The Eighth Annual Winter Film Awards begins in two days, on February 14th, in New York City, running for 10 days, showcasing 89 films from 32 countries around the world. I spoke with director and actor, Albert Fry Jr., about his short film, A Bitter Reckoning, which follows a small town sheriff interviewing a man about his ailing father’s recent suicide.

Walter Howard: Where did the idea for A Bitter Reckoning come from?

Albert Fry Jr: Well, there were three aspects that inspired it. The main one was my own father who did not commit suicide, did not talk about it, but just in my experience in watching him in his last few years, months, weeks, and especially the last six days of hospice care I spent with him, and just wondering what he was feeling, what he was going through, as he declined in health, and another big part of that, what I see as my own mortality being mirrored back to me, and I started thinking about myself, and what I’d do in his place. Would I want to take matters into my own hands? He ended up, not a great situation, he ended up in a healthcare facility, and two things, I felt like at one point, he reached a point where physically he couldn’t do anything about where he was at. He was stuck there, and second, his mind started going also, so cognitively he wasn’t able to make decisions, and so that’s what kind of inspired it. And another thing, I’d read about people who have resistance to pain medications, and I wondered what would happen in this situation where they’re failing in health, but they also can’t get relief through pain medications, or from the traditional way of assisted suicide. So I wanted to set up more of a situation of urgency. A situation where he was in pain, he couldn’t get relief, he really wants to end this situation that he’s in.

WH: You co-directed with Amber LeRae Earls. Was that always the plan for this film?

AF: It was. That’s one of the big challenges for me. Trying to act in and direct my own films. I find it very challenging. This film is important enough to me that I wanted some help. Amber Earls was my co-director. I enlisted her with the main purpose of having eyes on me, and helping direct me and my own performance.

WH: When did she enter the project? At which point in the process?

AF: Fairly later on. She came in maybe two weeks before we started shooting. Actually, I was looking for a unit production manager, and I had one who became busy with some other work, and was going to have to step down from that position, so I actually enlisted her first as a UPM. But I also asked her about this idea of being my co-director, and I was talking with a couple people about the position, and she was one of about three I was talking to. She was open to it. I knew some of her work. I was a fan of her work that I’d seen, and I knew that she could be an effective director.

WH: How did you first meet her?

AF: I met her, let me think here, it’s been about, maybe four or five years ago, at an audition for one of her projects she was producing, and I went in to audition for that project. Didn’t get the part (laughs), but that’s where I met her.

WH: You filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and you opened the film with some impressive aerial shots over the river, the woods, how did you achieve these shots?

AF: Actually those shots weren’t in Albuquerque. I was trying to create a setting that could be any Smalltown, U.S.A. New Mexico has a very, you know, its own distinct southwest style, and so I was trying to stay away from southwest style houses, or landscaping, or anything that would signal southwest. We found this nice house in a part of Albuquerque that was older Victorian, which is a little bit different than most of the city. The park worked well, because it didn’t have any houses around that had this southwestern architecture. We do have a river here. The Rio Grande runs through here, and there’s a lot of nice trees around it. I wanted to film, I wanted to get some footage of that, but the timing just wasn’t right. I tried to line up a drone pilot to film along the river for me, and I wanted to catch the Autumn leaves. Also Autumn was important for me. The river was important, and Autumn colors. I wanted both of those. By the time we got out there for some footage, it was too windy, and the next time we got out there, it was too late. We lost a lot of the color. We’d gotten our first frost and everything just started dropping. So those two shots, I found on Shutterstock, and that river’s actually outside of Morristown, New Jersey. I found that, and then the closeup of the town, I don’t even know where that is. It’s just described as-

WH: Smalltown, U.S.A.

AF: U.S.A, exactly. It came together, and it had the look I wanted. It blended okay with the park scene in the end. We lucked out. We actually got our first frost here the night before that scene. The leaves just started to drop. You see the sidewalk covered with leaves when the Sheriff pulls up. Someone asked me if we set the leaves up. No, I was just happy they fell down. A couple more days and they all would have been gone. The timing was perfect on that, and everything matched up pretty well.

WH: What did Smalltown, U.S.A lend to this story you tell in the film?

AF: I think what I was hoping is that anybody could relate to it. I don’t want anyone taken out of the story, because of locale. I wanted anybody to think, okay, this could be my hometown. This could be a situation in my own family. I was afraid if it looked too southwest, it would take people out of that. Maybe your mind would go to the architecture or the setting more than something they could all relate to.

WH: The structure of the film’s intriguing. You have two character in a room, working backwards through the story. One character has a clear picture of what’s happened. The other has an idea. When did you decide to tell the story in this way?

AF: I thought it would be interesting to do it in a flashback form probably because I wanted to build this relationship between Lester and the Sheriff. The Sheriff has his own thing going on too, and I always give backstory to my characters, and his backstory was that his Father had also died, and he watched his Father go through a similar thing that Lester’s father was going through. Now his mother’s going through the same thing. His mother’s just about at the point where she needs to go in to hospice care, and he knows that. I wanted the dynamic of the two, wondering what is going on in the Sheriff’s mind. I think a normal situation, and I had a good forensic adviser, a friend of mine, who’s a retired Sheriff’s deputy, 25 years in the Sheriff’s department, who’s also an actor, I talked to him about this and he said in a normal situation, they would haul Lester down to the office, and hold the interrogation, so why did the Sheriff come to his house? And he came on a Sunday. It’s because the Sheriff has something going on too. He maybe suspects some hospital foul play, and maybe even Lester pulled the trigger himself, he doesn’t know. Originally, when I wrote the first draft, it was just the interview between the Sheriff and Lester. That’s all it was. I went back and added the flashbacks to show what happened. That’s where all the action was. I just thought it would be an interesting way to tell the story.

WH: You talked about your inspiration, your personal reasons for writing the story. Empathy struck me as the main theme of the film. It’s centered around a horrific situation. The characters are asked to put empathy into action. What interested you about this idea?

AF: I’ve thought a lot about this whole assisted suicide, end of life. I’m a proponent of assisted suicide, and that’s part of it. There’s so many different aspects to that too. It’s not just cut and dry. A lot of people have different thoughts. A lot of it can depend on the people and the situation. I wanted to create something a little different. There have been a lot of films done on the Dr. Kevorkian style. Hook up a machine, pump them full of drugs until they overdose. I didn’t want to go that route. I wanted something a little different. The title A Bitter Reckoning, what is a bitter reckoning? A reckoning is Lester trying to reconcile his feelings, his father wants Lester to help him with this, but Lester can’t do it at first. There’s a fine line between that and murder. He doesn’t want to pull the trigger. The reckoning he comes to is okay, I have to help my father do this, but it’s a bitter reckoning because it’s not something he wants to do. He comes to understand his father’s ready.

WH: The Sheriff, you mentioned coming up with a backstory for him, you see him visit his mother in the end. Is he inspired by Lester? Maybe just a reminder not take their time for granted. What do you see happening in his character?

AF: I think in his character, he’s already gone through this with his father, and actually, his backstory is my backstory. I watched my father go through this. That’s what inspired all this. I watched my father end up in a healthcare facility. Have no control over what’s happening. It wasn’t nice watching the last few weeks, few months. My father was a very strong, hard worker his whole life. To watch him end up in that place was very hard. That’s now the Sheriff’s backstory. And my mother’s health also started failing. In fact, she was also in hospice care, and she actually just passed away on me Christmas Eve. I was with her too. Her last days. That was his backstory. I think that’s what makes him empathetic towards Lester and make the decision not to prosecute it.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

Since Marvel Studios was purchased by Disney for $4 billion nearly 8 years ago, their lineup of superhero blockbusters have dominated the movie theater box-office. They consistently receive strong reviews, big earnings, and please the Comic-con crowd. I, a card-carrying hater, though I do feel that the Marvel films are fine, have been less impressed by the company’s output. The following is a conversation with Edward Graham Peeler Jr., a comic book expert, passionate fan, and fellow blogger. You can follow his blog at https://dreadpiratesite.wordpress.com/, or his video reviews on youtube. We discussed the upcoming slate of Marvel films, and their projected plan for the future:

Me: Marvel has a good thing going. They keep churning out the hits. There doesn’t seem to be any Marvel fatigue at all, which makes me skeptical about the apparent “Star Wars fatigue” that was suggested after the disappointment of Solo. Marvel is certainly set for the next few years, but then, their first and second generation cornerstones, Iron Man and Captain America, for example, are likely gone. What’s their next phase after Avengers finishes? How do they keep from taking a step back? Or have they reached their peak?

Edward: It all depends on whether or not Chris Evans, Robert Downey, and Chris Helmsworth want to keep making Avengers movies.  They might be tired and want to move on but they seem to really enjoy making Marvel films and their making good money doing them.  Hopefully, they’ll stick around for a little while longer and we’ll have more adventures with Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor. I’m not sure exactly what they are going to do after Infinity War part 2.  What I would like to see is them starting to integrate the X-men and Deadpool into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s something I’ve always wanted so see: the X-men and the Avengers working together; specifically Wolverine as an Avenger.  Also, I hear a Black Widow movie is in the works which I’m looking forward to. The only thing I’m really worried about is the Captain Marvel movie, and Carol Danvers being integrated into the MCU. Carol Danvers is a superhero that has had multiple identities in the comics.  Her best incarnation was Miss Marvel and she’s occasionally gone by the identities Warbird and Binary. The past couple years she’s been going by Captain Marvel. The Marvel version of Captain Marvel was originally an alien Kree soldier named Jenus Mar-vel, who had these high tech arm bands that granted him cosmic powers, and he became a space-faring superhero that also helped out on earth, who is best known for being dead.  Miss Marvel was a spin-off character of the original Captain Marvel. She was a soldier who was abducted by the Kree, experimented on, and granted super powers. In my personal opinion she was great character when she was Miss Marvel. She was badass, confident, sexy, and one of the top-tier Avenger characters. She was one of the team leaders and she was a skilled, no non-sense tactician. Then they turned her into Captain Marvel.  The stated reason for turning her into Captain Marvel was to make her into a legacy hero. Legacy heroes are characters where the superhero identity is a mantle shared by many different people over generations. A recent example is when Batman allegedly died (he actually was sent back in time), and Dick Grayson, the original Robin, became Batman. He had actually not been Robin for years and had been going as Nightwing and Tim Drake was Robin.  While he was Batman, Bruce Wayne’s biological son, Damian Wayne, became Robin. Likewise when Barry Allen, the second Flash died, Kid Flash became the Flash. And there is a related character named Impulse who became Kid Flash. So those are all good examples of legacy heroes, and the stated reason for Miss Marvel becoming Captain Marvel was to be that, to honor the legacy and allow Carol to take center stage. The real reason for her becoming Captain Marvel was bullshit third wave feminism politics.  In recent years, with the distraction and success of Marvel’s movies, T.V, and other franchises, the comics have started to suck. Their editor in chief at the time, Axel Alonso, has allowed this invasion of really bad, ultra-liberal activist writers to invade the company and start writing the books. These people are less concerned with writing good stories and giving the fans what they want, and instead pushing their agenda or cause and making fools of themselves on twitter. As far as I can tell they hired a bunch of assholes who don’t even really like comics like Nick Spencer who turned Captain America into a Nazi.  They also decided to do a dumb convoluted story-line, where Thor no longer became worthy of his hammer, Mjolnir, and Jane Foster, a character so loved by fans that she was written out of the MCU in Thor Ragnarok, becomes the new Thor, also known as Lady Thor. And she became this miserable, man hating, “I’m better than you”, sort of character. Lady Thor died of cancer (which makes absolutely no sense but whatever) and it’s the first time I’ve found myself actually rooting for cancer, and in my real life I have many loved ones who’ve suffered from cancer. Yeah, thanks Marvel. Anyway, the moment Carol Danvers became Captain Marvel she transformed into this miserable character that is everything wrong with this direction Marvel’s been going in.  The argument for changing her into Captain Marvel was along the lines of “Why can’t she be Captain Marvel? CUS SHE’S A WOMAN?! SHE CAN’T TAKE CENTER STAGE?!” and “Oh, her original outfit is so sexist! God forbid she wear a one-piece bathing suit as her outfit! God forbid she be sexy!” and of course “It’s time!” She immediately turned into this authoritarian, ultra-feminist, bull dike lesbian, man hating monster and everyone hates her. Marvel’s sales have been down as long as they keep pushing this crap because the fans hate it and the people that are pushing this crap don’t actually read comics. And Marvel comics has been trying to make this new Captain Marvel into Marvel’s flagship character, the character that is the symbol of the company. Traditionally the flagship character is Spider-man and for awhile during the height of X-men’s popularity, it was Wolverine, both of which are insanely popular and beloved characters.  So all efforts to make Captain Marvel the flagship have fallen flat on their face since that’s a determination made by fan response not executive decision, but Marvel editorial keeps trying to push her as the character we SHOULD be reading. And then Kevin Feige announced that Captain Marvel was going to be the most important character in the MCU going forward. Naturally hearing this, a chill went down my body. Now Kevin’s been very good at making movies that both the fans and general audiences love, partially by staying away from politics; especially crazy extremist crap that the comics have gotten into. So my instinct says to trust him and see what he does. He’s done a good job so far and shown a lot of common sense so far, so I think we should wait and see. Another point of concern was some comments Brie Larson, the actress who will be playing Captain Marvel said. She said in response to criticisms of A Wrinkle In Time (your favorite movie ☺)  that “she doesn’t want to hear what white men think about the movie.” She wants to hear from women and girls and what the movie means to them. Because yeah, it’s not like I didn’t grow up with and love that book. Why should I have an opinion on a film based on a book I like <?<. So that’s disconcerting and may suggest their going in a bad direction with Captain Marvel. But we’ll have to wait and see the movie to find out. Hopefully the movie will be good and I’m worrying about nothing. I mean I waited until The Last Jedi to start hating Star Wars. I will give the films a chance so long as they are consistently good. I don’t have much of an opinion of Brie Larson. I liked her in Kong: Skull Island, so that’s something nice I can say about her. As long as they don’t make Captain Marvel a feminist nightmare, they can avoid taking steps back. Their movies are running strong. I think Marvel’s doing great film wise. If they do run into their peak, it will be Infinity War Part 2.  Hopefully they’ll be making awesome comic book movies for many years to come.

Me: Speaking of Captain Marvel; the studio’s first female stand alone super hero movie. Does it feel at all like Marvel is finally chasing DC in something, i.e Wonder Woman? Not that there’s no room for more female super heroes, but how does Captain Marvel break away and become its own thing? How does it separate itself from other Marvel movies for that matter?

Edward: Eh, they might be trying to copy Wonder Woman, but Carol Danvers is (or more like WAS) an awesome character in her own right, so there’s every reason to make a movie about her.  I just wish they were calling her Miss Marvel, because that was her best incarnation. Wonder Woman and Miss Marvel have very superficial similarities. They both have super strength, stamina, and flight.  But their personalities are totally different as are their origins and what the characters stand for. Diana Prince comes from a warrior race of amazons, and she is a kind, wise immortal character that people look up to in the same way they look up to Superman. Carol Danvers is a soldier who was abducted by aliens and given powers. She has a very tactical military mindset and accepted her new life as a super hero. Prior to becoming Captain Marvel, her motivation was to become the world’s greatest superhero, and she was always good and beloved as an awesome Avenger, but she was never the greatest hero in the world.  And as I mentioned above the moment she became Captain Marvel, she has become an awful third wave feminist, and a symbol of everything wrong with the far left, activist culture, and the current direction of Marvel’s comics right now. Now Wonder Woman is the greatest female superhero of all time and a feminist icon. So it could be Marvel is attempting to replicate that and that’s why Captain Marvel is getting a movie right now in that awful costume, in this awful incarnation, with Brie Larson in the role….I don’t know.  I don’t want to get into conspiracy theories right now. The problem is people love Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman IS one of the world’s greatest superheroes and she IS an extremely positive symbol of femininity. Carol Danvers has never been that. When she was good she was always a great superhero, but never the best. In her current form, the comic book writers want her to be a positive feminist role model and instead she’s an awful person that nobody likes. So if their goal is to copy DC’s success with Wonder Woman, that’s a terrible idea.  First of all, why would you want to copy the DCEU in anything? If the goal is: she’s a major Avengers character and we want to introduce her into the MCU, then it’s a good idea. What they should do is, just make a movie based off of her Miss Marvel era persona (with this modern crappy outfit). Just tell a story about a cool superhero; who HAPPENS to be a woman. They should not make a big deal about that. That need to keep politics out of it or at least stay away from extreme liberalism. A little bit of girl power is fine as is modest liberal values of acceptance.  As long as she doesn’t use the terms “safe space” and “CIS gendered pig” I think we’ll be fine. As for separating itself from Marvel’s other films, well, she does have powers comparable to Superman and Wonder Woman, namely flight, super strength, and stamina. Meaning she can fly and punch monsters and have a look and feel that is kind of what people think of when they think of a superhero. In many ways she can be Marvel’s typical superhero character, because none of their other characters that we see in the MCU are like that. They all  have their own look that feel unique to them.  Captain Marvel can be the character that puts on a cape, flies, and punches monsters like a more traditional superhero. Also, I think this movie is supposed to take place in the 80s, so it should have a nice period piece 80s feel.

Me: How do you see Disney’s acquiring X-men affecting that franchise, since you’re happy with their handling of Marvel but not Star Wars.

Edward: I think what we are going to see with X-men is they are going to slowly start integrating them, Deadpool, and the Fantastic Four into the MCU.  That’s what I’m really looking forward too. They might even play on the concept of the Multiverse that was set up in Dr. Strange and allow the X-men from the Fox movies to directly crossover into the MCU.  There’s no guarantee it will go down that way, and there are continuity and story telling problems that can easily crop up if they do it that way. If they did though that might be awesome, because I like the X-men movies enough that I would love it if just already established X-men were able to interact with the Avengers and other characters of the MCU.  As much as I love Tom Holland’s Spider-man and the direction they have been taking Spider-man in the MCU, I really love the Sam Raimi Spider-man movies and I would have loved if Toby’s Spider-man could have been the one to be an Avenger. It all worked out in the end, and Tom Holland’s Spider-man is the best and my new favorite, but I think that trilogy is not only great, we would not have this Renaissance of comic book movies we are experiencing now if it had not been for Sam Raimi’s Spider-man films, the X-men movies, and Blade.   So it would nice if we could do that with the X-men films and Deadpool. I want Hugh Jackman as an Avenger dammit! ☺ So we’ll see what they come up with. I love the direction Disney is taking Marvel in. I hate and detest the direction Disney has taken Star Wars. Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson, and, at this point, J.J. Abrams needs to go. I wish Kevin Feige could direct all of these franchises. I wish he was in charge of Marvel, the Fox Marvel films, Star Wars, Aliens, and the Terminator franchise, but he’s not a movie producing robot.  I don’t want to break Kevin. Kevin is doing a great job where he’s at. Star Wars needs someone like him running Lucas film, someone who is respectful of the fans and gives them what they want, but also has a vision and plan and keeps everyone focused and on task. Someone who allows his directors to be creative, but doesn’t let them go off the rails. Kevin rubbed Joss Whedon and Edgar Wright the wrong way because he had to. He had to be the bad guy that wouldn’t let them do whatever they wanted and they left Marvel as a result.  And those are really talented people that make great films, but he had to rein them in. And hopefully they’ll come back in some capacity eventually. Besides Whedon has talked about how sometimes you have to “kill your darlings” to save you’re your film. He understands that sometimes you have to rein in creative people in order to make the movie work, all though the process does seem like it gets frustrating. Meanwhile at Warner Bros. you had Zack Snyder given cart blanche to do whatever stupid thing he wanted for his god awful DC movies, complete with him publicly complaining about how he doesn’t like it when a studio gives him direction because “it’s not cool and not fun.”  I was happy to see him leave DC, although I wish it had been on better circumstances, given the fact that he left due to personal tragedy. And then they brought in Jeff Johns who is a comic book writer, not a producer. And he means well, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s still working on his comics. He’s torn in a million directions and I doubt he has the control over the films that Warner Bros. says he does. And then you have Kathleen Kennedy who I had never heard of before until The Last Jedi, who used to get coffee for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and apparently that makes her a producer, and means she can claim that she was responsible for how awesome classic movies like Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, and Back To The Future turned out.  And when put in the hot seat to run a film studio, she completely shits the bed 3 years into running this franchise. She focuses more on identity politics and virtue signaling, instead of telling a story or steering a franchise in a good direction. When she has disagreements with directors, she fires them instead of working with them as we saw with Lord and Miller and Colin Trevorrow. She wastes millions of dollars on reshoots, and has already cost Disney millions, probably billions at this point, on poor ticket sales and unsold merchandise. Disney needs someone like Kevin to run Star Wars, someone with his temperament, vision and discipline to get Star Wars back on track. At the very least they need someone passionate about Star Wars and who understands the franchise.  Fans really want Dave Filoni to take over, given his work on the Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons. I would definitely support that decision and come back to the theater if he were in charge. And they need to keep George Lucas in the loop. Apologize profusely to him and bring him on as an advisor. And get him a nice fruit basket.

Me: Coming to the film that holds several franchises in its grasp, Avengers: Infinity Wars, there were many deaths obviously. I was upset, because I feel like the end makes it clear that many of these characters will be coming back, which I feel undermines most of the film. Do you see any of the deaths in Infinity Wars as sticking? Who comes back and who stays dead if anybody?

Edward: Part of the reason I loved Avenger’s Infinity War was, it was very faithful to the spirit of the comic it’s based on.  It does do it’s own thing; the battle for the Infinite Gems went down very differently in the comics, but they were just about as bleak.  If Infinity War Part 2 is completely faithful to the comics, everybody’s coming back to life because that’s how it went down in the comics.  In the comics, when the heroes fail to stop Thanos, the gods and cosmic beings of the Marvel Universe intervene…..and Thanos easily beats them.  Then, Death and Mephisto betray Thanos, and try to grab the gauntlet for themselves. Thanos kicks their ass. The Silver Surfer and Adam Warlock try their last ditch effort to stop him, and it doesn’t work.  So finally, Eternity, the living embodiment of the Marvel Universe, an entity that appears as a humanoid, but is composed of space and galaxies itself, has had enough, so he tries to crush Thanos. Thanos not only defeats him, but takes his place!  All the universe becomes Thanos and his face is seen in the stars themselves. Things look bad, but it’s soon revealed that Thanos’ consciousness is controlling the universe, but his body and the gauntlet are now a motionless vegetable lying on the ground.  An insane and mutilated Nebula seizes the opportunity, and takes the gauntlet away from Thanos. This forces Thanos back into his body, but now the surviving heroes have a new problem: an all powerful pissed off Nebula. So instead of killing Thanos, Adam Warlock actually convinces Thanos to join the heroes, claiming that Thanos really wanted the heroes to stop him, and the only reason why he did any of this is because of his own personal misery causing him to lash out and fixate on Death. The heroes and Thanos band together, defeat Nebula, and Adam Warlock takes the gauntlet. Warlock undoes everything that Thanos did, including killing half the universe and flies off into space to find away to be a good and logical god of the universe and his story is continued in the Infinite Watch. If they do it exactly like the comics, that’s what’s going to happen. I think whatever they do will be in keeping with the spirit of that story, but the details along the way will be different. I think it all depends on who wants to renew their contract in the real world; whoever is played by an actor who wants to come back for future movies and T.V will be brought back to life.  Those that don’t, I see it kind of like Goku asking Gohan not to bring him back with the Dragon Balls after the Cell Saga. That or only characters killed by Thanos assembling the gauntlet and snapping his fingers will come back, but characters like Heimdal and Loki, who were physically killed by Thanos and his forces are not coming back; either because whoever gets the gauntlet at the end of the story doesn’t know about them, or they don’t know how to bring some people back. Doing some research for one of my role-playing games where I actually brought MCU Thanos into the mix, I learned the Infinite gems are actually sentient and highly manipulative; only someone powerful enough or smart enough to manipulate the gems can get them to work.  That’s why the pink kree girl from Guardians Of The Galaxy couldn’t just pick the power gem up and it caused her to explode. So there’s a number of different ways it could go down. Chris Helmsworth did say that part 2 is far more shocking and amazing than part 1 in his opinion and I can’t wait.

Me: How does Marvel’s second Spiderman movie proceed, apart from what we know happens in Avengers?

Edward: That’s a very good question.  That all depends on Sony. Whether or not Sony decides to do their own Spider-man films AGAIN!  WITHOUT Marvel! Because that worked so well the last two times they tried it. It depends on whether or not they pull a Fox and sell all of their franchises to Disney.  Most importantly it depends on whether or not Sony pictures completely and utterly implodes for being a garbage film company, that makes nothing but trash! It’s bad enough that in recent years, they’ve given us a shitty, unfunny Ghostbusters remake, that your sexist if you don’t like it, the Emoji Movie, Pixels, Jack And Jill, and a million other shitty Adam Sandler movies, and tons more crap that nobody likes, but as for the Spider-man front, how about that solo Venom trailer?  Hot garbage my friend. Hot garbage. I thought Tom Hardy was done doing shitty rolls after staring in Mad Max Fury Road. Prior to that, I thought a voodoo witch doctor was putting a hex on him causing him to star as unsatisfying villains that ruin franchises. It happened with Shinzon, in Star Trek Nemesis, and it happened with Bane, in The Dark Knight Rises. I can see that after a long hiatus, Papa Shango from the WWE is back at work, ruining Tom’s career. I don’t understand Sony or Warner Bros. obsession with solo villain outings that don’t even include the hero the villain is supposed to fight.  FYI, that character Tom is playing is nothing like the Venom from the comics. I don’t know who this doofus is, but he’s not Eddie Brock. And Venom never used his symbiote to shoot out tentacles to do wacky stuff while he was on a motorcycle. And I don’t know anybody who’s wants that garbage movie. There were more people excited for Solo, than Venom. In fact there are plenty of people, many of which who are dissatisfied with Star Wars that were still excited about the Obi-Wan stand alone movie and are pissed off that that and all other Star Wars spin offs have been placed on hold. But nobody is talking about Venom.  I think Spider-man will come back to life in Infinity War Part 2, if either Sony sells back Spider-man (or all their properties like Fox) back to Marvel, or at least agree to work with Marvel to make a sequel, and maybe some in-universe spin-offs. If not then the reason he was killed off in Infinity War Part 1 was to end Spider-man’s story prematurely to give the character a dramatic send off and allow Sony to keep hitting their head against the wall like a bunch of retards trying to hump a doorknob with their own crappy Spider-man films. But if all goes well, Homecoming 2 will probably focus on Spider-man being resurrected at the end of Infinity War Part 2,and then having to deal with the Sinister Six; with Vulture and Mac Gargan, the future Scorpion, pulling the team together.  That way Sony can finally get their Sinister Six boner and actually have it be good, instead of a dumb villain standalone film like they were trying to do.

Me: Who do you see dying in the second part of Infinity Wars?

Edward: Thor is going to die heroically.  Probably going to get turned into glass and shattered.  Iron Man is going to die tragically. Probably going to get his head ripped off by a female doppelganger of Thanos.  Black Widow, Hawkeye, Rocket, and Okoye will probably be defeated, but not killed. They are but insects to Thanos, and hardly worth swatting aside.  Captain America is going to die heroically, making a defiant stand against Thanos and with all of his comrades dead and defeated, he’s just going to march up to Thanos, stare him down, and say “As long as one man stands against you, you can’t possibly win!”  To which Thanos will reply, “Surely you jest.” Then when Adam Warlock and possibly Rocket Raccoon and maybe the Silver Surfer make their move to get the gauntlet, while Thanos is distracted, Thanos will figure out what’s going on and turn his attention to them while casually backhanding Captain America and snapping his neck.  In the end, Adam Warlock and the Hulk will live. Adam Warlock we haven’t even seen yet. He’s just been alluded to at the end of Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2. But it will be Adam who carries out both his and the dead Dr. Strange’s plan, that ultimately defeats Thanos. He also will confront Thanos on a personal level that disarms Thanos to his very core, possibly changing his mind about what he’s doing and confront his own demons instead of being one.  But to do this, the Hulk will physically be the one to stop Thanos. Banner watching his friends die, will either, through the pain of loss Goku/Gohan style or sheer will, finally bring the Hulk back out, as either the Savage Hulk or the Smart Hulk, also known as the Professor. Using those personas, Hulk will physically hand Thanos his ass. But if Thanos is to be killed, or if there is no other hope of stopping him, Nebula will save the day. She will either kill Thanos, or strip him of the gauntlet, defeating him and his ambition.  She might just kill him and finish her journey as a hero or she might seize this new found power and become a new threat the heroes have to stop and maybe even side with Thanos to bring her down. One way or the other, I think she will use the gems to heal her body physically and completely, so she can cast aside her cybernetic implants and probably give herself a rocking head of black hair.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

What is there to say about Edward Graham Peeler Jr? The man lives and breathes Comic-con culture. From Buffy to Captain Marvel, Jabba the Hut to Jar Jar, I can always count on Peeler for a hot take, encyclopedic knowledge, or a rage-based rant on everything wrong with a film. You can follow his blog at https://dreadpiratesite.wordpress.com/, or his video reviews on youtube. I took an opportunity to discuss the upcoming slate of DC films, their handling of their own comic book franchises, and projected plan for the future:

Me: DC released 2 big trailers at comic con this year. One being Aquaman- their sole release of the year- and the other being Shazam which took me by surprise. I feel like a lot is riding on Aquaman seeing as Wonder Woman has been the only real success of this universe DC is trying to build. What were your thoughts on the trailer? 

Edward: I feel like I need to preface this answer with a little back-story.  As a comic book fan and as someone who likes DC’s comics, I have been boycotting the DCEU.  Without going too much into it, around the time Man Of Steel came out, the comics sucked. They were doing this really stupid reboot that nobody liked called the New 52, that DC will still claim was a HUGE success regardless of the fact that they have completely undone that entire storyline, and brought us back to the classic comics, which for the most part are good again.  Now their other media at the time was still pretty good: good video games, good direct to DVD stuff; things like that. And the trailer for Man Of Steel looked amazing, so I went into it expecting a great movie. And I absolutely hated it. Man Of Steel set a standard going forward with these movies that said to me “We don’t care about the integrity of these characters and what they’re supposed to be about.  We don’t care about an intelligent or engaging storyline. We don’t care about likeable characters. Hell, we don’t care about doing a competent and entertaining blockbuster. We just want to throw a bunch of dumb pretty visuals at you and get your money. And you should give us your money because we’re Warner Bros. and we know better than you.” And I’m like, NOPE. I knew if this is the foot their going to start this universe off on, everything down the line they follow through with is going to suck.  So I vowed I’m not going to watch any of these. So I’ve just been sitting on the sidelines watching DC and Warner Bros embarrass themselves every year. I successfully avoided Batman V. Superman, but I watched and read many reviews, and talked to many friends who confirmed it was trash. I know about all the stupid plot points of that film and agree, they’re garbage. I was celebrating my birthday with my best friend Josh, and we decided to get drunk, and have bad movie night, and that’s how I saw Suicide Squad (I made him sit through Yoga Hoosiers.)  And yeah, Suicide Squad was also retarded, just style over substance. The only thing it had going for it was Margo Robbie’s sexy ass and her chemistry with Will Smith. The scenes where the two of them are plotting and scheming were the few bright spots of the film. I recently saw Focus which stars the two of them, and they are amazing in that film together. Of course it’s a much better film in general. I also liked Diablo breaking the Enchantress’s illusion. His strength of will and awareness of who and what he is, was a rare good character moment in a film where a government agent shoots her own people in the head because she’s too lazy to ask them to leave the room.  Everyone tells me Wonder Woman is the greatest film of all time and I refuse to see it because even if it is good and Gal Gadot is amazing in it, I have no interest in this garbage universe. And I’ve heard plenty of people criticize the film too. Best I can tell it’s a 7 out of 10, good but not great. I think a lot of people are praising it because if you don’t praise a product about Wonder Woman, the greatest female super hero of all time, then you’re anti-feminist. And to that I say, whatever. Lieutenant Ripley is the greatest female movie super hero of all time as far as I’m concerned and she’s been around since the 80s. The crappy Wonder Woman tv pilot from a couple years back is proof that just because Wonder Woman is in a story doesn’t mean it’s good.  However, I will say Gal Gadot does appear to be doing a decent job with the character. When it comes to performances, action, and raw beauty, she is an excellent incarnation of the character. It’s a shame she’s in the worst version of the DC Universe to date. And Justice League, I sat back, avoided it, and laughed and celebrated when it bombed. Like BVS, I watched and read many reviews and listened to word of mouth. I know about every stupid thing they did. It’s trash and everybody knows. Not to belabor this but one of DC and Warner Bros. problems is an abject refusal to copy the Marvel formula for building a cinematic universe. If they had literally just copy and pasted everything Marvel has done, these would be good movies and they would actually be competition for Marvel.  There is no helping this studio. The DCEU sucks. We all know it. I don’t know why they bother. What they should do is scrap this entire garbage universe and hire a guy like Kevin Feige, who loves the comics, to manage a new series of DC films. But they’re so stupid, they’re going to have to fall on their face a few more times before that happens. Aquaman and Shazam are not going to save them at all. But I’ve rambled enough. What did I actually think of the trailers?

The Aquaman trailer is very brightly colored, with a lot of stuff happening all over the place.  Warner Bros. is still trying to convince me that Jason Momoa (who seems like a very nice person) is an awesome cross between Conan the Barbarian and The Little Mermaid.  I am not impressed. Warner Bros. is notorious, especially in this franchise, for amazing looking trailers that promote a garbage film. It looks like they are trying to present an awesome sci-fi adventure film that I just have got to see.  They’re trying really hard to push that narrative, which is smart. They even have Black Manta as the bad guy, one of Aquaman’s most iconic villains. The problem is, even if it is good, it’s just another Wonder Woman, a good film in a garbage universe I have no interest in visiting.  On top of that, this is just sad. Warner Bros. is and has been banking that an Aquaman movie is going to save this franchise, a character that NO ONE, NOT EVEN COMIC BOOK FANS, care about. As a fan, I can attest that Aquaman is actually a great character. He has a lot of cool powers like super strength and water control.  Over time he has been turned into a warrior king and a major contributor to the Justice League with many awesome adventures and his own supporting characters under his belt. There was even a period where he lost his arm and it was replaced by an unbreakable harpoon that he could launch and entangle his enemies with as well as use like a drill.  He’s a great character, but in the public consciousness he’s still the idiot in orange whose only powers is to swim and talk to fish from the Super Friends. All the cool stuff I just mentioned has been a tremendous effort in the comics to get him away from the original image and it still hasn’t worked, not even in the comics. In the above mentioned God-awful New 52, their approach to rebooting Aquaman was having some doofy idiot approach Aquaman, the fucking king of Atlantis and an established world saving hero, and make fun of him as a reference to the Super Friends all the while the comic insisting that “Aquaman is actually really cool”.  Well if he was there would be no reason to remind the reader of that, and to be fair, better writers in the past have just used the character, cheesy history and all, and not beaten the audience over the head like the above example. He has his fans who adore the character, but even among his fans, it’s hard to find people that will adamantly defend the character, and talk him up, especially when comparing him to his fellow league members; even non-comic fans can’t shut up about how awesome the Big 3 are (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) and he’s even out-shined by major second stringers such as the Flash and Green Lantern. I think most people would agree that even Hawkman outshines Aquaman on several points.  The point is he has never escaped the shadow of his underwhelming earlier incarnations, and all Warner Bros. has attempted, is hiring an actor know for playing barbarian characters and has gotten Jason’s fan base interested in the project so they can see him do what he does in every show he’s in. And even if this does take off, great DC. That means the only two characters in your universe anybody wants to see is Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Once again what DC should be doing and is not doing is treating Aquaman like Marvel treated the Guardians of the Galaxy and Antman, as lesser known, underappreciated characters and we’re going to take a risk on even bothering to make a project on them. That way they can get people to take a chance on the character, be surprised by the quality of the film, and fall in love with the character.  They’re not doing that. They’re banking on the Aquaman movie being great and we’re going to just love everybody’s least favorite Justice League character. I predict this movie is going to be like another Green Lantern movie, where there’s going to be a lot of cool, in-concept, CGI crap all over the movie, that is actually a reference to stuff from the comics that when executed comes across as uninteresting and boring. It was a bad idea to invest so much in this film in the first place, but every decision Warner Bros. has made post-The Dark Knight has been a mistake, and they abjectly refuse to learn from any of their failures.

As for Shazam, their trying to make this movie their Deadpool.  Which is funny because they were also trying to make Suicide Squad their Deadpool, and that worked out so well <.<.  So the deal with Shazam (or Captain Marvel as he’s supposed to be called. It’s a long story of legal battles with Marvel Comics.  Don’t ask.) is that he’s supposed to be a nice little kid named Billy Batson whose been enchanted by a wizard whose actually named Shazam, and the magic of Shazam enables Billy to turn into a superhero with powers comparable to Superman.  He’s almost as strong as Superman and can actually handle him in a fight especially since the source of his powers is magic which is one of Superman’s weaknesses. He can be a funny character, because he is child-like and as a result can come across as silly, but he’s also a really good kid with a strong sense of right and wrong, and often times an unwillingness to compromise due to his maturity.  So he’s a legitimate superhero who can go on adventures and fight the same world ending crap Superman fights. It doesn’t look like they’re going in that direction with this movie. They’re just focusing on comedy and focusing on one aspect of the character: he’s a kid who turns into a superhero. Look how silly that idea is. That’s the movie. The movie looks legitimately dumb going by the trailer.  I’m not paying 10 bucks to see a dummy in a superhero outfit dance around in a shallow attempt to make me laugh. And again if this is their breakout movie, that’s pathetic. It means the only character in this universe people are going to come out and see is a character their playing solely as a joke. “What about Deadpool?” I hear you say. Well Deadpool is not solely a comedic character. He’s hilarious, but he’s also a badass, and there’s plenty of serious drama and even romance in his books, and both movies reflect that well.  For this movie to work it can’t just be comedy. The DC Captain Marvel needs to go on adventures and fight villains and reflect the adventurous feel of his book to work. If they do this right, the film should feel like Spider-man Homecoming, equal parts comedy, drama, and superhero adventure. I think their just going for dumb comedy which I have no interest in seeing. It’s a step up from Aquaman and it might actually be funny, I’ll give it that. But again if the best they can do is Shazam, that’s pathetic in terms of getting people to see this mess of universe they’ve created.  

Me: I felt like DC, with these two films, was conspicuously addressing their reputation for dark fare, showcasing a lighter side, especially with Shazam. 

Edward: Yeah, their trying to lighten themselves up and be more like Marvel.  It’s just their doing it in such a clunky fashion, without understanding why Marvel works.  Everything DC and Warner Bros. does reeks of desperation. They should have started out copying Marvel, and it’s a little too late to save this garbage universe they’ve made.  Also, they should have been light hearted TO BEGIN WITH, instead of trying to make everyone of their characters Batman. The DC Universe is inherently cheesy and that’s part of the reason why it’s awesome.  If they had embraced that from the get-go, their movies would be charming and redeemable.

Me: Next year sees three big releases from DC: Shazam, The Joker, and Wonder Woman 1984. Wonder Woman 1984 sounds exciting. We can probably project that being a success, but what are you expecting from the second entry?

Edward: I’m honestly not sure.  It could be an opportunity either for a great sequel, or for DC to shit the bed again.  I think either outcome is possible. If it’s good, what Warner Bros. should do is declare all DCEU movies, except the two Wonder Woman movies, as non-canon. Make Wonder Woman their Iron Man, and start fresh, slowly introducing better versions of Superman, Batman, and other characters into a new better DC cinematic universe.  And if they were to do that, I might actually see both Wonder Woman movies.

Me: I really believe the best super hero movies have some compelling story line for the hero outside of his suit; inner demons, the burden of being super, what have you. In Wonder Woman, we had the romance between Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. Now that he’s gone, what do they do with her character?

Edward: *shrug* I’m not sure.  I’d have to care about the Wonder Woman movie to adequately explore that.  They could do something that has been explored in fantasy and horror before with elves and vampires, where she’s still partially in mourning for him as an immortal who is in love with an ordinary human destined to die.  Some of the best drama in the Highlander series comes from the idea of being in love with mortal women, leading to pain, because of the woman’s inevitable death while the immortal lives on. Connor McCloud still mourns Heather centuries after her passing.  They could do something similar to that with Wonder Woman, and maybe compare it to Captain America’s plight in the Avengers movies, since he’s still waiting for that dance with Peggy that he’s never going to get. I’d focus on action. Cheetah’s fun. She’s a mutant cat-woman, mad scientist. Good old science fiction camp character. Has nothing to do with Greek mythology so there is a nice contrast between her and Wonder Woman. I’d introduce more characters too, show that Wonder Woman has adapted with the times and is doing the best she can to move on.  I think that might be interesting. I might actually even watch it this time.

Me: Another big release for 2019 is a Joker origin film. I’m highly skeptical about just the premise, since I think the joker is more interesting as an enigma.

Edward: Yeah, they keep doing this stupid crap, where they’re trying to make movies about villains!  It’s all Sony’s fault for trying to make a Sinister Six movie! Which was a terrible idea, and fortunately it never saw the light of day, but then Warner Bros. thought it would be a great idea, and that’s how we got Suicide Squad, and sure enough Suicide Squad sucks.  And of course Warner Bros. is retarded and never learns from their mistakes, so they’re trying to beat this dead horse again. Making movies about super villains is stupid for a variety of reasons. The biggest problem is, in comic books, villains serve to compliment the hero; they exist to be the nemesis of a particular hero or group of heroes.  They can be interesting characters in their own right, but we wouldn’t even know about them, or what makes them tick, if we hadn’t been reading the story of the hero they oppose. So it’s inherently stupid and misguided to make a stand alone adventure of a character that is, essentially, a supporting character of another character, especially if we haven’t even introduced that other character first.  That was what was dumb about Sinister Six. You want to make this movie about a team of Spider-man villains before you put them in a Spider-man movie. It doesn’t make sense. Likewise, in Suicide Squad it was stupid. You’ve got this team of villains, who are all villains of various heroes who we haven’t even seen on the big screen yet. It’s part of DC and Warner Bros.’ problem since day one; doing things out of order.  First they did Man Of Steel, which was about Superman. Then instead of doing a few more Superman movies to establish Luthor, and a few other villains, all the while doing a Batman and Wonder Woman movie (which is what Marvel would have done) they jump right into BVS, a big crossover movie featuring two heroes we haven’t seen in this continuity yet. We’re not given a standalone, to get to know them. No, we just throw them together.  And then the same thing with Suicide Squad. Let’s just introduce a bunch of Batman and the Flash villains without doing a Flash or a Batman movie. Hell, let’s introduce and focus on Harley Quinn, not only without doing a Batman standalone ,but also without properly introducing and focusing on the Joker, who we will also arbitrarily throw into this movie, without a set up in another film. Warner Bros. wants a cinematic universe without doing the hard work that Marvel has been doing for years to get where they are.  And now they’re going to make the same mistake again. We’re going to make a Joker movie without making a Batman standalone movie, where Batman deals with the Joker. These characters are dependent on you, the viewer, understanding that they are a supporting character of a completely different character that we’re not going to introduce first. It’s completely backwards and baffling, and just a stupid and confusing way to go about things in terms of getting viewers interested. The second problem is they are trying to make stand alone movies about bad guys.  Now of course that’s not impossible. Not every protagonist needs to be a good person. They are plenty of stories out there, that are from the point of view of villains, anti-heroes, or at the very least deeply flawed characters. But if you’re going to do that, you need to have a really good, smartly written script to make it work. The best stuff that deals with this kind of idea outside of comic book adaptations depends on this. The other problem is, if your main character is a bad guy, well, ok, what kind of movie are you going to end up making? And invariably the answer is either a horror movie or a super violent crime thriller.  And that’s at best. That’s the problem this dumb studio is invariable going to get itself into if it wants to go down this route. Again, stories with un-saintly protagonists are not new. Your story can come from any number of perspectives. But if your going to do something like this, it needs to be like a Quentin Tarantino film at his most raw. A Joker film in particular should be a really fucked up psychological thriller on par with Taxi Driver, if they expect it to be good. And I don’t think their ready to make that kind of a story. They don’t have the balls for that. They want kids to see their movies and buy their toys, and if you do a dark ass movie where the Joker is a blood and guts serial killer, parents aren’t going to take their kids to see your films.  They’re not going to get your Joker action figures if you cross that line. Also, these superhero films focus exclusively on the heroes saving the day. How can you do a movie about a villain any justice if you know without a doubt he’s going to get defeated? Where is the investment in this film if I know for a fact he’s going to lose? I mean just think about the motivation of these villains in a standalone film. The Sinister Six would spend their movie robbing banks and trying to kill Spider-man because that’s their motivation. That’s why they are a team. Spider-man villains tend to have cool science fiction powers and simple evil motivations; they rob banks. That’s what they do. You want a complex tortured sympathetic back story, go read about Magneto in X-men. Also, the Sinister Six specifically united, because they wanted to pool their resources and skills together to kill Spider-man, who beat them multiple times and stopped them from robbing banks.  A Joker movie would be about the Joker running around killing people and spreading chaos throughout Gotham City in a typical clown, psycho circus-y way, because he believes life is a giant monstrous joke. He would be doing that and trying to kill Batman. Those are the two forces that drive and motivate him. And any other headline villain would be similar. Luthor would be trying to kill Superman. Sabertooth would be trying to kill Wolverine. Apocalypse would be trying to take over the world. And if they are meant to be the protagonist than their has to be a possibility that they’ll win and get away with murdering the heroes and wantonly killing. It’s not impossible to do a story like this. I might even like it because I’m into all different types of stories. But that’s clearly not for everybody. So they’re not going to do that. They’re not going to have any teeth. The heroes will live and win the day. And so then, why even bother in the first place. The movie will be too tame to appeal to exploitation fans and the mainstream superhero fans are going to be confused as to why we’re watching a movie about a bad guy.  Your end result will be a pointless film that has no right to exist. And most importantly of all, it’s not going to save Warner Bros. They are desperately throwing whatever characters and properties DC has against a wall to see what sticks instead of just focusing on making a good film. It’s pathetic. Is it really so difficult to hire talented people and just let them make a good film for you? To just let your creators create, and not screw with them, because you need to have some idiot panicky marketing guy add his two cents to how a scene should be played out? If they keep this up, Warner Bros. will go down in history as a once great film company who completely ruined themselves, making bad Justice League movies.

Me: They are already breaking off to a degree from Suicide Squad anyways with Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker as mentioned.

Edward: Oh, dude, I don’t even know what that’s all about.  There’s suppose to be two different continuities for the Joker.  There’s going to be Jared Leto’s “Trying Too Hard” Joker from Suicide Squad, which is still the canon Joker of the DCEU, and then Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is supposed to be an alternate continuity, having nothing to do with the DCEU.  You know, just to confuse everybody. Aside from scrapping the DCEU, they need to just focus on making good superhero movies. Prove to me you can make a good Batman movie, before you do a Joker standalone movie. I will gladly watch the Joker standalone movie, if you guys give me one good Batman movie.  Truth be told, if they want a cinematic universe so badly, they should focus on making more good Lego movies and Godzilla/giant monster movies. That’s the only thing they’re making right now that is meant to have a shared universe, that I think is genuinely good.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

A week after the release of Star Wars’ latest, and six months after the highly successful, while divisive episode 8, or The Last Jedi, here are some of the questions I had, answered by aficionado and hardcore Star Wars fan, Edward Peeler. You can check out his blog at dreadpiratesite.wordpress.com or subscribe to his video reviews on youtube.

Me: We spoke about how The Force Awakens stuck pretty closely to an old formula, echoing A New Hope essentially. We both agreed that we wanted to see some experimentation in The Last Jedi. How do you feel about what The Last Jedi did in terms of making its own path?

Peeler: Well, I think it did a little too much in making it’s own path. I think it kind of went off the rails. It feels like their making these movies with absolutely no plan in mind. J.J.
clearly had a direction he wanted to go in and then they just brought in Rian Johnson and let him do whatever he wanted with this one with complete and utter disregard to
everything J.J. had set up. It’s like they decided to handle the plot of a major blockbuster
cash cow franchise by doing one of those creative writing games where one person starts
a story and then another person writes the second part and someone completely different ends it. Those games are fun but not the kind of direction you need for a major film series like this. And Rian Johnson apparently hasn’t directed too many films. He did
Looper which everybody tells me is amazing, but to me looks like the most boring and
predictable time travel story I’ve ever seen, so I’ve never cared to watch it. He’s done
Brick which I’ve never heard of and a couple episodes of Breaking Bad including the
fly/contamination episode which admittedly was a good episode. But that’s it. So to
quote Mike Stoklasa of Red Letter Media, “They gave the 2nd film of this major franchise
to Just Some Guy.” Which is shocking. They let this guy do whatever he wanted
whether it made sense or not, whether it was satisfying or not. And it’s had a pretty poor
response from fans, including myself. Youtube is like on fire with Last Jedi hate. It’s
beautiful man. And the more Disney talks about it and tries to explain themselves, the
worse they look. And now J.J.’s coming out and saying if you don’t like the movie, well
that means you don’t like women. Which is bullshit. And we also have Simon Pegg
coming out and confirming that Rian Johnson completely ignored J.J.’s plans and did his
own thing but J.J.’s got to “support the party line” so he’s acting like it’s A-ok. My
personal experience I think echoes a lot of people. I had a good time watching it in the
theatre because it was Christmas time and I saw it with my Dad and it was a fun little
family event. I had an adult beverage. My theatre was offering a red drink if you
preferred the sith and I had A Blue Hope which I think was Dan Akroid Crystal head
vodka with a blue lightsaber straw in it. And so we watched it, and there were lasers and
explosions, so we’re having a good time and all the while I’m watching and asking “Where are you going with this? Where are you going with this?” And there were a lot of strange choices like the infamous “Leia Poppins” sequence, Admiral Holdo which was a character I absolutely detested, Luke drinking alien milk or possibly semen from an alien walrus, etc. The list goes on. I left theater having enjoyed myself, but when I started talking to my friends about it- in particular, my buddy Andy- I started thinking about it and I realized, I was not happy with what I saw. It actually gets worse the more you think about it. And I’ve noticed a lot of people saying similar things. It’s like the first stage of grief is denial and I’m noticing a lot of other people saying they initially enjoyed it but then it started falling apart for them. I think they were way too focused on “doing their own thing”. One of the early bad signs of this move actually predates the Force Awakens where J.J. announced the Expanded Universe, which is one of the major things Star Wars fans, myself included, adore, is no longer canon. I thought that was a terrible decision then, and it’s a worse one now. Disney wants the money from the fans of Star Wars without earning those fans’ trust and without respecting the material. They are also too lazy to hire an intern to skim Wookiepedia, so that they have a general outline of what the continuity of this series is. I think in an effort to do their own thing they have actually successfully killed the franchise. Nice job breaking its hero.
Me: Referencing Luke Skywalker’s dark story arc? So with the more surprising aspects of the film, you feel The Last Jedi was iconoclastic and undercut its old established momentum?

Peeler: They basically drove this car one-hundred miles an hour into a brick wall. I wasn’t too crazy about the mysteries set up in the Force Awakens but many other people were. I think you were in particular. I just kind of trusted that it would be good because I liked the Force Awakens and Rogue One. I love the Marvel Movies, and Disney in general was making me happy. My friend Josh introduced me to Gravity Falls recently and I’ve been digging that. They just bought EVERYTHING of value from 20th Century Fox, including The X-men, Deadpool, and Fantastic Four, which as a comic book fan I’ve been anticipating for several years. I’m so happy about that deal; they’ve got Aliens so Ridley Scott can’t make anymore shitty Prometheus sequels. They’ve got Terminator. They’ve got so much good stuff. They could make Dodgeball 2 tomorrow and it would be awesome. And all of a sudden they just shit the bed with The Last Jedi. I did not see that coming. Whatever they were going to do, I figured it would be good so I didn’t speculate. I wanted to wait and see. And they just did nothing with it. Rey’s parents are nobody, so
that was pointless. Snoke’s a nobody, pointless. The Knights Of Ren are Sir Not-
Appearing-In-This-Film. And Luke Skywalker’s a bitch now. Just why even bother
making a Star Wars movie if you’re not going to do it right. I definitely feel the classic
characters got shafted in this film after the ABYSMAL treatment of Luke, Admiral
Akbar’s off screen death, and Chewie being reduced to a terrible running Porg gag, but
also what was the point in getting me invested in Rey, Poe, Finn, and Kylo if they’re not
going to get any decent development either? It doesn’t matter what generation of
character they were, they both got treated poorly.

Me:You were apathetic towards General Snoke before The Last Jedi. Were your feelings solidified after watching his demise?

Peeler: The best part about the movie for me was when he got his dumb ass sliced in half.  I’ve never been impressed with Snoke. And for the record, I’m super disappointed he wasn’t a giant.  I’m serious. I think they missed a unique opportunity to show a new unique alien species that we’ve never seen before.  He’s just a generic Sith lord. That’s it. He’s powerful and he can shoot lightening and whatever. Who gives a crap? And he’s old and CGI….because.  Why couldn’t you just put an old dude in a chair? Why not just put Andy Serkais as himself, for once, not in mo-cap gear, in a fucking chair? He was just in Black Panther as himself a week ago and he was fine…..all ten minutes of him which is a rant for another day.  Every Sith lord we’ve seen has got something going for them. The best of course is Vader. He’s the original big menacing bad guy played perfectly by David Prowse and James Earl Jones. Then you have Palpatine, who is deliciously evil and cunning and calculating played by Ian McDiarmid.  Maul’s got a cool look and badass martial arts by Ray Park. Dooku has the raw power of Christopher Lee. And even Grevious is an unsettling alien monster. And the Expanded Universe is ripe with kickass Sith with their own unique looks and personality, whether its Asajj Ventress from Clone Wars, Revan from Knights Of The Old Republic, The Grand Inquisitor from Rebels, and even Star Killer from Force Unleashed and Mara Jade (I think she started off as a Sith and then became a good guy).  Snoke just kind of blends in as a poor man’s Palpatine. I honestly don’t think there was anything there of value to begin with  but it’s the job of the writer, to make something. Word on the net is that Snoke was either supposed to be or people feel he should have been Darth Plagueis The Wise, the Sith lord who can allegedly create or restore life and whom it’s heavily hinted at in Revenge of the Sith was Palpatine’s master. Palpatine betrayed and killed him and became the new master of the Sith Order and then orchestrated his plan detailed in the prequels to take over the galaxy.  And honestly all the signs are there backing this up. He’s super old, he’s disfigured which suggests that Palpatine only thought he’d killed him but he survived. That would have been a more satisfying answer as opposed to nothing at all which is what we are given. It’s absolutely ridiculous that a Sith lord powerful enough to effortlessly bitch slap people with lightning and telekinesis without even getting up from his throne, powerful enough to link two separate people on other ends of the galaxy via a telepathic Skype, would need Rey to tell him anything about where Luke is hiding out.  A guy that powerful should be able to find him on his own. And second of all, he should be able to see an obvious betrayal happening right in front of his face. The only justification I can see for this (which I’m sure Rian Johnson or another mouth piece for Kathleen Kennedy will use at some point) is that the Jedi in the prequels were oblivious to a Sith lord right in front of their noses for years and Sith lords are kind of portrayed as stupid back stabbers that betray each other so regularly that their can only be two of them at any given time. But that bullshit falls apart with some simple logic: if the Sith are that retarded (which they are not supposed to be if you’ve played Knights Of The Old Republic or read the Sith novels) then how did they ever at any point in Galactic History become a force capable of taking over the Galaxy.  And also, if your mining the prequels to explain away your plot holes, your doing something wrong.

Me: You were also always apathetic towards Rey’s parentage as you mentioned. Do you believe Kylo when he says that her parents were these nobodies, or do you believe there’s more to that subplot? Do you care anymore about it or can it be salvaged in your eyes?

Peeler: I’m going to skip the first question for the moment and go directly to the second one. I don’t care anymore ☺ lol.  Again I didn’t care initially but apparently everybody else did.  And I was expecting SOME kind of explanation given how hard it was set up in the Force Awakens and it should have been addressed.  Not addressing it or claiming it was all bullshit is just bad story telling. Truth be told, there’s nothing wrong with her parents being nobody.  The galaxy is full of force sensitive people who have the potential to become Jedis and to me Rey was always just a role player playing the D20 Star Wars table top game who started play as a level 5 Jedi Guardian (which by the way is a class so powerful it will make a Paladin blush).  It also explains why she’s over-powered; sorry Finn. That’s what you get for leveling up as the Soldier Class. And poor Poe wanted to take the Dog-fighter Class from D20 Future but that’s a prestige class so he had to level up as a Fast Hero first and that’s why he sucks. That’s why all of them suck compared to Rey which is another problem with her lineage not being explained. Since the Force Awakens, the character has been accused of being a Mary Sue. These were concerns I mostly ignored and over looked since I liked the Force Awakens. But the fact of the matter is that in that movie, she’s a master of hand to hand combat, so techno-savy she can completely fix, fly, and expertly man the guns of the Millenium Falcon having never seen it before, is kind of a bitch to Finn when she first meets him for no reason, and can expertly use the Force and a lightsaber within approximately one day of learning she may have some connection to the Jedi.  In this movie she’s more powerful than Kylo Ren whose trained for years, beats up Luke Skywalker with a stick, and can break the ground and lift rocks with the force with absolute NO TRAINING. If that’s not a Mary Sue, I don’t know what is. That or the bitch is fudging her character sheet and gave herself 10 extra levels while everybody else is at 5 and gave herself 18s in all stats. Explaining that she’s the long lost child of Luke and Mara Jade or Han and Leia or Obi-Wan’s grand daughter or the reincarnation of Anakin Skywalker or Darth Revan would at least be a satisfying explanation as to where this unbridled power is coming from and I think it would have also made the fans who’ve been speculating for two years a little happier too.

Me: The biggest complaints I’m hearing, and you’ve addressed them slightly, have to do with Luke Skywalker. Mark Hamill himself spoke about an uneasiness he felt towards this arc. What are your thoughts on The Last Jedi’s Luke Skywalker?

Peeler: The mishandling of Luke Skywalker is hands down the worst thing about this movie.  Sometimes the first reaction is the correct reaction and I 100% support Mark Hamil’s original criticism of the film.  The only reason he has “expressed regret” at his earlier comments is because Kathleen Kennedy told him to keep his mouth shut.  I have no respect for her whatsoever. To quote Mark himself “How does the most optimistic person in the entire galaxy just give up and stop being a hero?”  I don’t know, but I don’t buy it. I also agree that “This is not my Luke?” My Dad described Luke in this film as a pussy and coward. Not only do I agree, I think it’s worse than that.  You’re telling me Rian Johnson, that Luke Skywalker, the most optimistic man in universe who literally went through hell and back to bring his father back from the dark side, his father who was the 2nd most evil man in the galaxy and guilty of genocide, is also the same man who years later entertained the notion of MURDERING A CHILD, not just any child but his nephew and best friend’s son, because he MIGHT do something bad in the future?  This is the same guy? Bullshit! This is character assassination. I don’t know why Kathleen Kennedy doesn’t like Luke Skywalker but she’s in the wrong business if this is the best thing she can think to do with him. We’ve been waiting two years to see Luke back in action.  Actually longer than that. I’ve been waiting since like 1987 to see to see a new live action adventure with Luke Skywalker. I was 5 years old. Return Of The Jedi was my first and favorite Star Wars’ Film. I will never forget the heroic stand Luke made against the Emperor when tempted to cut down his father!  Looking at his father’s broken mechanical hand and then looking at his own cybernetic replacement. I will never forget as he threw down his lightsaber, looked the Emperor in the eye and said, “Never! I’ll never join the dark side. You failed your highness. I am a Jedi! Like My Father Before Me!” That’s a hero.  That’s Luke Skywalker. I don’t know who this homeless guy drinking space walrus semen is but it ain’t Luke Skywalker. Now I’m not saying Mark did a bad job. Mark Hamil was the best thing about this movie. Hands down the best actor and hands down the best performance in the movie. He was a professional and he performed their garbage script like a professional which is a damn shame because he didn’t get a chance to do anything cool in the movie.  He didn’t fight anybody. He didn’t use a lightsaber. He didn’t go on an adventure with Rey which would have made me love and appreciate both of them. Meanwhile, Harrison Ford got a chance to do everything he wanted to do. He got to shoot the bad guys, fly around the galaxy, be a cool dude, and finally kill off a character he’s been trying to kill of for years but do so in a cool dramatic way. Luke was too lazy to leave the fucking planet he was on.  And I’m sorry, but the moment he died and faded away at the end of the movie, I felt this sinking feeling in my chest and I realized that Star Wars had just literally died. To me it’s dead now.

A brief aside.  I’ve been watching the hell out of Ash Vs. Evil Dead recently and first of all, it’s an awesome show.  Go check it out! I had the pleasure of meeting Dana Delorenzo a couple months ago at Pensacon and she’s awesome.  I bring the show up because that’s how you properly do a legacy show. Bruce Cambell’s Ash Williams is just as awesome as he was in the movies, but also his supporting cast is just as awesome as him.  Dana Delorenzo, Ray Santiago, and Lucy Lawless play great characters that elevate Bruce’s performance and he elevates them. Their characters are so good that I don’t just tune in for Bruce, I tune in for them as well and fully accept them as heroes (or awesome villains) in this world.  The show is definitely a team effort and it shows. The Last Jedi does not do this. There is a genuine effort to make the classic characters look bad that makes everybody in the movie look bad. Classic characters don’t get anything to do. New characters have arcs that are either insulting or go nowhere and nobody develops.

Me: Reylo has somewhat of a weird cult following. Did The Last Jedi do enough to make you interested in their arc at least?

Peeler: As I said before, I did enjoy the movie while I was watching it the first time and well, yes.  I felt this was intriguing at the time. I definitely shipped Rey x Kylo Ren while I was in the theater.  I don’t know. Maybe it was Adam Driver’s sparkling abs, but yeah, I thought those scenes between the two of them were romantic and kind of sexy.  In the long run? No, because again, I don’t care anymore. But the real shame of it is, I feel this was a missed opportunity. Let’s ignore the obvious criticism that these two might be brother and sister (it was my speculation that they were Jaina and Jacen Solo from the real Expanded Universe).  I think what really should have happened is that after the fight with the praetorian guard, which I think is universally enjoyed even by people like me who didn’t like the movie, when Kylo asked Rey to join the First Order with him declaring that, ” she’s nobody but not to him. To him she’s special”……she should have joined him.  That would have been cool. That would have been compelling. That would have been unexpected. And they could have taken this series in a whole new direction that we’ve never seen before. Imagine, a Jedi and Sith Lord as not just lovers, but as the new king and queen of the Galactic Empire! Two people drawn to each other on the opposite sides of the spectrum of good and evil, learning from each other, compromising who they are in an effort to make a better galaxy one way or the other.  Maybe they could have focused on demilitarizing the First Order and turning it back into the Galactic Republic, building a new galaxy together but dealing with harsh opposition on all sides of the argument and completely outside (the Hutts, the Mandolorians, the Black Sun, the Yuuzhan Vong,etc) and struggling with the temptation to switch to either side of the force and perhaps never fully trusting each other. That would have been a great movie and it could have satisfied that bold new direction itch that they’ve been trying to scratch.  But you know, that’s a complicated and interesting high science fiction idea with no clear idea of who to blow up in the movie, so they’d never do it. At least this Brain Trust of a Star Wars team wouldn’t do it. So yeah, they just blew up the lightsaber. Rey stayed good. Kylo stayed bad. And my erection got bored. They killed any interesting romance for me before it got started. It’s a shame. I found Daisey Ridley very sexy in the Force Awakens and I could have written such lovely, nasty fan fiction about her and Kylo Ren. And just so you know there is plenty of great porn of Rey out there on the inter-webs if you know where to look.

Thanks again for having me here dude. Hope everybody enjoyed my rantings.  This is the Dreadpirate signing off.

-Walter Howard-