Respecting Property
Two of my favourite recent movies placed in long-running franchises are Logan (2017) and Joker (2019). Logan tells the story of an older Wolverine, now struggling with health, and trying to take care of Professor Xavier, who’s suffering from dementia. Joker is a possible origin story for arguably the most recognisable comic-book villain there is. Both stories sit in well-defined, well-populated franchises. Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine has appeared in six X-Men movies, cameoed in one other, and appeared in three Wolverine-only movies. Although X-Men has been (softly) rebooted, the universe largely remains the same: same characters (just with younger actors), same feel, and the same type of adventures. Writer/director James Mangold…
Discovering How to Ruin Star Trek
I’m interrupting my overblown series on ranting at Star Wars to rant this week about another ruined franchise: Star Trek: Discovery. The second season just finished and I cannot contain myself. The first season was so bad that it almost killed any possibility of improvement. Almost. They then changed the showrunner. They changed writers. They had feedback from the fans. They had feedback from the licensees. Hmmm. Okay, all that amounted to a glimmer of hope. Maybe they could take all that on board and do something with Discovery and make it … Star Trek. Right? Right? Unfortunately, not. The second season isn’t just an indictment on the second season,…