#BizTrends2018: Noteworthy films and film trends for 2018

My original article here.

10 Jan 2018

Welcome to my 2018 edition of trends in film. Let's get right into it.

A Star Wars Christmas 3.0

 
Disney has a plan to take some of your Christmas bonus money for at least the next 20 years. When it comes to the Star Wars franchise most of us are like, ‘shut up and take my money’. JJ Abrams gave us Episode VII: The Force Awakens in 2015 in his usual fanboy love letter style and then Gareth Edwards gave us a prequel to the original trilogy that we did not know we needed but boy, did we! 

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story answered the question of how the rebels got the plans for the Death Star and why it had such a stupid weak spot. We have yet to find out exactly how many Bothans died to get information on the second Death Star but we can’t have it all, now can we?



Now we have Rian Johnson’s much-anticipated Episode VIII: The Last Jedi currently showing in cinemas. After two years of everyone and their dog on the Interwebs theorising, we finally got the lowdown.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a worthy follow up

Let me say it right off the bat that Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a great movie and a worthy follow up to The Force Awakens. If you've been following any news about the movie, you'll know that there is a split between some Star Wars fans and film critics.

BY CHARLES SIBOTO 1 DAY AGO

May 25 2018 sees the release of the second Star Wars anthology in the form of Han Solo: A Star Wars Story. The film went through some rough patches with initial directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (21 Jump Street) getting replaced by Ron Howard (Inferno) midway through shooting. The actor from 2013’s Beautiful Creatures, Alden Ehrenreich was cast as Han Solo after an extensive search for exactly the right person for the role. 

Donald Glover is playing the other charming scoundrel, Lando Calrissian. Everyone’s favourite Khaleesi, Emila Clarke plays the female lead and Joonas Suaotamo reprises the role of Chewbacca for which he was a double in The Force Awakens. Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Warwick Davis, Paul Bettany and Clint Howard are also in the cast.

Marvel v DC. . .Joking, it’s just Marvel (DC totally lost)

So much winning for Marvel every year. It’s like that time Donald Trump said: “We're going to win so much. You're going to get tired of winning." They went hard with Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming and the oh-so-much-fun Thor: Ragnarok. When I first saw the trailer for Avengers: Infinity War and saw Thanos in action it hit me that we watched 17 Marvel movies to get to this point! That is one huge build-up.

Marvel kicks off 2018 with Black Panther on 16 February. The trailers look mad dope and, personally, I cannot wait to see some action go down in Wakanda. The big spectacle that is Avengers: Infinity War starts on 4 May and then they close their 2018 with Ant-Man and the Wasp on 6 July.

Anastasia Steele, Lara Croft, Deadpool, a T-Rex, Grindelwald, and Aquaman walk into a bar

That sure would be an interesting evening at that bar.

Hate it or love it, the 50 Shades franchise keeps on keeping on and Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele return on 9 February 2018 for 50 Shades Freed, the er . . . climactic finale.



The Tomb Raider video games got a much-deserved overhaul with a grittier feel and a Lara Craft that does not look like a pubescent boy’s idea of a woman. 16 March 2018 sees a Tomb Raider movie in the same style as the new video games with Swedish actress, Alicia Vikander (The Light Between Two Oceans) playing Lara Croft.

Our favourite fourth wall breaking merc with a mouth returns in Deadpool 2 on the first of June and we get to see Josh Brolin as Cable, another beloved and pretty badass Marvel Comics character.

On 22 June 2018, we get some dinosaur action with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Chris Pratt is still having a great go as Hollywood leading man material and is still one of the sexy Chrises.



The first dark lord of the Harry Potter world gets his day in the sun in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald on 16 November 2018. I put the first movie off for a long time but when I got around to it it was actually quite charming and I look forward to seeing Johnny Depp’s Grindelwald and a young Dumbledore, played by Jude Law.

For all of its faults, you have to like Jason Momoa’s Aquaman in Justice League. Dude’s got a lot of styles and gets his own movie on 21 December 2018. We hope it follows in the style of Wonder Woman and not Batman v Superman.

More highlights

There is loads more happening at movies in 2018 and I can’t cover it all but here are some more titles to keep an eye out for: Ready Player One, The Incredibles 2, A Wrinkle in Time, Pacific Rim: Uprising, The New Mutants, Ocean’s Eight, X-Men: Dark Pheonix, Mission Impossible 6 (these missions are clearly very possible) and wait for it . . . Mary Poppins Returns.



Here’s to a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious 2018 at the movies.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review

Original review here. 

Let me say it right off the bat that Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a great movie and a worthy follow up toThe Force Awakens. If you've been following any news about the movie, you'll know that there is a split between some Star Wars fans and film critics.

Some of the fans feel that the movie is not a Star Wars movie at all and lacks the franchise’s essence. Many film critics praised the movie for its strong storyline and for the manner in which it subverts the viewers’ expectation. Director Rian Johnson (The Brothers Bloom) delivers a solid Star Wars movie with many unexpected twists and turns. The Last Jedi captures the magic of Star Wars but is brave enough to turn a lot of the lore on its head and steer the franchise towards a new direction. It does take some missteps as it changes course, though.

A New Hope

In 2015, JJ Abrams wrote the most beautiful love letter to Star Wars in the form of The Force Awakens. As fans, we loved it because it was ‘Star Wars’. We looked past the fact that it was a rehash of A New Hope and that it did not really move our favourite franchise forward much. Sure, we got new villains in the form of the First Order, but we must admit that they were introduced as carbon copies of the Empire’s villains. We got a new weapon in the form of Starkiller base (we see what you did with the name there, JJ) and that was pretty much the third Death Star. Snoke was pretty much the Emperor, Kylo Ren wanted to be Darth Vader and General Hux (with his amazing coat) an up-and-coming Grand Moff Tarkin. The good guys followed a similar mould, with maybe the exception of Finn. Don’t get me wrong, The Force Awakens is a great movie but it served as a soft introduction to the new trilogy and did that well. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi has the difficult task of being a Star Wars sequel and moving the story forward in an unexpected direction. It does that well.

JJ Abrams' love letter to Star Wars

Okay, by now we all know that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is good. It is frighteningly good.

BY CHARLES SIBOTO 19 JAN 2016

Luke’s words from the trailer are pretty much what The Last Jedi does: “This is not going to go the way you think”. Johnson gives the Star Wars universe some much needed fresh air by moving away from the beats we expect from a Star Wars movie. The good guys learn that they cannot fight the Dark Side using the same tactics they have been and the Dark Side goes to a place we’ve not seen before. Everything is not so Dark Side and Light Side, The Last Jedi dares to give us a grey area. We are given a new perspective on the Force and how it works and moves through the galaxy. Mark Hamill steals the show as a disillusioned Luke Skywalker. The story pays respect to the older Star Wars characters but it is more the story of solidifying the new characters’ place in the story. Every time you see Carrie Fisher as Leia onscreen you can’t help but feel emotional and her last performance as the character is beautiful. Daisy Ridley’s Rey learns to pick up the mantle as a Jedi, Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron learns to be a better leader and John Boyega’s Finn learns to value what he is fighting for. Adam Driver is brilliant as Kylo Ren and both his and Rey’s struggle with the Light and Dark sides of the Force is portrayed expertly. Domhall Gleeson as General Hux (his coat is so cool!) continues to vie with Kylo for the Supreme Leader Snoke’s favour. Snoke (Andy Serkis) is as menacing and mysterious as ever.

The Empire Strikes Back

The movie opens with the rebel scum doing their rebel thing and the First Order doing their chasing and threatening thing. Nothing new here. The Last Jedi opens on the same beat we expect from a Star Wars movie: a Star Destroyer looks cool in space, there is a cinematic battle, the good guys fly their X-wings against impossible odds whilst keeping up their humorous banter, a cute droid beeps, a villain loses his cool and a John Williams soundtrack is pushing all the right emotional buttons. It’s great. Then, all of a sudden our expectations start getting subverted at every turn. All of our YouTube prophets’ fan theories are trampled into the dust and we are in new territory. It’s great! Johnson questions things we believe about the Star Wars universe and opens new avenues of exploration.

The Last Jedi/The Return of the Jedi (They really need to make up their minds)

It’s not all lightsabers and BB8, though. The Last Jedi makes mistakes and they do take away from the vision that Johnson has. My biggest gripe is that the movie is too long. I love long movies but only when it does not feel like padding. The Last Jedi gets to a point where there is a lot of padding and what feels like unnecessary storylines. They introduce places and characters you can’t bring yourself to care about and that takes away from the brilliance of the core plot. At the end of the movie you are tired, happy, confused, possibly angry and then you go home and give it more thought and smile because this is a great middle act. The Last Jedi answers some of the questions we had offhandedly, not at all or asks us questions. The threads are left dangling and both groups of people who liked it and did not like it are left hoping that Episode IX answers all of our questions. YouTube fan theorists get to keep their jobs for the next two years as The Last Jedi leaves a lot of mysteries that need solving.