Green Phoenix - Walking With Dinosaurs (1999) Review

As stated many, many times during my various Jurassic Park reviews, I was absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs and paleontology growing up. A love I have actually healthily maintained to this day.

While I enjoy the fictional portrayals of dinosaurs, that passion also helped me to develop a love for documentaries and educational television and films. So much so that I even have a subscription to CuriosityStream simply because I want to have access to documentaries that I can't get on Netflix, Disney +, and Amazon. I had considered acquiring the documentary streaming service for a few months, due in no small part to the recommendation of some of my favorite YouTube educators and theorists. But the information that finally convinced me to purchase CuriosityStream was the knowledge that they had the entire Walking With... series available for viewing.

In the wake of the release of Jurassic Park in 1993, public interest in prehistoric life reached a fever pitch. This public excitement inspired Tim Haines with the idea of using ground-breaking computer effects and animatronics, similar to Jurassic Park, to create a dinosaur-centric documentary miniseries. Collaborating the Jasper James and special effects artist Michael Milne, Haines succeeded in creating the most advanced paleontological documentary ever seen to that point.

Walking with Dinosaurs is easily one of the most notorious and influential nature documentaries in recent memory and the progenitor of an equally influential franchise. It was a game-changer in the field of nature documentaries, utilizing state of the art animatronics, computer graphics, and the top paleontological knowledge of the time to bring the world of dinosaurs to life.

While dinosaur nature documentaries are a dime-a-dozen nowadays; back in the late 90s, Walking with Dinosaurs was truly revolutionary and the chance to talk about it in detail is exhilarating to me.

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Green Phoenix - Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) Review

A few weeks back, Red Diamond and I decided to check out the new Sonic the Hedgehog film. While I initially had no plans to review this particular film, I felt motivated to do so after seeing all the effort on the part of the production to...correct...some rather infamous glaring issues.

Video game films tend to have a, not all undeserved, reputation for terrible quality and when this film was first announced last year, it looked like that statement would continue to hold water.

And it all had to do with the design of Sonic himself.

Being as honest and as frank as possible, Sonic looked like absolute dogshit in the very first teaser posters and trailers. Looking far too cartoony to be real but far too realistic-looking to ever be considered cartoon cute, the original Sonic design essentially took a massive deuce in the uncanny valley.

And the internet made sure that absolutely everybody knew about it.

It was actually kind of incredible to watch a video game movie implode before it even reached the theatres in real-time. The design of Sonic could've very nearly sunk the entire project just from the teaser alone. It was then that the production team behind the Sonic the Hedgehog film decided to delay the film's release and completely revamp Sonic's design.

The result is what was delivered to theatres. A level of post-production on this scale for a video game movie due to public backlash is almost unheard of. And it is an incredible achievement what the CGI artists were able to accomplish. I felt like I had to support such a project.

Perhaps studios would listen to real audience feedback instead of "supposed" audience feedback.

So how did the film turn out? Is it an amazing work of art? Or is it like nearly every other video game movie?

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Sonic The Hedgehog (Movie) Review - Red Shard Prime

So I saw Sonic The Hedgehog in theaters on premiere night and a second time and there’s a major flaw with this movie which shows the cast and crew did not do their job properly.  They forgot to make this movie horrible.  Video game based movies are NOT supposed to be good, and by making it good, it means everyone really screwed up here.  So let me explain how they screwed up by making this movie good.

WARNING: MILD SPOILERS IN IMAGES AND WRITING!

Green Phoenix - Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark Review

Growing up, I had three great passions. Each of these passions was born out of a piece of media.

The first of my passions was Paleontology. Born of my love of the Jurassic Park franchise, I absolutely adored dinosaurs and desired to learn everything about them. I once even challenged a paleontology major college student (my second grade teacher's son) to a dinosaur naming contest and won.

My second passion was Astronomy. I adored stories of space travel and exploration. Star Trek and Star Wars captivated my childhood and has continued to form a core to my futurist tendencies.

My third passion was Archaeology. And given the title of this article, you can probably imagine which series influenced this passion. The Indiana Jones franchise built a love of history and alternate history that has only grown stronger as my knowledge of history grew with my education. Until I was in High School, there was a genuine part of me that wanted to go into archaeology as a profession.

Naturally, my dislike of busywork and the realities of being an archaeology teacher or museum curator (the only profitable jobs that an archaeology major could reasonably acquire) nipped much of that in the bud. But the love and appreciation for this film remained, especially as my passion turned to film-making and I learned the history of some of my favorite childhood films.

Like how Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark was a collaborative passion project between George Lucas, the director and creator of Star Wars, and Steven Spielberg, the director and force behind...basically the best films of the 1980s and 1990s. Much like Star Wars was inspired by George Lucas' love of Flash Gordon sci-fi serials, Indiana Jones was inspired by the treaure hunter and explorers of 1930s and 40s serials, as well as the romance and danger of characters like Alan Quartermain and James Bond.

Lucas wrote the initial draft, then called The Adventures of Indiana Smith. but shelved the idea for many years, as the means and method to create such a series of films were outside of his capacity. Initially wanting Clint Eastwood for the role of Indiana Jones, prior commitments on Eastwood's part to the film The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the development of The Empire Strikes Back being shifted to a different director to Lucas, would see Lucas and Spielberg team up with Harrison Ford to bring a brand new adventure franchise to life.

To phenomenal success. It is no exaggeration to state that the Indiana Jones franchise fundamentally shifted much of the public perception around adventure blockbusters and even the archaeological profession. Just as Star Trek and Star Wars inspired astronomers and Jurassic Park inspired paleontologists, Indiana Jones has become the benchmark for future archaeologists.

And for very good reason.

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Green Phoenix - Jurassic Park III Review

Upon the success of Jurassic Park, Director Joe Johnston expressed an interest to Steven Spielberg of directing a potential sequel. Though Spielberg already had intentions of directing The Lost World: Jurassic Park, he gave permission to Johnston to direct a third film, should such a film ever be produced. This understanding that he would not be able to direct the third film in the franchise pressured Spielberg to change the ending of The Lost World to include the T-Rex San Diego scene, which would have been the climax of the third film had Spielberg's initial plans gone through.

As a result, the third film was handed to Johnston with many of its best moments already utilized by previous films and a lack of novelization to base their ideas on, as Michael Crichton never wrote a third Jurassic Park novel. The result was a difficult pre-production as Johnston struggled with multiple writers to develop a proper script and story. With some scripts reading "like a really bad episode of Friends", the production almost immediately started on a rough patch. This resulted in a film that while a commercial success, drawing in nearly 369 million dollars with a 93 million dollar movie;  the film was critically mixed.

A sentiment I can't help but agree with, even with how much I love the Jurassic Park franchise and the nostalgic memories I have with this one in particular.

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Green Phoenix -The Lost World: Jurassic Park Review

Back in October of 2019, I took a look at Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic Jurassic Park. Based on the bestselling novel by Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park is a monstrous success when it came out. With its incredible effects and beautiful integration of new technologies with masterful cinematography, cinema of the 90s was forever changed by Spielberg's dinosaur epic.

So naturally, talks were given about making a sequel. Thing is, Michael Crichton had never wrote Jurassic Park with plans of making a sequel, and the main character of this second film was effectively killed at the end of the first novel. But with the popularity of Jurassic Park on the rise, fans pressured Crichton to work on building a sequel to his bestselling book. That would result in the publication of The Lost World in 1995.

With the release of the book, Spielberg was given the green light to begin production of a sequel, which would be released in 1997. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a very different film from its novelization. The film brought together much of the same production crew, including Director Steven Spielberg, who saw the project with the potential of creating a powerful new film franchise.

Did they succeed? Or is The Lost World: Jurassic Park doomed to spin the wheels of the franchise from the original, like so many other sequels?

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Green Phoenix - Building Better Backstories III

Last week I took a long look at Frozen 2 and throughout that review, I felt myself inherently comparing it to its predecessor. This is perfectly natural, as any sequel will be held to the standard set by the previous entries in any series (sometimes to its determent).

But while I was watching Frozen 2 in theaters, that unavoidable comparison brought an interesting thought to my mind. The story of the original Frozen is a fairly strong one, possessing only a single element that I feel is fairly weak and could be improved upon.

With that in mind, I was sitting in the Frozen 2 showing thinking about just how one minor change to the overall film could change the narrative direction of the film, and even improve its thematic and dramatic elements.

Which naturally left me realizing that that would make an excellent article for Building Better Backstories. So let's take another quick look at the Frozen franchise and change one story beat and see whether or not the "new" film is better or worse than the original?

THIS ARTICLE WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS TO THE ORIGINAL FROZEN.

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Green Phoenix - Frozen 2 Review

It's the sequel to Frozen. A sequel to one of Disney's highest grossing and most critically and commercially successful film's of the past decade.

Normally I would use this introductory section before the post cut to give the viewer and overview and history behind the production of the film in question and its significance (if any). If you have somehow managed to avoid Frozen and its incredible cultural impact on the 2010s and the Disney Company as a whole, then I would love to take a nice long look at that apparently spacious rock you've been hiding under.

With that out of the way, Frozen was an adaption of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen (the same author behind The Little Mermaid). Following its release in 2013, the film was a monstrous success and quickly became over-saturated in terms of merchandise and especially music (LET IT GO! LET IT GO!).

With such a hit, a sequel was less of a possibility and more of an inevitability. We all knew it was coming. But for the past 7 years, Disney was perfectly content to release the occasional Frozen short in place of a full length film. Many of these shorts were fairly well received, though Olaf's Frozen Adventure did receive a great deal of criticism for its length and its position ahead of 2017's Coco.

But then we saw that first trailer. And we knew that Frozen 2 was coming. So now the question is, does the sequel live up to original? Does it continue the story effectively and reach the same emotional and toyetic potential of the first?

It took 7 years to make this sequel, was the wait worth it?

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Green Phoenix - Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker Review

THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN MANY SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

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In 2012, George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney Company, following his announcement of retirement and the largely lukewarm or cold reception to Lucas' most recent films. Following this purchase, Disney began a complete overhaul of the Star Wars extended universe, eliminating the last 30 years of extra content (save for the movies and CGI TV shows) and beginning an all new sequel trilogy, furthering the story of Star Wars into the years after the Battle of Endor.

With that goal in mind, The Force Awakens was released in 2015 to...a lukewarm response. People seemed to enjoy it well enough, but felt that it was just too similar to Episode IV: A New Hope (To be fair to them, they're not wrong). Not exactly the strongest start to a new trilogy, but maybe Episode VIII would fix everything?

2017's Episode VIII: The Last Jedi did NOT fix everything. In fact, when coupled with the release of Solo 2018, it was considered by many to be lowest point in Star Wars history. The franchise was in dire straits and, somehow, Episode IX was going to have to fix the mistakes of The Last Jedi, conclude the story introduced in The Force Awakens, and be worthy of book-ending the last 42 years worth of films and resolving the entire "Skywalker Saga" in a form that audiences (many of whom were already turned against the film because of Episode VIII) could appreciate and enjoy.

So...did Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker meet those expectations? Well...if any of you saw my initial Twitter thread following the release of the film, you might get some sense of my opinion. But let's go into more detail.

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Green Phoenix - 2019 in Review

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!

This week is going to be a little different. This won't be an article analyzing a piece of media, or an editorial giving my take on an element or change I would make to a cultural capstone. Instead, in the spirit of the new year, I will be taking a look back on the previous years articles and looking at the various statistics behind those articles and what that can tell me about what I can do more next year.

While this article may be a bit more dry than my usual editorial, I feel that, as my audience, it is very important you see the work I go into making these articles the very best they can be and as entertaining and informative as I can make them.

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Green Phoenix - Die Hard Review

I know that the Nostalgia Critic just finished reviewing this film for his Christmas Day special, but I had this article ready for the past four weeks. I didn't copy him, I just wanted to talk about this film at Christmas too.

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Hope you all had a Happy Holidays! While I have taken most of December off to recollect myself and compile a stockpile of material for the coming year, I felt it would be a pleasant treat to give you all "Christmas" movie review to send the year off.

And what better movie to review than the most kick-ass Christmas movie of all time? An adaptation of the 1979 novel by Roderick Thorp's Nothing Lasts Forever, 1988's Die Hard has rightfully earned it place as one of the greatest action movies of all time.

Though the film's production history is one of false starts, recastings, and few expectations; it launched the action career of Bruce Willis and fundamentally shifted movie-goers expectations of what an action movie could be.

All with a wonderfully strange Christmas setting at its heart.

With that in mind, let's take a nice long look at Die Hard and end 2019 on a kick-ass action movie.

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Green Phoenix - Dragonheart Review

Last week we covered 1998's Godzilla, directed by Roland Emmerich. I gave a very...colorful opinion on that film (especially given my love of the Godzilla franchise and Kaiju films in general). With that in mind, lets take a look at a film that on the surface should suffer from all the same flaws, but due to some very different circumstances and motivations behind the scene, comes off much stronger and remembered far more fondly.

Originally set up as "The Skin Game with a dragon in it...Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", Dragonheart was a film which could've been the great Fantasy film that Hollywood was waiting for. The film that The Lord of the Rings would eventually become. In another universe, this film could've been directed by Richard Donner or Kenneth Branagh, but instead fell into the lap of Rob Cohen.

As I looked into the background and production of Dragonheart, what we got instead was a film where greed and studio politics kneecapped the final product yet could not completely destroy the heart behind the original story.

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Green Phoenix - Godzilla (1998) Review

Godzilla is without a doubt the most famous movie monster of all time. With a consistent film release since his premiere in 1954's Godzilla. The nuclear powered dinosaur has appeared in 35 feature films and numerous television shows and comic books. And while the current iteration of the "King of the Monsters", produced by Legendary Pictures, has reintroduced Japan's most famous kaiju to American audiences, there was an earlier attempt to reimagine Godzilla for American audiences.

In the wake of films like Jurassic Park, with its groundbreaking use of CGI, there was a proliferation of CG-heavy monster and disaster movies that characterized the "Dark Age of Cinema". Big of effects, but oftentimes light on story, this period would see Godzilla return with a controversial new-look but a surprisingly familiar story.

But maybe a little too familiar.

From the directorial mind behind Independence Day, 1998's Godzilla would be the film that killed Godzilla to the majority of western audiences for nearly a decade. Despite a magnificent marketing campaign, the lack of original story, compelling characters, and effects that failed to wow due to their sheer ubiquity during this period of blockbuster cinema left Godzilla a dull, plodding, and even mean-spirited mess that is still mocked to this day in the US and especially Japan.

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Green Phoenix - The Monolith Monsters Review

A few weeks back, I did a review of the 1977 killer car horror film The Car. Just like that film, I came across this week's movie through the hosted horror-comedy show Svengoolie (check out his website here).

And much like that film, I was absolutely enthralled by a film that represented the absolute best of a "so bad, it's good" kind of B-movie horror.

Released in 1957 by Universal-International, The Monolith Monsters is goofy, campy, and wholly ridiculous in both its premise and execution. And it was considered just as much back when it was first made as well.

But just like The Car, I found myself innately drawn to rather unknown black-and-white science fiction film from the Golden Age of B-Movies.

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Green Phoenix - Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Review

At long last, we come to the conclusion of the Star Wars saga, as determined by the Machete Order. I will not be exploring the new trilogy until the release of The Rise of Skywalker and can properly analyze the entire trilogy in retrospect and with hindsight.

That being said, with the first two films in the original trilogy now explored, and the two flashback episodes that show us the rise of Darth Vader and the fall of the Jedi, its time for both prequel and original series storylines to come to an end in Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

Released in 1983 as the final film in the original trilogy, the Machete Order treats Episode VI as the final conclusion to the Skywalker story and was also the conclusion of the series in Episode Order, one of the very few strong points of that viewing order.

With this basic introduction out of the way, let's take a look at the final story in the Star Wars saga (until Disney completes their first trilogy).

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Green Phoenix - Jurassic Park Review

Ever since I was child, I have been obsessed with dinosaurs. I remember watching every possible dinosaur documentary that I could get my hands on, and even some of those documentaries that detailed other non-dinosaur focused prehistoric creatures (I still find myself watching the Walking With series from time to time when I get a chance).

But of all the dinosaur media, none have had a greater impact on my love and passion than the Jurassic Park franchise. While I can only really call the first film a good film, I have always found the entire series enjoyable and thrilling...because, you know, it has dinosaurs in it.

Based on the best-selling 1990 novel by the late Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park was released in 1993 to near universal acclaim.

So let's take a look at one of my favorite films of all time and one of the most influential science fiction thrillers of all time: Jurassic Park.

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Green Phoenix - D-War Review

Let me tell you all the story of a film that I have grown to love, despite its awful plot, graphics, and characters. This is my absolute guilty pleasure movie.

Developed by a South Korean film production company, by a director who spent years of time, money, and energy with the hopes of creating a South Korean blockbuster film, Dragon Wars (sometimes just abbreviated to D-War) was the highest budgeted South Korean film at the time of its release and received a mostly negative response from viewers and critics.

Despite this, I happened across this film in a Walmart bargain bin probably 10 years ago and just thought "Why not?". And from that impulse buy, I was introduced to a work that is one part passion project and other part international Syfy film.

While not at all a good film, the love and ambition is clearly seen and I enjoy watching this movie just as much for its few good parts as I do for its many, many, many, many bad parts.

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Green Phoenix - Stars War: Revenge of the Sith Review

By the time Revenge of the Sith was announced in 2004, I was 10 years old and it became perhaps the first film that I can actually remember my excitement for its release. I come from a family of Star Wars fans, though my dad has always preferred Star Trek, and the reveal of Episode 3's title made us all exceptionally excited.

So when the film came out in May of 2005, my entire family went out to go see the film in theaters, something we only really did for the Harry Potter films. And even to this day, Revenge of the Sith remains an essential part of my childhood, even as I recognize its many many flaws.

With that introduction and understanding out of the way, we will now take a look at the fourth film in the Machete Order and the last of the "flashback films", Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith.

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Green Phoenix - Star Wars: Attack of the Clones Review

According to the Machete Order, following the conclusion of The Empire Strikes Back, we as an audience are expected to go back in time and watch Episodes 2 & 3, in order to see the fall of Anakin Skywalker, the rise of Vader and the Empire, and the collapse of the Jedi Order, so as to see the connective tissues and elements that will be critical for Episode 6's story when we come back to it.

With that in mind, we now move to the second film in the Prequel trilogy, skipping The Phantom Menace due to its narrative superfluousness and will instead treat Episode 1 as if it were a supplemental film like Solo or Rogue One.

Released in 2002, Attack of the Clones acts as a reintroduction to the characters introduced in The Phantom Menace and shows the start of the Clone Wars and the beginning of the relationship between Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala, a Senator in the Galactic Republic.

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Green Phoenix - Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Review

Following the massive success that was the original Star Wars (later retitled as Episode 4: A New Hope), George Lucas found himself swamped in cash and ready to deliver a powerful new addition to his Star Wars mythology.

Teaming up with director Irvin Kerschner (who would later direct films like Never Say Never Again and RoboCop 2) to deliver a film was hopefully superior to the original film in every way.

Kershner had a tall order to fill in not only surpassing the original which was already being considered a classic and the start of the blockbuster era of American cinema, but also had to build up elements which would have to be paid off in the already planned third and "final" film in the Star Wars trilogy.

And Kershner succeeded in just about every way.

Up next in the examination of the Star Wars franchise by going in Machete Order, the film widely considered to be the greatest film in the Star Wars saga.

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back.

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