2023 holiday viewing

So it appears that I’m only updating this blog these days around the holidays, and only about what I’m watching. Need to get better at that…

But until I do, here’s yet another post about what I watched over the holidays.

Movies:

• Troll (7/10) - Norwegian movie, watched with subtitles. Fun if you don’t think too hard about the plot or characters. Very mixed effects/budget use, seems very Nordic from my North American perspective. Works for me as a brain-off popcorn movie. Would really like a sequel with more realistic stakes.
• Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (4/10) - Way too Zack Snyder-y. Some pretty standard sci-fi epic ideas (characters, world building, etc) and the action is OK, but many good actors being wasted on bad plot and no development, and too much weird editing/effects (Snyder-y). Not planning to watch the next one.
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (5/10) - I’ve previously always liked how Marvel built Wakanda in the MCU, and I still like a lot of those parts of this movie but otherwise it was largely a disappointment. Marvel should know by now to have women write stories that are primarily about women, and the plot was bad and character motivations unclear or unearned. Additionally, the new non-Wakandan characters introduced here who will have a larger role in the MCU are a huge disappointment. Namor and Riri Williams were very badly adapted from the comics, it’s like they took a few basic concepts and redeveloped their core characters entirely, and the results are not great. I’m totally fine with updating powers and backstory (Ms Marvel is a huge success in my view), but doing that without keeping the core of who the character is… you might as well just give them a new name. The Namor in this movie is not the Namor who’s been in 80+ years of comics.

TV:

• Working my way through a rewatch of Star Wars Rebels before starting on Ahsoka, finished season 3 and started season 4. The stories and visuals are improving significantly, I keep thinking about how it’s so close to movie-level scenes now. I also listened to the Thrawn trilogy audiobooks in December, so I’m definitely in a Thrawn mood.
• Watched the first couple of episodes of A Murder at the End of the World, which so far is interesting, will see where it goes. Hopefully more “billionaires are bad, actually” and less “look at all the cool things this billionaire has done”. It was a little too dark of mood for the holidays though so put a hold on it until later.
• Started making my way through season 13 (Flux) of Doctor Who (which so far seems kindof meh) in advance of watching the wild array of special episodes (seven of them!) that have arrived since then. I generally like Doctor Who, but would really like if in addition to switching up the lead actor they also switched up the showrunner to someone besides a middle-aged white guy.