Book Review: To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (2020)

 Hey everyone! I know I said I would be back tomorrow or Monday to do this review, but I actually finished reading To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini this afternoon while I was sitting outside on the front step enjoying the sunshine and warm temperature. And since I have nothing else to do this afternoon, here I am. So let's get right into the book.

When Brad dropped this book on my front step six days ago I wasn't sure what to expect from it. I'm not a huge fan of Paolini's work mainly because, well, I've only read Eragon and since that's his first book ever, that he wrote when he was still a teenager, and wasn't edited properly, even when a publisher actually picked the book up, it was so wordy and a blatant rip-off of Star Wars that I didn't like it and never finished reading the Inheritance Cycle. So when I found this book on my front step on Sunday I didn't think I was going to like it.

Here's the thing though. I REALLY enjoyed it. It is so different from Eragon and so much better written, that I was completely surprised at how good it is. I've never seen Alien, but this book seems to take inspiration from Alien, Witchblade, Star Trek, and Star Wars. But it's not any of those things. I swear it takes elements from each thing and mashes them up into it's own thing.

The main character of the book, Kira Navarez is pretty great. She makes mistakes, she's not overly confident, but she tries her best and is loyal to her friends. And for a xenobiologist, she's actually a pretty strong person, unlike other scientist characters in fiction, who end up just standing around looking stupid until the soldier character or characters save them from whatever threat they're facing. Not Kira though. Instead with the help of the xenosuit, the Soft Blade, or Idealis, Kira fights the bad guys (and the good guys at times) as well as any of the soldiers that are in this book.

However, Kira isn't what kept me engaged with this novel. She's pretty cut and dry throughout the book, so it's easy to follow her. What kept me engaged is the cast of supporting characters that populate the Wallfish which is the ship that Kira finds herself on eventually. From the ship's captain, Salvo Falconi to the ship's mind Gregorovich. A ship's mind is basically a human consciousness inside a starship's control circuits, allowing him or her to control a ship. While we learn a bit about each of them, we don't get anything from their perspectives, leaving us to learn about them as Kira does. Which is intriguing and allows us to get to know them, without being overloaded with information about them. Which is cool.

The alien race that's invading our galaxy, the Wranaui, or Jellies as they're commonly referred to as throughout the book, are your typical alien race, but they aren't bugs. They're kind of like the Borg in that they have artificial bodies, but they don't have the hive mind. So I guess they're more like if someone built an army of protocol droids from Star Wars and unleashed them upon the universe. 

Of course the so called good guys, known as the League of Allied Worlds, which is basically like the United Federation of Planets, and their military arm, the United Military Command, which is basically the book's version of Starfleet, aren't much better than the Jellies, and end up being your stereotypical political and military organizations that pop up in many books, comics, and movies, like the Nova Corps in Guardians of the Galaxy, the United States Military in the DC Extended Universe films, and other things as well. Which gets tiresome after a while, but it's still interesting to see how Paolini portrays this as he isn't outright portraying them as the villains as he did with the Empire in the Inheritance Cycle. 

Another thing that I like about this book is that the technology isn't as advanced as it is in franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars. They still have to cook, they use microwaves, and they still have to do the dishes after a meal. Which blew me away. I mean in most Sci-Fi shows, movies and books, there's some sort of device that cooks the meals, and then disposes of the dishes afterward. As silly as this sounds, it just makes the characters seem more relatable. Especially since the situations they find themselves in throughout the book aren't ones that the majority of the readers would most likely find themselves in. Also, I like how the Faster Than Light travel isn't instantaneous like it seems like it is on Star Trek or in the Star Wars films. 

The thing I don't like about this novel is how long it is. I was talking to my sister about this on Tuesday after we watched our episode of The Orville for the week and she mentioned there were several places where the book could've, and probably should've, ended before it did. However, I didn't notice that at all. There were just some places where I thought the material could've been shortened or taken out entirely and it wouldn't've mattered all that much, but there wasn't really a place, that I found, where the story could've ended before the actual ending. And even when it did end, it felt abrupt, as if there was still more of the book to go.

What's neat about this book is that Christopher Paolini wrote an afterword detailing when he came up with the idea for the book, and what his process was when he was writing it. He first came up with the idea as he was finishing up writing the third book in the Inheritance Cycle, Brisingr, back in 2006 or 2007 but didn't start writing it until after he was finished with it. Though he didn't begin in earnest until 2012 after the final book in the Inheritance Cycle, Inheritance had come out. Then he wrote until the book was publishable in 2020. Occasionally, particularly with major authors's books, you get this information in interviews and then people record it on Wikipedia or the Wiki dedicated to that series, but writers don't often publish those kinds of details in the afterword of the book in question, so I thought that was cool.

Overall To Sleep in a Sea of Stars was a fun book to read. Despite the 878 (825 of story) page count, I finished it in exactly six days. Mostly because I've spent two hours sitting outside reading just about every day this week, in addition to reading a bit before bed. If you're a fan of the Inheritance Cycle or are just looking for a new Sci-Fi book to read, I definitely recommend this one.

And that is going to be it for me for this week for real this time. I will be back next week though with more reviews and posts. I should have volume 2 of Codename: Sailor V finished by Tuesday or Wednesday, but I might even have it finished by Monday, so expect that review to come out next week as well. So until then have a great evening and a great rest of the weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Movie Review: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

 Hey guys! How was everyone's week? Mine was pretty good. So I had this review all written and posted but something weird happened with Google Chrome and the post got deleted. So I'm going to attempt to do it again. Let's get right into it.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks is probably one of Disney's most underrated movies. It's done pretty well on home media over the years, it being the second movie Disney ever put out on VHS in the early 80s, and getting pretty frequent re-releases on VHS in the 80s and 90s. But people still don't really talk about it all that much. It did okay critically and financially, but for whatever reason, even though, if they saw it at all, people of my generation probably saw it on the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection VHS release in 1994 and any reissues it had after that. Yet it's one that I quite enjoyed watching this time.

One of the things I like about it is that it's a fun movie to watch. While it's not as strong a film as Mary Poppins, it's still enjoyable to watch. The tone is a bit all over the place, but that's pretty much the case with any Disney movie that came out in the 70s. This movie was made in an era when Animation wasn't doing quite as well at the Disney Studio and the studio was relying on the live action films they were producing to keep themselves going though The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and The Rescuers all did okay when they came out.

The cast of this movie is spectacular. I mean you have Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson as the leads, and the actors playing the children were pretty good, though none of them did very much else before or after this movie. The oldest of the kids, Charlie, is a bit of a jerk at the start of the movie, but his attitude changes once Miss Price (Angela Lansbury) proves that she can perform magic spells. The other two kids, Carrie and Paul, are quite fun to watch on screen.

The visual effects are actually quite a bit better than they were in Freaky Friday. Probably because animation was used in this movie and that made things stand the test of time. Also the process they used to combine the live action characters with the animation is actually much improved compared to how the process was different than the more traditional blue screen process movies were using at the time.

I originally saw the movie on VHS sometime in the early 90s. As I mentioned in my overview of the Neon Mickey VHS releases, I'm about 95% sure that it was the 1986 release (seen above) that my parents rented for me rather than the original 1980 release that came out the same day as the first VHS release of Pete's Dragon. I remember enjoying it and not being afraid of the King, who is a Lion (he's on the front cover of just about every home video release), chasing them at the end of the animation sequence, the way the Wizard's duel between Merlin and Madam Mim did in The Sword in the Stone.

The songs in the movie are pretty solid, since they were written by the Sherman Brothers, who had done numerous projects for Disney in the 60s and 70s. However, the one thing I don't like about this movie is the dance sequence in the middle of the "Portobello Road" scene. It really slows the movie down since it's just random people dancing in the middle of Portobello Road (the location in the movie, not the song) and it feels like it drags on and on for five minutes. 

Overall this is a great movie. Before last night I hadn't seen it in about 30 years, since whenever the last time was that we rented it from Rogers Video. I've never owned it on VHS, DVD or on Blu-ray, so it was nice to be able to sit down and watch it on Disney+ last night. 

That's gonna be it for me for this week. However, I will be back on either Sunday or Monday with my review of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars as I am on page 607, and I only have 271 pages left until I finish it, so if I continue going at the rate I've been going when it comes to reading, I should be done by tomorrow afternoon. If not, I'll definitely be finished by Sunday night before I go to bed. So keep an eye out for that review at some point. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Comic Book Review: The Batman Adventures #'s 7 and 8 (1993)

 Hey everyone, I hope you're having a good week so far. As promised in my blog update post that I put out on Monday, I'm back for a comic book review. As you can see from the title of this review, I'm reviewing not one, but two issues today and will be focusing on the first two issues of The Batman Adventures that I ever got when I was a kid. So, let's get right into it.

Growing up in the 90s, Batman: The Animated Series was very popular with the kids in my class. However I wasn't allowed to watch it very often and so my first introduction to Batman was watching the reruns of the 1966 TV series, Batman: The Movie (1966), and Batman Returns. However I became familiar with BTAS because in 1993 my mom bought me The Batman Adventures #7. The Batman Adventures was a comic book that DC published as a tie-in to Batman: The Animated Series. While the show's creator, Bruce Timm, wasn't involved with the comic, the various artists the book had used the character models from the TV show to design the characters for the comic. As a result, the comic is basically the TV show in comic book form.

The Batman Adventures #7 was my very first Batman comic book ever. Though I remember seeing Batman on the subscription pages and a few advertisements in issues of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation that DC was publishing at the same time. So I knew he was a comic book character even though I saw him on TV and in movies first. Every issue of The Batman Adventures and later Batman & Robin Adventures that I got as a kid was bought for me by my mom at the hospital gift shop. 

As a story, this issue isn't the best that I've read, but it also isn't really bad. Batman is after a criminal named the Mobster, who favours boxing matches. Meanwhile, Killer Croc is a wrestler who gets spooked because one of his opponents is known as the Masked Marauder and had beaten Croc before in an earlier match. 

The thing that I like about this issue is that Batman isn't going up against one of his major villains. I mean yes, Killer Croc is in the issue, but Batman isn't after him. My one gripe about this issue, and the next one, is that Batman isn't in it enough. I don't know what it is about the 90s, but pretty much everyone who worked on a Batman project, be it movies, TV shows or comics, seemed to prefer to focus on the villains more than on Batman himself. I don't have a problem with it when it's an interesting character like Two-Face. Or even Mr. Freeze for that matter. But when it's a character like Killer Croc or the Joker or whoever, where the character isn't all that interesting, it doesn't work as well. At least not to me. I know there are some of you out there who just enjoy the villains way more than you enjoy Batman, which is fine, but for me, most of the villains aren't that interesting with Two-Face and Mr. Freeze being the exceptions.

I think that's all I have to say about this issue. It's time to move on to The Batman Adventures #8. So let's hop on over there and check it out.

This issue isn't the greatest either, but I do like that Batman is going around looking for the bank robber known as the Invisible Man. I won't spoil who the Invisible Man actually is though if you pay attention to the shadow on the cover, I'm pretty sure you can figure out who Batman is fighting.

My problem with this issue is that Summer Gleeson's love life takes up more pages than the Batman storyline. She's only in twenty episodes of the series and she's not really a major character and yet she got more "screentime" in this issue than the title character did. Yes, it's tied into the Batman plot via the villain, but this is The Batman Adventures not The Summer Gleeson Adventures, so I don't care about a minor character's story, which should be the subplot.

The artwork in both issues are pretty good though. Like I said earlier, the artwork matches up to the designs used for the TV show, which is good. Mike Parobeck and Rick Burchett are the artists for issue #7 as well as for issue #8 and they're consistently good though I also prefer Ty Templeton's work on this series as well.

Like with issue #7, I got this issue at the hospital gift shop after an appointment or scan or whatever I was there for at the time. I started getting issues of The Batman Adventures during a time where I'd be at CHEO all day because I had three or four appointments all in a row with a break in between. So either in between appointments or after my final appointment, we'd stop in at the gift shop and my mom would buy a comic or a Berenstain Bears book for me if I was good.  

Aside from the problems I have with both issues, I like them. However, I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading them as there are better stories in this series and aside from the first three issues and the final three issues, this series consists of standalone issues so you don't need to have read all 36 issues to get anything out of it. 

I think that's all I have to say about these two issues. I'll be back on Friday for my review of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Until then have a great evening and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.

Blog Update for May, 2021

 Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. A bit on the crazy side towards the end, but still good. Today I'm here to give you all an update on the blog for this month and to make an announcement for a series of reviews I'm going to be starting at the beginning of June. Right now, let's get into what didn't happen on Friday.

As you probably noticed I didn't get my review of Bedknobs and Broomsticks done on Friday as I'd planned on doing. That's because I just didn't feel like watching the movie on Thursday night. Also I'd already put up my review of Freaky Friday on Monday, so I at least got a movie review up last week. So I think I'll get it done for this Friday instead. We'll see though.

There will also be a delay on my review of Codename: Sailor V Volume 2, and the Sailor Moon manga and anime because Brad, very sneakily, dropped off a book to lend me yesterday called To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini, the author of Eragon and the other three books in the Inheritance Cycle. Right now I'm on page 104, the beginning of chapter 8, and there's 878 pages, including the appendices and afterword/acknowledgements. Naturally, I started it right away. It's a little slow, but it's good so far. I didn't like Eragon  all that much when I first read it a long, long time ago. Mainly because I felt it was a little too derivative of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope without being subtle about it, but that was Paolini's first novel and he was around fifteen or sixteen when he wrote it, so naturally it's going to be awkward, stilted and derivative. Gordon Korman wrote This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall when he was twelve and it was awkward and stilted too, because Korman himself was awkward, being a twelve year old writing his first novel. So maybe if I can get my hands on it I might give Eragon another chance, and then read the rest of the series. I'm aiming to have my review of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars out by Wednesday of next week, end of next week at the latest. Like I said there's 878 pages in the book in total and I have just under 800 pages to go, so we'll see how that goes.

The sixth season of DC's Legends of Tomorrow began last weekend, and I had no clue the premiere was even on. I haven't been watching Space Channel for the last few weeks because Superman & Lois has been on hiatus and there isn't a Star Trek series airing right now. As a result I haven't seen the commercials for the return of Legends and the online promo campaign has been pretty lax. I only found out that the season started because this week's episode's airing was trending on Twitter. Being the VHS fan/collector that I am the season 6 poster actually looks pretty cool. Also, Superman & Lois comes back from it's hiatus next week, on the 18th so I'm looking forward to that for sure.

While I'm finished my overviews of the major home video collections from Disney, I've decided to go deeper into the releases that I have. Thanks to some online friends I have digitized editions of the Disney VHS releases that I'd been on the hunt for before the pandemic hit, including some of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection releases, and all but three of the remaining Walt Disney Classics releases from the 80s and early 90s. This is like how Vincent sent me the digitized versions of the Teddy Ruxpin VHS tapes that I used for those reviews. I still want to get the actual physical copies for some of them obviously, but for right now this will be beneficial to the blog. Starting on May 31st I'm going to look at each release that I have, in the order of their home video release date, each week until I've gone through all of them. Basically this will be a more in depth look at the history of Walt Disney Home Entertainment, from the earliest VHS releases that I have, through to the most recent DVD and Blu-ray releases that I have in my collection. I might do this with my non-Disney VHS tapes in the future, but for now I want to focus solely on Disney. 

With that said, aside from my Bedknobs and Broomsticks review, which will be coming out on Friday (hopefully), I don't actually have much content coming out this week. Mainly because I'm doing some prepwork for my Disney home media release review series the rest of the week, as well as focusing on reading To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. I'm going to at least get a single issue comic book review in on Wednesday. I'm not sure which issue yet though. 

I think that pretty much covers everything I wanted to talk about in this update. I am doing a review of season 1 of The Orville in two weeks along with the full season review of season 1 of The Hardy Boys. I've been rewatching The Orville on Disney+ with my sister and we're three episodes away from finishing the first season. We wanted to make sure that my memory was refreshed and my sister was caught up before the third season starts later this year or beginning of next year, depending on when it starts. 

Alrighty, that is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Wednesday to review whichever comic book I decide to read this week. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.   

Book Review: Codename: Sailor V Volume 1 (2011)

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing well. It's Thursday and I finished reading the first volume of Codename: Sailor V, which is the prequel/predecessor to the popular Sailor Moon manga series by Naoko Takeuchi. So that's what I'm here to review today. There isn't alot to talk about because this volume is more episodic. I'll have alot more to talk about with volume 2, because it leads up to the beginning of Sailor Moon. Right now though let's dive into Volume 1 of Codename: Sailor V.

As I mentioned, Codename: Sailor V is the prequel manga to the Sailor Moon series. However it also acts as a prototype to the Sailor Moon series. Instead of five heroes, we have one, but Minako's personality and life is basically what Usagi would become later on when Naoko Takeuchi modified the premise into what we now know as Sailor Moon. As a result there are alot of familiar places and themes in this book. The game center, with the Sailor Guardians's secret hideout is there, as well as the premise of the villains stealing energy from people. Though here the reason for it is actually unknown. Sort of how it was at the beginning of the original Sailor Moon anime. There are even some cameos from Motoki Furuhata (Andrew in the original English dub), Naru (Molly), and Usagi (Serena) herself, though you don't actually know who she is at this point. In the final chapter, Kunzite (Malachite) is mentioned, though he's not shown. 

One of the things I like about this book is that there aren't tons and tons of characters that keep getting introduced and Minako's supporting cast doesn't have a whole lot to do except be the supporting cast. Which is nice, because when I was reading it, I didn't have to think about too many characters at once, unlike with Sailor Moon. The last time I read the Sailor Moon manga, I had a hard time keeping track of all the characters just because so many of them were very important.

I also like how funny the book is too. There were several points where I laughed because of something funny that happened in a panel. Usually it ends up being something that happens to Minako because of her incompetence as a new superhero. Plus her dynamic with Artemis, who is probably just as scatter-brained as Minako is, is hilarious. 

This series doesn't feel as compressed as Sailor Moon does. That's probably because each chapter is very episodic with the monster of the week formula, used to great success in live action Tokusatsu series such as Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, being extremely effective here. Which is pretty cool.

The one thing that I don't like is that the book feels slow in places. Mainly because it is so episodic and there are chapters where it doesn't feel like nothing's happening even though there are things happening. I also don't like Minako's contrary attitude when Artemis is trying to remind her that she's supposed to be on a mission. Also, what's up with her using the disguise compact when all she's going to do is transform into Sailor V? Usagi does that a couple of times, but not as often as Minako does. It feels pointless. Especially when she uses it to disguise herself from a friend, family member, or someone else she knows so she can transform into Sailor V. But I guess this manga operates on the same kind of logic that our comic books do when it comes to hiding the identities of pretty much everybody in the DC Universe whose identities aren't public knowledge.

Overall this is a pretty good book. If you're into manga and anime, and are a Sailor Moon fan, I would definitely recommend reading this prequel series, if you haven't done so before. I own the two volume 2011 English translation edition rather than the original three volume edition from 2004, which I don't think has an English translation version. The 2011 edition is probably the one that's going to be the easiest to find if you don't own it already.

There's one more thing I want to cover before I wrap this review up. When I get to reviewing Sailor Moon I'm going to review the manga as a series, rather than by volume or by story arc. That way I can just talk about everything all at once without having to repeat myself with certain things. I'm also planning on doing the same thing with the anime so I can just talk about the anime instead of each season individually.

That's it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow though for my review of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

TV Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch Episode 1, "Aftermath" (2021)

 Hey everyone! How are all of you doing today? I'm doing pretty well. I hope you all enjoyed my look at the pre-Walt Disney Classics VHS releases. Today I'm switching gears and am going to be talking about "Aftermath", the first episode of the brand new Disney+ animated series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch. I watched it virtually with my buddy Jonathan and he really enjoyed it and is excited for the next fifteen episodes. While I liked this episode, I'm not really sure about the series going forward. But I'll talk about that in this review. So let's get into it.

I've gone on record in previous blog posts saying that this series didn't interest me and that I wasn't planning on watching it. And I probably wouldn't've if Jonathan hadn't agreed to watch it with me over Skype. Part of it is because it's a spin-off of the 2008 series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the majority of the main characters of this show appeared in an episode of that show long after I'd stopped watching the series, when it was on TV. For reference I actually stopped watching it in late 2009 or early 2010 during the second season. So it's been close to twelve years since I stopped watching The Clone Wars. The other reason I had no interest in this series is because it deals with the Clone Troopers and I'm not a fan of that kind of story. Yes, it's called Star Wars, but I don't necessarily watch it for the military aspect of it. I watch it for the hero, the rogue, the princess, and the gambler more than I do the soldiers.

After we finished watching it, Jonathan and I talked about it a bit and I didn't actually say whether I enjoyed it or not. I wanted to sleep on it and think about it before I said anything. My initial reaction was somewhat positive, but I needed time to really process what I was watching. It was a good episode. It was well written, well produced, and well animated. But despite their "genetic defects" I found these Clone Troopers to be just as bland as any other one that I've seen in the prequel trilogy and the first season and a half of The Clone Wars. Not that that's a bad thing when they're supporting characters, but when they're the main characters that you're following for a full season (or more), it's not a good idea to have bland characters. It's almost like if Star Trek suddenly announced they were making a series where Borg drones are the main characters. It doesn't work. Also, Star Wars has actually done a similar premise to this back in 2007.

It's not my favourite Timothy Zahn written Star Wars novel ever (that honour goes to the 2013 novel, Scoundrels), but he wrote a book called Allegiance. In it, a group of Stormtroopers desert the Empire after the events of A New Hope, and go rogue, basically becoming a vigilante group who are being hunted by Mara Jade. Which is essentially what this show is, except there's no Mara Jade, they're Clone Troopers instead of Stormtroopers, and it takes place after the events of Revenge of the Sith instead of A New Hope. The thing is, both are well written, it's just neither are really for me.

I think what I liked most about this episode is that we got to see Kamino in the immediate aftermath of Revenge of the Sith, which we didn't get to see in the movies, and that Lama Su is still the Prime Minister of the planet at this point. I'm sure I'm missing some important details from The Clone Wars where the Kaminoans appear, but I don't care, it was still cool to see.

I also liked that Tarkin was the one to test the Bad Batch's loyalty to the brand new Galactic Empire. Though his character model is a bit wonky. What I mean by that is it looks like they reused the character model used in Rebels rather than the one used in The Clone Wars, so he looks as old as he did in Rebels, Rogue One, and A New Hope rather than he should at this point. That's a minor issue though. Just the way he was utilized here was pretty cool.

Overall, it was a good episode, but I'm not sure if I'm going to continue watching the series going forward. I'm not really connecting to any of the characters, the way I did with The Mandalorian and the way I hope to with Obi-Wan Kenobi when that comes out. And I think that's because they didn't struggle with their decisions, it came to them quickly, and that makes them seem too perfect and nobody in fiction should be perfect, because nobody in real life is perfect. I'm planning on giving it one more episode to win me over, but so far The Bad Batch is turning out to be not for me. Which is fine, as there are other Star Wars shows and movies coming out in the near future that I'm really excited for. So if the second episode doesn't win me over, I'll leave the series for the people who are into it, and those who just love Dave Filoni's animated Star Wars shows in general be it The Clone Wars, Rebels or this.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow though for my review of volume 1 of Codename: Sailor V as I have one chapter left before I finish the book. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

The History of Disney Movies on Home Video Finale: 1980-1984 Neon Mickey Releases

 Hey everyone! Happy Star Wars Day to those of you who celebrate it. I'm not doing any Star Wars Day posts this year. At least, not today. My buddy Jonathan and I are watching the premiere of Star Wars: The Bad Batch on Disney+ tonight and I'll be talking about the episode tomorrow. As you know I'm not interested in the show as a premise, for reasons I will get into when I talk about the show tomorrow, but I decided to at least watch the first episode, as I did with WandaVision, and as I will do with Loki next month. Since Jonathan was going to be watching it anyway, I figured I'd have more fun if he and I watched it together virtually. So I got my fingers crossed for that.

Today I'm here to end my overview series on the history of Disney movies on home video. I began in 1984 with the Walt Disney Classics and ended in 2019 with the Walt Disney Signature Collection. But what about the releases that came out from 1980 to 1984? What were they and how and why was Walt Disney Home Video established? That's what I'm going to be talking about today. Originally I was going to talk about every single release to come out between 1980 and 1984, but because most of the releases are primarily for live action films, I decided to narrow things down to the three live action/animation hybrid films that were included in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection and the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection, the five animated movies that were released on home video, two cartoon shorts that were originally part of an animated package film, and two cartoon featurettes that were released along with theatrical re-releases of Disney animated classics. So without further ado, let's talk about the Neon Mickey era of Walt Disney Home Video.

The reason these tapes are commonly referred to as the Neon Mickey releases, is because of this logo at the beginning of each tape. This is the very first Walt Disney Home Video logo which debuted in 1978 when Disney began releasing cartoon shorts on Laserdisc through MCA DiscoVision. What's interesting about this logo is that it says Walt Disney Home Entertainment on it, rather than Walt Disney Home Video. Possibly because Disney hadn't actually established Walt Disney Home Video yet, but they needed a logo to differentiate the seven Disney DiscoVision releases from other studios's movies released on Laserdisc around the same time. The 1984-1986 variant, which says Walt Disney Home Video, and has the more well known Walt Disney signature typography rather than the one used on Disney movies since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, used on any VHS, Betamax, and Laserdisc releases that weren't part of the Walt Disney Classics, is the one I grew up seeing on my early VHS releases of Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. Disney established Walt Disney Home Video in 1980.

The first Disney to be released on VHS was Pete's Dragon. It was released on March 4th, 1980. I did some preliminary research and I can't seem to find why Disney chose Pete's Dragon for their first VHS release. According to Wikipedia though, while Critics liked it, the movie didn't do well at the box office and Disney had hoped for a box office return on the level of Mary Poppins back in 1964. Which is reasonable. The problem with that thought, is that not only could nothing Disney put out match how popular and successful Mary Poppins was in 1964 in terms of their live-action films, but Pete's Dragon came out in 1977. That's a thirteen year difference between the two films and box office numbers can change drastically in those thirteen years in terms of what is considered to be a flop in box office returns. I know, all that to say that Disney executives, who were nowhere near sold on the idea of their movies being available for the home video market, particularly in 1980, figured it would be safe to release Pete's Dragon on home video since it wasn't one of their popular titles. Which is the same mentality which led to the Walt Disney Classics starting with Robin Hood four years later.

 Up next is Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which came out the same day as Pete's Dragon. When my parents rented this movie for me when I was a kid, I'm pretty sure it was the 1986 VHS release they rented, not this one. However, the covers are similar.

This is the 1986 release of the movie. As you can see the cover art is similar, though the font used for the movie title is different, and the design is slightly different. Plus, this release is a slipcover release, while the 1980 release is a clamshell.

I'm not sure how well this release did, but again, with the executives's mentality being that the live-action films are safe to release on home video as many of them wouldn't get theatrical re-releases, unlike the animated movies, it's not surprising that Bedknobs and Broomsticks would be one of the earliest home video releases that Disney would put out. Which doesn't explain the next release.

The next animation related release to come out was Mary Poppins. It was released on December 30th, 1980, almost a full year after the other releases that came out on March 4th 1980. Because it was one of Disney's more popular live-action movies, and the one that the company compared all their other live-action films to, it's a bit surprising given it had two theatrical re-releases prior to it's home video debut.

Next on my list of Neon Mickey home video releases came on June 26th 1981. This was a major turning point for the company, because thus far Disney had not released any of their animated feature films on home video. However, Dumbo made the grade. It had theatrical re-releases in 1949, 1959, 1972, and 1976, and had two television broadcasts. One in 1955, and another in 1978. Both were on the Disneyland TV series. But I guess that's why executives were okay with releasing it on home video in 1981. Walt had okayed the film's 1955 television broadcast, as he was the host of Disneyland at the time and at the time the early VHS releases were coming out, the mentality was, if Walt okayed it, then it was fine. Even though Walt had been dead for fifteen years at this point.

Also released on VHS and Betamax on June 26th 1981, was The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. This wasn't a surprise as this was only two years before Disney would release Winnie the Pooh and A Day for Eeyore theatrically, and Welcome to Pooh Corner would debut on the Disney Channel. This movie also didn't have any theatrical re-releases, and the individual shorts that make up the movie had probably aired on TV at some point in the 70s. Personally, I would love to have this release in my collection, but it's probably really hard to find.

Next is Alice in Wonderland. Released on October 15th, 1981 it's another movie that Walt had decided to put on Disneyland in the 50s. In fact, it actually aired as the program's second episode in 1954. Naturally, the execs in 1981 felt it was okay to release it on home video since, again, it wasn't as popular a movie as something like Pinocchio or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

 

Something that I talked about at length in my Walt Disney Classics overview is the fact that no new animated movies were being released on home video at this point. While The Fox and the Hound had been released on July 10th 1981 to theatres, it did not get a home video release at all in the 80s. As I showed in the Walt Disney Classics overview, the movie didn't get a home video release until 1994 as the final release in the Walt Disney Classics collection. While it's predecessor release, The Rescuers, also didn't get a home video release in the 80s, being released as part of the Walt Disney Classics in 1992, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh did have a home video release and up to this point was the most recent Disney animated movie to get a home video release as Alice in Wonderland had originally been theatrically released in 1951 and Dumbo in 1941.

 The next Disney animated movie to get a home video release was the 1945 package feature, The Three Caballeros. It was released in November 1982. According to the Disney Wiki, the 1977 print used for the film's theatrical re-release was used, which is why the Buena Vista logo is before the movie on the tape. 

Also released in November 1982 was Fun and Fancy Free. The reason these two package films were released on home video this early is because they were two of the more popular ones that Disney had been airing on TV. Neither of them had theatrical re-releases so they hadn't brought in any more money than they had during their theatrical releases in the 40s. Not to mention The Three Caballeros starred Donald Duck and Fun and Fancy Free starred Donald, along with Mickey Mouse and Goofy. What's interesting about this release is that the title "Mickey and the Beanstalk" is more prominent than the film's actual title "Fun and Fancy Free" is. 

Next was The Wind in the Willows which was the first half of the package film, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. It was also released in November 1982.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which was the second part of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was released at the same time. While the full film wouldn't get a VHS release until the end of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection in 1999, it did get a Laserdisc release in 1992, though it's not part of the Walt Disney Classics collection. Both The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Wind in the Willows would each get a VHS re-release as part of the Walt Disney Mini Classics collection, as well as the Favorite Stories collection in the late 80s and the 90s. 

Mary Poppins got a VHS re-release in November 1982. I think this was the first Disney movie to get a home video re-release, though Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh all got re-releases in 1982 as well, as their original 1981 releases were for the rental market only, while the 1982 releases were for the retail market only. People bought them despite the almost $80 price tag on these early home video releases. This price tag wasn't limited to Disney movies. Most movies on home video were expensive in the early 80s. Because of this most people's VHS collections were limited to the movies they absolutely had to own.

On December 3rd 1984, the same day that Robin Hood was released on VHS for the first time, launching the Walt Disney Classics, Mickey's Christmas Carol was released on VHS for the first time as well. Both films were part of Disney's Wrap and Ready-to-Give Christmas promotion that year. The packaging for this short was closer to the one used for Robin Hood rather than the design used for the releases up to this point. Except it was in a white clamshell instead of the black clamshell used for Robin Hood.

Finally, on December 3rd 1984, Winnie the Pooh and Friends was released on VHS. This is a compilation of Winnie the Pooh and A Day for Eeyore with the three Humphrey the Bear cartoon shorts that came out in the 1950s. It was the first time that Winnie the Pooh and A Day for Eeyore was released on home video, and I think the only time the Humphrey the Bear cartoons were released on home video outside of the Disney Rarities set from the Walt Disney Treasures DVD series. Winnie the Pooh and A Day for Eeyore was re-released on VHS in 1986 to coincide with the first individual VHS releases of Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. 

And that my friends is the end of my look at the history of Disney movies on home video. There are several collections of cartoon shorts that came out over the years like the Walt Disney Cartoon Classics, the Walt Disney Mini Classics, and the Walt Disney Favorite Stories collection. However, I decided to end things here because it feels like everything has come full circle now. This has been alot of fun to do. As I said at the beginning of the Walt Disney Classics segment I started doing these on my old blog in like 2018 or 2019, but I only got as far as the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection and stopped. This time I managed to go through all of the releases I wanted to talk about.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow though for my review of the first episode of the new Disney+ animated series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. May the Fourth be with you!

Image Credits

Thanks to Kyle O of Imaxination's Video Corner for the use of the cover images for Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland. They were all on the Disney Wiki, without credit attributed to anyone, so if there are any here that Kyle also took besides those two, thanks for the use of them too. Check out his blog here:

http://imaxination1980svideocorner.blogspot.com/

And check out his other blog here: https://kylelovesanimationnmore.wordpress.com/