Creature Commandos Season 1 Overview: James Gunn’s Fragile Ego

The DCU is born.

Right from the off something about this series struck a bad chord with me. It’s taken me a while to really think about what’s wrong with it and be able to articulate that, here is my best attempt.

Firstly, this feels like a spin off of the Harley Quinn animated show, and by that I mean the humour is exactly the same, however, where that show allows its characters to have serious moments this shows allergic to that. Whenever there will be a tragic or sad moment the writer will feel the need to undercut with a quippy joke or some sort of absurdist visuals.

Secondly, and relating to the first point, each of the Creature Commandos has tragic back stories, and this is bad for two key reasons. Chiefly, it shows a lack of any genuine villains in the show, which is supposed to be about a team of villains going on missions, as well as a fear of anti-heroes and not having everyone be sympathetic. Moreover, these back stories are often quite depressing, so the show feels the need to overcompensate by having it side by side with the present timeline in which something absurd or silly will be happening in order to get away from the sadness. This cheapens it.

Thirdly, the humour as I’ve mentioned in my previous two points is really what ruins this show and runs through all of the criticism, It is juvenile, gross out, and often edgy for shock value. I don’t think I laughed once during the entire run of the show.

Fourthly, and perhaps worst of all, is the fact that one of the sub antagonists of the show are the Sons of Themyscira, who are portrayed as incel online nerds. Not only does this feel like screw the audience, but also feels like Gunn personally taking shots at his critics. This is potentially catastrophically bad as it shows that Gunn is a reactionary and shows how even mild criticism of him can find its way into his projects and affect them in a major way, hence he’ll get more of it. It also destroys any kind of confidence one may have in his upcoming Superman film, and you have already seem him coming out to attack haters on that and to respond to criticism. The Sons are of course horribly cringe and die off in humiliating ways in order for Gunn to own his critics.

Overall, it is nice to see a more mature tone and some of the ideas were good, but the humour, the lack of meaningful emotion and Gunn’s fragile attempt to own the haters all result in this being a damaging start for the DCU, and a red flag for this summers Superman. :

2/5

Pros.

The mature tone

A few good ideas

Cons.

The humour

The backstories

Gunn’s fragile ego

If you enjoyed this review, then please head over to my Patreon to support me, I offer personalized shoutouts, customised film recommendations to suit your personality and tastes, the ability for you to pick what I review next and full access to my Patreon exclusive game reviews. Check it out!

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Skeleton Crew Season 1 Overview: The Duffer Brothers Need To Sue

Summary

Star Wars steals from Stranger Things.

Honestly, as far as recent Star Wars shows go this wasn’t bad. That’s not to say it was perfect, I would place it in the watchable category.

For the most part this is a fairly self-contained adventure, we don’t really interact with iconography or characters from the Star Wars universe we would expect to see, we see some X-Wings, a lightsaber and a few things are mentioned in passing but that is really all. There is distinct Goonies and Flight Of The Navigator vibes to this, but I would say the biggest influence is Stranger Things. To see Star Wars lift so many themes and ideas from Stranger Things is depressing on a number of levels, to see one of the kings of the science fiction genre have to borrow from the new upstart shows just how bad of a situation Star Wars is in.

The journey itself was interesting there were certainly ups and downs, and some episodes hit harder than others but for the most part it was entertaining. I liked the mystery around Ad Attin and I thought the new droid, voiced by Nick Frost, was a welcome addition to the universe. The child actors were probably the weakest part of the show, I will not rag on the child actors too much as it seems like low hanging fruit, however, it must be stated that their emotions were all over the place and they were badly directed.

My biggest bugbear with the show was the fact it introduced yet another survivor of Order 66, at this point the Empire seems incredibly incompetent. This of course is Jude law’s character who the series teases with the will they won’t they question of is he a Jedi, at times you are lead to believe that it’s just parlour tricks or that maybe he is force sensitive, but no the final episode has him reveal that he is in fact a Jedi or was. Moreover his origins and how he survived order 66 a so incredibly vague you question why it was even brought up at all, clearly it was done to set him up for his own show where it would be explored in more detail.

Overall, not as bad as the Acolyte not as good as Andor.

3/5

Pros.

It is watchable

It has fun moments

It feels very disconnected

Cons.

The child actors aren’t very good

There is yet another survivor of Order 66

!https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Cinema Issues: State Of The Box Office Address Start Of 2025

Written by Luke Barnes

In this cinema issues article we are discussing the contraction of the entertainment industry. If one was to cast their gaze upon the 2025 release schedule it would be perfectly acceptable for them to ask what happened to make it to 2025? For those of you that don’t know, with the destruction of COVID and the writer’s strikes, there was a mantra in Hollywood to make it to 2025 as this was seemingly the year when things would get back to the 2019 normal. This was pre the wildfires.

As such this mythical 2025 was going to also see the box office recover to 2019 levels, as it’s been steadily below over these past few years, and in order to do that there was going to be a lot more films releasing each month than in previous years. However, to go back to our opening image there is in fact not a lot of films releasing each week in 2025 so far. Whilst yes there will be some films set to come out in 2025 that have not yet been given formal announcements and release dates, it seems the idea of masses of new releases might be a pipe dream, why is this?

Crucially there are two things Hollywood didn’t account for with the 2025 dream, the first being an obvious and sustained change in audience viewing habits, with more people waiting to watch films at home, being more choosy with the films they watch due to higher ticket costs, and of course the audience’s rejection of slop. The second key fact is the death of the movie star. When discussing the death of the movie star it can’t be stressed enough how important the rise of social media has been, influences and youtubers have given the public new role models seemingly more accessible, more down to earth, and more like them. Audiences have begun craving authenticity, as such the very performative and fake world of Hollywood has lost its allure, the actors who still maintain rabid fanbases do so with a keen use of social media or by giving off the persona of being nice people, whether true or not.

The death of the movie star has left Hollywood unable to move forward, it needs radical change to continue to exist, yet if there’s one thing Hollywood executives are frightened of doing it’s doing anything new. As such I expect 2025’s box office to languish behind 2024 which wasn’t good to begin with, we’re miles off from 2019. I believe looking at the calendar now and of course there can always be new announcements and upsets, but I would say that there is one surefire billion grosser film in the fourth coming Jurassic World, and possibly another in Superman if the stars align. That aside the box office looks quite sick this year, there are not a lot of films and the ones that are don’t seem to have the draw that could make the box office healthy.

The worst thing is in its floundering attempt to combat these problems Hollywood won’t take drastic action, the action of course that’s needed is a slashing of film budgets in half or more, in addition, films need to stop pushing divisive messaging and being targeted towards niche and specific minorities rather than the widest possible audience. Hollywood needs to decentralise, it needs to move outside of the LA ecosystem, films need to be made on a budget of $50 million, a raft of new original films costing that amount or below could allow for greater creativity and potentially some new franchises rather than mining the same wells.

As we head towards the end of this piece you can expect to see Hollywood shrink in the coming year and become more reliant on re-releases.

If you enjoyed this piece, then please head over to my Patreon to support me, I offer personalized shoutouts, customised film recommendations to suit your personality and tastes, the ability for you to pick what I review next and full access to my Patreon exclusive game reviews. Check it out!

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Conclave: The Oscars Get It Wrong Again

Summary

A gathering of the cardinals is made appropriate for the 21st century, and you better like it you bigot.

So I had forgotten about this on first release but then I saw it later and excitedly remembered it and thought I’d give it a watch. On the surface this film should have been good, a sort of papal intrigue drama film about deciding who would be the new Pope. Yet whilst there was some of that there was also a lot of modern day filler like a whole plot about one of them being intersex, as it is 2024/2025 and you cannot release a film unless it has some form of representation like that.

Moreover, I found the dialogue to be a little stiff, what I mean by this is that for films that have lots of long drawn out scenes of people talking you need them to be gripping and yet here whilst the performers brought gravitas I found a lot of these scenes ended up feeling overly long. This film was always going to hinge on the quality of its writing, and sadly it got let down.

I don’t really see how this got nominated for an Oscar outside of the fact it has been a slow year, there is interest and a well put together narrative sans one sub-plot, I bet you can guess which, but by and large it doesn’t come together in the way an Oscar nominated film should.

Overall, another odd choice for Oscar nomination.

1.5/5

Pros.

It has some interesting moments

It is not your average slop

Cons.

The intersex storyline and how needless it is

The writing is patchy

There is pacing issues

It was broadly disappointing

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

One Of Them Days: Yet More Stereotypical Black Women

Summary

A film chocked full of stereotypes.

This film would have been considered incredibly racist if it was directed by a nonblack person. Increasingly certain parts of cinema are defining a black woman as either wise and sage or like they are here, it is two separate stereotypes that are continuing to put these women in a box. The worst thing of all is that here these women couldn’t get anymore stereotypical unless they randomly broke out into jive every few minutes, and the writer of this project is herself a black woman, so she is perpetuating a racist stereotype against other black women.

The film itself is allergic to originality and is the same thing we have seen countless times before two sort of losers have to fix a problem, here it is getting rent money, and hijinks happen along the way. Again these hijinks further the stereotypes I was previously discussing as the two leads, played by Keke Palmer and SZA, constantly get into fights with various groups of people, which again feels like it is leaning into stereotypes.

None of the performances were very good either, I didn’t feel any warmth to any of the characters.

Overall, very much January fare.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is short

Cons.

It stereotypes black women

It is generic

It isn’t funny

It has pacing issues

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

The Rig Season 2 Overview: A Sinking Feeling

Summary

Amazon needs to burn more money so they made a sequel series to something that didn’t need it.

The Rig came out a while ago, and I wouldn’t say it was popular, I never saw anyone talk about it on social media for example, and for the most part the ending of the first season closed out the loop. This secondary season was in no way needed.

There also seems to be far less to do this time around, the new season is mainly split between a refugee camp, post wave, and a new rig, if you would permit me. For the most part it is just folks stood around talking, and the few times they do venture outside of this it looks cheap.

I found the characters also to be much more unlikable this time around, we some of the relationships not making a lick of sense, it felt as though they had in new writers who just didn’t get the characters and couldn’t be bothered to read the scripts for the first season so just wrote this with no frame of reference.

Also and this may be a little mean so I’ll keep it brief but Emily Hampshire has clearly had plastic surgery and it is distracting in a bad way, she looks uncanny valley but in real life. Also because of whatever she has done whenever she tries to emote her face doesn’t really change in any way and that also takes you out of it.

Overall, a disappointing and unnecessary second season.

1/5

Pros.

It is laughably bad

Cons.

It doesn’t justify its existence

It has a terrible ending

Emily Hampshire is distracting

It is too bloated

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Section 31: Michelle Yeoh Has Embarrassed Herself Post Oscar

Summary

An old woman embarrasses herself.

I won’t claim to be the biggest Star Trek fan, I don’t watch every show and I don’t know all the characters. However, I have tried to keep up with modern Star Trek and have covered it before, it is sad to see things get worse and worse in the way it has but here we are.

I have to ask you dear Reader what place does S and M have within Star Trek is it empowering to see Michelle Yeoh dominate men half her age? Not really it is embarrassing. The way this film/series extension, whatever it is, treats Yeon as a woman half her age, it expects you to believe her as this badass matriarch when she looks as though a gust of wind would have her collapsed on the floor. Honestly Yeon’s team seem to have a knack for scoring her roles in the worst fantasy and science fiction stuff they can.

I watched the last few episodes of Discovery to try and make sense of this, as I had long given up on the show, it was a painful experience. Even with that I was pretty confused as to what was going on, after I got situated I found the science fiction narrative to be convoluted and badly conveyed. A lot of things happen that don’t make sense with the character or their motivations and this screams to me of bad writing and why I stopped watching Kurtzman Trek in the first place.

Overall, embarrassing.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is good to laugh at

Cons.

It is embarrassing

It is a vandalization of the franchise

Michelle Yeon

It makes little sense

It is a waste of your time

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Merry Good Enough: Not Really Good Enough

Summary

A mother, Susan Gallagher, goes missing on Christmas.

So this is a holdover from my 2024 Christmas viewing season, as I am now writing about it in late January, it slipped through my net regarding posts to release and I had forgotten I had seen it for a while on top of that. That should say all we need to about the film leading in.

However, I imagine you want more. So basically this is a film about a mother who feels underappreciated and runs away both because she wants to escape her children but also because she wants to know they care. This bizarre dichotomy is made only the more strange by the fact that she does not live with her children so why does she need to escape them, one whom she quarrels with comes around every week but she still has the rest of her week to herself. Anyway logic aside.

The kids air family grievances and have to come to terms with the fact that there parents are not perfect people, a thing that most already know by their mid-teens, but hey these folks have to figure it out as adults as they are all clearly quite sheltered.

There is some charm and some relatability but ultimately you cannot form a bond with any of the characters as the writing is just so poor, they don’t feel like people but rather archetypes.

Overall, a fairly forgettable Christmas dramady.

2/5

Pros.

It is watchable

It has a few warm moments

Cons.

It is poorly paced

It is forgettable

The characters feel like characters

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

A Real Life: This Is Why Folk Hate Americans Abroad

Summary

A guided tour of Poland takes a turn for the emotional.

This was a perfectly fine film, but I am left wondering how it was nominated for awards. In my estimation the only reason this got nominated for anything is because the awarding bodies, acutely aware that they have been demonising jews and Israel for the year need to do something to cover themselves in the face of antisemitism accusations, so they do this: much as a racist may remind you they have a black friend.

I thought narratively it was no great shake due to the fact that the reveal was obvious. We have seen the formula of successful friend of family member, here Eisenberg, meets with less successful or wash out friend of family member, here Culkin, for the latter to turn out to be on the verge of suicide or some form of trauma and for the former then have to give them a reason to live again. Film’s as different to this as The World’s End did this narrative.

Moreover, Culkin’s character which was supposed to be sympathetic just wasn’t. He seemed to be an awful person with few redeeming qualities, a perfect example of this is when he berates the guide for giving information. The others or his tour may well have wanted to hear it but because he didn’t he behaves unilaterally. The fact they have a scene later when the tour guide thanks him makes it all the worse, as this scene feels like it is there in order to excuse the character rather than how people would actually behave. There are not enough scenes where you feel warmth towards his character to make you feel anything when the truth about his trauma comes out.

Overall, I am a fan of Eisenburg and will always show up to his projects, however, the writing in this one was a little cliched and weak.

2.5/5

Pros.

There are some fun moments

It does have an emotional core, but that doesn’t make you empathise with the characters

The central duo have a believable familial friendship

Cons.

Culkin’s character is insufferable

The reveal is obvious

The supporting cast are wasted

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews

Shogun Season One Overview: The Best Series Of The Year

Summary

A series about an Englishman, Cosmo Jarvis’ trip to feudal Japan.

I think this was one of the strongest series of the year, not just because it was well done but also because it was so refreshing. We have been crying out for more Samurai fare for a while, there are some films and series here and there, but by and large the sub-genre at least from a western perspective has been dry for a while. As such this arrived at just the right time.

What I appreciate about this show is that it is both a slow burn and has soap opera like elements but it doesn’t effect the quality of the show. There is enough happening within an episode to make the slower pace and the world building feel rich and meaningful rather than tedious. Moreover, there is enough action and character’s doing things to make the interpersonal soap opera stuff seem few and far between.

I think the characters are all written well and that the story goes to interesting places, I would like to see the war between the clans more fully realised but I suppose that will be something to consider in the next season.

Overall, definitely one of the best shows of the year.

4/5

Pros.

The setting and the world

It feels fresh

It is interesting

It has great characters

https://www.patreon.com/c/AnotherMillennialReviewer

Or if you would rather send me a donation if Patreon isn’t for you then please find a link to my donations page below

Help Support My Reviews