By George Robbins
The ‘Harry Potter‘ franchise is one that very quickly caught on and became a worldwide phenomenon that persists to this day. The series has always been one that has drawn people in because it has a mix of everything people like in the fantasy genre. This has resulted in people the world over taking countless forms of inspiration from the films and novels. What came to be as a result was the birth of an entire generation that took strong influences from the stories and did something with them. Most recently, in fact, the protests happening in Thailand have had some interesting themes and results.
As of now, there are a large number of people in Thailand who are protesting the government because they are unhappy with the monarchy. The kingdom of Thailand is ruled by a coalition of parties that are endorsed by the military who launched a coup in 2014 that overthrew the democratically-elected government. This essentially turned the country of Thailand into a military state where civilians are constantly under the watchful eye of the new government. People in the country are no longer allowed to speak their minds as this has essentially become an illegal act against the government. King Maha Vajiralongkorn has even made it illegal for anyone to speak ill of him or the royal family, including criticism.
As with much of the rest of the world, the citizens of Thailand have recently taken to protesting against this regime and the king himself. No one would willingly go along with the rules that are in place, so then why should they sit around while not doing anything. This is the thinking behind what they are doing, for the most part, but also they are tired of the tyranny they now see in their daily lives. Within the recent months, protests have sprung up all over the country to try and make a difference the same way other protests have been trying to do the same thing. Thus, a group of university students took a little bit of inspiration from the ‘Harry Potter’ series.
Very recently a group of students from two universities in the Thai capital of Bangkok has taken to the streets to protest the government dressed in Harry Potter costumes. Not only are they wearing costumes, but they are carrying around signs with Voldemort’s face on it in order to suggest that the king is the same as the villain in the series. Even more than that, they started referring to him as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” in reference to the laws that he made that keep people from talking ill of him. They are doing this in a bid for the monarchy to dissolve the new government and establish a proper democracy once again, taking from the themes of the franchise. It is clear that they are taking the strongest lessons offered by the ‘Harry Potter’ stories and trying to make them a reality.
By George Robbins
Ever since the world was forced to go into lockdown back in March, people have been doing their best to try and find things to do that will keep them busy. For the most part people have managed to do just that and they have found ways of keeping themselves busy until they were able to leave the house. That being said, even though people can now leave the house to some degree, there is still not much for them to do since everything is limited capacity. With this fact in mind, people still mostly prefer to stay home rather than go out of the house. I’m certain that this will probably continue to be an issue for the foreseeable future.
Even though there are limitations in place, people are still finding ways to keep themselves busy at home with little in the way of entertainment. Companies are all too happy to help them as well because it means that they can still peddle their wares to people and more than likely, those people will buy them. This has made it possible for some entertainment companies to keep themselves afloat while they are, in essence, shut down to the general public. One example is Universal who have managed to make some money where they might have lost it by releasing some of their films straight to digital, forgoing any theatrical release. This decision of their’s was made after they saw this was a perfect chance to check out if this system would work.
Universal then managed to get themselves into trouble with AMC by saying they planned to do this with all of their films from this point forward. Until recently, AMC has said that they would no longer show Universal films in their theaters. However, an agreement was made recently where, after a period of only 17 days after a theatrical release, Universal would be allowed to put their movies out digitally. In an unprecedented move, they then offered this deal to many other studios including Disney. This works out very well for companies like Disney that have their own streaming services. With Disney+, they would stand to gain a lot by releasing their films so soon after release because they would get the surge of money from the first couple of weekends from theaters and then they could sell the movies on their service.
This deal could be seen as a major win for Disney because they can sell the newly released movies on their service like they are going to do with ‘Mulan.’ In doing this, they can then say that it is so that people can see the movie long before it becomes free on the service. This could end up making them a fortune because they have so many people now using their streaming service. They just recently reached an incredible 60.5 million paid subscriber mark for their service, which is way over what they thought they would have by this point. They launched in November of last year and have since exploded into a service that has many people paying for it every month which gives them a bit more leeway for whatever they choose to do moving forward.
By George Robbins
Theatrical movie releases have been nothing other than plagued ever since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Every time a company plans a release date for a film, they have almost no choice but to end up pushing it back, or in some cases they are forced to go straight to digital. This pandemic is very fluid and any day, the number of new cases can rise exponentially which ends up creating even more restrictions. With these restrictions in place less and less people are allowed to leave their homes to go out and do things. If people cannot go outside, then businesses like movie theaters that rely on capacity to make any earnings will get nothing.
If theaters don’t have much of an incentive to open their doors, then they simply won’t and this is how we have gone so long with theaters staying shut down. However, it seems that AMC is intent on opening in mid-August regardless of whether any new movies release or not. The only thing that they will be able to do is play older movies like other theaters have been doing. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee as to whether this will work out or not due to how few theaters have been reopened since the beginning of the pandemic. This gives us very little to look at in terms of whether this will work out or not, but they are going to be trying their best anyway.
With theaters mostly shut down and a large majority still going to remain shut down for the foreseeable future, companies are not very forthcoming with information on release dates. They are constantly trying to decide when they should actually release their films or if they should just make them available digitally. Companies have been forced to look at whether their films are cost effective enough for them to keep delaying them or not. In the case of ‘Tenet,’ Warner Bros. has decided to delay the film indefinitely domestically, but they will be releasing it in 70 other countries. This comes after the decision that the climate around the pandemic in the U.S. is just too volatile for them to try and have any kind of full theatrical release. Other companies are continuing to simply push back their release dates as time goes on.
Even though many companies are pushing back release dates, as previously stated, if they are not cost effective then a new plan must be drawn up. If a movie is just simply not worth the time and money to have it release at some later undetermined date, then it will just end up being released digitally. Disney seems to have decided that it is not worth waiting to release their new live-action version of the movie ‘Mulan’ anymore as it has been delayed since March already. They will be making it available to watch on Disney+ for $29.99 starting on Friday, September 4th and plans to release it theatrically on the same day in select markets where Disney+ isn’t available and/or movie theaters are open for business. This is just simply the better business option for them at this point in terms of cost effectiveness.
By George Robbins
There has been much talk ever since the announcement last year that Disney had acquired 21st Century Fox after winning a bidding war with Comcast. Much of the talk involves the properties that Disney now controls which is a large number of IP’s that they have been trying to get for years. Among those intellectual properties is the ‘X-Men‘ franchise which has brought in fans for years but it has also been stagnating. After their release of the first film, they were definitely standing on top because they did it pretty well. What followed after that is nothing but a series of hits and misses that fans were worried they would end up making and it essentially killed the franchise. Though now that Disney owns the property, all sorts of different things can be done moving forward.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, often referred to as the MCU, is a cultural phenomenon that had not been done with so much success before. The MCU was started by Marvel Studios before they had been officially acquired by Disney and they have been able to continue without issue ever since. Without any real interference from their parent company they have managed to make films that will last throughout the ages and people will always love to go back and watch them as time goes on. This is something that not every franchise is capable of saying they have managed to do. With this in mind they are continuing to put out new movies, when they are able to, and they will probably be just as high quality as the other films.
Many MCU fans and comic book fans in general were happy to hear that Disney acquired 21st Century Fox due to the knowledge that it comes with. That would be the knowledge that the MCU now has a very strong chance of having the X-Men appear in the MCU in some fashion sometime in the future. If we are going to see them in the MCU, it will not be the same portrayals by the same actors we have seen in the past as this new adaptation of the characters will be a reboot. There is currently a theory in place that if the upcoming ‘New Mutants’ movie does well, then that may just be the jumping in point for where they could introduce the characters. There is no telling whether this theory is actually true but it would kind of make sense since the film is standalone, meaning that if it does well they can start from there and if it does bad they can simply call it a one-off.
Many fans are excited to see this iteration of the X-Men come to fruition but many feel that it might be too soon off of the heels of the previous films for anything to be done yet. This is why it is probably still a ways off especially since they don’t even have any writers currently working on the film. When they do, they are going to be putting their best writers forward so that their introduction goes smoothly. David Hayter, the screenwriter for 2000’s X-Men, has said that they will probably not hire him for this job working on the reboots, though he is very much open to the idea of it. Hopefully it will not be in the distant future where we will get to see the characters join the beloved universe of characters.
By George Robbins
We all know by now that the ‘Star Wars‘ franchise has had long lasting affects on society especially when it comes to the subject of pop culture. Pop culture dominates almost everything we see going on around us and it determines what a lot of people end up doing in their lives. The original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy that started all of it changed the course of society in some aspects, thus changing the lives of many different individuals. In the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker takes precedence as the main character of the story and we see his journey to learn about who he is and what he can do. The story of Luke’s journey completely changed everything as it introduced entirely new concepts to the world at large.
In the second film of the original trilogy, ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’ Luke has already gone headway into his journey and partially learned to use the Force. This mystical power is something that allows people access to all sorts of abilities and he starts learning how to use them in this film. By the end of ‘A New Hope‘ Luke started learning how to wield it, but ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ sees him trying to master it to some degree. His journey eventually culminates in a confrontation with the Sith Lord that he believed responsible for his father’s death, Darth Vader. Through that confrontation at the end of the film, he learns that Darth Vader is actually his father.
During their confrontation, Luke ends up in despair from not only finding out that his greatest enemy is also his father, but because he also loses an arm. His lost arm makes it impossible to continue fighting the man he now knows is his father and he has to make a hasty retreat. He manages to escape from the Cloud City that they were on and he is picked up by his friends as they are getting ready to escape from the planet. It is at this point that we see something interesting with his getting a new hand. In order to make up for the arm he had lost, a new robotic arm is made. This arm makes it possible for him to once again resume his training and finally confront his father one last time.
The interesting thing about his arm is that mention of it is never really brought up again. One part of this is because robotics limbs are mostly normalized in the Star Wars canon and the other part is the fact that it is covered in skin. Unlike anything that was really seen in media before, we saw him get a new hand that looked exactly like the one that had been lost. It was a robotic hand covered in artificial skin that he was able to touch things with. Without this loss of senses, he was still able to keep up with his foes in combat. Researchers in Singapore have developed artificial skin aimed to help those with prosthetic limbs regain the sensation of touch and they claim that the biggest inspiration for this was Luke’s arm in the Star Wars franchise. Though still in the experimental stages, it could open up a whole new world for prosthesis and for robotics.
By George Robbins
The ‘Kingsman’ series of films has garnered attention from sources all over the world ever since the first film, ‘Kingsman: Secret Service,’ released in theaters back in 2014. The series is based on a comic book series of the same name that was written by Mark Millar with art by Dave Gibbons. What really got people’s attention with this series was the over-the-top and stylish action pieces we were treated to in the first film. This drove home the movie in the eyes of those who had never heard of the comic series before and this made it more interesting for those that had. The sequel, ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle,’ was released in 2017 and while not as acclaimed as the first film, it still did fairly well.
There is an upcoming prequel that is supposed to be coming out soon call ‘The King’s Man,’ but due to the coronavirus pandemic, there is no telling just when it will release. What is loved most about these films, other than the stylish action sequences, is the fact that they shy away from other spy movie tropes. This has made them wholly original and unique which had resulted in the large fanbase that those films have managed to accrue and has brought the series to the point it is at now. The person that we have to thank for these films is Matthew Vaughn who is responsible for directing all of the films in the series thus far. Vaughn has been working in comic book films for awhile already and this adaptation has cemented his name amongst great directors.
Vaughn is responsible for the directing work of other comic book movies like ‘X-Men: First Class’ and ‘Kick-Ass’ which have both been given credit where credit is due. Although those films haven’t necessarily received commendations and they didn’t do anything really all that new, they were well put together movies that he deserves credit for working on. Now that he has wrapped production for the upcoming prequel, he is just waiting like everybody else to see his late work revealed to the public. One of the biggest issues presented as of late is the fact that he doesn’t seem like he will want to stay with the series from this point forward.
There is more than likely going to be a continuation of the series even after the release of the prequel and this means that we will definitely be seeing a ‘Kingsman 3’ some time in the future. Vaughn has recently said that he does not think he will be returning as the director for the film as he wants to hand the next entry of the series off to a new director. He believes that a change in style could really change things up and make the next entry in the series even more interesting. He revealed that the new prequel will be setting something up that will pay off in ‘Kingsman 3,’ but he isn’t sure if he really wants to be involved. It is something he will be considering for the future, so we may not see his directing style again based on whatever decision he makes.
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