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News Around the Net

Here’s our first trailer for the long-awaited Andor season two!!

I can’t wait for this!!!  I thought the first season was a masterpiece.  Some of the best Star Wars ever.  It’s been a long wait for season two.  (I’m not wild about Disney’s release strategy of dumping three-episodes of the show per week for four weeks.  On the one hand, that fits with what I’ve read about this season’s structure of four three-episode stories, each taking place during one of the four years between season one and Rogue One.  So it’s sort of like we’re getting four Andor movies, one per week.  That’s cool.  But on the other hand, I am not a fan of a binge release schedule.  I’ve been waiting years for this show, and I’d prefer not to rush things.  I like enjoying one episode per week.  I guess we’ll see how this goes!)

Here’s the trailer for Jurassic World: Rebirth:

It’s… fine?  I love the original Jurassic Park, and I’d be thrilled to see another great Jurassic Park movie someday, but this trailer looks like it’s just the same story all over again.  A bunch of people go to the island of dinosaurs on some mission and it all goes wrong.  It’s interesting they’ve kept the Jurassic World title, even though they seem to be moving away from the storyline of the last two films in which dinosaurs were released across the globe.  I like Scarlett Johannsson and Mahershala Ali, and the creative team of directer Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, The Creator) and screenwriter David Koepp (who has scripted many great movies, including the original Jurassic Park) gives me hope.  But this trailer felt to me like same old, same old.

This is a heartbreaking story: Ezra Edelman, who directed the incredible O.J.: Made in America documentary series, has apparently been working for five years on a nine-hour documentary about Prince, but due to a disagreement with the Prince Estate, Netflix has agreed to shelve the entire project and never release it.  Click here for an in-depth article about this project from The New York Times.  It sounds like it would have been amazing.  I really feel for Mr. Edelman; to have worked for years on this project that will now apparently never see the light of day is just awful.

In similar news, Will Forte reminds us that Warner Brothers last year shelved the completed Coyote vs. Acme movie, never to see the light of day, in order to get a tax break.  Mr. Forte is still pissed about it, and I don’t blame him.

There have been some sad losses recently; let’s start with the great Gene Hackman.  As a kid, Mr. Hackman first indelibly impressed himself upon my consciousness with his performance as Lex Luthor in 1979’s Superman: The Movie (and, of course, Superman II and Superman IV).  As I got older, I appreciated his amazing performances in films such as The Conversation, Unforgiven, and The Royal Tenenbaums.  What a talent.

It’s also sad news that actor Tony Roberts has passed away.  Mr. Roberts was so memorable in films such as The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Serpico, and his many collaborations with Woody Allen, including Annie Hall and Play it Again, Sam.

I wasn’t a fan of his work, but I was nonetheless sad to read that Bob Orci, who worked with Alex Kurtzman on many films, including J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot films, passed away at only 51 years old.

I’ve never watched Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  For years I’ve intended to go back and watch it, but I just never found the time, and when the stories of Joss Whedon’s bad behavior surfaced a few years ago it sort of took the wind out of my sails and I lost the desire.  Still, I’m aware of Michelle Trachtenberg’s work on that show and other projects, and it’s a tragedy that she’s passed away at age 39.

In other news… it’s interesting to read about these new cast additions to The Rings of Power season three: Jamie Campbell Bower (Vecna on Stranger Things) and Eddie Marsan (V For Vendetta, Sherlock Holmes, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell).

I loved season four of True Detective (True Detective: Night Country), so I’m excited that writer/director Issa Lopez is returning for season five.  I can’t wait!

I cannot fathom why the dunderheads running Star Trek these days haven’t produced the Khan mini-series that Nicholas Meyer wrote years ago, back when Trek first returned to TV/Paramount+ (it was called CBS All Access back then).  (Mr. Meyer is one of the best creatives to ever work on Star Trek; he wrote and directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and he also wrote the bulk of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, basically everything set in 1986 on Earth.)  But I am intrigued that this script is going to be brought to life as an audio drama, and that it’ll star Naveen Andrews (Sayid on Lost) as Khan, and Wrenn Schmidt (For All Mankind) as Marla McGivers!

Let’s wrap up with two big pieces of news:

First, there were lots of rumors that Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down as the head of Lucasfilm.  But that all seems to be false and much ado about nothing, according to Ms. Kennedy herself in this lengthy interview with Deadline.  Ms. Kennedy has been in charge ever since George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012.  Ms. Kennedy has been a focus for misogynistic online vitriol for years, and while the online trolls hate her, I think that she’s done a decent job.  I think her batting average with the Star Wars franchise has been high.  She had to reinvent what it meant for anyone other than George Lucas to make new Stars Wars stuff, and I was happy to see new movies and, most excitingly, new and very high-quality Star Wars TV shows on Disney+.  Rogue One and Andor are some of the best Star Wars ever made, as was the finale to the animated Clone Wars series (which was originally cancelled; Ms. Kennedy permitted Dave Filoni and his team to go back and finish the show as intended, which was a miracle).  The Mandalorian was terrific, and I quite enjoyed Ahsoka, The Acolyte, and Skeleton Crew (all of which I think are better than their online reputations). The film franchise started off strong with The Force Awakens (which has aged very poorly, but was a blast when it was first released, recapturing the fun tone of the OT, in contrast to the stuff, talky Prequels) and The Last Jedi (of which I am a fierce defender, even while I do admit it has flaws), but then crumbled with the abysmal The Rise of Skywalker (which sunk the whole Sequel Trilogy for me).  Solo wasn’t a bad movie; I’ve been mystified as to why that film’s failure at the box office seemed to permanently paralyze the production of additional Star Wars films.  (It was obvious to me that releasing it six months after The Last Jedi was a dumb move.)  So I think Ms. Kennedy’s quality control has been a little lacking, and the approach to the TV shows has felt haphazard… but she’s also responsible for a LOT of great new Star Wars content that I have loved!  (She hasn’t been successful in other areas: I give her credit for trying to bring back both Indiana Jones and Willow, but both new projects were flawed.)

And, in huge news #2:

I was shocked, and I mean shocked, to read the news that half-siblings Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have sold their interest in the James Bond franchise to Amazon.  The Broccoli family has steadfastly owned and guided the Bond film franchise ever since its inception with 1962’s Dr. No.  Barbara’s father Cubby Broccoli oversaw the franchise until he passed it on to Barbara and Mr. Wilson in the nineties.  I feel like Bond was the last franchise personally owned and overseen by one creative force.  I never ever thought that would change.  There’s a lot of speculation as to why Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson sold — here are some interesting guesses — but the bottom line is that Bond is now owned by Jeff Bezos and Amazon, and as a Bond fan I doubt that bodes well for the franchise.

As was my assessment of Kathleen Kennedy’s management of Lucasfilm from a few paragraphs ago, I think the Broccoli/Wilson family’s oversight of Bond has been far from perfect.  While I found loved Daniel Craig as Bond and thought all five of his Bond films were exceptionally well-made and beautiful visually, I also felt that, after the triumph of Casino Royale, the other four films were all let-downs (each in their own way).  It’s taking way too long between films, and following Mr. Craig’s departure from the role back in ’21, it doesn’t seem like there’s been any forward momentum on a new installment.  This has all been frustrating.

I’ll bet that Amazon is going to move fast and give us lots of new Bond product in a hurry.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see the series expand beyond just films; I’d be shocked if we don’t see some Bond streaming TV show spin-off series in the next few years.  But is this a good thing?  Amazon’s TV product has been very hit or miss (their huge-budget Lord of the Rings TV series is good but far from great), and I certainly don’t trust Jeff Bezos.  Having Bond owned by a huge corporation that probably sees the character as just a way to make money doesn’t fill me with hope.  I’ll certainly approach any future Bond projects with an open heart, but for now, I think this is a big bummer.

I’ll leave you with this fun clip from the archives, posted by the gang at the terrific Inglorious Treksperts podcast: Siskel and Ebert’s review of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, from 1982:

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