I am really struggling to see how the National Football League thinks that it's NFL+ subscription service is worth $30 - $80 a year. I tried a free trial of the app during the first week of the NFL regular season and was thoroughly disappointed by the service in almost every conceivable way.
First of all, just signing up for it is a pain in the ass because their payment provider, Cleeng takes forever to load. I had to refresh it several times and wait several minutes before I was finally able to actually activate the trial.
The NFL wants $30-$80 for its streaming service. Is it worth it? Spoiler: NO.
The real kicker is that I can only watch live games that are televised anyway, as well as in-market games. So I can watch the Raiders (because I live in Las Vegas), even though I hate the Raiders; but I can't watch the Bears unless they're on TV anyway. I don't have cable, but I do have a broadcast TV antennae, and an Amazon Prime subscription (which carries Thursday night games). I can already watch every game that NFL+ offers at no extra charge, with the sole exception of Monday night games on ESPN, because even though we have a Disney+ subscription that supposedly includes ESPN+, we can't actually watch any live sports on ESPN+ because the Disney subscription only covers the basic ESPN+ content, and live sports requires the premium ESPN+ subscription. So, without needing to write another review, ESPN+ is also a complete waste of money.
If I really want to watch a Monday night game, I can go to my parents' house and watch it. They have cable, and they live less than 2 miles away.
The only thing that NFL+ offers that has any value to me is the ability to watch replays of games. But that's a feature of the premium ($80) subscription, and isn't offered by the basic ($30) subscription, and it's not something that is likely to be particularly valuable to most casual NFL viewers. It's only potentially valuable to me because I make YouTube content about Madden and other football video games, and I often use NFL footage (under Fair Use) to demonstrate how those games get football right or (more often) wrong. Most people don't bother to watch replays of live sports. The appeal of sports is to watch it in the moment. Once the moment has passes, so has the appeal. People watch highlights after the fact, but not entire games. The only time I've ever watched re-broadcasts of NFL games was when I would watch replays of Bears preseason games on NFL Network in order to see how the backups play. I have no interest in watching re-broadcasts of regular season or playoff games, except in the context of using it in a YouTube video. And that also has limited value because I'm usually able to find the clips or highlights that I need for free on YouTube or from NFL or ESPN highlight and analysis shows.
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Tags:NFL, NFL Plus, app, subscription, football, network TV, cable, ESPN, ESPN Plus, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Disney
One of my biggest complaints with Disney's Star Wars movies has been their complete lack of original ideas, and their complete unwillingness to move the Star Wars narrative forward. That's actually why I didn't think The Last Jedi was as bad as most people said it was. I mean, it wasn't "good" by any stretch of the imagination. The script was messy, the tone was uneven, and a lot of the movie's logic was fundamentally flawed. But I appreciated much of the bold thematic elements. The Last Jedi wanted desperately to move the franchise in new directions, and it actively mocked the previous film(s) (and the fanbase) for being too trapped in the past.
The rest of Disney's Star Wars movies haven't been so bold. The Force Awakens was a rehash of the original movie. Rogue One and Solo were both prequels that nobody asked for that both attempted to explain minutia that never needed explaining to begin with. I haven't seen Rise of Skywalker yet, but I'm hearing that it's an exceedingly dumb rehash of Return of the Jedi, and possibly the worst Star Wars movie since The Pantom Menace. And that's the "gentle" criticism that I'm hearing from people who were generally favorable towards Disney's treatment of Star Wars!
Suffice it to say, outside of the X-Wing and Armada tabletop games (which I love and still regularly play), I have become so jaded and sick of Star Wars that I didn't bat an eye at Disney's announcement of The Mandalorian. I just assumed that it was a prequel series about young Boba Fett that would continue the Star Wars trend of fixating on its past. I had no interest in watching the series, and I sure as hell was not going to pay a monthly subscription to Disney to watch it.
But I guess a free subscription to Disney Plus came with our Verizon phone plan, and my girlfriend was hearing some good word-of-mouth in the week after the first episode premiered, so we've been having stay-in date nights to watch it. I want to say, by the way, that I like this approach of releasing episodes of a streaming series on a fixed schedule, rather than dumping a whole season all at once. It facilitates water-cooler talk because everybody else is at the same point in the narrative that you are. You have time to digest the events of each episode and talk about them, and you are able to speculate with friends over what's going to happen next, because your friends don't know either! You'd think that streaming services like Netflix and Hulu would have figured this out with the success of HBO's Game of Thrones weekly release schedule, but they didn't. Disney learned. (and so did CBS).
The Mandalorian feels like it's actually pushing the Star Wars narrative forward.
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Tags:The Mandalorian, Disney, Disney Plus, streaming television, Lucasfilm, Star Wars, Mandalorian, bounty hunter, Yoda, baby Yoda, child, the Force, Galactic Empire, New Republic, Christmas, toy
I'm late to this party. With Avengers: Endgame due out in the next couple weeks, I finally got around to seeing Captain Marvel. I had planned to see it with a friend the week after release, but illness and work got in the way, so we never made it out. Also, I just haven't been out to movies much since being blown away by Into the Spider-Verse -- seriously, it's out on home video and streaming, go watch it! There's a few other movies that I've been wanting to see, and I'm going to try really hard to not miss them in theaters. I'm really looking forward to Jordan Peele's new movie, Us, which I'm hoping to see this week or next. And apparently, DC's Shazam! might actually be good?!
But I finally had a weekend afternoon to myself, and decided to go to Captain Marvel, since my girlfriend didn't want to see it. As is par for the Marvel movies, it's good enough. Marvel has yet to produce a true flop, but I feel like Captain Marvel is a bit of a regression considering the studio's recent track record.
I like when the Marvel movies experiment with genre, but Captain Marvel remains a pretty standard fare origin story.
The big problem is that we're back to origin stories. Spider-Man: Homecoming smartly passed on re-re-telling the story of how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, and was all the better for it. Recent movies like Black Panther, Guardians vol. 2, and [especially] Infinity War, had moved beyond the dull origin stories and un-interesting, cookie-cutter villains to offer truly engaging and transcendent films. Captain Marvel kind of falls in with Doctor Strange as being a passable -- but ultimately skippable -- entry. At least it isn't as contradictory as Doctor Strange.
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Tags:Captain Marvel, Marvel Comics, Disney, Stan Lee, Avengers, Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Nick Fury, Skrull, feminism, refugee, Blockbuster Video, 1990s, cat
Pretty much any time I talk about Spider-Man on this blog, I use one of two points of reference. The first is the original comics themselves (the Silver Age comics of the 60's and 70's). The second point of reference is a short-lived children's cartoon from 2008 to 2009 called The Spectacular Spider-Man. Its first season aired on The CW network (part of Warner Bros. network), and the second season aired on Disney XD. The series was developed primarily by Greg Weisman and Victor Cook, and was produced by Sony.
Despite referring back to this series repeatedly, I've never actually written a review of it. Recently, however, I re-watched the series (by introducing it to my 8-year-old daughter and her friends), and thought maybe I should actually write a review of. Put simply, Spectacular Spider-Man is probably the single best adaptation of Spider-Man that has ever been put on a screen. It's not only the best Spidey animated series, but it might even be better than any of the Spider-Man movies, including Sam Raimi's movies and Marvel's recent Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Spectacular Spider-Man is a better adaptation than any of the Spider-Man movies.
High school drama for all audiences
The show is a children's cartoon and its high school setting is definitely targeting younger kids. But it is surprisingly well-planned, well-written, and well-executed for a children's cartoon, and the teenage drama suits Spider-Man exceptionally well. Any Spidey fan, regardless of age, should be able to enjoy this show.
On the surface, the series seems to take a lot of inspiration from the Ultimate Spider-Man line of comics. This was a little bit off-putting for me at first because I don't particularly care for the Ultimate Spider-Man storylines or aesthetics. However, Spectacular won me over by remaining very faithful to the original comics as well. Spectacular manages to take the best elements from every incarnation of Spider-Man, combines them, and modernizes them into a 21st century setting while delightfully capturing the spirit of the original 60's and 70's comics. Plot elements and themes are pulled from the original comics, from the Ultimate comics, and also (being produced by Sony) from the Sam Raimi movies. It even makes a few successful homages to the 1990's Spider-Man: the Animated Series that ran on Fox and had been, up till this point, the gold standard for Spidey on TV (at least, up until the last couple seasons go completely off the rails).
Spectacular takes the best elements from every incarnation of Spider-Man,
while remaining spectacularly faithful to the original 60's and 70's comics.
Spectacular even replicates some scenes straight from the panels of the comics. The infamous "Face it Tiger, you just hit the jackpot." scene is transferred verbatim. Other scenes such as Spider-Man removing the Venom symbiote in the church tower, and channeling the thoughts of his friends and loved ones to help him lift himself out from under collapsing metal beams are also faithfully replicated.
Spectacular [BOTTOM ROW] replicates panels from the original comics [TOP ROW] almost verbatim.
Other adaptations have also replicated (or paid homage to) specific comic book panels. For instance, The Animated Series of the 90's also had the "Face it Tiger, you just hit the jackpot!" scene, and the symbiote bell tower scene, and so forth, and many of its episodes are loosely based on issues of the comics. Homecoming had the "trapped under rubble" scene. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movie had the Green Goblin being impaled by his glider. And so forth.
What separates Spectacular from these other adaptations is that Spectacular manages to maintain more of the nuance and texture of those original comic panels.
And it isn't just the faithfullness to the source material that I like. The show is also generally well-written, with some clever (and not-so-clever) uses of things like symbolism and foreshadowing. The characters are all well-written and well-performed. The animation may have exaggerated body proportions, but it's very fluid, expressive, and is full of nuances in facial expressions and body language. There are some parts of the show that have some cheesy dialogue that reminds me that it's a children's show, but overall, the show is immensely watchable by adults and children alike.
There's some quality writing, including foreshadowing, symbolism, and misdirection.
If I haven't made it clear already, this show is fantastic, and I absolutely adore it! The next section will contain minor spoilers, and the sections after that will contain major spoilers! So if you haven't seen the show yet, then I highly recommend that you buy the DVDs and watch it, then come back to finish reading the review. You can maybe get through the next section ("Friends and Lovers") without too much spoilers, but sections after that will be spoiling major story threads, including what I consider to be the single biggest spoiler in the entire series. Suffice it to say: I love what the show does with Gwen Stacy, I love what it does with Mary Jane, I love what it does with Harry Osborne, and I love the depictions of most of the villains! If you haven't watched the show yet, then read on at your own risk!
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Tags:Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Sony/Columbia Pictures, Disney, Marvel, Marvel Comics, Disney XD, DVD, television, cartoon, children, comic, comic book, Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson, Harry Osborn, Norman Osborn, Emily Osborn, Green Goblin, Eddie Brock, Venom, May Parker, Ben Parker, Josh Keaton, Lacy Chabert, Marina Sirtis, high school, teenager, death, Batman: the Animated Series, Spider-Man: the Animated Series, Ultimate Spider-Man
Movie audiences were all pleasantly surprised when the ensemble cast of Avengers all came together to make a pretty damned good movie. There was genuine anxiety regarding whether that movie could possibly successfully bring four movies' worth of superheroes together into a single movie, and manage to give everybody enough valuable screen time to make the whole thing work. Similarly, there was considerably anxiety regarding whether or not Marvel could double-down and pull off an ensemble of ensembles for the mega-crossover Infinity War. But at this point, I think we've all moved past any expectation that Marvel will screw up, and we all just assume that they're going to find a way to magically make it all work.
I had to wait a couple weeks to find out. I had planned to see the movie the Monday after release and have this review out two weeks ago, but fate conspired against that. Towards the end of the trailers, somebody pulled the fire alarm in the building, forcing the theater to evacuate. It was a false alarm, but by the time they let everyone back in, it was too late and the movie wouldn't be over in time to pick up the kids from KidsQuest before they closed for the night. Ah well. My girlfriend finally got sick of having to hush her students whenever they started talking about the movie, so she dragged me out to the theater earlier this week.
The sheer volume of characters, content, and punches here does make Infinity War one of the more unbalanced of Marvel's movies. It is after all, weaving a complex tapestry of superhero action, science fiction, and magical fantasy, and there's virtually no set-up or development for the characters. This movie is all climax all the time. It's probably the first Marvel movie that really requires that you have seen most of the lead-up material. There simply isn't enough time here to introduce who everyone is and what their deal is. If you haven't seen at least one film featuring each character, you'll likely be lost with regard to who they are. Guardians of the Galaxy, Civil War, and Ragnarok are pretty much essential prerequisite viewing. You can skip Ant Man though, as he's conspicuously absent from this particular compilation piece.
Infinity War is an ensemble of ensembles.
This movie would probably fail miserably if it were a typical super-hero movie focused around the heroes and their struggle (and failure) to beat the bad guy. Marvel knows well enough to not try to replicate The Empire Strikes Back. Instead, Infinity War is much more about the bad guy. Thanos is pretty much the main character here, and a great deal of time and effort is paid to trying to make him as relatable and understandable of a villain as possible. He is characterized with nuance, he's clever, he's ruthless, and he's consistent in his goals and ambition. Whether or not you sympathize with his point of view will, of course, depend on where you stand on the topic of universal genocide. Josh Brolin's Thanos does, however, have some pretty definitive swagger and charisma. His CG monstrosity has a lot of screen presence. It's too bad that the CG isn't always completely convincing though.
Because the bad guy is basically the main character (and protagonist), the entire narrative arc of the movie is almost the inverse of what you'd usually expect. The bad guys show up to create the dramatic stakes and sense of threat with aplomb, as expected. But instead of the rising action being a series of setbacks for the heroes with a climactic victory at the end, the heroes seem to come together and get everything mostly under control for the middle act of the movie, only to have it all go to shit when the climax arrives. Instead of the good guys losing in the end, the movie is framed as the bad guy wins in the end -- a subtle, but significant difference!
Thanos is the main character of this movie, and the dramatic and emotional arcs revolve around him. [More]
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Tags:Avengers, Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel, Marvel Comics, Disney, McGuffin, Josh Brolin, Thanos, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Loki, Starlord, Gamora, Groot, Rocket Racoon, Drax, Black Panther, Wakanda, Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Infinity Stone, Infinity Gauntlet, space, magic, comic book
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