Recently there have
been a few disappointments connected to my favorite franchises. Now I
do not expect everything to be perfect every time. I've seen enough
failed aspects of these franchises that I know just being in those
universes does not mean it will be perfect. I still do not have to accept it when things are poorly done.
So first we'll do
the easy one, the trailer for the upcoming Venom movie
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzxFdtWmjto).
I never had high hopes for this project and the trailer did nothing
to change that. In fact if anything the trailer was so poorly done
it made me even more certain this project was going to bomb.
First off the idea
that you could have a Venom story done without something of the
needed Spider-Man backstory already started it off weak. That part
alone said this was not going to be Venom, but a character with the
look and powers, but not the essence. So they then give us a trailer
that tells us nothing at all about the movie. We get no idea of
plot, no idea of character, no idea of, well, anything important. It is
just a batch of random scenes with no images of the full Venom
character. We barely see Eddie Brock, and what we do see does not
create any interest.
My money is on
Venom being a bust. Sony has shown that when left to their own
devices, they have no cue how to handle the Spider-Man franchise.
They ruined Amazing Spider-Man 2 in no small part because they were
more concerned with building up to a Sinister Six movie, that no one
really asked for, but the studio seemed to put as a high priority
than actually making a good movie. They seem to be more concerned
with getting movies out for as much of the non-Spider-Man Spidyverse
characters that they have the rights to use than actually making any
of it work. DC has already shown us that just getting movies out
there for the sake of getting movies out there, just does not work.
The second
noticeable recent disappointment was with the Star Wars 40th
Anniversary short story collection From a Certain Point of View.
Here we get 40 short stories in the classic trilogy time frame from
40 different writers.
It starts off with a
story following Capt. Antilles from the end of Rogue One to his death
at Vader's hands in A New Hope. It was good start with a decent story
that worked and gave us a worthy look into a minor character.
After that, well it
is a lot of hit and miss. We get to see the excitement of the Imperial
paperwork and how to manipulate it. We get an odd story from Aunt
Beru after she dies. We see Leia's adopted mother (who now did not
die when Leia was young) right before Alderaan is destroyed, which
bothered me greatly since that is trying to rewrite movie canon.
We get a batch of
stories focusing on the aliens at the Mos Eisley Cantina. These
stories disagree as to what each character's motives are, changing
from one story to the next. In some stories the band has been
playing there regularly for some time, while one story has them on
their second night there. We get off POVs that do not at all line up
with the movie. I started to get irritated with each new story that
clearly did not at all work with the story I just read, while being
told they are in the same universe, on the same planet with the same
characters interacting with each other.
Near the end we get
another example of stories not fitting together when dealing with
Rebel pilots and the Battle of Yavin at the end of A New Hope. In one
story we have a bunch of pilots upset that they did not get to go
into battle because there were not enough fighters. This is followed
by a story of an engineer who is looking at all the fighters that did
not get used because of the lack of pilots...
Much of this is the
kind of thing a good editor would fix by working with the writers.
Well, for some reason this collection has no listed editor. It does
say “All participating authors have generously forgone any
compensation for their stories. Instead, their proceeds will be
donated to First Book—a leading nonprofit that provides new books,
learning materials, and other essentials to educators and
organizations serving children in need.” But still, they could have
put a little more effort into coordinating the stories and making
this work.
Now there are some
good stories in there and some interesting concepts introduced, but
for the most part this felt too amateurish and not well planned out.
Gonna end on a
positive note about something that did not disappoint, Black Panther
was a awesome movie. Loved it. While I was bothered by a few elements of it, in the end it did not disappoint.
