Let's Talk...Avatar Legends

It is a rare series that can truly be considered revolutionary in the cultural zeitgeist. A show that can literally be the harbinger for transformation of an entire industry. A show like Avatar: The Last Airbender. Airing between 2005 and 2008, Avatar: The Last Airbender takes place in a world comprised of four nations each based on the four classical elements (Earth, Fire, Water, and Air). In this world, there are people known as benders who are capable of manipulating one of the four elements based on their nation of origin. Only a single individual, known as the Avatar, is capable of bending all four elements at once. The Avatar's duty is to maintain peace between the four nations and the spirit world, a realm filled wit all kinds of strange

Beyond its cultural impact, I don't think it is too much of an exaggeration to say that Avatar: The Last Airbender also had a truly transformative impact upon my family growing up. It was the one "children's" show that my entire family would watch, oftentimes on replay as we had the entire DVD collection at home. We relished in the triumphs and tragedies, the beautiful music and themes, and I personally absolutely adored the expansive world-building presented to us.

And in the past 20 years, the Avatar universe has only vaguely been explored since The Last Airbender. Of course, there was The Legend of Korra, which was controversial within the community but otherwise until the last few years, Avatar seemed an abandoned IP. Thankfully, that is no longer the case and that is where today's article will be focusing. We are going to discuss the current lineup of Avatar properties, the upcoming projects and releases, and conjecture about interesting and fascinating potential areas to explore within the universe of Avatar, now more popularly referred to as Avatar Legends.

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...Sonic: Wonders of the World

It's time for yet another episode of Let's Talk..., where I go into a more free-form discussion about a specific subject of media or hypothesize about a specific theory or topic. Today, we actually have a request for collaboration. Cendoo is getting ready to release a new series called Video Game Classroom and he asked me to make an article parallel to his first episode. He is planning to discuss a cancelled Sonic the Hedgehog game from the mid 90s known as Sonic X-treme.

To promote his upcoming project and because of the recent Sonic the Hedgehog 3 trailer that just released, I felt it a fine time to discuss a tie-in movie that would've been released alongside Sonic X-Treme known as Sonic: Wonders of the World. In this episode of Let's Talk..., we will hypothesize about what this film would likely have looked like. How its plot would've likely developed, and whether the film would have been a financial or critical success, given the nature of the film industry at the time.

The answers might very well surprise you.

 

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...Roger Rabbit

In 1981, author Gary K. Wolf wrote Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, a murder mystery novel involving hardboiled detective Eddie Valiant as he seeks to uncover who murdered famous comic strip character Roger Rabbit, using a "doppelganger" of the former character to assist him in the investigation. From this concept, would eventually arise the 1988 Robert Zemeckis classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

While this would adaptation would essentially change everything about the original story, it would also become an incredibly popular and influential film, propelling the character of Roger Rabbit to the upper echelon of animated legends. In the succeeding years, a series of cartoons would be developed involving Roger Rabbit and his co-host Baby Herman, and then...nothing.

What happened to Roger Rabbit? And what could've been done with his character, or what could be done now after almost two decades without any new Roger Rabbit content?

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...The Hobbit Trilogy

In 2001, Peter Jackson released the first part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy to near universal acclaim. Over the next two years, this ambitious project (which had never been done before) would rise to become one of the greatest film franchises of all time, not only helping to popularize the fantasy genre for blockbuster audiences (a trait the Lord of the Rings trilogy shares with the Harry Potter series) but also ensuring that the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, would become a household name.

With an expansive and immersive world, fantastic characters with beautifully realized archetypes and a true sense of focus that George R.R. Martin could only dream of, The Lord of the Rings has long become a cornerstone of the fantasy genre, almost to the genre's detriment if I'm being particularly critical. But it was not the only exploration that Tolkien took into the world of Middle-Earth. Before The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had been working for decades on several projects including works that would eventually become The Silmarillion and, of course, the book that propelled him to popularity in the first place, The Hobbit.

Thus when the fans of The Lord of the Rings cinematic trilogy began to express their hunger for more content, The Hobbit was the clear and obvious choice. Despite this obvious recipe for success and profit, the world would not see an adaptation of Tolkien's beloved children's book until 2012, with a brand new trilogy of films: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of Five Armies.

At last after a decade of waiting, a new trilogy within the world of Middle-Earth was available for people to enjoy. And audience's collective response to this trilogy was...lackluster, to say the least. Initially, I couldn't decide if I wanted this article to be a Building Better Backstories or just a general editorial. Because of that, this edition of Let's Talk...will be something of a discussion and consideration. We will look at what worked and what did not about Peter Jackson's second trilogy in the world of Arda. I will naturally discuss my passion for the greater Tolkien mythos and ponder on what alterations might have been made to improve the overall product.

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...Lifetime/Hallmark Christmas Movie Tropes

Merry Christmas everybody!

This time of year is the time for Christmas specials and holiday movies and, as is my custom, my annual Christmas special editorial. Last year, I wrote about the Rankin Bass Christmas Film Cinematic Universe, showing all the claymation films connected to each other by their shared mythologies and characters. It was a hell of a good time and far more immersive and substantial than I had initially anticipated. It was a ton of fun to write and motivated me to take a closer look at and discuss another aspect of the holiday season that I'm sure everyone is at least tangentially familiar with, for good or ill.

So this year, I will be discussing the tropes and common narrative elements behind the Lifetime/Hallmark Christmas movies. These films have a not undeserved reputation for their repetitive natures, common story beats and almost disgustingly predictable plot lines. With such a reputation, how could I not end a year that has been filled with so many moments of transformation for myself than by discussing a psuedo-genre of films which are nearly identical?

It's only logical really.

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Green Phoenix - Random Fanfiction Idea: The Secret of NIMH/Planet of the Apes

Before we begin the article, I have an announcement to make regarding the release of these articles. Starting next week and occurring roughly every 8 weeks or so (not including my month long vacations), I will be taking a week long mental health break from article writing.

The last two years have shown that my consistent article writing has been taking a severe toll on my mental health and affecting the quality of the articles that I bring to you all. With that in mind, it is my hope that these break weeks can be used to recuperate and use any build up of articles, building up articles without the fear of releasing one that week, and focusing on other projects and personal obligations without worrying about disappointing my readers.

Again, these will occur roughly every eight weeks or so starting next week, though that is not inherently a given as my break weeks will have to fit around my vacations as well. It is my genuine hope that these breaks will ensure a continued quality of articles and minimize the possibility of burnout.

Now with news out of the way, let's move on to the weirdest article topic that I've probably ever written.

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Now, I know what you're thinking when you read that title. This is absolutely the weirdest title for an article this dude has ever written. And the fact of the matter is is that you're not entirely wrong. I began my writing and review career by looking at either movies through my Phoenix 8 Productions work or fanfiction through my The Brony Critic channel. As a result, I have developed a deep respect and love for the artistry of fanfiction writing.

 

Fanfiction occupies a controversial sphere in our modern media. Utilizing already established intellectual properties to create unofficial content of unregulated quality might at first seem deeply troubling and rife with low quality trash, an assumption that at first glance might not be entirely inaccurate.

However, I also hold that fanfiction represents a unique field for practice and creative exploration for writers, allowing writers to skip some of the more difficult and laborious aspects of world-building in favor of focusing more directly on capturing the feel of a character or exposing the narrative strengths of a particular concept. Or simply using a existing property as a framework to enhance the world-building to a much higher degree.

Through this mindset, I have also begun working on various fanfiction ideas from time to time. In fact, I oftentimes have far too many to ever reasonably be able to work on them in any great capacity. But I still want others to hear about my story concepts, even if I never write it myself. So to that end, I decided to create a subset of my editorial segments as sort of a cross between the Building Better Backstories series and the free-form nature of the Let's Talk... articles; thus the creation of the Random Fanfiction Idea, or RFI.

For our first outing of RFI, I decided that we should discuss an idea that I got while watching Don Bluth's 1982 animated classic The Secret of NIMH.  The idea is fairly simple but possesses a fantastic narrative and thematic connection that could lead to a bunch of drama.

What if you wrote a fanfiction sequel to The Secret of NIMH inspired by the modern Planet of the Apes franchise? That is, what if you wrote a series of fanfiction's showing how the evolution of mouse and rat society eventually supplants human culture as a result of our own societal defects and systemic issues?

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...DreamWorks Traditional Animation

 

At the height of the Disney Renaissance during the mid-1990s, the company Walt built stood almost completely unopposed in the field of animation. Their only major competitor from a creative and financial standpoint was arguably Don Bluth Animations, and even they were beginning to replicate the Disney formula in order to attempt to achieve some level of equal financial success, to middling results. By the release of Beauty and the Beast, it seemed like Disney was on top of the world and absolutely unstoppable under the triumvirate leadership of Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Then came the unfortunate passing of Frank Wells in a helicopter accident. Suddenly the unifying element of the Disney triumvirate was broken and a power vacuum formed in the wake of Wells' passing. A battle raged for the soul of Disney between Disney's CEO Michael Eisner and the head of Disney animation, Jeffrey Katzenberg. As you can no doubt imagine by their positions within the company, the winner was a foregone conclusion and Katzenberg soon found himself fired and with a major chip on his shoulders.

Normally, that might be the end of the story. But Katzenberg had many friends in Hollywood and had been the largest force within the Disney triumvirate behind the Disney Renaissance. So when he made an alliance with Stephen Spielberg and David Geffen, DreamWorks Pictures was founded. For the most part, DreamWorks established a reputation as the edgier CGI counterpart to Disney, with some of their first outings like Antz and Shrek being either near rip-off of other Disney/Pixar projects or a criticism of the Disney corporation as a whole. And so was Disney's hegemony over the industry destroyed, ironically by the politics within their own rank-and-file.

However, in the early days of DreamWorks, a few traditionally animated films did pass through its halls. Nowadays, traditional animation is not very common from any of the studios. But I feel that the films that are spoken of tend to be exclusively from Disney.

And it is with that in mind, that today's Let's Talk... will discuss the short list of traditionally animated DreamWorks films. They don't make them anymore, but they were a vital part of the company's early history and represent a very unique aspect of the company's identity.

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...Schoolhouse Rock!

 

So I realize that it is entirely possible that I might have been far too subtle for you all to pick up on my general personality, despite my many personal stories. I know that you all must think of me as this incredibly suave and cool individual, always aware of the latest trends and a person well-liked by everyone I meet.

Thus it is with a heavy heart that I must break this notion to you all. For you see, I am, in point of fact, a massive nerd with an obsession for not only countless fandoms but intellectual pursuits in general.

Okay all kidding aside, I really do enjoy watching educational content, even to this day. My Netflix account is filled with documentary films and series and I even have a subscription to CuriosityStream to feed my educational media fascination. And this fascination goes back to my very earliest moments of childhood. I've spoken of the Walking with... series and its impact on my love of biological and paleontological documentaries, but my general love of learning stemmed from Bill Nye the Science Guy and the focus of today's article: School House Rock!.

Developed in the early 1970s and airing until 1984 before returning intermittently in the 1990s and 2000s, Schoolhouse Rock! was a series of short animated music videos that touched on specific subjects in numerous general subjects. It was developed after the creator noticed that his child often struggled to remember their multiplication tables, despite being able to memorize all the lyrics to Rolling Stones songs.

Schoolhouse Rock! helped generations of kids learn all kinds of fascinating subjects and I figured that this would be the perfect opportunity to discuss my personal experience and what the series means to me. This isn't a review, but more of a general retrospective.

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...Mineta from My Hero Academia

 

Hello everyone! Let's get into yet another edition of "Let's Talk", my free-form editorial series where I discuss a subject that is on my mind all off the cuff and from the heart. This time we will discuss a topic that is tangentially connected to something very near and dear to my heart. If you are a fan of the anime My Hero Academia, you may or may not be surprised by what I have to say. But we will get to that in a moment.

It will probably be something of a hot take, but I feel like I do have something to say on the subject.

For those of you who follow my content outside of this website, you would be familiar with my very personal connection to fandom and fan content, including for the purposes of this article: fanfiction. I started reading fanfiction through the My Little Pony fandom, before then expanding into Steven Universe, Game of Thrones, and the subject of today's article, My Hero Academia,an anime written by Kohei Horikoshi that takes place in an alternate future Earth where most people develop superpowers and become superheroes. The show is incredibly good and I find that the prospect of superpowers to be a fascinating breeding ground for great fanfiction stories.

As of writing this article, the show is starting its 5th season, which you can watch subbed on CrunchyRoll. While I do plan on watching it when their are more episodes available for me to begin bingeing, I felt like this was the perfect opportunity for me to discuss an aspect of the fandom that severely disturbs me and that I want to discuss with some measure of detail. If you read the title of this article and are familiar with My Hero Academia and its fandom in any capacity, you likely already know what I am going to talk about.

So let's talk about the Fresh-Picked Hero: Grape Juice (otherwise known as Mineta Minoru, the pervert of Class 1-A) and why the fandom hates this character so much and why that's kind of a bid problem.

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...The Rankin/Bass Cinematic Universe

  

Merry Christmas everybody!

As this year finally comes to a close, I figured that I would end the year with a little bit of fun by discussing a topic that was on my mind all the way since last December. The Rankin/Bass Christmas specials have long become a staple of the season, being almost mandatory viewing for everyone despite an almost universally acknowledge lack of quality.

The stop motion animated company was founded in 1960 by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass. And until their demise in 1987, the company released dozens of cheap animated Christmas specials that have become icons of the holidays. Starting with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964 and lasting until The Wind in the Willow in 1987, the company released numerous animated specials over its tenure.

With this in mind, I began to wonder about the interconnection of some of these Christmas specials. Thanks to Marvel and Disney, the idea of a cinematic universe is incredibly commonplace. But what if I told you that Rankin/Bass may have unintentionally created a Christmas cinematic universe back in the 1970s?

The more I looked into it, the more I just had to talk about it. So Let's Talk...The Rankin/Bass Cinematic Universe.

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Green Phoenix - Let's Talk... Adapting The Jack Ryanverse

 Welcome back to another edition of Let's Talk...

I have spent the last few weeks intermittently reviewing the 1990s Tom Clancy film adaptations, with plans to conclude the series by reviewing Clear and Present Danger next week. However whilst reviewing this series, I was struck upon a particular thought. The possibilities of adapting the entire Jack Ryanverse into a film or television series, ala the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This has been a thought that has long dominated my mind, with the current reviews only being a further impetus for my thought experiment. Could such an adaptation occur in today's cinematic climate? What alterations might have to be made in order to forward such an adaptation? What restrictions might exist that could hinder such an adaptation?

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