mhorg2018

OK. I love The Mandalorian. I also really enjoyed Boba Fett and Ashoka. All quite enjoyable and well done. I liked Skeleton Crew, which was a bit more light-hearted. The Acolyte... well, they can't all be winners (See Star Trek: Discovery, Picard and nearly half of Strange new Worlds. Hey, star trek, stop copying Star Wars and stop with the unnecessary prequels). All these series pale in the face of Andor. Tremendous writing, tremendous stories, fantastic cast. Diego Luna is brilliant as Andor, who really does everything he can for the Rebellion. Luthen and Kleya deserve at least a movie of their own. Andor is right when he tells the rebel council that they don't understand the debt they owe to Luthen, who, for the first time in any star wars we see PTSD. (Leia should really suffer from this as well, since she saw her planet blown up!) Each episode is a masterwork of writing and directing. There isn't a bad episode in the bunch. A joy to watch and my wife and I have watched the entire run several times. Just a brilliant show. More, Mr. Gilroy! More!

So Mr Trachtenberg is the savior of the predator universe? Hardly. While this isn't as horrible and full of plot holes as pray, nor as poorly done as that weak cartoon, predator and predator 2 are still tops. This weak story with a runt predator trying my to prove himself by being friends with a synthetic (who looks entirely too amused the entire movie) something no predator from 1 or 2 would do. Somewhere along the way the writers forgot that predators see the entire universe as prey not friends. Another weak entry in a fading franchise. There should be a 50 year moratorium on any further predator or alien movies.

If Hollystink can't do a decent adaptation of a science fiction novel (I'm look at you Dune and Dune 2), then they should simply stop. Starship Troopers, one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written, and one of the best by Robert A. Heinlein, gets a royal screwing here in this lame as can be 'adaptation'. Let's look at the GOOD: Really, other than the sfx, there isn't any good. Paul does a crap job as does Minor.

The BAD: Well, virtually everything. They left out the suits, which is why the army in the book is called THE MOBILE INFANTRY. The cast is too white, too young, too smiley and, in the case of quite photogenic but terrible actress Denise Richards-terrible. Paul missed the entire idea behind the novel; it isn't to promote the military or war, it's showing how one should earn certain rights, like voting, by service. Seeing some of the dunces elected in my nation, America (it's certainly not united) I can get behind that. But, I'm a veteran. The story is barely coherent, running from one big action scene to another (again the SFX are the best part), clipped together with every single military trope one can find. This is truly a horrible movie and the sequels - they're even worse!