The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Damsel
It’s always obvious when a genre has outstayed it’s welcome. In 1969, Hello, Dolly! was launched into a world where the innocence of the high-production Broadway musical film was no longer welcome. The Sixth Day was arguably Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best 80s-style blast flick but no one was interested by 2000. So it is with Damsel. This film feels like an intriguing artifact. A leftover from another time. It has arrived as another genre whose time is passed. However, and this is...
Star Wars Has Made Disney $13 Billion?!?!?
That pitch to Disney shareholders has been a barrel of laughs. Bob Iger has to be feeling like he is standing in Michael Eisner's shoes twenty years ago. Just about every one of Eisner's fatal problems has an analog today. ABC Capital Cities was assimilated by the Mickey-Borg in 1996. Part of the reason that Murphy and Burke decided to let Michael Eisner buy the company was because they had promised Bob Iger that he would become CEO of ABC Capital Cities when...
RE:View – The Terminator
Los Angeles 2029: There is nothing but rubble, mountains of skulls and gigantic killing machines rolling through the streets gunning down the last few remaining inhabitants of LA. “YEAH SKYNET!! GIT SUM! GIT SUM! YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! HOO-RA-A-AH!” “Dear, please quit rooting for the terminators,” The Mother of the Darkspawn sighed. “It’s bothering the children.” “Nah, we’re cool with it, Mom,” replied Darkspawn. Before Westworld came along the Robot Apocalypse used to be cool. The Machines weren’t angsty at all. They just wanted to...
The Latest Round of Disney White Papers
We have two more white paper filings to the SEC in fast approaching showdown between Nelson Peltz’s Trian group and Robert Iger’s tame board of directors that he wants to keep tame. Peltz’s filing was a thorough 130 page evisceration of the Walt Disney Company’s failings. Trian is the opposition. His pitch for himself and Jay Rasulo being on the board is made on a strong business track record. Since Bob Iger can’t possibly stand on his own merits in 2024, he has...
Walt Disney World Investments SLASHED!!!
Oops. Bob Iger's supporters said the quiet part out loud. The Disney Company has released an editorial reply to Nelson Peltz and Trian's white paper. Mickey and Great and Terrible's own white paper is kind of an embarrassment. Disney seems to have convinced itself its financial legerdemain is so brilliant no one could hope to penetrate it. Well, I did, and so did anybody else that wasn't high on Pixie-Dust. One of Bob Iger's big claims for the park is that he...
The Head of Imagineering Has Been Fired!
When a business wants an announcement spread far and wide it’s made on Monday early in the afternoon. When a company doesn’t want to bring attention to it, it’s made on a Friday at 4:40 in the afternoon. When a company wants a piece of news buried six feet deep, with a layer of peat moss thrown on top, they announce it on a Saturday. On Saturday afternoon Barbara Bouza, the president of Walt Disney Imagineering announced her departure. They at least...
Just How Bad Nickelodeon Was
We knew it was bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvyULepxgw4 Discuss on SG
Sweet Baby Cyanide
So why haven’t I said anything about Sweet Baby? Because to me the problem has been so self-evident for so long that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Yes, I knew about it. I knew the cancer for what it was and how it spread. I also knew that Sweet Baby Inc was not the only “narrative development studio that provides "sensitivity reviews and consultation.” Lionbridge Games is still on the grift train, Sliverstring Media is the up-and-comer. And...
RE:View – SyFy’s Dune
On September 24, 1992, Leonard Nimoy was watching a countdown timer run out. For a few days, this countdown had been running on a new channel owned by USA Networks. It was a joint venture between Paramount and Universal. When the timer reached zero an extended trailer started featuring the finest, reasonably priced computer graphics available in the early 90s, combined with some miniatures designed by John Dykstra. The director held up three fingers, then two, then one. With the cheerful...
Nelson Peltz’s White Paper
Everyone knew this was coming but the forms of vendetta must be obeyed. Nelson Peltz has finally thrown down his gauntlet at Bob Iger’s feet. The Trian Group has sent its 130-page white paper (more of a white novel if you ask me) to Disney’s institutional investors. This is basically a list of everything that Disney is doing wrong and what Peltz says needs to be done to fix them. The letter to PepsiCo was rather searing about PepsiCo’s own stance...
Harddrive-by: Helldivers 2
I had pretty much given up on playing AAA games when this came along.. They have mostly been a series of rolling disasters for the past couple of years. Redfall, Gollum, Starfield, Skull Island, Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League and of course The Last of Us 2. You’ve probably got a list of your own. It’s not just technical incompetence, although if you buy anything from Bethesda, damn kid what were you thinking? No, politics have pushed...
The Dark Herald Recommends Dune II
“Unadaptable” is the word that was most frequently used to describe Frank Herbert’s Dune and not without good reason. People who have had no trouble at all with Tolkien’s Silmarillion have struggled mightily to plow their way through Dune. Herbert stood the convention of “show don’t tell” on its head and mostly just told. He took a 900-page exposition dump on his readers and somehow made it all work. Making a movie version of this is all but impossible but there...
The Dark Herald Recommends: Dune I
BUMPED 3/02/24. I'll be posting my review of Dune II on Monday, so I decided to bump this review of Villeneuve's first Dune movie. Obviously, the stuff about there possibly not being a sequel no longer applies but I decided not to edit it out. Frank Herbert’s Dune always makes the list of greatest science fiction books of all time. And unlike Foundation and 2001, it actually has business being there. It was a book that was genuinely for the thinking man. Dumb...
It Came From the Nineties: Unforgotten Science Fiction from the End of the 20th Century
None of these are in this article REPOST 3/1/24. In honor of Farscape's Silver Anniversary and because my review of Helldivers 2 needs an editing pass when my brain isn't fried, I repost this Dark Herald classic. TV tends to lag behind film trends. The 1980s is arguably the best decade ever for science fiction and fantasy movies. In the 1990s the small screen followed suit. This is a list of 1990s sci-fi series that I decided weren’t obscure enough to qualify as forgotten. I’ll do...
Meet the Pretenders to Iger’s Throne
The court is assembling from all across the land for a king is dying. Various factions are now presenting pretenders to the throne while the old king insists that he's still good for years. But it is becoming clear that Iger has lost the support that matters. The last earnings call was a nothing but smoke and mirrors. Too much of it was obviously staged. When it was clear that no one who mattered would be allowed to ask awkward questions. Too much went wrong...
First Impressions – FX’s Shogun
In 1942 James Clavell became a prisoner of war of the Japanese Empire. He was eventually transferred to the infamous Changi prisoner-of-war camp where he would remain until his liberation. “Changi became my university instead of my prison. Among the inmates, there were experts in all walks of life—the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving, the most important course of all.” -James...
Disney Deathwatch: The Executions Are Underway
Sean Baily is out as the president of Disney Live Action. I knew someone was going to have to answer for last year's carpet bombing of the theaters. I’m honestly surprised it was Sean Bailey. He really wasn’t responsible for the disasters that Disney has produced. Although, it’s true that he didn’t stop them either. Alan Bergman bears a great deal of the blame although Dana Walden bears much more. David Greenbaum at Fox Searchlight has been promoted to the newly created...
The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Netflix’s Avatar The Last Airbender
So much wrong in one poster There is a time in your life when children’s television programming reenters your life. Or at least it did if you were Generation X. I have no memories at all of my parents sitting down with me in front of Saturday morning TV. When the subject comes up I’ve rarely run into someone in my age group that has. Admittedly there wasn’t too much available when I was a kid that needed monitoring. Although, there...
Jodorowsky’s Dune
Question: What is the most influential movie you've never seen? Answer: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune. This film's art designs have inspired just about every movie that isn't trying to imitate Star Wars or Star Trek, it clearly inspired ship, set, and costume projects as diverse as Alien, The Black Hole, Babylon 5, and Farscape. Arguably the revived version of Battlestar Galactica as well. Its influence is strongly felt in Warhammer 40K and Starcraft. Yet, not a single person has ever seen this film. Because it...
Trailer Drop Thursday 2/23/24
I know what you're thinking. This is super low effort, oh Herald of the Dark. And you're right it totally is. I'm glad you're paying attention. FIRST Borderlands Greasy as a vat of whale blubber Randy Pitchford has finally gotten his dream. Borderlands is now a movie and I got to say the casting is kind of weird. Cate Blanchett as Lilith: I'm a gigantic fan of Cate the Great, that said, she's 54 and that's assuming her age isn't being shall we say suppressed. I love her...
Atlantean Bull Dancers
I’m a long-time fan of Stephen Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle. It’s a retelling of the King Arthur stories but told from both a historical and Christian perspective. It stretches from the final days of the Roman Empire in Albion to the Battle of Britain. The very first book in the series is to my mind the strongest: Taliesin. The book is told from two perspectives. The first follows the life of Prince Taliesin, the greatest Celtic bard in the history of Britain. His father...
Helldivers II – First Impressions
I had intended to post a full review of Helldivers II this week, but that is not going to happen. I have to say that I am somewhat disappointed. I was under the impression that Helldivers II was going to be a non-competitive, third-person co-op shooter. One that had strong overtones of Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. Except this one was actually funny and wasn't trying to be a secretly brilliant film that you have to have an IQ that falls in a very specific...
No Christian White Trash Allowed, Says Disney REPOST
(2/19/24) Some of my newer readers maybe wondering why I haven't posted anything on Elon Musk's Tweet. The one where he talks about ABC's "secret Inclusion standards" sheet and how horrible it is. The reason I haven't posted anything is that I already did nearly three years ago: REPOST April 15, 2021 Disney knows what it wants and what it wants isn't you. After a year of doing nothing but studying all the stuff that Twitter and Tumblr users are gaga about, Disney's ABC has boldly...
The Iron Vault of Tax Write-Offs: Tim Burton’s Hansel and Gretel
Twitter was blowing up in Twitter rage this week because Coyote vs. Acme's temporary reprieve had run out. Gentle reminder: This movie was about a lawsuit that Wile Coyote launches against ACME, the company whose product line has failed him at every turn. I'll be honest, it sounded to me like the premise for an ultra low budget 1980s Looney Tunes clip show. The kind where there is five minutes of cheap new material inter-spliced with clips from Termite Terrace's golden age...
The Rabid Puppies at Ten Years
I indeed and truly thought I was never going to have anything else to say about the Hugo Awards ever again. I mean what was there to say that hasn’t been said already? There was a time that the Hugo Awards indicated, well I’m leery about calling it excellence because there were too many genuine classics in the field that never got an award. Classic example. The powers that be at the Hugos had been criticized for never giving J.R.R. Tolkien a...
The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Madame Web
You know you are in for a special treat when everyone’s contacts at Marvel Studios are all saying, “Dude, I swear we had absolutely nothing to do with this one.” No one wanted credit for it. You know how a modern movie has fifteen production company plates at the start of it these days? There were only two for Madame Web “In association with Marvel” meaning this is as far as we can distance ourselves from this thing without endangering...
Totally 80s Comics – First Comics
It’s no real secret that the man with the golden Rolodex is going to get ahead in life. I recently talked to one of the guys that runs a publishing house that is usually near the top of the KU store. He had started with an email newsletter. If you wanted a boost as an author you just sent him your book’s info and he’d give you a boost, provided it was science fiction or fantasy, and not romance or...
80s Table Top – Star Frontiers
Recently, while cleaning out the garage I ran into something I'd completely forgotten about. Finding this book touched off a wave of bittersweet nostalgia for me. 80s tabletop RPGs were unquestionably the best of all time. If you disagree I'm not going to pretend you have an opinion that can be respected. It was the Golden Age. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was still owned by an independent TSR that was controlled by the god of gaming, Gary Gygax. Dragon Lance was taking it mainstream-ish. FASA had a...
Is Disney Abandoning California?
There was an all hands emergency meeting at Disney Animation Studios Burbank. They started the meeting by telling the animators that no one at Burbank was being laid off. Which probably means that everyone is being laid off. It turns out that the Moana 2 movie that Bob Iger announced last night is going to be made by a surprise studio that just sprang into existence in Vancouver British Columbia with a staff of 400. Seemingly overnight so far the as the...
The Carano Lawsuit
The reason I haven't covered this suit is simple enough. It's never going to go to Discovery. There is no way on Earth Disney can let it go that far. It's bad enough that the results of LucasFilm's complete dysfunction is available for all the world to see. The one thing Disney doesn't want is to reveal just how disastrous things are behind the scenes. However, part of this suit was actually jaw dropping. Under a lot of pressure to issue an apology...
Disney’s Feb 7 Earnings Call Impressions
Fellow travelers within the cabal are circling the wagons around Bob Iger with a view to preventing Nelson Peltz and Jay Rusulo from getting on the Disney BOD. These weren’t softball questions, these were T-ball questions. Clearly they had been instructed about that which they could and could NOT ask questions about. The closest thing to a hard hitting question was, what are you going to do about the film business? Iger replied with what I think is the most terrifying...
A Less Optimistic Appraisal of the Netflix Avatar Trailer
It's been a while since I posed anything by E;R Mostly because it's been a while since he posted anything himself. Regardless he's a bigger Avatar fan than I ever was so I will respect his opinion on this matter. Dour as it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-8TkayFT34 Note: I might not be posting tonight, depending on how interesting the Disney earnings call is today.