Why did Maul let Obi-Wan cut him in half?

Star Wars on Disney+

The first time I saw Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 1999 (which should be named, The Rise of Skywalker and vice versa) I felt the lightsaber battle where Obi-Wan cuts Darth Maul in half looked like a lame scene because the Sith apprentice was just standing there and didn’t defend himself for like a whole second, but what if it was because Qui-Gon Jinn’s force ghost was slowing him down?

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Master Qui-Gon was the first Jedi in a long time to be able to preserve his consciousness as a force ghost, but he seemed to work in audio mode only, but maybe he could touch and move stuff like Yoda and Luke did when they were ghosts. It probably looks that way because George Lucas may have rushed the filming, but I prefer to think it was Qui-Gon. Either way, it’s still my favorite lightsaber fight in all of Star Wars. What do you think? May the Force be with you.

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how would YOU break in a HOLLYWOOD virgin?

I truly love my girlfriend. We have the same sense of humor and get along wonderfully, but she’s never watched anything that wasn’t on Facebook or YouTube before. She’s never even used a DVD or knows what a VHS or cassette tapes are. It’s not her fault because she’s a millennial and country girl who was born in 1998.

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According to Google, Boomers were born after WWII, Generation X was before 1980, and Millennials grew up in the middle of the digital age and know nothing but digital entertainment. I was born in 1980, so I’m kinda a hybrid of a Gen Xer and a Millennial, but I would identify more as a Millennial. I do remember vinyl records and tape cassettes, but I loved my Gameboy and NES more. Since we had Apple IIs in every classroom when I was in kindergarten and elementary school I guess I fit the requirement of being a millennial.

I was in army basic training back in 1999 and the drill sergeant thought he would hurt my feelings by calling me a Nintendo generation. I corrected him and told him that I actually play Super NintendoSega Genesis, and even N64. Everyone but him thought it was funny. I may have made my fellow soldiers laugh, but my arms were not amused by all the pushups he had me do.

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I was a linguist in the military and one of the best ways I learned to get good at any language is through immersion. Back then I was learning Thai, so I bought a bunch of Thai CDs and cassettes from Thai Town in Hollywood and only watched Thai TV shows on VCDs. VCDs were like DVDs, but they were only 700 MBs so you had to have two discs to watch a movie and dozens of them to watch a full series.

After I got out of the military I became an English teacher and I had one student that was just too good. She spoke English with a perfect American accent and was lightyears beyond the other kids. When I told her that I thought she was wasting her time in our school and asked her if she was from the states, she told me that she’s never been. She said that her mom had only one serious rule in the house: All entertainment must be in English. Thinking this was a great idea I did the same with my 5-year-old stepdaughter who could only speak Thai. I bought her a cheap TV and a 64 GB Kingston USB stick with every Disney movie I could fit onto it. I had to put everything into one folder so it would play the next movie seamlessly, but it did the job.

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My ultimate goal was to get my girlfriend to be a Star Wars fan, but I knew I couldn’t start with that so I went with Titanic as the first film. It has held up really well over the years and of course, she loved it. She has no idea who Leonardo DiCaprio is, but whenever she sees him in more modern films she’ll ask why Jack looks so old.

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Do you know how many letters are in the English alphabet? If you answered twenty-six then you’d be wrong. There are now twenty-four letters in the English alphabet because E and T went home.

When I showed this movie to my daughter when she was eight, she fell asleep when E.T. was all pale and sick dying by the river. She had nightmares all night screaming for E.T. Was he alright? Did he die? Did he ever go home?

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My girlfriend is a farmer from the countryside of Laos. When she showed me her hometown there was this super scary bridge that reminded me of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. When I asked her if there were crocodiles below like in Indiana Jones she of course had no idea what I was talking about so we watched all three of the films. Yes, I know there is a fourth, but it sucks and I knew she wouldn’t have liked it.

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Which Star Wars film do you think is best to bring in a new fan? I tried with the prequels, but she wasn’t into it so I jumped to Rogue One which my girlfriend liked very much. It also flows well into the original.

I know a lot of fans dislike the sequels, but I saw them with my son when he was young in an IMAX theater and cried at the beginning of The Force Awakens because I never thought I’d ever get to see a new Star Wars in a theater ever again. My girlfriend didn’t want anything to do with them though. She said she wanted to see Luke and Han, not this girl named Rey.

It was quite a pleasure to see the shock on her face when Darth Vader told Luke the truth about his father. Now that we’ve seen all of the Star Wars movies and TV shows I asked her what her favorite moment was and she said it was when the Ewoks help defeat the rebels in Return of the Jedi. I’m torn between the time Luke Skywalker helped save the day in the Mandalorian and when Obi-Wan kicked Vaders ass again. What’s your favorite moment from the Star Wars universe?

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I figured I’d call it quits and end with Star Wars, but before I did, I asked Wan, my girlfriend, if I’d covered all of the movies that she remembered and she asked how I could’ve forgotten to mention Top Gun. I didn’t think she’d like it because she never liked any other military movies, but I just wanted her to see it before we saw the new one. I guess it took her breath away. What did you think of the new one? I’ve seen it five times now. It’s truly amazing.

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OK, I lied. There was one other military movie that she liked a lot and it was Predator. To me, it’s more of a horror film, but it’s one of Arnold’s best. I wonder why he’s never come back to save the franchise.

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I was just four years old when my stepdad took me to see the original Terminator, but I clearly remember him making me promise I wasn’t going to tell my mom that he took me to see it and it made me love it and remember it well, but it hasn’t aged as well as Judgment Day so I just showed her some key scenes from the original and explained what Skynet and T-800s were before we watched the legendary sequel. I’ve never bothered showing her any of the other films because they are all just disappointments.

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Wan didn’t even like Pulp Fiction so I was surprised that it’s the movie she quotes the most often. Can you guess which scene I’m talking about?

Thanks for reading. What did you think of my approach? Which films do you think I should show her next? How would or did you break in a Hollywood virgin?

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9 Things I Miss About the 1990s

Technically, MTV was a product of the 1980s, but it was still relevant and watched by young people up until the 2000s. The biggest complaint I remember most of us had was that they used to only play music videos and moved too much to reality TV shows, but as a young person at the time, it felt refreshing to have shows and a whole TV channel geared towards us. My fondest memory of MTV was when we’d stay up all night watching the top 500 videos of all time. The number one video would always belong to Michael Jackson, Madonna, or Guns N’ Roses but we’d have fun arguing which music video would come out on top. Today, we have YouTube and a fairly good algorithm that predicts pretty well which song to play next, but it just isn’t the same as watching MTV back in the day. You can show your kids the videos you used to watch, but can’t recreate the fun of watching MTV with your friends while your parents were asleep. What was your favorite music video? What was your favorite show on MTV?

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I had a hard time restricting this post to just nine things. Feel free to copy my title and make your own post about nine things you miss about that decade. I think I’ll make another post called 8 things I miss about the 1980s too. I don’t think it’s wrong to steal someone else’s title as long as your post is original.

It was fun to remember all the quirks and unique things from the decade of the 1990s. As far as music formats, it was either going to be Boomboxes, Walkman, Minidiscs, CDs, the radio, or even the few of us who still used records in the 1990s, but in the end, I chose cassettes. I used Wikipedia for all of my image resources so some of my decisions were defined by the quality of the picture they provided. I thought restricting my image sources to Wikipedia would be good in case anybody wanted to read more about what I wrote below. I would’ve gone with Sony Walkman for this item, but without the cassette, there wouldn’t be a Walkman.

Minidiscs were really cool too. I am a person who rarely feels jealousy. If I see a handsome young man with a good body, I think good for him, and feel sorry for him at the same time for all the pain he must put himself through to look that way. If I see someone who’s rich, I know that material items don’t bring happiness, but one time in 1999, I was at a dance club and I saw a DJ with a clear plastic box full of MiniDiscs and I remember feeling so jealous of him. I loved MiniDiscs for many reasons. First of all, they looked like something from the future. They had the benefits of both CDs and cassettes and were really small too. I think they would’ve been a lot more popular and widely used if MP3 technology had never come along.

Now some of you may be wondering where are CDs? I actually started off this part with MiniDiscs, then remembered that only tech nerds used them. CDs were definitely a big part of the 1990s, but they suck in my opinion. For one thing, they’re still with us today and still suck. The names may have changed to DVD or Blu-ray, but they are still easily stolen and scratched. Although I still have a fond memory of seeing a CD for the first time and seeing its rainbow in the sunlight, I would grow to hate the technology in no time. I do remember that my first CD was The Lion King soundtrack. And the first CD I purchased with my own money was Queen Greatest Hits I & II. I thought it was such a great deal to get my first two CDs for the price of one at Fred Meyer. The first DVD I purchased was Army of Darkness with Bruce Campbell. Do you remember your first CD?

Cassettes are another technology that was around before the 1990s that we all associate with that decade. The technology goes back to WWII and the compact cassettes we all remember came out in the 1960s. Speaking of the 60s, I’d really like to read a post about 6 things you miss from the 60s. I can only guess since I was born in 1980, but ask anybody who was alive back then about that decade and I can guarantee you that their face will light up and they will most likely remember Rock and Roll, NASA, and really cool cars.

For me, I remember getting in arguments with girlfriends in my car about silly things and them ejecting my CD then throwing it out the window. I’d of course stop and search for it only to find it never works again even if I bought one of those fancy CD repairers, but if you did the same to a cassette tape, it would be just fine. I also remember being useful to friends because I was one of the few people who could fix a cassette with just a pencil and some scotch tape.

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Why were movies from the 1990s the best? I was shocked when my girlfriend had never seen a Hollywood movie in her life. She has only watched crappy Thai dramas on Facebook and YouTube, so when it was time to introduce her, I of course showed her Terminator 2, but I started her off with Titanic. I just showed her a few scenes from 1984’s Terminator on YouTube just to introduce her to Sarah Conner and T-800s. I’m not saying all modern movies are horrible. I really wanted to get her into Star Wars so I showed her Rogue One before episodes IV, V, and VI, but she doesn’t even know the prequels exist. She was really shocked to hear what Darth Vader had to say to Luke in Cloud City. How would you break in a Hollywood virgin? So far she’s seen TitanicE.T.Terminator 2Rogue OneA New HopeThe Empire Strikes BackReturn of the JediArmy of DarknessGoldenEye, and Red Notice.

I was a teenager in the 1990s, so I remember either straight up sneaking in the back door of the theater or buying just one ticket then sneaking into as many other films as we could. Another trick we would pull to stick it to the man was to have a little gang of friends. One would work at McDonald’s or KFC and sneak out free food. One would work at the grocery store and ignore a bit of shoplifting, and one friend would work at the movie theater and let us watch as many free movies as we wanted. We’d even have the movie ticket in case a company man with a flashlight showed up.

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Speaking of movies, who can ever forget Blockbuster? I think they are a good example of how having a huge ego and thinking you’re king of the hill can lead to your own demise. Blockbuster could’ve bought out Netflix for nothing back in the day, but now they no longer exist.

Be kind and please rewind stickers were even put on DVD boxes by Blockbuster employees. Although I rented my fair share of DVDs and VHS tapes from Blockbuster, I would go there mostly to rent Nintendo games and also remember sneaking into the adult section just to sneak a peek at the adult videos. I always wished I had a pair of star-shaped screwdrivers so I could swap out whatever crappy NES, SNES, or N64 ROMs with the ones I was renting. Did any of you think or actually do that?

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Today any game from the 1990s can be easily downloaded and emulated on a phone or PC, but the only ones I keep coming back to are the N64 games. Riding my bike to the “SuperMall” and buying an N64 and a Super Mario 64 cartridge will always be one of my favorite memories from any decade. It was September 29th, 1996, and the electronics mega-store which no longer exists and I can’t remember its name either had a contest on a huge screen. If you could get the secret castle star where you slide down in under 21 seconds, then you could win a free Mario game. It’s one of the moments in time I wish I could use my current gaming skills to go back to. I would also never open or damage that Mario game knowing that it could sell for a million dollars today. There were many great games for the N64, but the first one, Super Mario 64, was definitely my favorite. How many times has that happened in video gaming history? Where the first game was the best? Maybe only ever with the Gameboy and Tetris.

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I never owned or even liked a Honda CR-X, but it seemed like everybody else did back then. My first car was a pickup truck, a Chevy Luv. It was a total piece of junk, but I drove that little guy to San Diego and even to Texas without it ever breaking down. The only reason I got rid of it was because the communist state of California made (and still makes it) almost impossible for any old car to pass emissions. I sold it to a Mexican friend for $500 and he told me it kept on going well into the 2000s. If I were to ask you for a lift today and handed you a one-dollar bill, it would be a total insult, but back in the 1990s, just a few friends handing you one-dollar bills could actually put some gas in the tank.800px-PlayboyLogo.svg.png

I didn’t get my first peak of pornography until I was 16 years old. I’m not a psychologist, but I think it’s perfectly healthy for a teenage boy to see some beautiful naked women. It was very exciting to see. I can’t see how it’s a good thing that kids can see porn so easily before they’re ready to see or even like it. If some boys want to see titties today, all they have to do is open Twitter or do a Google search. I had to bribe a bum to buy my first Playboy magazine at 7-11 and when I was 18 and old enough to buy it legally, I still felt so embarrassed to wait in line and ask the 7-11 clerk for it.

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I grew up on a small airport in South Dakota, so aviation has always been interesting to me. Even when I was a kid, it felt like the technology had hit some kind of wall. When asking my grandfather why it was so, his answer was, “Because the god-damned lawyers ruined it.”

My grandfather had good reasons to hate lawyers and they very well may have ruined general aviation, but surely not military or commercial aviation. The F-16 still looks cool today. Flying on a jet has not changed at all since I was a kid. Well, maybe a bit. The cabin crew got a lot fatter and now there are TV screens, but the general look and feel of commercial aircraft are sadly exactly the same, only worse. How the hell did that happen? It’s stuff like that which fuel conspiracy theories. I don’t have a conspiracy theory, other than that it’s Generation X’s fault. Millennials may be a bunch of whiney-ass bitches, but Generation X was named appropriately. They did X. They did nothing. They definitely are the worst generation. Seriously what did they do besides continue using horrible banking and invent the iPhone? One thing I really miss about the 1990s and before that was the whole airport and airplane experience. I remember you could send your loved ones all the way to their seats and even meet the Captain and take a look at all the aircraft controls in the cockpit before 9-11.

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Before making this post I asked my followers on Facebook and Noise.Cash what they miss about the 1990s. Nothing. I got nothing. What a bunch of like monkeys. I showed a few people my draft of this post and the only thing I got was how they miss landlines. What’s there to miss about that? OK, maybe a few things…

I remember if I wanted to eavesdrop on my parents’ phone conversations, I’d first remove the phone line so they wouldn’t hear me pick up the line, then slowly slide it back in without clicking it and covering the noise of my breathing. Sometimes I’d just break the little snap off and have an extra line I’d use just for listening in on them. There was also the fun of making prank calls before *69 or caller-ID came along. (I still like using the Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard to prank call people today.)

Today, you can go out and buy the latest iPhone, but unless you truly need it for the camera, you just look like a cunt trying to look cool, but anybody who had a pager back in the day looked cool as fuck. You were either a soldier, doctor, businessman, or drug dealer if you had a pager. I never had a pager, but I felt they were the coolest tech at the time.

Thank you for reading about my 1990s nostalgia. I used Wikipedia for all these images and shared the links to the articles below. What do you miss about the 1990s? What did I forget to mention?

Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2:_Judgment_Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_LLC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_CR-X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playboy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pager

Star Wars: Visions ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review 🇯🇵

I just finished watching all 9 short stories of this wonderful mix of Japanese animation set in the Star Wars universe and am now watching them all again. It reminds me a lot of The Animatrix from 2003, but only better. I must admit that I am completely biased since I am both a Star Wars and anime fan.

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I liked each one so much that I downloaded them all and put them on my phone to watch for whenever I don’t have an internet connection. It’s not my fault Disney wants to be all passive-aggressive with their “Sorry, fuck your region message.” First of all, it’s not MY region. I’m just stuck in Laos because of this Covid lockdown bullshit. I’m a fucking American damn it! I wore the uniform. How many of you social justice warrior bitches at Disney can say the same? I don’t care. I’ll just get it for FREE from the Pirate Bay anyways. What’s Disney going to do about it? Call the police? Call the FBI? That will make for a good laugh when I’m in jail explaining to the other inmates what I’m in for. “I downloaded a bunch of Disney cartoons.”

The Circle is Now Complete

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George Lucas has never denied the fact that he used famous Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s films as inspiration for his Star Wars films. Now Disney+ has given some of the best Japanese animation studios (Studio Colorido, Studio Trigger, Production I.G, Science SARU, and Geno Studio) and artists a chance to tell 9 great short stories. Many of the artists for Visions saw Star Wars as their inspiration when they were kids.

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I liked every story in Visions even though they all had a different animation style. The only one I thought was a bit much was the one that had twins fighting on top of a Star Destroyer without any suits. They were even talking to each other in the vacuum of space. Now, come on! Not even a Jedi can be heard in the emptiness of space!

I see a lot of negative reviews from Star Wars fans about this online, but today it seems people complain about everything. At least these stories weren’t afraid to take Star Wars in a new direction rather than just reboot stuff. If you like Star Wars and or Japanese anime I’m sure you love Visions as much as I did.

Resources:

Disney+
https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/show/star-wars-visions

Gaijin Pot Blog
https://blog.gaijinpot.com/akira-kurosawa-5-essential-movies-from-japans-greatest-filmmaker/

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Visions

Youtube

SKELETOR is back!

The internet is crying that another beloved gem from the past, He-Man, got Kathleen Kennedy’d.

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So what? He-Man is lame. It just makes me respect SKELETOR even more. He didn’t let Hollywood or three decades or positively inclusive and wonderful advancements in society change his style or who he was; a purely evil rip-off of Darth Vader, Death, and Ghost Rider created for the purpose of selling cool toys.

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Prince Adam may be put in his place by strong women often, but he and his scaredy-cat were always a carbon copy of Superman’s Clark Kent, so there’s nothing new there. What did people want from this character? For him to start slapping hoes telling everyone that he’s the damn prince and threatening everyone with his, “Don’t make me make He-Man show up again!”

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There may be a same-sex relationship and a character changed from a white dude to a black dude. Oh no! Who cares? Honestly, the feeling of having another memory from my past being ruined never came up during this five-part (first half of ten) continuation of the original 1980s cartoon and Dolph Lundgren live-action film. Besides, I just wanted to see SKELETOR, and ain’t nobody puts him in his place. Not woke lesbians, not He-Man, no-one commands SKELETOR!

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As you can see I’m happy to see SKELETOR again. The show should be called, The Skeletor Show, as Star Trek: The Next Generation should be called, The Jean-Luc Picard and Data Show. Having Skeletor voiced by one of the greatest voice actors of all time helps make his character even better. I really doubt I’m the only person who watched Masters of the Universe Revelations just to see what Skeletor’s been up to after all this time.

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The characters are typical lazily drawn Saturday morning cartoons, but the background animation helped modernize the look while staying true to the artistic style we loved in the 80s. Masters of the Universe Revelations isn’t the best animation I’ve seen this year, but it’s not a woke in your face dumpster fire as the internet claims either. Like I said before, I’m just glad to see SKELETOR causing problems again. Our world may have changed, but he’s still perfectly evil.

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I’m really lazy. I mean like super lazy. I may be one of the laziest people ever born. I sleep around 16 hours a day and now that we can earn money in our sleep with great DeFi projects like CUB, I have even less motivation to write posts here on HIVE, but I enjoyed Masters of the Universe Revelations enough to create this post recommending it to you and my friends.

I got all of the images for this post by pressing the PRINT SCREEN button on my computer while watching Masters of the Universe Revelations on Netflix. I then uploaded the images to Google Photos and chose the auto-enhance and crop to 16:9 aspect ratio in the edit menu. Thanks for reading. May the power of Skeletor be with you.

Trailer:

Masters of the Universe Revelations on Netflix:
https://www.netflix.com/la/title/81154670

BATMAN -vs- TMNT: Please make this into a game!

How did I not know about this movie until now? I was born in 1980, so I was 7 when the cartoon first aired and I even remember some of the darker comic books before they went mainstream. The saddest thing about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise is that the best thing they’ve ever produced was in 1990 when the original live action film was released. I’ve shown the classic gem to friends and students here in Laos who’ve never seen it and they can tell it’s not CGI, it’s over three decades old, but it looks real. They always asked the same thing, “How did they do it?”

I’ve given ALL of the TMNT flicks a try over the years, but none have ever really even come close to capturing the magic of the first film. As a ten year old boy, it was the only film I remember that was a bigger deal than Star Wars. I also remember going to see it in a big theater with my friend Mike and we noticed this “old lady” in front of us sitting alone. She was friendly, but we were very surprised to see that a 24-year-old was also a turtle fan like us. In Catholic school, my teacher was very amused that in my version of heaven, I would choose to be a mutant turtle.

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DC

The Movie

Warner Brothers, nickelodeon, and DC has brought the turtles, the Footclan, and Shredder to Gotham City. Batman -vs- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has cheap Saturday morning animation, but the voice acting and ninja story kept me entertained. Did anyone else dream of being a ninja as a kid? I didn’t find out it wasn’t a real job and there was never going to be a ninja academy scholarship in my future until I was almost 13. Even though it’s been many years, I can still use most of the turtles’ weapons I practiced with for hours and hours in the woods. Mikey is my favorite turtle and I was always a Bruce Lee fan so I’m pretty handy with nunchuku.

I felt the characters all stayed true to form and used their weapons in brutal ways in this animated action adventure crossover. I won’t ruin or spoil the story for you. I’ll just say that I would have loved to watch this as a kid. Overall, I’d give this four out of five stars.

The Game

Remembering that I’m NOT a genius and someone else may have had this idea or even hoping the game already exists, I Googled it and found this awesome Reddit post by AuntieJamima. They posted a rad CGI video that looks like a gritty claymation of the fight mechanics if the TMNT were in a Batman game. I think it would be cool if the turtles borrowed some of Batman’s tech and could fly up and glide down on hoverboards from the future too. It would be so fun to go on five person online adventures as Batman, Leo, Raphael, Donny, and Mikey. If this ever becomes a real game, please leave me a NFT tip in the future…

Wonder Woman 1984: It’s not that bad!

Wonder Woman was never a cherished character nor was the princess disliked in any way, but I honestly had very low expectations and I didn’t have anything better to do now that the Mandalorian is gone, so I gave Diana a chance and found her new film emotionally entertaining.

Now that Mando has taken off his mask he must no longer follow the creed, because he showed his face this whole movie. He must really miss the baby. He was a good dad to the green guy, but he’s lost his fatherly touch and is too focused on his godly wish stone and neglects his ten year old human son now.

What do you think other heroes would wish for? I think Superman would wish to go back in time and get a second chance with Lana Lang from Smallville. Batman would surely wish for his parents to have never died ironically making it so the Bat never exist. (I’ll suggest this to the Joker the next time I visit him.) Diana just wished for her boyfriend back and that is how Captain Kirk was able to come back to life in 1984, even though he died in WWII, and had to possess some other dude’s body.

This is just a weird “what if” type of comic book movie that explores Diana’s heart more than action or trying to compete with any other movie. So many people have complained they didn’t like this movie for its flaws, but they were what made it feel like a living comic book to me. It’s not the best film of 2020, but it’s not as bad as they say either. By the way, what do you think was the best film of 2020?

STAR WARS: A look at some of the upcoming shows in our redeemed universe…

Star Wars has just exploded with exciting new content! Thanks to the success of The Mandalorian, we’ll be getting a whole bunch of new adventures. How great was that season finale? It gave me goosebumps. I felt like a kid in the theater again! Thank you for showing Star Wars the way Mando!

Ahsoka

This is the show I’m the most excited to watch. I love Ahsoka. She is a great character and will surely make for a great series. We got a peak of what’s to come with her appearance in The Mandalorian‘s second season and it was pure awesomeness. There isn’t an official trailer for Ahsoka yet, but this fan made concept trailer on Leia’s Lair Youtube channel is pretty cool.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=E_rYTFZrOmk

Kenobi

I remember George Lucas talking about the possibility of this show many years ago, but the technology wasn’t ready until now. It looks amazing. I can’t wait to see how Obi-wan has been doing and the return of Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader.

Andor

I never thought I’d see Cassian return after he got smoked with Jyn by the Death Star in Rouge One, but he’ll be back for 12 episodes in 2022.

Rogue Squadron

Patty Jenkins looks like she’s going to really put her heart into this film. It’s going to be fun seeing a new squadron of X-wing pilots kicking ass!

The Bad Batch

I honestly have ignored all of the Star Wars animated series until I noticed their characters appearing in The Mandalorian, but I’ll give this one a shot.

The High Republic

This Youtube video doesn’t show us much other than the writers, but it looks like an interesting show too. It will be set 200 years before The Phantom Menace, so a younger Master Yoda will probably be the only character we’ll recognize.

The Acolyte

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? It will be fascinating to learn the ways of the Sith and to explore the secrets The Dark Side.

Rangers of the New Republic

This is where our favorite characters from The Mandalorian will likely reappear. I hope Cara Dune doesn’t get cut by Earth’s crazy cancel culture.

There will also be a show about Lando, the droids, and a Japanese animation called Visions to look forward to. After the fan backlash of the sequels and Solo, I was really worried for the future of Star Wars, but it looks like we’re going to have a lot of Mando quality entertainment to keep us happy for years to come! Which show are you most excited to see? I have spoken. This is the way.

THE LIBERATOR: The true story of the most racially diverse unit of WWII

This four part miniseries is like The Dirty Dozen mixed with Band of Brothers with Scanner Darkley‘s animation style and seems too good of a story to be true, but it is based on a true story.

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It starts off with a young lieutenant tasked with getting J company ready for a live fire drill. When he finds it, he see’s that the J stood for jail. He gives the men the choice of staying locked up or to train with him.

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When training at the firing range a massive bully of a master sergeant heavily berates his men so he suggests that rather than talking down to them maybe he should actually do his job and teach them.

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This pisses the master sergeant off so much he invites the lieutenant for a fist fight behind the shed. This brawl earns him the men’s respect.

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One of the American soldiers gets captured by the Nazis who looks at the names of some of the dog tags he’s aquired noticing most men have Mexican and Native American names. The Nazi suggests that America must be desperate to recruit men like that and the captured soldier defends his brothers saying they are Americans just like him. The Nazi officer tells him he has been to America. He studied at MIT and had traveled to the south and had seen signs barring Mexicans from bars and seperate water fountains for blacks and whites wisely asks why men would die for a country that treats them as second class citizens and tells him they are not like him.

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I thought the animation over real actors was just an effect for the opening credits, but the whole series was done with it. It was weird at first, but it’s such a good story that it didn’t bother me after a while. Infact I think it helps the audience focus on the men of the story rather than the sets or props.

If you like WWII army movies, then The Liberator wont let you down. It’s a powerful story of courage and leadership. I thought this was a story too good to be true, but after looking into it, I found it was based on real events. I highly recommend watching this inspirational Netlix orginal series.

THE RIGHT STUFF: Film (1983) and TV Show (2020) Review

Do you have what it takes? I wish I did. I went to Space Camp in 1992 and was sure I’d be an astronaut or at least a fighter pilot when I grew up. I remember seeing The Right Stuff on the bookshelf and thought the pictures and captions were really cool when I was a kid.

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My grandfather was a fighter pilot in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. I grew up on his airport in the 80’s and met hundreds of pilots. I thought it was normal and how all kids grew up. The guys in The Right Stuff were legends in my family.

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When I saw Disney had turned the film, which was based on the book, into a TV show, I decided to check it out. Besides, I’m all caught up on The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Discovery so a little historical drama might be fun. I was right. The Right Stuff is only 8 episodes which I watched all in one setting. I then watched the 1983 film.

Fake History & Humanizing Heroes

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Rocket technology was brand new back in the early 1960’s and many of them blew up. The first Russian and Americans who strapped up ontop of converted nuclear missles and shot up to space truly were brave pioneers who everyone either looked up to or were jealous of. The TV show only showed the American point of view, but I think they should make a show like this about what really went down in the Soviet Union’s space program too, considering they sent the first satellite, man, and woman into space. Maybe people will actually be able to say Yuri Gagarin’s name right after watching it.

Look what Google showed me after searching for the first woman in space…
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I remember learning that Alan Shepherd was the first American man in space in school, but only learning of Yuri years later. Isn’t it interesting how they play with words like that? It technically is true, but still feels like a deception or fake history at the same time. When I was in the military, I was a Civil Affairs linguist. We fell under the Special Operational Forces command. That didn’t mean we were Special Forces with green berets. We weren’t one tenth as skilled, disciplined, or badass as the men that wear green berets or Navy Seal tridents, but a lot of douche bags would pull what was linguistically acurate, but sneaky stolen valor by telling others, we’re Special Operational Forces. I got in some heat at my teaching job in Bangkok because I said the manager was a douche bag pussy liar for pulling that crap. I had to explain to all the other teachers that he didn’t technically lie, but I was the same type of soldier as he was and that he’s full of shit and to ask him again and to listen to the words he says more carefully and to look it up. He never spoke to me again, but nothing serious came of it because I was simply telling the truth.

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There were a few inaccuracies in the TV show, but nothing serious or important. The only thing that bothered me was that Disney didn’t show what Alan Shepherd said right before launch…

Don’t fuck this up!

Overall, the show did a great job of making me care and feel like I got to know these American legends by showing their weaknesses and flaws. Some drank too much and womanized while others took themselves too seriously and were too square. The actors were a bit too buff and handsome compared to the real guys, but they did a great job.

1960’s Nostalgia

I was born in 1980, but still feel nostalgic for the 60’s. When I was a kid a lot of the technology, furniture, and cars from that time were still around plus all the grown-ups idolized that time. The Right Stuff captured that decade’s feeling perfectly just like Mad Men did in my two decades late opinion. If you remember or love the 60’s I’m sure you’ll love this show, but it’s good besides that too.

The Movie

Having feeling sad the TV show ended so quickly, I immediately watched the 1983 film. There are some famous actors in it including Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, and Ed Harris who must have met the real astronauts because they act and look just like them. It was filmed just over twenty years after the real events, so a lot of the aircraft and people were still around from that time for references. It wasn’t a successful film for the time and feels like a B grade version of Top Gun, but it did come out first and surly helped inspire the Tom Cruise hit. I really like how they mixed real NASA footage into the film and made you feel like you were in the cockpit sometimes.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a Top Gun like action packed thriller, then neither the film or TV show may appeal to you, but if you love aviation, space, and history then I think you’ll like this historical drama. It got me into a rabbit hole of reading about great pilots and astronauts. Did you know that Chuck Yeager is still alive? He enlisted as a private and made it to a Brigadier general in the Air Force who retired after over 30 years. He was still flying for them until 2012.