Although I don’t love the fact that every major movie release these days seems to be a part of some existing franchise, and I don’t necessarily think these new Avatar movies need to be made, that didn’t stop me from going to the theater to watch this movie. And I was not disappointed. There were some things that I didn’t like about the movie, but for the most part it was an enjoyable experience.
For me the highlights of the movie were the visuals. The effects, the CGI, the meticulous way that the world of the Naavi were built, were all top notch. This is the sort of movie that you will want to watch on the big screen. I didn’t see the 3D version, so I’m not sure if that would have enhanced the experience or not. The plot and characters were also better than the original movie. It’s been a while since I last saw it, so that is not as fresh in my mind, but this was a more compelling story.
On the downside, not having seen the original in a while, the beginning of the movie was quite confusing and I thought they could have done a better job of bringing the viewer up to speed in the world of Avatar. I also thought the movie was too long. Three plus hours is just too much for a movie. Specifically, the part I felt that could have been cut down was the part when Jake and his family arrive at the water tribes and integrate themselves into the tribes. They could have slashed a half hour from that part without missing too much.
The good in this movie outweighed the bad and I think this will be an enjoyable experience if you choose to venture into a theater to watch it.
It’s hard to give a full review for the first season of House of the Dragon. There was so much going on in the season, and it was quite different than any show I’ve ever seen. Some of it was good and some not so good.
The most jarring aspect of the show were the two time-jumps. At first, I didn’t like the switching of the actors and didn’t think it was entirely necessary to do so, especially since I liked some of the younger actors better, particularly young Rhaenyra. Of course, I didn’t realize that there would be a second time jump, necessitating the changing of the actors. However, it made no sense that they kept Ser Criston Cole and Daemon Targaryen, when the actors playing those roles were so much younger than the characters in the latter part of the season. They didn’t even bother trying to age them.
Game of Thrones was one of my all time favorite shows, and I don’t think season one of House of the Dragon quite measures up to it even though there was a lot about the show that I liked. Whereas Game of Thrones was a mix of magic, palace intrigue, and epic fighting scenes mixed in, House of the Dragon is much more about the palace intrigue, with dragons being more of a side show than the main event. The blend of those elements is what made Game of Thrones work so well.
What stood out on the show was the quality of the acting, especially Paddy Considine as King Viserys I Targaryen and Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen. The birth scenes were kind of like a war unto themselves and were overdone. The CGI with the dragons improved quite a bit over the years. Some of the gaps in logic were a bit much. As an example, it was so obvious that Rhaenyra’s first children were not from her husband, that it was almost preposterous that they would even try to masquerade it. Also, at the end Rhaenys Targaryen could have wiped out all of her Targaryen enemies and it was silly for her not to.
So, it was a bit of a mixed bag, but the good definitely overshadowed the not so good. It’s a worthy successor to Game of Thrones and I think with less jarring time jumps, the second season should be better than the first.
I really enjoyed the first book in this series. With the bar set high, Waking Gods, did not disappoint. The book takes place a number of years after the end of the first book. It starts with the robot giant, Themis, touring around the world, and preparing just in case aliens invade the planet—and they do. This book features robots coming to Earth, and Themis engaging them in fights. It’s readily apparent that Themis can’t possibly fight all of them. As people die by the millions from these robot encounters, the humans need to find an alternate way of dealing with the situation—a way to prove to the aliens that humans are worthy of surviving as a species.
The quality of the writing in this novel is strong. Although most of the time I didn’t mind the nontraditional storytelling method of using mission logs, journal entries, and interviews to tell the story, sometimes it gets a bit wonky. Like when there is a life and death situation, and the person is narrating real time what is happening. That makes absolutely no sense, and it is clearly a vehicle used to tell the story. In a real life situation, that would never happen. But the story telling is good enough to overcome that. Overall, it was a fun read, with some good twists and reveals along the way. The author is also not afraid to kill off big characters, which can be very risky for the author, but it also often pays big dividends. This is a good novel that I would recommend.
Sleeping Giants is a really cool book in a lot of ways. I’m generally not a big fan of novels that are not written in a traditional manner. The whole experimental style is usually not my thing since I think often times it is a gimmick being used because the writing is subpar, but that is clearly not the case here. The book is written as a series of news reports, journal entries, and interviews by a nameless, faceless, yet very powerful governmental agent. It’s done in a clever manner. An easy comparison for this novel is World War Z, but I thought the way this story was told was far superior to the way World War Z was told. With World War Z it wasn’t a continuous narrative that you could follow from beginning to end. It felt more like bits and pieces scattered. In this novel, I could follow the story entirely, despite the non-traditional narrative style.
The novel had an interesting and unique premise. Various parts of a giant robot, far technologically superior than anything we have is scattered around the world. The US puts together a team of scientists and military to find these pieces, put them together, and learn how to use this robot, all in a way that threatens a world war. Despite the lack of a traditional narrative style, the characters are well developed. There are about four or five main characters, and they are all distinctive and have strong personalities. There are also some interesting twists and turns along the way.
All in all, this is a refreshing and creative novel that I would recommend.
It appears that Terry Brooks is getting darker in his old age. The second book in the Dark Legacy of Shannara trilogy is a good bit more grim than most of his writing. I don’t remember him killing off so many of his characters in previous novels and certainly not in such violent ways. This novel has more of an apocalyptic feel to it than his other work. It continues right after the first novel ends with a group of druids and the Ohmsford boys, and a company of others accidentally going into the Forbidding searching for the missing elf stones. They encounter the demonic creatures who live in this land, who had been locked away with Elven magic in the form of the Ellcrys, which is dying, allowing the magic protecting the Four Lands from the Forbidding to weaken.
Although I certainly don’t mind my fantasy being dark, it seems odd coming from Brooks. I have read so many of his novels, and this seems a bit of a departure for him. All the same, the writing is strong, the pacing is good, and the action sequences work. There are almost too many characters to keep track of, but that problem gets solved with the author killing off many of these characters during the course of this book. Perhaps that was the reason he started off with so many characters to begin with. Although I didn’t like this as much as book one, this was a good sequel, and I look forward to reading the final chapter of this trilogy.
