My Review of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

I don't know if you know this, but I am a huge fan of The Dark Crystal.

Ok, that's a paltry attempt at humour. If you read this blog at all, you know that I hold The Dark Crystal up as the greatest example of true fantasy that has ever been created. I have written before about the astounding amount of creativity that I feel went into this film. Tolkien did something wonderful when he created Middle Earth; he took elements of existing mythology, added many of his own ideas, and blended it all together into a cohesive (and incredibly well-detailed) world.

Almost all fantasy (excluding 'modern fantasy,' obviously) has followed on that pattern to some extent. Some fantasy worlds do away with non-human races (like Game of Thrones), others add or remove or alter some non-human races (Earthdawn added the Obsidimen and T'skrang, for example), but they're otherwise all more or less the same basic idea of pseudo-medieval settings with magic.

This is not the case with The Dark Crystal.

Rant: Star Wars vs Star Trek

It has been two months since I posted. My goodness, that is a long time. I haven't had a break that long since I returned from hiatus in December 2014. I'm really sorry. Life got too busy there for a while. I just didn't have the time, or the energy needed to think of topics.

With that said, let's get back into the swing of things. I'm going to rant today about something that has been bothering me for a while now. I know I've mentioned this a little bit before, but I want to expand on it.

I don't like Star Wars. After I watched Episode II: Attack of the Clones, I lost interest in the franchise. I waited until Episode III was in the dollar cinema before going to see it. Then in 2012, when Disney bought the whole mess, it began a horrifying cycle of new Star Wars films every year. It began with Episode VII in 2015, followed by Rogue One in 2016. Episode VIII will release this year, with a Han Solo film planned for 2018. According to Wikipedia, Episode IX will come out in 2019, and there will be another film in 2020. If I know how Disney works, they won't stop there. They will continue to churn out films every year for as long as they can.

Star Trek: Beyond

Back in October, I published my ranking of the Star Trek films. As I'm sure you know, a new Star Trek film was released almost two months ago. I really don't want this blog to turn into a movie review site, but I just have to express what I thought of the new one.

Be warned: This review contains spoilers. If you haven't seen this film and don't want it spoiled, DO NOT READ THIS ARTICLE.

In fact, I'm going to put this behind a cut just to make sure. Because

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

There. Now let's continue.

Wonder Woman

I just saw the first trailer for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. Especially given that I had just moments before seen the trailer for an upcoming King Arthur movie, I am full of thoughts.

Again, even though it's not directly gaming related, I'm going to take a little bit of a detour and talk about something else nerd-related. Hold on to your hats, people, here we go.

Thoughts on Movies in General

I used to like watching movies. I really did. I watched quite a few of them. Then one day, when I was working at Blockbuster Video (many years ago, obviously), I looked out over the many shelves of films on both VHS and DVD, and found myself wondering how many different titles there were. I did a little calculating and estimated that there were probably around 700 titles in that specific location alone.

Just that one store.

My Ranking of the Star Trek Films

I'm going to do something a little different this week. I spent a good chunk of this morning reading some articles about how other people rated the Star Trek films, and it got me thinking about how I would rank them.

I know it's not about gaming per se, but Star Trek is at least as nerdy as gaming, and besides, there have been more than one game (some of them roleplaying games, even) set in the Star Trek universe. Anyway, it's my blog, and I'll blog about what I want.

So here we go.

Before we get started, I want to give you a little background. I grew up on Star Trek. As a young boy, I loved looking up at the stars and thinking about the vast cosmos in which we lived. So naturally, any story set in outer space strongly appealed to me. I watched Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica. I was a fan of the original Star Wars trilogy (although, apparently unlike other young male fans, I wanted to be Luke Skywalker instead of Darth Vader) ­– the new trilogy destroyed my love of the series so thoroughly that I no longer count myself a Star Wars fan at all; after I saw Episode II, I took a long hard look at the entire franchise and realised that the only thing about it that had kept me a fan was nostalgia – remembering the joy I had once gotten as a child from the films, but no longer had.