TV Show Review: Loki Episode 1 "Glorious Purpose" (2021)

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing okay today. I watched the first episode of Loki on Disney+ with my sister last night, so I'm here to talk about that episode. I'm not going to have spoilers in this review, so don't worry if you haven't watched the episode yet. With that said, let's get into it.

Loki is a series that I wasn't excited for when it was announced. Mainly because I'm just so tired of superhero shows and movies in general at this point. Especially DC and Marvel. Though at this point for Marvel it doesn't matter because people will watch whatever they put out, regardless. Like, it could be the worst Marvel movie or show ever, and people will still watch it. Even after thirteen years, that's still really weird to me, because Marvel wasn't always as well known to the non-comic book reading audience as it is now. Especially when I was growing up in the 90s and 2000s. DC wasn't either to the extent it is now, though people knew who Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman were thanks to the shows that were on in the 50s through to the 80s, not to mention the movies that Superman had been in in the 70s and 80s and the movies that Batman was in in the 80s and 90s. But aside from Spider-Man and the X-Men, very few people knew anything about Marvel.

The MCU is a fickle thing for me as someone who isn't a big fan of Marvel Comics in general, because I loved the early movies from Iron Man in 2008 through to Ant-Man in 2015. I didn't like Age of Ultron as much as I enjoyed The Avengers, and while I enjoyed Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Black Panther, Infinity War, Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far from Home, I didn't like Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Ant-Man and the Wasp, or Captain Marvel as much, with Doctor Strange and Thor: Ragnarok being the two I didn't like at all. And it's not that they're bad movies by any means. It's just I personally didn't care about them as much for one reason or another.

So when it came time to announce the MCU post Far from Home, and even a little bit before that, probably around Infinity War or Endgame, I decided I would become more selective when it came to which MCU films and shows I would watch. Especially when it came to the Disney+ shows as I just don't care about the characters being chosen to be the lead character in those shows as much. In fact the only two I actually became excited for were The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (which is one of the best shows I've seen in a long time) and the upcoming series, Hawkeye, because I love Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye and I am really looking forward to seeing how Hailee Steinfeld ends up portraying Kate Bishop, who was the best thing about the first trade paperback volume for Matt Fraction's Hawkeye comic book run. The rest I didn't (and don't for the upcoming ones) care about and have had a very take it or leave it attitude towards. And that includes Loki.

The first episode of the show, titled "Glorious Purpose" is extremely well done, and I had lots of fun watching it, but the time travel aspect is something I'm uncertain about going forward. Look, I'm a fan of DC's Legends of Tomorrow but I'm a fan of that show because of the characters, while most of the weird stuff they do on that show, particularly the time travel aspect are the things I hate the most about that show. So, when the whole conceit of a show starring Tom Hiddleston as the god of mischief, has to be time travel because he was killed at the beginning of Infinity War (okay, so there are slight spoilers for that three year old movie), then to my mind, you're asking the audience to take a leap of faith that the time travel won't immediately make the entire show convoluted due to how loosely these shows and movies tend to play with their own rules when it comes to time travel. Yes, even a show that has been on for decades, like Doctor Who, plays loosely with it's own time travel rules. I'm also not as invested in Loki as a solo character, as I feel his story ended with Infinity War, and anything they do going forward is just filling in blanks that don't necessarily need to be filled in, between movies that came out almost a decade ago. 

Aside from not feeling as invested in this time variant version of Loki, who we were technically introduced to in Endgame when the Avengers went back in time to the first Avengers movie in order to get the Infinity Stone inside the Tesseract, though still liking him, everything I said in the previous paragraph is, in this episode, unfounded. It's well written and I do like the chemistry between Loki, and Owen Wilson's character, Mobius, the Time Variance Authority (TVA) agent who recruits Loki for what they need him for. 

Speaking of Owen Wilson, he actually surprised me in this episode. Mainly because he's never been an actor that I've enjoyed watching as he's known for playing loud and obnoxious. Especially in the 2000s, when every comedy was trying to outdo each other with how raunchy and plotless they could be. But here, I actually enjoyed his character. And of course, Tom Hiddleston is always fun to watch when he's playing Loki. That's the main reason I didn't just dismiss this series and refuse to watch it. And the banter between these two characters are the reason I'm going to watch the next episode or two. But again, if the time travel aspect gets too complicated for me then I'm going to bow out and put this show on the "Not for Me" list.

The thing I don't like about this show is that it took almost the entire episode for Loki to find out why Mobius wanted to recruit him. Instead most of the episode is Mobius psycho-analyzing Loki, which I guess is necessary, but I am so sick of comic book movies and shows doing this. Yes, we know what Loki's insecurities are at this point in the MCU. Multiple characters identified them in Thor, The Avengers, and Thor: The Dark World, so I feel we don't need to rehash them again for this show. If it was Loki from later on in the timeline it would be fine. But it isn't. It's the Loki we've known since 2011. The reason I love Superman & Lois (one of them anyway) is that all it's trying to do is be a Superman show. It wants to be a Superman show, and so it's not spending entire episodes pscyho-analyzing the main character. I just wish Loki wanted to be a straight up, fun, Loki series. Especially since it only has six episodes to tell it's story in, and so I feel like it should've packed a little bit more plot into this episode instead of spending precious moments on establishing what we already know about the character.

Also, the TVA is basically the Time Lords from Doctor Who, the Temporal Investigations Department from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Time Bureau and the Time Masters from DC's Legends of Tomorrow and Time Force from Power Rangers Time Force. Not to mention any other time monitoring organization in any other show or movie about time travel. So it's really nothing new at this point.

I know, I sound like I'm bashing this episode. But that's the thing, I'm not. A good reviewer has to not only praise the thing they're reviewing, but also identify it's flaws and areas where things could be improved. Especially when it comes to entertainment mediums such as movies and TV shows. Otherwise, how else can the show or movie franchise get better? And the same thing goes for reviewers who are reviewing something they don't like. You can't just bash a movie or show, because that doesn't do anything. Instead, if you don't like something, you have to at least try to find something you enjoyed, even if it's the worst movie or TV show ever. Loki is still an interesting character, but you don't immediately need to go into the psycho-analysis of him to make him interesting. Because it just makes some audience members bored. Luckily, there was still alot of fun in this episode, but there wasn't much story being told, which is a problem when the first season of a show only has six episodes. Both seasons of The Mandalorian, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, as well as WandaVision were able to do so much in only eight or nine episodes that it was astonishing how much they got done in that small number of episodes. But this show has six episodes to tell it's story, and if they continue not putting very much story in each episode, then by the finale, it's going to feel rushed and compacted because they didn't tell much story.

Overall, I think those of you who are huge MCU fans will enjoy this show if you haven't watched the first episode yet. There's tons to love about it, just keep in mind that not much story is told in this first episode. But otherwise, it was a good episode, and I'm interested to see where things go in the remaining five episodes. 

Alright guys that's gonna be it for me for today. I should be back tomorrow with another post. If not I'll definitely be back on Saturday with this week's movie review. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to watch tomorrow night yet, but whatever it is, I'll be reviewing it on Saturday. So until then have a wonderful afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Where Does Geek Culture End and Pop Culture Begin?

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing well for a Wednesday. It's not as humid out today as it was yesterday and the day before, but it's still warm out. It'd be nice if we got some rain though. The reason I'm writing this today is because I've observed a trend recently with current movie and TV shows. Particularly with recent superhero/comic book based TV shows and movies, but also with animated movies too. That trend is that certain movies and TV shows get popular really quickly, but never trend on social media. Others trend on social media, but I don't see anyone talking about them. While others don't trend on social media and nobody talks about them at all. Which made me want to ask the question, where does geek culture end and pop culture begin? So let's get into it.

Personally, I see pop culture and geek culture to be two separate things. Occasionally, with things like Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, the MCU, Batman (in the 90s), Disney Animation (in the late 80s and early 90s), and Star Trek (in the 90s), the two crossover and what are primarily considered to be geeky franchises go mainstream and become full blown pop culture phenomenons. But, for the most part they stay relatively separate. Yet, what makes geek culture cross over into pop culture? I mean, Batman was well loved in the 90s, with the animated series, and the movies, plus lots and lots of toys. But, at the same time, in the 90s, Superman died in the comics, Warner Bros. tried developing a movie for him to star in, and he was the star of both a live action show from 1993 until 1997 and an animated series from 1996 until 2000. Not to mention his younger self, Superboy was the star of a live action show that ran from 1988 until 1992. Aside from his death at the hands of Doomsday in 1993, which made international headlines and made non-comic book readers freak out enough to actually go pick up a comic book, by the time I entered public school in 1994, despite Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman being on TV, my classmates were too focused on the upcoming release of Batman Forever, season 2 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and The Lion King to pay any attention to Superman. Same goes for Spider-Man. Kids were engrossed with the X-Men to pay attention when Spider-Man: The Animated Series debuted on Fox Kids in November of 1994. What does that have to do with the current status of pop culture and geek culture? Easy. It has EVERYTHING to do with it. For example.

 Superman & Lois debuted on February 23rd, 2021, with some attention to it, for being a fun Superman show, something we hadn't had since...well, since ever as Smallville was a Clark Kent show and Lois & Clark focused more on the Lois and Clark side of things rather than the Superman side of things. Which means that we haven't had a straight up Superman show in live action since Adventures of Superman, starring George Reeves, ended in 1956. But that's it. While the show trends on Twitter every week, when it airs, hardly anybody is talking about it. Like I'm not being inundated with spoilers each week on Twitter, Facebook, or even YouTube.

On the flipside of that though, the first episode of Loki dropped on Disney+ this morning. However, it started trending yesterday afternoon because early reviews started coming in. But the show hadn't even dropped yet, and people were already talking about it!!! Which I just don't get. How can anyone be in love with a show or movie when it hadn't even come out yet? Maybe it's because I'm almost 35 years old and while I want to be excited for shows like Loki, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and whatever the next Arrowverse/DC Comics based TV show is going to be, especially since Supergirl is wrapping up, my constant disappointment lately with new shows and movies being not quite for me, aside for certain shows like Superman & Lois, and The Hardy Boys, I'm finding it more and more difficult to get excited about the shows and movies that I should be excited for.

Aaron and I have this argument all the time. Usually when he's telling me about some Science Fiction series or movie that came out in the 70s or 80s that I've never heard of before, but apparently was massively popular at the time it came out. Most of the time I end up thinking that the show or movie in question was liked by a solid, devoted fanbase. But just because something is liked by people, doesn't mean it's massively popular. Every piece of entertainment has it's fans.  For example, Horror is such a huge literary genre thanks to early pioneers like George A. Romero and Stephen King, but it's not appealing to everyone. Hell, I'd say it's not even as accessible to everyone, given how disturbing books and movies in this genre tend to be. 

Going back to superhero and comic book based shows, while WandaVision and Loki were highly anticipated, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier kinda just came and went quietly. It only trended on Twitter once, and that was the week the first episode dropped. And it mostly trended because of the reveal of John Walker in the Captain America suit at the end of the episode. Otherwise, I didn't see very much about it week to week. Which made it safe for me to wait until Friday nights to watch it instead of rushing to put on the episode right after breakfast to avoid all the spoilers like I've been doing with The Mandalorian since 2019.

 Back in 2013 Walt Disney Animation Studios released Frozen. Nobody was prepared for it, nobody had asked for it, but they'd released it because they'd wanted to do a movie based on Hans Christian Anderson's story, The Snow Queen, probably since Walt was alive. The movie blew up. It was bigger than any of the animated movies that Disney had put out in the early to mid-90s. It was bigger than Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King combined. And not only was it this huge pop culture phenomenon that put Disney Animation back in the spotlight, where it hadn't really been since the 90s, but it stayed a pop culture phenomenon until 2016 at the latest. Long after it's debut on DVD and Blu-ray.

Fast forward nearly a decade to this year when Raya and the Last Dragon came out back in March. It came and went with so little fanfare. Even when it went into general release on Disney+ last week, it came and went very quickly. As you know from my review of the movie, I loved it. But outside of the Animation fan community, it garnered very little attention in pop culture. Is it because it wasn't a Disney musical like Frozen is, and focused more on adventure, character development and world building much like The Rescuers, The Rescuers Down Under, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, and Big Hero 6 did? Or is it because a number of animated movies came out in March and people just didn't want to pay an extra $30 for the Premier Access of the movie, especially in countries where movie theatres still aren't open yet? There's no real way of knowing to be honest. I will say that people seem to think that Raya and the Last Dragon was a failure because it wasn't popular like Frozen or any of the movies from the early to mid-90s. That's simply isn't the case, I don't think. And it certainly isn't the case in Disney's eyes. Which leads me to the wildest speculation.

Do box office numbers and ratings not matter anymore when it comes to how popular a TV show or movie is? Is trending on social media more important? As I've said in this post already, it seems like the more often a movie or show is trending on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, the more popular it is right? Yes and no. I mean in terms of movies, they have to make money regardless of how much people like them, so how they make money isn't as important, especially in this day and age, as long as they make money.

So to get back to the question that is the title of this post, where does geek culture end and pop culture begin? Honestly, there isn't really a dividing line, because sometimes geek culture can become pop culture, depending on how well it's received by audiences. Also, it can be a subjective thing too, because one person isn't necessarily going to like what other people like, and sometimes someone will like a movie or show or comic or book or whatever it is that other people don't like. So it really just depends on a person's individual tastes. 

I think that's going to be it for me for now. I'll be back tomorrow with my review of the first episode of Loki. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

The History of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment: The Adventures of Chip 'n' Dale (1980)

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So today I'm going to be officially starting my long term History of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment review/overview series where each week, in the order the tapes, DVDs, and Blu-rays were released in, I'll be taking a look at a Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (previously known as Walt Disney Home Video and Walt Disney Home Entertainment) release that I have in my collection. I'm able to do this because thanks to online friends, I have digitized copies of some of these tapes, DVDs, and Blu-rays, while having the actual physical copies of the rest of them. My focus will be on the openings, bonus features occasionally, and the history of Disney releasing movies and shows on home media formats. I'm also going to give short opinions on each movie, which means I'll be repeating myself in several posts because I have multiple releases of the same movies. So let's get into it with the only pre-1984 Neon Mickey tape that I have, The Adventures of Chip 'n' Dale!

 As I said in my Neon Mickey VHS overview Disney began releasing cartoon shorts and live action movies on home video in 1978 with the MCA-Discovision Laserdisc releases. However, beginning in 1980 with the Fotomat collaboration, they began releasing movies and cartoons on VHS and Betamax. Among the thirteen titles planned for the Fotomat collaborative release line, The Adventures of Chip 'n' Dale was released on VHS on March 4th, 1980, alongside Pete's Dragon, The Black Hole, The Love Bug, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Case wise, there's no difference between tapes released through Fotomat and tapes released elsewhere. It's simply that Fotomat was the first place where you could rent tapes from. That's it. The case for The Adventures of Chip 'n' Dale is exactly how I described the cases in my Neon Mickey VHS overview. A white clamshell, with the Sorcerer Mickey Walt Disney Home Video logo at the top with orange and red bars separating the logo from the release's title. What's odd about the piece of animation they used for the picture, Chip and Dale are in their original appearances from the 1943 cartoon short, Private Pluto where they look more like the animals in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Which is interesting because I didn't actually know that about them.

The tape's opening is interesting, because while the front cover says Walt Disney Home Video at the top, the Neon Mickey logo actually says Walt Disney Home Entertainment, as they were still using the original 1978 Neon Mickey logo, rather than the one used from 1981 until late 1986. And I say late 1986, because all four 1986 VHS releases for the Winnie the Pooh cartoon featurettes have the Neon Mickey logo in the openings for the tapes, but the first Disney Sing-Along Songs tape, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah has the red Sorcerer Mickey Walt Disney Home Video logo at the beginning of it, which I'll talk about more when I get to those tapes in a few weeks. 

So The Adventures of Chip 'n' Dale is actually an episode of the old Disneyland TV series that aired in 1959 and it's actually pretty good. The cartoons that are featured in this program are ones I've never seen before, as I didn't watch a whole lot of cartoons that had Chip and Dale in them as the main characters. I mostly saw them in Christmas specials and short cartoons with Donald Duck, much as they are in the three cartoons that Donald is in on this tape. They're funny though. And they aren't like Disney funny either. They're more Looney Tunes funny with the physical gags and the Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner type humour. I'm not usually a physical humour guy outside of the Looney Tunes and occasionally the Three Stooges, but I found these cartoons to be really funny. Maybe it's just from the shock of watching Chip and Dale take down Pete with his own weapons and cooking items in a Tex Avery/Looney Tunes style. I had a good time with this tape.

1980 was an interesting year for Disney. They hadn't released an animated movie since The Rescuers and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh had been released in 1977, but the animators were in the middle of making The Fox and the Hound, and both theme parks and the live action movies were still doing relatively well. I say relatively well because the live action movies were mostly comedies they could just crank out one after another with smaller budgets than movies like The Black Hole required. Ron W. Miller, the son-in-law of Walt Disney, was the biggest advocate for the home video market at Disney. At least for the animated classics such as Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland, and Pinocchio. Though he doesn't seem to be the originator since he was still working on the movie side of things as a producer, and wouldn't be in a position of power at Disney until he became the president of the studio in 1980, two years after Disney made their deal with MCA Discovision to start releasing movies on Laserdisc effectively starting Walt Disney Home Video.

Overall this was a fun tape to watch and a great start to the series. Unlike with my other reviews, At the end of each review I'll be telling you what the next release I'm going to be talking about will be, because I am going in chronological order for each release. This way I'll be recording a more comprehensive history of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment through all of it's stages, as well as getting into my personal history with the tapes I have that I had or rented when I was a kid. I promise, it'll be fun. So next week I'll be talking about Volume 4 in the Walt Disney Cartoon Classics series from 1983, Sport Goofy.

That is going to be it for me for today, but I'll be back on Thursday for my review of the first episode of Loki, which drops tomorrow. My sister and I are watching it tomorrow night, so that should be fun. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.  

Video Game Memories: Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)

 Hey guys! How were your weekends? Mine was good. Actually, it was pretty quiet. Today I'm finally going to be talking about Super Mario Bros. 3, the final Mario game released for the NES back in 1988 in Japan, 1990 in North America, and 1991 in Europe. So let's get right into it.

After the interesting way they went with Super Mario Bros. 2 Nintendo decided to go with a more traditional Mario game for Super Mario Bros. 3. They didn't just make another harder version of Super Mario Bros. like they had with The Lost Levels. Instead they opened up the world alot more and actually had another quest for the majority of the game, instead of just Bowser kidnapping Princess Toadstool. He still did that, but not until the end of the game when you're about to hit the final world. Instead you have to save the seven kingdoms from Bowser's kids (pre-Bowser Jr. of course) because each kid put a spell on each king using an airship to go from place to place.

 Like the previous three Mario games that I've talked about, I watched family members play Super Mario Bros. 3 on Super Mario All-Stars for the Super Nintendo when I was a kid. However, this is actually the only other game in the original Super Mario Bros. series that I also got to play on the NES as well, besides the original game. I got to play the original version of Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES one time when I was in the hospital. I think it was sometime in 1996 or 1997 when I was admitted for something. In addition to getting to play Super Mario 64 on the then brand new Nintendo 64 console, I also got to play The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, AND I also got to play Star Fox on the Super Nintendo as well. I think this is the game that my mom spent the most time on when I was growing up. Super Mario Bros. was a pretty quick game to get through, even if you didn't beat it in one sitting, The Lost Levels was so hard that it was impossible to beat, and Super Mario Bros. 2 almost doesn't feel like a Mario game. Super Mario Bros. 3 had so much more to do in the game. I mean you had eight maps to complete, with numerous levels on each map, plus a fortress, and the castle at the end. So it's a much longer game than the original Super Mario Bros. is.

If I have to be honest, Super Mario Bros. 3 isn't my favourite Mario game for the Super Nintendo. Maybe it's because I didn't play Super Mario Bros. 3 as often as my mom and siblings did, but I actually prefer Super Mario World over Super Mario Bros. 3. However, I have to say I prefer the score for Super Mario Bros. 3 more than the score for Super Mario World. I think it's because there's a wider variety of music for this game than for Super Mario World, both for the individual levels and the overworlds (the maps) and the music also doesn't sound as repetitive.

And while you have way more power-ups in Super Mario Bros. 3, I find Super Mario World to be visually more pleasing. Mainly because there's alot going on on the screen in Super Mario Bros. 3 with the power bar/inventory bar at the bottom of the screen. It's still a really good game, and is one of my favourite games in the Mario franchise, along with Super Mario World and Super Mario 64. I just prefer Super Mario World over it. In other words I just really wanna talk about Super Mario World. Lol.

Alrighty I think that's gonna be it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow for the first installment in my Disney VHS overview/review series that I was supposed to start last week, but didn't because I actually thought I was going to do VHS Reviews instead. But no, there are so many Disney VHS tapes that I want to talk about in more detail than I did in my History of Disney Movies on Home Video overview series that that's what I want to focus on. I'm going in the order in which each tape (and later DVD and Blu-ray) was released in, so tomorrow we'll be going all the way back to 1981 to talk about The Adventures of Chip 'n' Dale. And then on Thursday I'll be reviewing the first episode of Loki which drops on Wednesday. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Movie Review: Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

 Hey everyone! How's everybody doing today? I'm doing well. It's been a quiet day so far. So last night instead of watching The Orville this week, my sister and I watched Raya and the Last Dragon, the latest movie from Walt Disney Animation Studios. Which means I'm now writing this so I can talk about it a bit. I'm not including any spoilers into this review, because I hope you'll watch it for yourselves if you haven't already done so. So let's get into it.

As you probably know from the post I did about the shows, movies and books that I was looking forward to in 2021, I've been extremely excited for this movie to come out. Especially once I saw the trailer during the night of the Disney Investors' Day announcements. There was just something about the movie's concept that drew me in in a way many Disney animated movies since Zootopia didn't until I actually see them. But this drew me in. I was not prepared for this movie when my sister and I watched it last night. The trailer made it look good, but how good it was I was not prepared for.

Since it appeared on Disney+ outside of Premier Access, I've seen many people compare it to the Nickelodeon animated shows Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. While there are some elements in this movie that are similar to those shows, especially with Raya resembling a younger version of Korra from The Legend of Korra and her companion, Tuk Tuk playing the same role as Appa from The Last Airbender, my sister also saw some resemblance to some Anime that she'd seen as well. I agreed with her to a degree because of the film's Eastern influences on it's story, characters and even animation style. 

One of the things that I like about this movie is that it reminds me of the adventure type Disney animated movies The Rescuers, The Rescuers Down Under, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, and Big Hero 6 (another movie that has a more Eastern influence on it). There's nothing wrong with the animated musicals like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Tangled, and Frozen (among many others) or DreamWorks type comedies like The Emperor's New Groove, Lilo & Stitch, and Wreck-It Ralph, but the 2010s were so full of them that it was refreshing to have a pure adventure movie with real stakes and actual consequences.

Raya herself is a brilliant character. While she's officially a Disney princess, she feels more like an ordinary person who makes mistakes, and then eventually learns from those mistakes. Afterall, she's the reason everything happened the way they did at the beginning of the movie and so the rest of the movie is her trying to atone for her mistakes and seek misguided revenge on Namaari. Which is what makes her so relatable. Interestingly enough, Kelly Marie Tran wasn't Disney's original choice to voice Raya. Originally, she was going to be voiced by Cassie Steele, who played Manny Santos on Degrassi: The Next Generation from 2001-2010. But there was a shift in the character on the creative side so she was replaced by Kelly Marie Tran.

The only other cast members I'm even vaguely familiar with are Daniel Dae Kim (Chief Benja, Raya's father), Benedict Wong (Tong), Sandra Oh (Virana, Namaari's mom), and Alan Tudyk (Tuk Tuk). I'm not current on pop music so I'm not familiar with Awkwafina (Sisu the Dragon), and the rest of the cast is unknown to me due to not having seen anything else they're in, or in the case of Gemma Chan (Namaari), not knowing her by sight from Captain Marvel. The entire cast is phenomenal though.

I found the opening to be a bit slow, but that's okay because this isn't really a fast paced movie and you needed that opening narration to understand the state of the world at the beginning of the movie. Much like how you need the opening narration in the first episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender to understand what the show is about.

The animation in this movie is absolutely gorgeous. While we were watching it last night, my sister and I commented on how far Disney has come in it's 3-D animation style since the 2000s when they released their first 3-D animated features, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt. Even since Toy Story came out in 1995, CG animation has become more refined. I was drawn in by the visuals as much as I was drawn in by the story and the characters.

Overall Raya and the Last Dragon is an amazing movie. It's interesting, it's chilling in places, and the characters are fantastic. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly HIGHLY recommend you do so ASAP. Especially if you're into Anime. But even if you're not, it's a movie that surprised me from start to finish. I expected to like it, but I wasn't expecting to be as blown away by it as I was blown away by Soul. Though Soul blew away in a very different manner than Raya and the Last Dragon did.

And that my friends is it for me for this week. But I'll be back next week with my thoughts on the first episode of Loki which drops on Wednesday. My sister and I are going to watch the episode on Wednesday night so that review will be up sometime on Thursday. I'm also going to have a movie review going up as well, though I'm not entirely sure what movie I'll be reviewing yet. So until then have a great rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all soon. Take care.

VHS Review: Teddy Ruxpin: The Movie (2000)

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! I hope you all had a great week. I did. Today I'm going to be reviewing the 2000 direct-to-video movie compilation of the first five episodes of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Teddy Ruxpin: The Movie. I'm also going to be talking about the history of shows that had direct-to-video movie compilations of their first few episodes, which is something that goes back to the 80s with shows like The Transformers and G.I. Joe. So let's get into it.

 I don't think I could say anything about this movie that I haven't already said about the individual episodes included in this "movie" when I did my Teddy Ruxpin VHS reviews last year. However, what fascinates me about this movie in particular is that there are very few edits to it that could constitute it as a film. If you look at other direct-to-video movie compilations like Gargoyles: The Movie - The Heroes Awaken, most of them have scenes shifted around, fade ins and fade outs removed, and scenes shortened to allow for the movie running time that isn't in the episodic format of the TV show. But here, the episodes are just cut together, with the fade ins and fade outs at the beginning and ending of each episode is removed, along with the title cards for each individual episode.

If you've seen the first five episodes of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin then you've seen this movie. The story and characters are exactly the same, all of the crazy moments are the same, it's just an easy way to watch these episodes without going through DVD menus. Of course us Teddy Ruxpin fans would watch the episodes both ways because that's how we roll.

As I mentioned in my The Treasure of Grundo VHS review last year, that was very weirdly edited because it had the first two episodes, the scene of everyone meeting Wooly from "Guests of the Grunges" and then cuts right to the group arriving at the Wizard's Fortress from the beginning of "In the Fortress of the Wizard", carrying on with that episode and then having "Guests of the Grunges" and "Escape from the Treacherous Mountain" be on their own individual VHS releases after that. It's like Hi-Tops Video wanted to include all five episodes on a single VHS tape, in movie form, but couldn't so they did a really weird edit for that first volume. With this movie though, there's two weird editing thing. The first is at the very beginning of the movie, which is the start of the episode "The Treasure of Grundo", where they edited in a shot of a stream near to where the Airship landed before going up the Treacherous Mountain to the Hard to Find City in "In the Fortress of the Wizard". Which is fine, but they let the camera pan a little too much and so you see the edge of the Airship's air bag before it cuts to the regular shot of Grundo before panning over to Teddy and Grubby approaching Bounder Pass. 

The other weird edit, is that at the end of the second episode, "Beware the Mudblups" after Tweeg and L.B.'s conversation, in the episode it cuts to the Airship where Grubby is serving some root stew to his friends as a thank you for saving him from the Mudblup cave and when his back is turned, Teddy, Gimmick and Prince Arin dump their bowls overboard, where the root stew lands on Tweeg's face before fading out to end the episode. In the movie cut used for the The Treasure of Grundo VHS release, they keep all of that in, except for the fade out at the very end, before transitioning to the group meeting Wooly scene from "Guests of the Grunges". In this version, as it gets to Grubby serving the root stew, a voiceover of Gimmick's first line from "Guests of Grunges" is put in, and then it cuts to the opening of the next episode's footage. So that was weird.

Of course Teddy Ruxpin: The Movie wasn't the first direct-to-video movie compilation of a few episodes of a TV show, be it the first few episodes or some random episodes in the middle of the series. Nor was it the last. The earliest one I could think of is actually the 1977 pilot for the live action Spider-Man series. It aired on TV as a movie and then was released on VHS and Laserdisc as such three years later. And then you have the one for the original Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. The earliest cartoon one I can think of is The Transformers as Family Home Entertainment released the pilot episode/mini-series "More Than Meets the Eye" in movie form on VHS in the 80s, along with season 1 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joe. The big one for me in the 90s was of course Gargoyles: The Movie - The Heroes Awaken which was the movie version of the first five episodes of Disney's animated series, Gargoyles. Of course Warner Bros. also released the pilots of Batman Beyond and Superman: The Animated Series in movie form on VHS and DVD in 2003 as Batman Beyond: The Movie and Superman: Last Son of Krypton as well as "Secret Origins", the three part pilot of Justice League that same year. Disney did it as recently as the pilot episode of Star Wars Rebels in 2014. So it's really nothing new. Neither is having a feature-length pilot episode being released theatrically overseas before being released on home video, which Disney has been doing for years. So there was a history to this long before Teddy Ruxpin: The Movie was released in 2000 and a history after it's release too.

What puzzles me about this release is that it didn't get a DVD release like Batman Beyond: The Movie, Superman: Last Son of Krypton, and Justice League: Secret Origins (labeled simply as Justice League on the VHS and DVD cases) did. In fact The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin wouldn't get a DVD release until 2006 when The Journey Begins, which contained these five episodes (in their original episodic forms) on the disc, was released. I guess Entertech Home Entertainment, the company that released this movie on VHS, didn't have the resources to make the movie suitable for a DVD release. Probably why Gargoyles: The Movie also hasn't had a home video release since the original 1995 VHS and Laserdisc release outside of the original episodes being on the Gargoyles: The Complete First Season DVD release. 

One thing I'd like to point out here is that before the movie there's a trailer for a movie called Kids World. I've never heard of this movie as it only had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and I don't think it had one here in Canada. If there was, there was no marketing for it outside of the trailer on the VHS for Teddy Ruxpin: The Movie and I wasn't exactly going to the video store very much by the time it got released on DVD like six years later. It stars Christopher Lloyd interestingly enough, as well as Blake Foster, who kids from the 90s know as Justin, the Blue Ranger in Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie and it's TV show continuation, Power Rangers Turbo. He was also in the 1998 direct-to-video film Casper Meets Wendy.

One negative thing that I've heard about this tape from other fans is that the cover is somewhat misleading. As you can see from the image I have at the start of this review, the cover says, "Get ready for Teddy in his first feature film". I don't really see how that can be misleading. He had a live action TV movie in 1985, which was released on VHS in 1986. That movie is only 44 minutes in length, which is 2 minutes longer than the length of the 1942 Disney package film, Saludos Amigos, but that movie is still considered to be a feature film. But, this is indeed Teddy's first feature length animated film as feature films are defined. Yes, it's a compilation of the first five episodes of the 1987 TV series, but that doesn't make it any less of a feature film than any other direct-to-video or made for TV movie that's been produced over the years.  

Overall, this was a fun way to watch these episodes all together without going through the first three VHS volumes or the DVD release I have. Honestly though it's unnecessary to own unless you're a huge Teddy Ruxpin fan or you don't have the DVDs or the other VHS releases. Especially if this is how you watched Teddy Ruxpin as a kid since outside of the Yes! Entertainment releases of the original VHS volumes, which had to be used in tandem with the Yes! Entertainment Teddy Ruxpin toy, this was the only home video release available in the early 2000s. Once again, thanks to Vincent for providing me with a digitized copy of this tape. I'd heard of it of course through the Teddy Ruxpin fandom over the last ten years or so, but I'd never seen it before. So it was fun to just sit and watch it last night.

Alrighty I think that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of Raya and the Last Dragon as my sister and I are going to be watching that tonight instead of an episode of The Orville. I'm going to try to have my review out by lunchtime tomorrow, but it's probably going to be closer to dinner before I get it out just because I have a video chat with a friend after lunch tomorrow and I'd like to try to get outside before it gets really hot. But sometime tomorrow I'll have a review of Raya and the Last Dragon. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Blog Update for June 2021

 Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was good. Not too busy, but the weather was nice. So today I'm here for the monthly blog update to let you know what I'm hoping to do on the blog in the month of June. So let's get right into it.

This is the logo for my new series. VHS Reviews. I've tried this in the past in various forms, but every past attempt has just turned into regular movie reviews for movies that came out from before I was born to the present day. However, I'm taking inspiration from YouTube for this. For those of you who watch Cinemassacre, you might remember that for a while James Rolfe did a series called Rental Reviews, where he and some friends would sit in James's basement video store setup and review movies that could be rented at a video store back in the day. They ended the series about a year ago. However, Tony, one of James's friends has been doing a successor to that series, called Talking About Tapes on his channel, Hack The Movies. Though Tony's show has a much broader focus than the mostly obscure stuff that Rental Reviews was about. So my plan is to do something similar, where I write about movies that were on VHS originally and if I have the tape then I'll watch the tape. If I don't have the movie on tape, I'll watch it in whatever form I have it on such as DVD, Blu-ray or digitally. Especially since Disney+ has so many movies on it from the VHS era, including Fox stuff, Muppets stuff, Pixar, and their own Disney stuff. I'll be doing regular movie reviews for movies that were released after the VHS era, including some more modern films that I have access to on Disney+. 

I'm also going to be revisiting movies in this format that I already have reviews for up on this blog like The Terminator, Dick Tracy, the first four Star Wars movies, The Black Hole, and Tron, among others. So that'll be interesting. The first movie I'm going to be looking at in this format is going to be the 2000 direct-to-video movie compilation of the first five episodes of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Teddy Ruxpin: The Movie. And that will be coming out on Friday. 

Also this week Raya and the Last Dragon is being released outside of Premier Access on Disney+ so I'm going to watch it on Saturday night and then I'll have my review of it up on Sunday. Yes, it's late and people probably don't care anymore, but this is what happens when I have to wait for movies to leave Premier Access before I can watch them.

Otherwise I'm halfway through the Sailor Moon manga and it's pretty good so far. That review is going to be up sometime in the next two weeks, but I can't promise exactly when it's going to come out. So far I've been averaging one volume every two days as I take the books with me when I go outside during the day and I get quite alot read in the hour and a half to two hours that I'm out there for. Technically I could read one volume a day, but I'm forcing myself to slow down just a little bit.

Once I'm finished reading the Sailor Moon manga I'm gonna get back to regular comic book reviews as well as novel reviews. Right now though I'm focusing on getting the manga finished as it's taking up pretty much all of my reading time right now. Other than that I don't think there was anything else that I wanted to tell you. I mean, eventually I'll have a review for season 2 of The Orville out though that won't be until July or maybe early August since my sister and I are only watching one episode a week.

I guess that's going to be it for this update. I'll be back on Friday with my review of Teddy Ruxpin: The Movie. So until then have a great week and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.