The Toys That Made Us: The Review!

I'm on like day 5 of Christmas vacation and the kids are starting to drive me crazy. Hats off to all you stay at home parents.

This afternoon while the kids decided to take a break from trying to kill each other (or me) I watched a couple episodes of Netflix's new documentary series The Toys That Made Us. As the title would lead you to believe it's all about toys. There's only a handful of episodes each devoted to an iconic toyline: Star Wars, He-Man, Barbie and GI Joe. I caught the GI Joe and Star Wars episodes. It had a lot of good info and was infotaining enough for me to plan on watching the next couple episodes.

The series is not without it's flaws, the historical recreations are kind of silly looking and the humor the writers try to interject through the narrator is not ideal. Still, I felt like I learned a bunch about toys that I didn't know, so mission accomplished.

On the GI Joe scale it wasn't quite a Snake-Eyes but it wasn't a Refrigerator Perry either. It's a solid Flint.

Disney Is Doing Big BIG Stuff

Earlier today during an Earnings call Disney CEO Bob Iger dropped a bombshell of Star Wars news on all us nerds. Disney is developing a live action Star Wars TV show that will air on the soonish to be launched, as yet untitled, Disney Streaming Service. He didn't stop their, they made it official that the Marvel Deal with Netflix would end in like a year or something AND that they were working on a brand new trilogy or Star Wars movies. This new trilogy will introduce new characters set in a part of the Star Wars Universe we've never seen.

Big stuff right?

I'm sure the speculation will run rampant over what the TV show and the new Trilogy will be about. Like a decade ago when Lucas was still in charge of his own universe he had supposedly written 50 episodes of a Star Wars show that at the time was just too expensive to shoot. I'm sure this new show won't be related to that at all, but its a fun fact for everyone. I'm hoping the TV show follows some smugglers or better yet some bounty hunters. I'm kind of hoping the movie takes place during the Knights of the Old Republic era. I know in this day and age prequels are all tired and junk but how cool would that be to visit a time and place where Sith were everywhere, not just one or two crusty old dudes hiding in shadows.

As far as the Marvel stuff goes, I don't even know if that was new news. Netflix bought out Mark Millar's Millarworld brand of comics specifically so they could get some sweet superhero content they actually own. It's all about owning that content these days. I know everyone creamed their jeans the other day when it was rumored that Disney would be buying Fox's film side because we could finally get the Fantastic Four and the X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. BUT there's more to Fox than just terribly run Marvel movies. Owning all of Fox's films would be a HUGE get for them when it comes to launching their streaming service. Disney has a lot of content for kids and families to offer but not as much adult fare as other movie studios. Sure Fox is a pretty terrible studio but they've had big, well respected hits recently like the Martian, Life of Pi, or the Taken franchise.

It sounds like the deal was put on the backburner but there's zero chance Disney doesn't try to keep adding to its library in anticipation of their new service. I could write a whole other blog post about how it's actual quite bad that Disney is growing like this but I don't want them to blacklist me from seeing the next The Last Jedi.

GLOW Official Trailer

If you had told me last year that in June 2017 I would be hotly anticipating a new GLOW TV show AND a Baywatch Movie I'd have been very incredulous for about 5 seconds, thought about it, and then said "you know, that sounds about right".

The only big problem with this is that it's on Netflix and right now Netflix is on super-ultra low priority at casa de Newburn. I'm about 5 episodes behind on Bob's Burgers, The Goldbergs, Fresh of the Boat, etc. Not to mention I haven't even started Luke Cage or Iron Fist. There's a VERY VERY slim chance I get to GLOW before Fall when the new season of everything starts. My only chance is if all the WWE stars start tweeting or Instagraming about it and my wife really wants to check it out. So, hopefully that happens.

Bright, The Trailer

Will Smith as a cop with a sword fighting trolls in a modern day Los Angeles? Yeah I think I can find 2 hours in my precious schedule to watch the hell out of that. Good work Netflix.

New Iron Fist Trailer

A couple days ago Netflix released a new trailer for Iron Fist. It's pretty good. I mean on it's own, in a vacuum, it's fantastic but I have a few minor issues with it that probably aren't really it's fault.

The biggest one is the Might Whitey trope. I've talked about it a bit here before but in case you're unfamiliar the Mighty Whitey essentially refers to a type of story where some white guy is placed in a different culture and suddenly becomes better at everything that culture does, often he becomes an exalted hero or leader. It's a story telling trope that was big in the 18th and 19th century but is still plenty popular today. I mean when I think of famous Samurais, Tom Cruise is the first one to come to mind...

Anyway, the story of Iron Fist is a product of it's time and by that I mean it's kind of a rip off of the TV show Kung-Fu. White kid is stranded in a Mystical Asian city, learns super Karate, becomes the most powerful Karate guy on the planet. It's fine, I mean it's lazy but its fine. If you want to complain about Asian representation in Superhero movies and TV shows ask someone why there's no Kamala Kahn/Ms. Marvel movie, or an Amadeus Cho Netflix series. Iron Fist has a long history in the comics and they're sticking with the original origin. It's like a B- move for Marvel. They did hire RZA to direct an episode so it's not like it's all bad here. Also Iron Fist is far better know as being part of Heroes for Hire with Luke Cage and that book actually had real cultural significance in the 70s with it's portrayal of a pair of black and white superheroes who were best friends. If Marvel/Netflix decides to go that route and once those two characters are paired up, the Mighty Whitey/cultural appropriation stuff starts become less and less of an issue.

My one other knock here on this specific trailer is the whole, hey kids here's the last of the Defenders. I'm totally over the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff. I think it worked fantastic in Captain America and Thor for the build up to the first Avengers movie but it kinda ruined the Iron Man movies. Also obviously Avengers two was a loosey goosey mess and Joss Whedon directly blamed the insistence from Marvel to add a bunch of cinematic universe nonsense into the story. I don't really think any of the Netflix shows have really suffered in the build up to the Defenders but that doesn't mean I'm still not wary of it.

Ok, this is way more that I had planned on writing about this trailer. I'm sure the show will still be good, if nothing else it's probably going to have a great soundtrack.

Bill Nye Saves The World, Trailer

Hey kids remember Bill Nye? Sure you do, he was on The Nightly show just about a year ago talking about global warming while a couple really bad comedians shouted over the top of him some stupid sex jokes. In related news, Hey kids remember the Nightly Show?

I'm not super into Netflix bringing back shows that were canceled over a decade ago. Fuller House is terrible and from everything I've seen the new Arrested Development season was a disappointment, but this new Bill Nye show doesn't look much like the old Bill Nye the Science Guy. Quite frankly this reminds me a lot more of the science segments he would do on Almost Live with John Keister. I'm all in on that. Sort of like Mythbusters but with an occasional celebrity guest.

Threatening Links

Netflix’s new offline mode lets you download shows, watch them offline. Yay, Netflix is doing something Amazon Prime has offered for like the last 3 years. It sounds like it's only going to be available on their own shows and movies for right now but I guess it's a start. Now you can go camping and still binge watch the new season of Gilmore Girls. USA! USA! USA!

A Canadian town is threatening drunk drivers with Nickelback torture. The most hilarious part about this story is that the Facebook post from the sheriff's department showed a Nickelback tape, not a CD but a freakin cassette tape. There's something incredibly Canadian about that.

We Asked 8,500 Internet Commenters Why They Do What They Do. This looks about right, I mean it's incredibly unscientific to just poll your own commenters but it's a lot more than anyone else is doing so I'll let it stand. On occasion I'll comment on an article, usually its when I think I have something to add to the conversation, which of course is completely delusional. No one cares what anybody else thinks, no one.

Jubilee Will Lead a New Team of Teen Mutants in the New Generation X Comic. About a year ago there were a ton of doom and gloom rumors that Marvel was tanking all their X-Men comics because Fox owns the movie rights and Disney is crazy about stuff like that. Fast forward 12 months and it looks like Marvel is making a big push to re-establish all the X-Men franchise, which is nice. I'm really interested in this new Gen-X book, I love me some Jubilee and she's been handled pretty poorly the last 5-10 years or so. It would be nice to see her become a more prominent member of the group.

7 shows Netflix should bring back/reboot

I just got done reading a Cracked list of 5 Ridiculous TV Remakes We Wish Netflix Would Tackle Next and it was fine I guess. I mean it was mostly just an excuse to tell jokes about how bad How I Met Your Mother was, which is fine, that show really was awful near the end. It however had me asking, what shows would I like Netflix to bring back? So here we go...

It should be noted that I've put zero thought into this and I'm just winging it, I might not ever get to 7!

Better Off Ted.
This show was hilarious and it was only canceled a few years ago and I can't think of anything big any of the actors from it are doing, so logistically it should be pretty feasible. Also it's a sitcom that takes place in an office, it probably costs 20 bucks to make. It would also make a nice companion piece to The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Battlestar Galactica
CBS is bringing back Star Trek for their stupid CBS subscription service, why not bring back Battlestar Galactica to Netflix? You could do one of two things: Retcon away the ending no one really liked where they're stranded on earth a hundred thousand years ago or make another prequel but this time make it closer to the SyFy series than Caprica was.

Sliders
Hey kids remember Sliders? Yeah, I don't either but from everything I've read it was a cool concept for a show. Just keep Jerry O'Connell and his weird twin like brother away from it.

Law & Order
Bum Bum!

Tour Of Duty
Man I loved this show as a kid, which is weird because looking back on it I was way to young to be watching a show about Vietnam. Scary thought, we're as far from Desert Storm now as we were from the Vietnam War when Tour of Duty first aired. Maybe they could make a new show and set it during Desert Storm. Considering the mess going on the region now you'd have timely allegories for days!

The Avengers
Ok, you might need to change the name with this one cause I'm not talking about Thor and Iron Man, I'm talking about British Spies John Steed and Emma Peel. Forget that the movie reboot ever existed, set the whole thing in the 60s during the cold war, find a foxy gal to wear Emma Peel's catsuit and you're golden.

Night Court
Dude, Night Court was so rad. I've been catching reruns on one of those TV channels between 20 and 100 that does nothing but play shows from the 70s and 80s and I am telling that ish was a thousand years ahead of its time. Bring back Night Court.

Fuller House Season 2 is a thing

Now lets get one thing straight. I loved me some ABC TGIF when I was 12 or whatever. Full House, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, that show where there were like 10 kids and two of the older girls were really cute. I couldn't get enough of that crap when I was a kid. However, I was a kid so all I liked was crap. Liking crap is one of the things that defines being a kid. Have you watched an episode of Full House recently? or worse, have you watched an episode of Fuller House? Holly cow. Terrible doesn't even come close to defining it. How the Olsen twins turned that show into a money printing factory I'll never know, they were legitimately terrible on that show. Just horrible. The fact that they turned that thing into like a billion dollar empire is AMAZING. When we're all dead and gone Aliens will view it as one of the great mysteries of Earth.

So here's a trailer for Season 2 of Fuller House. I guess if this helps Netflix pay for actual good shows like Jessica Jones and Stranger things its fine.. everything's fine.

Final Luke Cage Trailer

So I guess this is the final Luke Cage trailer. It's been a good run. I look forward to following back up with this series in December when everything is in reruns and I have time to watch something on Netflix. My wife gets Entertainment Weekly (I don't know why either) and they only gave the show a B-. Its the first official review for it I've seen but I take it with a grain of salt. They also didn't give Daredevil S2 a very good review in particular saying the parts with the Punisher weren't very good. Talk about a swing and a miss. The parts with the Punisher were easily the best part of the season. Also Season 2 was probably better than Season 1. Whatever, I'm not going to let BIG REVIEW stand between me and something I want to check out.

Remind me to eat those words when Wonder Woman gets terrible reviews and I get all high and mighty about how terrible DC's movies are.

Luke Cage: Official Trailer

A few days ago Netflix and Marvel announced that new seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones wouldn't air until 2018, which is a pretty long time considering the last two seasons aired about 9 months apart from each other. In the meantime we're to Enjoy Luke Cage, Iron Fist AND the new Defenders series (which will included Jessica Jones and Daredevil). I think that's a fair deal. Luke Cage still looks fantastic. Can't wait to binge watch this one.

First Look at New Marvel Netflix Shows

Sweet Christmas, Netflix and Marvel really brought the heat when it came to SDCC first looks. We get the first trailer for Luke Cage and Iron Fist and a super bonus teaser for The Defenders. The Luke Cage trailer in particular is perfect. If the entire series is 10 episodes of Luke Cage wrecking low level thugs set to Wu-Tang tracks I'm totally fine with that.

The Iron Fist trailer doesn't provide as much action but at least gives you a sense of core of the character. Homeless Karate Man. In the comics Danny Rand is also quite rich so we'll see if that plays into the show or not. It probably would have been cooler watching him blow the door off that warehouse if I hadn't just watched Luke Cage do the exact same thing AND beat up guys with a car door.

I think I might be more excited for these TV shows than I am the next round of Marvel movies.

Voltron: Legendary Defender

I don't know if I've written about it here or not but Netflix is doing a reboot of Voltron. I guess that's cool. I remember watching Voltron when I was a kit but I couldn't tell you anything about it other than there was Robot Voltron and Lion Voltron and you weren't allowed to like them both.

The trailer looks good enough. Kind of a modern update of traditional late 80s, early 90s anime. I'll give it a try with the kiddos. So far we haven't really had any luck with modern remakes of old cartoons. Thundercats, Transformers and GI Joe have all flopped at our house. Plus when you already have awesome shows like We Bare Bears and Be Cool Scooby Doo (wait, there's a remake!) it's hard to fit something new in the rotation.

Netflix Says Yes to More Punisher

In what might be the least surprising news of the day, Netflix has reportedly ordered a Punisher Spin-Off series. I have yet to watch Daredevil Season 2 but from what I understand The Punisher plays a large roll in the first 4 or 5 episodes. A couple of the more mainstream media outlets like Entertainment Weekly didn't really think the Punisher stuff was that great but from the buzz on twitter a lot of net nerds really really liked it so I'm not surprised at all that Netflix would order a spin-off.

If I had to take a guess, I don't think this will be the last time Netflix will green light a spin off based off one of their Marvel properties. I'll bet this will become pretty standard practice. Marvel's original deal with Netflix was for 4 series. Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist, with a small mini-series team up show with all those characters in it called The Defenders. Even with the short 10-13 episode seasons they use that's like 52 episodes, more when you start including the second seasons. That's a lot of time to sort of test the waters with new characters that Marvel doesn't have movie plans for. Hopefully, fingers crossed we can get a Runaways series out of this. If Ned Stark losing his head blew your mind, the finale of Runaways would like... double blow your mind.

Another Daredevil Trailer

I should probably stop complaining about the number of Trailers Netflix releases for their Marvel shows. They're not like a regular network that can just run commercials for Agents of SHIELD every commercial break or anything like that. They kind of have to make a big splash on the internet to drum up attention and attract new subscribers.

Also I'm perfectly ok with their decision to showcase a wet Deborah Ann Woll. She is not unattractive, which of course is a total waste for freaking Daredevil the blind superhero. Forget his radar sense, Daredevil's real superpower is the ability to attract supermodels with his frumpy suits and poor social skills.

Daredevil Season 2: Official Trailer

The first "trailer" for Daredevil Season 2 hit the interwebs yesterday. I use quotes around the word trailer because Netflix and Marvel have this thing where they release endless teasers, trailers and first looks until I'm convinced I've actually seen the first episode before it's available. Even this trailer they're calling "part 1", what the hell does that mean? You're releasing trailers in two parts now? Yargh!

As for the actual video, it looks super dope. The Punisher is natural antagonist for Daredevil. Daredevil is all full of Catholic guilt and no mater how much he punches guys he generally doesn't cross the murder line. Punisher is the exact opposite, he has like anti-guilt. To him killing bad guys is a moral imperative and Daredevil is just another sheep that hasn't woken up to the cold hard reality they're living in. This should be good stuff.

Marvel's Daredevil - Coming Soon, Season 2

Hey kids, it's a teaser trailer for the upcoming season of Daredevil. You know what this means, only 2 more teasers, 4 trailers and 14 TV commercials to go! I kid, but seriously Netflix needs to Netflix and chill.

This is as good of a time as any to write a bit about Jessica Jones. The wife and I finished up the first season a couple days ago, it was fine. I'm kind of surprised the majority of people I hear talk about say they like it better than Daredevil. I thought the main characters on Daredevil were more likable and that the show as a whole was a bit more accessible for the average TV viewer (ie not a big old nerd). I will say David Tennant absolutely killed it, watching him chew scenery the last few episodes was quite the treat.

I'll still check out the second season whenever it comes around but I'm not putting in my top 10 list or anything. It was a great show to binge watch while every other show was on winter break. 7/10?

Jessica Jones: Trailer #2

A couple days ago before I got crazy busy, Marvel and Netflix released the last Trailer for Jessica Jones.

I'm not sure what to add to that. It still looks good? It'll be available on 11/20? You really want me to tell you about how much I like the comic book again or how I'm wondering how they will adapt some of the story lines that involve other big name Marvel Superheroes?

How about we switch it up and I complain about having to work all weekend?

Leaked Links

New 'Star Trek' series to blast off on CBS streaming service. Yay for new Star Trek! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO for this subscription garbage. If you hadn't heard yesterday. CBS has confirmed that they're working on a new Star Trek series. They also confirmed the show would be exclusive to CBS's new streaming service which costs like 6 bucks but offers all the CSI and NCIS spin-offs you could ever want. I'm torqued for a couple reasons. First off the majority of CBS's programming is the reason people pay 10 bucks a month for Netflix. Secondly, and I've bitched about this before, I'm already beyond tired of having to pay for and manage, multiple subscription services.

I have a bad feeling about this. CBS's hoping to drive people to their service by offering a show that appeals to the demo best equipped to pirate said show.

Leaked Screenshots for Fallout 4 on the PC. Sweet Christmas, these screenshots of Fallout 4 for the PC on it's highest (?) setting are pretty fantastic. It's really amazing how they're able to render stuff like trees and dirt so realistically, the future is now.

Netflix’s ‘Iron Fist’ Is Now Rumored To Be A TV Movie. Aw man, this kinda sucks. Iron Fist is awesome and his backstory in K'un-Lun is really interesting and after seeing Daredevil I'm positive Netflix and Marvel could translate it really well. A TV movie is still better than nothing but I'd love to see the Immortal Weapons or the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven translated to more of a long form story.

Return Of The Jedi Was Great, You Ewok-Slandering Fools. I get it, Empire Strikes back is better than Return Of The Jedi but it's not like ROTJ is bad. People that hate on it are just trying to hard to be cool.

Jessica Jones: The Real Trailer this time... for Reals

After teasing us with teasers and sneak peaks Netflix finally came up with the good stuff. A full two minute trailer for Jessica Jones. Sorry, MARVEL'S Jessica Jones.

I really hate it when they do that. We get it you're Marvel.

Looks rad, one interesting thing of note. Jessica Jones is essentially a former superhero that quits the cape and tights biz to be a private investigator. If I remember correctly, the very first story arc of the comic book Alias (which this is based off of) has Jessica Jones getting involved in a conspiracy against Captain America. Given that she's a former superhero she has a lot of interaction with other Marvel heroes like Cap, Daredevil, Spider-Woman, etc.

It isn't until something like the 20th issue of the series (and the very last story arc) that we learn about why she quit being a superhero and what her beef with The Purple Man (played here by David Tennet) is all about. So what I find so interesting about the trailer is that it looks like this first season is going straight to the Purple Man. Also it kinda looks like they're skipping the whole "she knows a lot of superheroes" thing. At least that's what I gather by her interactions with Luke Cage at the bar. That's supposed to be Luke Cage, right?

I'm actually ok with all the changes, I'm not one of those nerds that gets caught up in the details. Find the heart of the character and make the story work for TV, that's what they did with Daredevil. Hopefully that's what they've done here too.