Batman The Caped Crusader: The Life And Times Of Oswalda Cobblepot

Summary

Batman the much cancelled series finally finds a home, that it then proceeds to stink up.

So, as someone who enjoyed many Batman tv series as a kid particularly The Brave And The Bold I was excited for the idea of a new Batman series to get stuck into. However, little did I know that this series was made by the franchise destroyer himself J.J Abrams. After WBD didn’t want the series and sold it off there should have been red flags, but I was like maybe there was a good reason for it and the series is still good, but no.

Upon turning the show on the first thing that hits you is that this is made for modern audiences. We see every ethnicity, gender, ability level and what not on screen in the first episode and it only goes more over the top from there. There is nothing wrong with diversity when it is done for a reason or with a point in mind, particularly if it is organic to the show, but here it is clearly just ticking boxes in order to try and get as much virtue signalling as possible, it is tokenistic. The worst example of this is Oswalda Cobblepot, Batman has a long history of female villains why not feature one of them instead of forcing in a gender swap for no good reason. At times it felt like Abrams and co wanted to flip off the fans as much as possible

We also, perhaps in some sick homage to Snyder, have a scene wherein Batman is holding a gun, this to me and many fans just highlights how this series has no respect for the character or his lore, it is just more low grade slop wrapped in a Batman colouring.

Overall, if you want a new Batman the Animated Series this is not it.

1/5

Pros.

The animation was okay

Cons.

It doesn’t understand Batman

The series as a whole has a terrible pace

It doesn’t make sense at times

The tokenism and gender/race swaps

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X-Men 97: A Blast From The Past

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

When scraping the bottom of the barrel what is there to do but move on to the next decade.

At first when I saw Disney were resurrecting this old and beloved series I thought to myself this would be little more than a cynical effort in brand exploitation. However, upon watching it I found there to be a lot of elements to like, in many senses this series felt like an X-Men comic book come to life. A number of iconic X-Men moments where depicted in the series for the first time and they were done justice to.

Personally the nostalgia factor was not there during my time with the show as whilst I grew up on X-Men cartoons for me it was Evolution that was my go to X-Men fix.

Something that hampered my enjoyment of the show was how it would jump around in structure, in one episode we would follow the main team but in the next a side story. To me this felt disjointed and often killed excitement I may have had between episodes.

Another thing that somewhat affected the series for me was its allegiance to current year identity politics. We had characters that were non binary, and I am no Morph expert but I do not believe the character was called this in the comics as this is a modern term. As such I believe it was included to tick a box which is the cheapest and laziest form of representation. The series also focuses heavily on the characters feelings towards Wolverine which as a side character this felt odd. The Scott and Jean relationship of which is central to the X-Men lore got less screen time and plot consideration, this could only be done in a tokenistic effort to show diversity on to appease bluehead people online.

Overall, whilst it was nice to see classic X-Men moments on the screen for the first time it was undercut by a need to appease identity politics and the structural issues with the episodes which I found jarring.

3/5

Pros.

Classic moments

A number of good action set pieces

Some fun to be hard

Cons.

Identity politics

Odd pacing and structure

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The Acolyte Episode 8: The Novice Osha Kills Jedi Master Sol With Ease, Let That Sink In

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

We finally see the back of the worst show in Star Wars history.

Lets see what does this finale have to offer, well firstly it bastardises Darth Plaguise making him some random cave dwelling ghoul and also manages to force Yoda in at the end in one final lore break. It makes no sense as if Yoda had learned about all of this he would have behaved differently in the prequels.

Leslye Headland’s self-insert wife returns here and continues her struggle to act, she reveals that the wannabe Sith was actually her apprentice. A twist everyone saw coming. I think the issue with her character is just that the acting is so bad it is distracting. This is why you should only put your girlfriend in your films if she can act.

Osha, Amandla Stenberg, snapping and killing the Jedi when she has always been the good one of the twins makes very little sense as does her later decision to wipe Mae’s memory. It is one of those things that you can feel them doing to try and set up conflict for a second season, which thanks to poor viewing figures is never coming.

Overall, thank God it is over

0.5/5

Pros.

It is not offensive

Cons

It ruins Plaguise

It makes no sense

It is super obvious

Amandla can’t act

It continues to break the lore

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The Acolyte Episode 7: Saving Children From A Cult Somehow Makes You The Bad Guy

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

We finally get to see how the coven of witches died.

My apologies for the lateness of this review it took me a minute to mull over the maddening content that we were presented with in this episode.

I’ll open this by saying that this show thinks it has something deep to say about morality it does not. It thinks that by having a patriarchal group like the Jedi, if we just ignore Carrie Anne Moss’ character, smashing up a matriarchal coven that it says something interesting or new about gender politics, it doesn’t.

A lot of Acolyte stans coming out of this episode have said that the Jedi are evil, this is dumb and reductive. They have such a bias that oh this coven of darksiders cannot be evil because they are women and a minority, and Mae and Osha, Amandla Stenberg, is the main character and so her perspective has to be right. Mae started the fire that killed the coven when they were all passed out, the coven wanted to kill the Jedi the moment they arrived, the only member of the coven that the Jedi killed was using a dark side power and so was deemed a threat. Again the stans go see he’s evil she did nothing wrong, the analogy of the police shooting first as they think someone is going to pull a gun on them has been used repeatedly, whereas in reality he was just defending himself against a perceived threat as anyone would do. Moreover, he shows regret for his actions.

To me this episode was lazy as how much new footage did we really get? I’ll answer for you, not a lot. Most of it was repurposed from the previous episode that covered this moment. To me this just reeks of trying to save money in the budget, you could go oh well they showed a new perspective of the Jedi being bad, but did they? Again I would say the previous episode on this topic already implied that, but the audience is too simple to be able to handle that so they had to physically show it.

There are no mysteries in this show as you know where everything is going. Let me take a moment to predict the next episode for you, Mae and her Jedi chaperone will decide its time to go and save Osha, there it will be revealed that the Sith has her on the verge of turning but they will arrive just in time. The Jedi will die fighting the Sith and then Mae will try to kill the Sith to save her sister, as she does that it will be revealed he is not the master, and the horned witch, one of their mothers, will be the real master and then the three of them will have a heart to heart and realise it wasn’t her fault, the horned mother will let go of her anger and the mother and her daughters will walk off together into the sunset.

Finally, the idea that a Jedi cannot handle a 7 week placement on a planet and so goes mad out of a desire to go home is laughable in terms of character motivations, but at this point I expect nothing less

1/5

Pros.

Some very funny moments this week

Cons.

The character motivations

The logic

Trying to make a group of darksiders into misunderstood heroes

Mae was the one who really killed the coven

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Velma Season 2 Overview: Please God Let It Stay Dead

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The Scooby Doo franchise is once again vandalised.

There is nothing that can be said about this show that hasn’t already been said. This show is the most clear cut example of a film or tv show that hates its IP, not only is this a self-insert for Mindy Kaling, the woman who joked about how she had forced a man to kiss her which is sexual harassment, but it just hates the Scooby Doo brand.

Velma, voiced by Kailing, could only be more annoying if she did everything in a high pitch squeaky voice, she is hateful towards men, towards women, toward anyone that is not like her. Honestly in real life she would be the villain, despite her saying on the show she’s so progressive she is actually really horrible and judgemental to everyone around her, the show thinks it can get around this by going oh but we acknowledge she’s a bad person so its fine. Nope having horrible unlikeable characters is all on the writers.

They pull out all the cards to make this edgy, with the sex and the violence but they need to realise the reason other adult animations can get away with that sort of thing is because people care about the characters, no one cares about Velma. I was honestly surprised there wasn’t a scene of Velma having sexual relations with the well-known great dane, but hey Warner Brothers Discovery said she can’t have the dog appear in the show. The fact I expected to see that shows you just how low and gutter trash this show is, it will do anything for a cheap shock laugh.

They also made Scrappy Doo the villain of the season, which because of how the show is made him the hero of the season instead, which is an odd feeling when it comes to Scrappy, but hey ho. Velma dies in the final battle so hopefully she and the series never come back.

Overall, just as bad as the first season but now a little bit extra stale.

0/5

Pros.

None, this was a few hours of my life I’ll never get back

Cons.

Kailing

It is not funny

It hates the IP

It is frequently gross for no rhyme or reason

Velma is an awful person

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The Acolyte Episode 6: Appealing To Less Than 30% Of Your Audience

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Remember folks the male gaze is wrong and to be called out yet a scene made for the female gaze is terrific and wonderful, a double standard everyone.

I apologise for having this review out a few days late, I have been away and so have been using my reserve for reviews, but fear not I have returned and now here is my thoughts on the latest episode.

You can tell this episode was co-written by Leslye Headland as it is one of the weakest of the whole season. Firstly you have the very obvious thirst scene designed to appeal to those less than 30 percent of female fans and small segment of the LGBTQ+ community, which again reflects my comment in the summary.

Secondly, you have the fact that the Jedi suspect Sol, Lee Jung-jae, as being the one behind the massacre which makes no sense, can they not sense things in the force, can some of them not read force echoes? Are you meaning to tell me that in the entire battlefield not a single item had a force echo attached to it which will show who the killer was. Once again we see the Jedi being portrayed as dullards. The whole point of this show seems to be to have the space cops, as the show wants you to think of them being the bad guys, the Jedi are incompetent they are evil and no doubt they just killed all the space witches for the hell of it. The social commentary is so thick that it blocks out all light or sense of sanity a viewer might have.

Thirdly a perhaps most cynically of all you have the helmet moment and the reference to Darth Vader. Now I have seen some people try to excuse this by saying its foreshadowing, foreshadowing what exactly how one of the twins becomes Darth Vader? No, nor is it foreshadowing how that twin will fall to the dark side as they will both be grey Jedis at the end of the show. They can’t be Sith as to have a non-white person as a villain would be incredibly problematic in this day and age, and they won’t be full Jedis as that would make them space police and you can’t have that either as everyone is supposed to hate the police now. So grey jedis or morally ambiguous force users they will be. The reference to Vader is simply more desperate pandering to try and hit you with the member berries in order to care more

Overall, boring, dumb, creepy and cheap.

0.5/5

Pros.

At least it’s almost over

Cons.

The thirst scene and the female gaze, the hypocrisy and the creepiness of it

The Darth Vader moment

The Jedi are bad okay

It is just not Star Wars

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The Acolyte Episode 5: It Would Have Been Better If The Sith Had Killed Every Character

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A lot of characters die, the show wants you to care but frankly you’re happy to see them go.

So this was the big action episode with all the fights and the lightsabers that had been teased for a long time. If you are the kind of person who just seeing some lightsabers is enough to make you happy, then good news you’ll love this episode, however if you require more substance than I can safely say you will be disappointed. The action choreography was weak, they have clearly taken influence from martial arts films and what not and that is fine but some of the actors they have trying to pull off these moves look like there is no way in hell they actually could. The action is pretty fake looking at times too, it looks like something you might see on a better than average Youtube channel that recreates movie fights, not the sort of thing you expect for a show with 180 million dollar budget.

Moreover, as I said in the summary a bunch of characters die, and you either feel indifference or kind of want them to. The show and its terrible writing has done such a bad job of making you care about any of the Jedi, even at sometimes making you hate them for how not like Jedi they are, that when they die it has the wrong emotional effect. I also thought it was cringe as hell that it was only the Padawan that gave the Sith a fight, as the rest of the Jedi’s were easily chopped down and they were experienced Knights, but because the Padawan is a know it all girl boss, played by Dafne Keen, she could go toe to toe with the Sith fighter. It is silly and stupid and the perfect reflection of modern Star Wars

Oh the twist, the dude from The Good Place is the Sith, yes that’s right folks the most obvious and laziest choice is the correct one. Everyone guessed from the minute he showed up that he was and as the show has gone on people were like it can’t possibly be him that would be too obvious and yet the show gave you just that. The issue is people don’t seem to understand just how poor the writing actually is so of course they can’t misdirect you or give you a good twist it is far too hard for them.

Moreover, Mae, Amandla Stenberg, continues to be the most schizophrenic character in Star Wars history flipping between emotions every few seconds. In the flashbacks she cares about her sister, then she wants to kill her, she is on her mission to kill all the jedi, then suddenly gets bored and stops, she wants to escape and live with her sister then knocks her out and leaves her with a Sith who likes killing Jedis. This is not good writing, it is as though they cannot decide on how they want the character to be so they keep having her do different things that are entirely at odds with each other it is hard to follow. Moreover, the fact they had to strip the sister down so Mae could switch clothes with her feels like some odd pervy fan service, though there is no nudity you know that scene will feature heavily in deviant art for years to come.

Overall, though this episode is more interesting that last weeks I would say the baffling character decisions and the stupid writing makes it worse.

0.5/5

Pros.

The new Sith could be interesting

Cons.

Mae and her mood swings

The terrible writing

The reveal is obvious

You don’t care about any of the deaths

Girl boss X-23

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The Acolyte Episode 4: Amandla Stenberg Is The Most Oppressed Person On The Planet

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

We get another fun and needed episode of the Acolyte.

If you couldn’t tell I was being sarcastic. Now to address somethings before we begin, I had a few people ask me why do I cover this show if I don’t like it, and there’s two reasons for that and no it is not because I am going crazy, though the show makes me fee like that at times. Firstly, it is because I think bad writing and bad content deserves to be called out so that other people can see this and stay clear, a lot of people are seeing and engaging with these reviews, according to my stats, so I am providing a service. Secondly, because a lot of trolls out there tell me to shut up and call me names because I am critical of the show and I will not bow to pressure and stop.

That said lets carry on, so this week we get a slightly better time than last week but not by much. We get to see more of the Sith who is very obviously the twin’s mother, as Jodie Turner Smith is billed to be in more episodes. They try their best to make her scary or do much of anything with her but ultimately it just comes off as cheaply done character work that tries to set up this great mystery when in actuality it is all obvious.

Then there is the return of Ki-Adi-Mundi only 100 years before he was born. Now I am no Lord of the EU or Master of the Lore, but it just seems to me like they needed someone vaguely recognisable to put in here, they don’t have even the slightest regard that this breaks cannon or anything like that they just do it for the sake of it. Moreover, after that the show then changed the characters Wookipedia entry in real time in order to try and get around what they knew to be a lore destroying moment. Once again it just shows a level of disrespect that this show has towards the audience and the franchise as a whole.

The flip with have with Mae, Amandla Stenberg, finally deciding to give up her mission and to try and find her sister instead made little sense. Ultimately the show couldn’t answer the question of why now, why had she not done this before, why would she want to see her sister after threatening to kill her. It is just a heel turn for the point of plot. Speaking off as always Stenberg is a devotee of the Alaqua Cox school of acting and shows no emotion as Mae goes through this massive character shift. She is not a very good actor.

PS. I took an extra day writing this as whilst I was writing it Stenberg’s diss track to the fans dropped and I needed some time to process that. Not only does it show just how out of touch she is, calling herself oppressed when she and her family are millionaires, whilst also making a video about racism whilst constantly bragging and focusing the shot on her for maximum narcissism. However, the reason I wanted to include it is because it just shows you what the people making this show think of you the fan, yes there may be some racists and she may have suffered some abuse, but to make a video where she says that all Star Wars people are haters and want to oppress her and stuff like this is not the way to combat racism. All this does is make the fandom even more divided as non-racists are angry that she is lumping everyone in together.

Finally, we have an incredibly forced scene that I just want to draw your attention to as I think it highlights everything wrong with modern Star Wars. There is a scene in which the gang find a new alien character and rather than call it it as people would, they instead decided to debate its pronouns. Now this scene is bad for a couple of reasons, firstly there was no need for it, it was done so they could say oh look we are talking about pronouns on the show aren’t we diverse, but it just shows how shallow and forced in this message is and how they are just ticking things off a list. They don’t actually care about meaningful representation just the appearance of it. Secondly, the scene slows the whole episode down which makes it stick out even worse, the writing is so poor it makes you consider was it written by an AI.

Overall, though it wasn’t as bad as episode 3, it is still pretty terrible and makes you debate the difference between awful and god awful.

1/5

Pros.

It is more watchable than the last episode

Cons.

The destruction of the lore

The pronoun scene

Mae’s randomly shift in personality

They couldn’t be bothered to let us see the Wookie Jedi fight

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The Acolyte Episode 3 Review: Star Wars Is Dead And Kathy Did It

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

We learn that the twins have abusive parents that want to control them and indoctrinate them. Yet the episode kind of feels like it wants us to root for them.

Lets start off this review by saying two things, firstly the Jedi did nothing wrong the force witch coven are abusive and controlling and want the twins to have no control over their lives they only tried to help the kids. Secondly, this will be my last review of the Acolyte as I’m done, with this show. However, if enough people want me to carry on I may do so. Never say never.

This is the episode that had been prophesied to ruin Star Wars and it did, and for what. So Leslie Headland could live out her fan fiction fantasy about a group of strong lesbian witches that don’t need no man trying to take down the evil patriarchal Jedi order, with a female master. You can almost feel in this show the amount of destain that Headland, a supposed fan, has for the Jedi and for Star Wars in general.

Now how did she ruin it, oh boy buckle up. Well remember how Anakin was immaculately conceived by the force and that is why he was so powerful and supposedly the chosen one, well here we learn that the twins were also born of the force so that basically destroys the whole idea of Anakin being the chosen one. Now some people have argued its not the same Anakin was made by the force itself, whereas here the witches use some magic to create them, therefore it is their creation not that of the force, yet the show knows what it is doing it is trying to undermine Anakin and the wider Star Wars universe because it knows that that story is better than the tripe they are peddling here.

Moreover, we continue to have no masculine heroes, I went some ways to talk about it before in my 1 and 2 review, but all the males here are just so passive and in no way cool, they are emotionless and just do as their told by the strong female characters. I understand wanting to have strong female characters, for the tiny female viewership they care about more than the overwhelmingly male one for some reason, but they couldn’t even give the show one interesting male character that has some agency and isn’t just weak.

The acting continues to be terrible across the board, nothing more needs to be said there.

Overall, I am fully convinced Disney wants to kill Star Wars.

Pros.

It is meme worthy

Cons.

It ruins the lore

It is dumb and needless

It is Headland’s personal fanfiction

The acting is awful

The lack of any non-passive male leads

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Poker Face: A Shorter Slightly Worse Knives Out

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A woman, Natasha Lyonne, who can always tell when people are lying heads out on the road to solve crimes. It is such a simple premise you wonder why it hasn’t been done before.

Rian Johnson is a controversial figure, a man of highs and lows, sometimes he makes something very good Looper sometimes he makes something very bad The Last Jedi. His Knives Out films were woefully not of the same quality, with the Netflix sequel being dumber and more distracted. Clearly he was working on other things whilst writing it. As such this series could have either been great or terrible, there was no room for in between.

Turns out life won’t be put in a box and despite my previous statement this is a pretty mixed show.

Now there are some things that it does well Lyonne is a strong and likable lead and you care about what happens to her character. I think if you had got someone who was less affable to do this show then it would have just been bad, as even in some of the harder to get through episodes Lyonne’s charm just about makes it bearable.

The episodes themselves fall into more of a villain of the week sort of thing, though the series tries for a wider overarching plot, for the most part it is oh the lead has tripped over a corpse better find out who killed them. Some of these episodes are good, usually the ones with notable guest stars who get to have fun, but some aren’t. The issue with villain of the week storytelling is that not all the episodes are created equal, some get the guest stars and more time to do interesting things and some are filler, and that is not just true here but in a lot of shows.

The issue with this show is that it can have a few bad episodes in a row before you get a good one and because of that it is a slog to get through.

If you are a Knives Out fan then you will almost certainly be into this show.

Overall, fun at times but mostly slow and predictable.

2.5/5

Pros.

Lyonne

Some of the episodes are fun

It has some good ideas

Cons.

Some of the episodes are dull

It is not as smart as it thinks it is

The ending is underwhelming

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