Movie Talk - The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Next up is a quick look at a franchise I’ve sometimes talked about here: the Terminator franchise. Yeah, I’m jumping on the Terminator bandwagon since that new trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate was released. I thought it looked fine, but I want to see more before I make my decision on it. We’ve been burned before with this franchise, so I can’t blame fans for sitting this one out. Thankfully, I’m sitting the possibly “meh” entries out for this post. Today, it’s just the first two movies: The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

T2 is what introduced me to the franchise. I know I’ve seen it on TV plenty of times. I even rented it as a kid, though I never got to watch it unfiltered. In fact, I think this is the first time I’ve seen it without it being edited for TV. I didn’t see the first movie until a few years later on TV as well. Since I had the time, I decided to watch them over the weekend. I have T2 on DVD while the first movie was relegated to Netflix. It’s also the first time that I’ve seen the extended edition for T2.

Weird Star Trek Episodes - Endgame aka "All Good Things... Version 2.0"

Young Janeway: Are our uniforms going to look that bad?

Old Janeway: Well... yes. If there's one bad thing "All Good Things..." brought into existence, it's this crappy uniform!

All this talk about the Game of Thrones final episode has got me thinking about other final episodes. Last episodes tend to range from “what the heck was that crap” to “that was pretty good.” Even some of the best shows end up having a bad ending. I’ve never watched Dexter, but that’s one that gets thrown around a lot. Sci-fi franchises have also felt this. For every “All Good Things…,” you’ll get a “These are the Voyages….” This stuff just tends to be random. Then, there are the ones that just “whelm” you. They’re not good nor or are they bad. In Star Trek’s case: it’s one thing: “Endgame.”

No, this doesn’t involve Captain Janeway flinging Mjolnir at the Borg Queen because that would be too cool. “Endgame” was the series finale for Star Trek: Voyager and it aired May 21, 2001. At this point, I was catching up with the show through reruns on UPN. We only had the station for about a year, so I didn’t start watching VOY properly until the end of the sixth season. We even got a few surprises in the finale like Alice Krige reprising her role as the Borg Queen. I know I liked this back when I first saw it, but why did have a whelming feeling when I saw this a couple of years ago?

Trek Novels - Star Trek: The Captain's Table Book 4 - Fire Ship

“Today’s post is the start at a look at an anthology series that was released throughout 1998 called 'The Captain’s Table.' The basic premise is that there is a special bar called The Captain’s Table and captains of all sorts come and relax for a bit. Six books looked at the different captains at that time… I’m going to try to look each book during the next few months…” 

So... I really got behind on this one. I think I started reading it sometime last year, but other stuff got in the way. Next, I lost track of the dang thing. When I finally got around to finishing it, let's just say that  it took longer than I thought it would take. So, Game of Thrones has come to an end. While I’ve only seen one episode and bits and pieces, I’ve enjoyed all the furor that’s been said about the last season. It’s even making me want to revisit something that’s related to the book I’m talking about today. I’ll probably talk about that later this week, though. I’m still not that interested in seeing more  GOT especially since I have a lot of other things I want to see.

I haven’t read too many Voyager novels. While I do have a couple, I haven’t gotten to them yet. Today’s pick is Fire Ship from The Captain’s Table collection. As you can tell by the cover, it’s all about Captain Kathryn Janeway, someone who’s not exactly one of my favorite characters. I think I know why it took so long to get to this one. The book is written by Diane Carey, who I almost got mistaken for Diane Duane, another Trek novelist. Carey’s done quite a few Trek novels, and some were even novelizations of episodes. It’s not stated when it takes place, but I looked online and it says that it takes place right before the episodes, “Year of Hell.”

Random Thoughts On... The Netflix Godzilla Anime Trilogy

In a couple of weeks, the G-Man will be returning to theatres. Yeah, it took five years, but Legendary Pictures has finally gotten another Godzilla movie out. From what I’ve seen and heard, this looks like it’ll be fun especially since a certain King will grace its head(s) once again. For this month, I was originally going to do a list of my favorite Godzilla films. I haven’t seen them all, so that’s gotta wait. Yes, I’m such a bad Godzilla fan. Instead of that, I decided to revisit and finish the anime Godzilla trilogy on Netflix. I can safely say that it’s… okay?

Alright, let me start off at the beginning. Toho Co., the ones behind the Godzilla movies, announced that they were going to do a trilogy of animated Godzilla movies. Toho Animation worked along with Polygon Pictures to bring these movies to life. The first movie, Planet of the Monsters, was released in 2017. Its sequel, City on the Edge of Battle, was released in 2018. The final movie, The Planet Eater, was also released in 2018. It didn’t make it to Netflix until 2019, though.

I was moderately interested in the movies. When I found out the first one was on Netflix, I immediately watched it. It took a while for me to get around to the sequel, though. As for The Planet Eater, I actually decided to re-watch the first two movies and it as well this week. I guess I felt I was missing something the first time around with the first two. I’ve also briefly talked about the first two here as well. I wasn’t a big fan of them and now that I’ve finished watching the trilogy,… eh.

Trade Tales! - Serenity: A Shepard's Tale

Next up for the month is a return to the Firefly franchise. Outside of the TV show and movie, I haven’t ingested other Firefly material. I think part of it just has to do with the fact that I got other stuff to do. It is out there if you look. There are novels, Dark Horse Comics has had the license to do stories with most of Joss Whedon’s properties and Firefly is one of them. Whedon’s even been involved with a few. I ended up coming across this somewhere and something about it really struck my fancy: Shepard Book.

Derrial Book (played by the late Ron Glass) was the Serenity’s holy man. He’s a Shepard which is a priest or pastor in the Firefly universe. While he was a man of God, he seemed to do well with the pretty shady crew of the Serenity. Even he had some shades himself especially if you remember his little moment with “kneecaps.” We never found out more since the show got cancelled. When he was brought back for a bit in the movie, he met an unfortunate end. Since he was pretty popular, the Whedons (Joss and Zack) decided to do a graphic novel surrounding his origins.

Serenity: A Shepard’s Tale was released in 2010. Joss provided the plot while Zack handled the story and dialogue. Chris Samnee, who I know from his run on Daredevil, handled the artwork. The colors were done by Dave Stewart. The letterer was Michael Haesler. Finally, the awesome cover art was done by Steve Morris. So, what did this Shepard get up to in his youth?