BW Media Spotlight

examining the art of storytelling

Latest Posts

September 28, 2024

BW’s Saturday Article Link> The Anti-Hero Cruelty

Nobody calls them out on that.

Here at BW Media Spotlight, heroes rule and villain drool! Seeing the hero win is catharsis against our own troubles, and remind us that at least some evils, or whatever obstacles there are in our lives, are surmountable. Modern writers seem to take the defeatist attitude that evil will always win and there’s no point in trying, like a bummer Homer Simpson. Telling kids especially to just lay down and die is a terrible message as this writer discusses in a pushback against nihilistic stories where good becomes evil and evil becomes good.

Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 28, 2024 in Uncategorized and tagged commentary, writing tips.

Leave a comment

September 27, 2024

Finally Watched…Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Here is the last of the currently banked reviews. I hope to get a few more banked at some point, the sooner the better.

Fantasy, especially high or dark fantasy, are not really my cup of tea. I have nothing against it, but it isn’t for me. It’s one of the reasons I never played Dungeons & Dragons, along with me being too much of a control freak when it comes to storytelling to lead to a good experience for everyone involved. Video games are easier because there’s only two voices: mine and the game creators, and I’m willing to accept theirs as the dominant voice, even in games like BioWare’s more famous (and sometimes infamous) content, where your choices lead the story down one of a few different paths. It’s like combining video games and Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks.

I really didn’t watch the first Dungeons & Dragons movie many moons ago because it looked lame, and apparently it was one of those movies so bad it became comedy. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves decided to embrace the comedy and the stranger aspects of the tabletop role-playing game franchise, and from the trailers it just looked like a lot of fun. So I decided to check it out when the opportunity arose. And now I have a review of it, some months after I saw it, though the bulk of the review was written right after I saw it. Edited for spelling and clarification, here is my review.

RELEASE DATE: 2023
RELEASED BY: Paramount Pictures, Entertainment One, & AllSpark Pictures
RUNTIME: 2 hours 14 minutes
RATING: PG-13
VIEWING SOURCE FOR THIS REVIEW: MGM+ Hits
STARRING: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, & Sophia Lillis
SCREENWRITERS: Johnathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, & Michael Gilio (Chris McKay credited for story with Gilio)
DIRECTORD: John Francis Daley & Johnathan Goldstein
BOX OFFICE: $93,277,026, $208,177,026 worldwide gross, according to IMDB
ESTIMATED BUDGET: $150,000,000 according to IMDB

Continue reading →

Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 27, 2024 in Finally Watched, Movie Spotlight and tagged Dungeons & Dragons, Finally Watched, Honor Among Thieves, movie review.

2 Comments

September 27, 2024

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Feature Comics #23

These Asylum Films plots get weaker every time.

Feature Comics #23

Comic Favorites Inc. (August, 1939)

I’ve been trying to avoid the newspaper strip collections because there’s enough comics for me to go through and I’d rather focus on the original comic book comics. Plus newspaper strips weren’t really designed to be read in a comic book format. In this case, there is some reformatting, so you don’t have to see the title every page, just the start of every story.

I was also curious about the comic being introduced here. The Charlie Chan movie series is rather controversial to “modern audiences” because the main character was always an actor in make-up even when there were other Chinese actors in roles like Charlie’s “number one son”. I never understood that myself, but I’ve also not really watched a Charlie Chan movie all the way through, just episodes of Hanna-Barbera’s The Amazing Chan And The Chan Clan in reruns. Yes, that actually existed.

Imagine if Chan’s other kids joined de-aged number one son and formed both a rock band and their own detective group while having access to an advanced version of Inspector Gadget’s Gadgetmobile, and kept sticking their noses into dad’s mystery solving, then needed him to save their butts. It’s not even as interesting as it sounds, and I probably lost some of you already. Anyway, to the reviews!

[Read along with me here]

Continue reading →

Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 27, 2024 in Yesterday's Comics and tagged Charlie Chan, Comic Favorites Inc, Gallant Knight, Golden Age comics, Rance Keane, Reynolds Of The Mounties, The Clock.

Leave a comment

September 27, 2024

BW’s Daily Video> Why Is Alfred Pennyworth Still Dead?

Catch more from Comic Lads on YouTube

Of course it was a Dan DiDio decision. And yet, though he’s no longer there, his Darker DC still remains active.

Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 27, 2024 in Death of DC and tagged Alfred Pennyworth, Batman.

Leave a comment

September 26, 2024

Power Rangers: Origins> Did We Dodge A Laser?

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers has done some pretty amazing things outside of the show’s universe itself. For one, it dethroned the similarly four word named Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as the top kids cultural phenomenon. It brought live-action back to kids action television for the first time since the 1980s began, possibly late 1970s. It also outlasted most kids properties except for Scooby-Doo, Superfriends, and current title holder Sesame Street when it comes to how long the show’s been on. It’s one of the few kids shows with its own 24/7 streaming channels. It got older viewers interested in Japanese superheroes like source material Super Sentai. It’s proof that a kids show can have good writing and not only entertain kids but have adults still enjoy it or at least look fondly on what came before.

However, not every take on the franchise has worked, and some have not even seen the light of day. Not being heavy into the Power Rangers community (I used to be part of a Power Rangers newsgroup until people kept spoiling the season that borrowed too much from the Sentai it was based on) I had never heard of Power Rangers: Origins, an animated take on the original team produced in part by ZAG Entertainment, mostly known for Miraculous: Tales Of Ladybug And Cat Noir. It’s not the first time they’ve associated with Japanese superheroes as Miraculous was co-produced by Toei and certain anime tropes show up in the series despite being set in and produced for a French audience. It’s also not the first time Japan and France have worked together on a project, so I’m surprised none of the Miraculous World movies were set in Japan, but we had one in China. (The heroine is part Chinese.)

A recent article by Bounding Into Comics saw some leaked footage of the failed project. I knew they wanted to shift the franchise into animation but I didn’t know it had gotten this far. So okay, let’s have a look and see how good or bad it is.

Continue reading →