In my last review I mentioned the idea of ranking the new songs the Disney remakes have made for the love interests, specifically in the Disney Renaissance remakes. I think this is the best time to do this because looking at the Renaissance films yet to be remade Megara and Esmeralda already have their own songs, The Rescuers Down Under isn’t a musical and Tarzan is a different kind of musical. The only Renaissance film I could see them doing this again with is Pocahontas but I doubt it’s going to get a remake, but if it does and it remains a musical I’ll be sure to update this list with whatever song they give John Smith.
#4
Spirit (The Lion King)
This is at the bottom of the list because it’s not even a Nala song, it’s just a Beyoncé song. Beyoncé does a great job singing as Nala in Can You Feel the Love Tonight but instead of giving Nala a solo song like the rest of the characters in this list they just have her sing a completely unrelated song an stick it in the scene of Simba running home. This probably shouldn’t count but I can’t make this list without talking about it.
#3
Wild Uncharted Waters (The Little Mermaid)
The newest entry on this list. The strength of this song is the fact it highlights the way Eric was written in this film. It’s a bit like how in the direct to video sequel Melody had a love of the sea but in a way that can overlap with Ariel’s goals. It is also nice that Eric gets a song because unlike the others he never got a duet.
#2
Speechless (Aladdin)
I have my criticisms of the placement of the reprise (especially as it meant cutting the Prince Ali reprise, Jafar’s only song) but as a Jasmine song it works really well. From what I’m aware this is also the most popular of these songs as I remember it getting a decent amount of attention as a stand alone song.
#1
Evermore (Beauty and the Beast)
But the best of these is weirdly the first one. Out of all of these it’s the one that fits best in the point in the movie it’s used and the one that fits in best with the songs from the original. It’s not the only new song I’d say this about (For the First Time in The Little Mermaid is another good example) but when specifically comparing the love interest songs it’s a big part of what makes this the best one and the exact opposite of Spirit.
And that’s the list. Mostly in release order and a bit different from my rankings of the films themselves. Maybe in a few years I’ll make a similar list for new songs in Disney remakes in general or talk about another way these remakes can be compared to each other. If you’ve seen all four of these movies which new love interest song did you like the most?
This was the movie I ended my Guardians 3 review saying I was going to catch up on some films for. I even remembered I had one more film to catch up on after seeing it before I wrote this review, but what films I caught up on I’ll save until the ranking images.
I liked it. If you’re new to my Disney remake reviews I put less focus on how they compare to the originals and more on how they compare to each other, especially with the Disney Renaissance remakes as there are some similarities in their approaches (except Mulan). And it is fitting that the best of the Renaissance remakes is of the film that started the Disney Renaissance in the first place.
It does still have its fair share of flaws, mostly ones it has in common with other remakes and ones I was already aware of from the trailers and promotional material. For example it’s an odd choice to make Sebastian a ghost crab, a species of crab that can’t survive that long underwater, and Flounder has the Lion King problem of looking too realistic he can’t express any emotions in his face. There’s also an issue with how with some of the songs the more realistic approach results in a lack of a visual to go with a lyric and that does stand out a couple times in Under the Sea even if the rest of the visuals in that song look very good.
And speaking of the songs that brings us back to the strengths of the film. Halle Bailey, Daveed Diggs and Melissa McCarthy all do an amazing job with their songs. The cast of the film are all good in this but these three especially stand out because of their singing. I think even if you don’t like the look for this film I’d recommend listening to their covers of the classic songs.
Two of the films I made an effort to be caught up on for this were the sequel and prequel to the original. The biggest issue is all four films are pretty much the same story with something different about them. Ariel’s story in reverse, Triton having the exact same arc but with music instead of humans and now a full remake. I probably should go back and watch the other sequels, prequels and midquels for any of the films that Disney have more than three movies for at some point.
The other remakes I caught up on for this ranking were Rodrick Rules, Peter Pan & Wendy and Geppetto. The first two were ok but Geppetto was so boring. Anyway back to this movie it’s nice to have another of the newer remakes in the top 10, and going back to my point earlier in my review about the Renaissance remakes one thing I am thinking is it might be a good time to compare the new songs they made for the love interests as we’ve probably had all the films they’re likely to do that for now.
I ended my last review with a setup for a different movie, I am all caught up for said movie now but by that point I had to watch this one first. With how great Into the Spider-Verse was and Miles being one of my favourite characters from the comics this was one of the movies I was most excited about seeing this year.
I knew this was going to be really good going into this but I was not prepared for how it would be that good. Since the first movie came out multiverses have become a popular theme in movies, including another Spider-Man movie (which contributes to the mulitiversal damage being dealt with in this movie). And something that’s very clear from all three multiverse Spidey movies is that Spider-Man really is the perfect character to tell a multiverse story with.
Everyone is familiar with multiple versions of Spider-Man. From the longtime fans who recognise all the comic and classic TV show cameos in the crowd shots to people who only really follow the movies to young children growing up with the newest cartoons. And this movie explores that in a really interesting way, and one that’s the perfect follow up to Miles’ character arc from the first movie.
And of course the specific Spideys it chooses to highlight really get to shine. It takes this version of Miles and this version of Gwen and really explores them in ways that stand out next to their comic counterparts, including their bond. Migel, Pavitr, Hobie and Jessica are all great additions and this movie’s take on Ben Reilly is a hilarious parody of 90s edgy comics. Speaking of the 90s most viewers who already knew this film’s villain The Spot probably remember him from the 90s cartoon rather than the comics and they manage to make him this impressive balance of goofy and intimidating.
An amusing detail about the top and bottom of this ranking is without actually referencing the scenes this movie actually causes the Vulture’s appearance at the end of Morbius to make sense. And making that point reminds me that unless they all get delayed there’s going to be three more of Sony’s “why does this exist?” spin-off movies before we get the third part of this trilogy next year.
Back when I was rewatching MCU movies in preparation for seeing Endgame I decided to rewatch the movies the Iron Man, Captain America and Thor movies back to back to see how they worked as trilogies. Iron Man worked the best in this approach, Captain America was in the middle and Thor didn’t work as a trilogy at all which fits considering Thor is the first of these three to get a fourth movie and the fourth Captain America movie will star a different Captain America. Anyway now we’ve got an MCU trilogy that was actually planned as a trilogy.
And it’s easily the best MCU trilogy. All three films as so good individually that part of why it took so long to get around to writing this review was figuring out where this fits into my MCU rankings compared to the other two, and I could easily change that order if I decide to go back and watch all three movies again back to back. But also like many of the best trilogies the story told across the three movies is really good and enhances the first two looking back at the larger narrative.
If you ever read any of the pre-MCU Guardians of the Galaxy comics or watched/played media that promoted them that came out between the 2012 announcement and the first movie’s release (the most notable examples I remember being Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes) you’ve probably been hoping that they’d get the blue suits in the movies, and of course they waited until the last film. But I also like that the suits get to be a visual representation of the group they’ve grown into after the last two movies and their time as Avengers. Not a fan of how Groot’s head looks though, I get they’re trying to highlight that the Groot we saw grow up is different from the original Groot but Teen Groot did that just fine without just looking like baby Groot’s head on a full grown body.
This review has been light on the story and that’s because it’s hard to cover that much without spoiling anything. It is focused on Rocket and even when you know ahead of time his backstory is going to be tragic (due to the previous movies and the fact they’re animal science experiments) it’s still effective with its delivery. On a lighter note I like that this film and vol 2 highlight Rocket’s love of music in general, a larger love for it than Quill has. The rest of the cast are all great in this too but I don’t want to say anything about them in this review as their subplots aren’t really highlighted in the trailers. Anyway time for the ranking image.
I’d say the first film is the funniest, this film has the most heart and the second is the best balance of the two, but like I said earlier that’s just how I feel right now. As we move forwards I do often find myself as the only person in my social circles to not have MCU fatigue, though I have had a recent moment of irritation towards Marvel that may end up being MCU related in the long run (why yes, I am talking about the nonsense death that happened in the comics recently that caused the even more nonsense potential revival method to trend on Twitter). Anyway before my next trip to the cinema I do have a bit of catching up to do in order to have ranking images at the end of that review.
This was one of the main reasons I haven’t released my top 10 movies of 2022 yet. A new movie from Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, 5 Centimeters per Second and Weathering with You) was something I knew my list would feel incomplete without. And because it came out fairly late in the year in Japan that meant waiting for a bit to watch it. This was also my first time seeing a film in the Vue this year, they’ve finally ditched both of the annoyingly long post-trailer videos.
It was worth the wait. It has the amazing visuals I’ve come to expect from CoMix Wave Films, especially Makoto Shinkai’s work. Back when Your Name came out I never got the whole “new Miyazaki” comments people made about Shinkai as the two have very different appeals as filmmakers and it’s been a comparison Shinkai himself felt uncomfortable about. However with the lead up to this film I think I get it now, at least as far as comments made by people outside Japan go, he’s the new director whose name stands out to people who don’t normally watch anime films. Of course this is assuming the comparisons are only made outside Japan.
The film is focused on Japanese mythology surrounding earthquakes, mainly Namazu which has been the influence for a lot of media in Japan over the years (such as the Pokémon Whiscash). It’s interesting seeing this mythological depiction of earthquakes contrasting with a more modern setting where people have earthquake alerts on their phones. It also showcases the aftermath of these natural disasters with the story bringing the main cast to locations left in ruin.
It’s also a movie where one of the main characters spends the majority of the film as a chair. And yes it is odd to see a film that covers a topic as serious as the large amount of earthquakes that happen in Japan have a plot point as silly as “the guy I like turned into a chair by a cat” but the bizarre thing is that it works. If you’re a fan of Makoto Shinkai’s work you probably already saw this, if you thought Weathering with You was too thematically similar to Your Name you might have a similar issue here (no cameos this time though). Personally I like the thematic similarities. Now that I’ve seen this I’ve seen most of the films from last year I feel I need to see before making my top 10 list, it’s certainly the last I’ll be writing a review for before making it.
I’m not sure why it’s taken me this long to get around to writing this review but here we go. With this movie once again people have forgotten good video game movies exist and act like their enjoyment of this movie is something special when they said the same thing about Sonic and Detective Pikachu. It’s the REAL video game movie curse, every well received video game movie gets dismissed the moment a new one comes out. All so the new one can be paraded around as the “first” good video game movie.
As for this movie it’s fun, one of the better Illumination movies I’ve seen and is exactly what you’d want from a Mario movie. That said I think a lot of the people who love it might be overeacting to things like the Rotten Tomatoes critic score. For one thing 58% isn’t even a low score, that’s still just over half of the critics liking it. But even if it was a low score there are faults of the film that while not an issue for general audiences and Mario fans are tiresome for people who watch movies for their job, a good example being some overused choices for needle drop songs in types of scenes they’re regularly in (it’s a good thing Mario never went to London at any point).
But let’s talk about what does work about the movie. Well for one thing it’s full of details from a wide range of Mario games and even The Super Mario Bros. Super Show of all things, it’s not just the classic stuff either but newer games like 3D World and Odyssey. The score is especially great, one of the disappointing details of the Sonic movies is the references to Sonic are very limited and one is so subtle it’s easy. Meanwhile with this movie the score perfectly translates melodies from a decent chunk of the games into a movie score while also keeping the chiptune around when it fits, if this movie has any impact on future video game movies I hope it’s on the score because with Shadow being the tease for Sonic 3 they’re going to need some Crush 40 in there.
And on the music note Jack Black is great as Bowser and his song is hilarious. As amusing as the original reveal of the cast was they do all work for the ways these characters are written. But more than any of the celebrity voices the actor I think needs highlighting the most is Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek, out of all the main cast he’s the one I think not only could play the part in the games but should. On that note I am curious if they’ll add anything from these movies to the games at some point.
So far my experience with DnD has mostly been playing one-shots at events and listening to the podcast Flintlocks & Fireballs hosted by some of my friends but it is something I’ve made attempts to get into more. So when I saw this movie being advertised I thought it looked like a lot of fun and captured the fun I’ve experienced with my limited experience with the game.
It’s really good, I think it does a good job balancing details that mean more to longtime fans of DnD in a way that wouldn’t confuse a viewer using this film as their introduction to it. Any names of locations and creatures that serve as fun Easter Eggs for players can also double as selling points for campaigns involving them for any future players inspired by this film. It’s also just a really fun and funny action film with a fantasy setting so if you like those you should like this.
The cast are all great each being a great fit for the types of characters they’re playing. A heist planning Bard might be one of Chris Pine’s best roles (at least that I’ve seen), Michelle Rodriguez has a lot of experience playing warrior women so she plays a Barbarian really well, Hugh Grant should play villains more often, this is only the 6th film I’ve seen Justice Smith in and he’s been great in all of them and this is the first film I’ve seen Sophia Lillis and Daisy Head in and I’m looking forward to seeing more from both of them.
Surprisingly while this movie does have a lot of tabletop gaming tie-ins (Hasbro own a fair amount of games to market their movies with) I haven’t seen any new Dungeons and Dragons starter sets, character sheets or books based around the film yet. Of course with DnD doing their own Nintendo Directs I’m sure when we do get content based on the film it’ll be revealed in one of those. On that note I have been meaning to make a wishlist of DnD crossover content I think should exist, maybe I should get to work on that soon.
Second 2023 film I’ve seen so far and amusingly both films star Jonathan Majors as the main antagonist. The Rocky series was one of the first movie marathons I did with the first Creed ranking pretty high in the rankings at the end of it and the second being pretty close to it when it came out.
It’s really good. This is the first Creed film to not feature a subplot for Rocky Balboa and as great as Sylvester Stallone was in those last two movies I think it’s a good thing that Adonis Creed has at least one movie without him. There’s still the odd reference to legacy content from the original Rocky movies but they’re not a focus of the main story this time around. This is also the first film to be directed by Michael B. Jordan, which is itself a bit of a Rocky legacy detail as most of the Rocky sequels were directed by Sylvester Stallone.
A really great detail is because Donnie’s daughter Amara was born deaf in the last film there are a lot of scenes where the majority of the dialogue involves sign language, Amara is also played by deaf actress Mila Davis-Kent who is great in this. Amara’s subplot looks like it’s going to be one of the interesting details of future Creed movies and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Michael B. Jordan has talked about the influence shonen anime has had on the fights in this movie and it shows. There’s a lot of shots that take clear inspiration from Dragon Ball and Naruto, there’s even a Naruto poster in one of the flashbacks. It works especially well considering Donnie and Dame are old friends who considered each other brothers much like Naruto and Sasuke.
Maybe it’s those anime influences that are why it’s now my favourite film in the franchise. Looking at the Wikipedia page while writing this review it looks like in addition to having more Creed movies planned Michael B. Jordan has also expressed an interest in having spin-offs which would certainly be interesting and of course they would all count towards future updates to this ranking image.
It’s been a while since I did a wishlist for a game but with the new trailer and website promotions for the next Ultimate Ninja Storm game out I figured it only made sense to make another wishlist for it considering I made one for the last two Storm games.
Now it’s important to note that this is going to be like Generations and Revolution rather than the numbered games. Why is this relevant to a wishlist? Well in those games while they did tend to add characters from the newer arcs they also caught up on a bunch of characters the previous games didn’t bother making fully playable. So it only makes sense to start this wishlist with…
The Kage (Boruto era)
I’ve wanted these characters to be playable back when they were the bodyguards for the previous kage. Darui is already playable so he can just get given a costume but Kurotsuchi and Chojuro are long overdue a playable appearance in this series. It’d be nice for them to have costume slots for their Shippuden designs too. Since Generations and Revolution both added a bunch of kage I think these might be a safe guess this time around.
The Seven Swordsmen of the Mist
Another set of characters that were in my previous wishlists. They really should have been playable back in Storm 3 but I can understand putting more resources into having all the Jinchuriki. But now that they’re promoting the choice to make characters from the distant past playable with Ashura and Indra completing this set would make a lot of sense. They could even give Fuguki Samehada to effectively represent what he was like while he was alive.
Ino-Shika-Cho (Boruto)
I don’t know if we’ll get all of Boruto’s classmates in this game or even all of the children of the Konoha 11 but at the very least these three should be playable. And on a similar note…
Ino-Shika-Cho (Original)
It’d be great to have three generations of Ino-Shika-Cho in this game. Plus the game is called Connections, they fit the name pretty well.
Karui and Omoi
I don’t expect them but they’ve been in both my previous wishlists and it would be nice to play as Karui, Choji and Chocho as a team. If we only get one of these two I’d say Karui is the most relevant being Chocho’s mother but Omoi is the one we’ve seen more from in combat.
Young Madara and Hashirama
Another repeat entry. I think they could fit in with whatever their plan for Ashura and Indra is.
Baryon Mode Naruto
They always add a new version of Naruto and I think it should be this form.
Kawaki and a new Boruto
As the new protagonist I suspect moving forwards Boruto will the the one getting new character slots to represent his progress, he already has three of them. Kawaki also feels like the most important Boruto character to include in preparation for a potential Storm 5.
Zetsu
Still the only Akatsuki member that isn’t playable.
Boruto antagonists
I’ll admit I’ve not been following the Boruto series properly so I don’t really know which characters should be higher priorities than others but at least some of the antagonists should be present.
Bring Back Lars
I know he was a guest character but Bandai Namco publish these games, there shouldn’t be an issue getting the rights to use him again. Plus it would allow Tekken 8 to bring back this costume and maybe even add a Naruto character as a guest.
A character made for this game
Storm Revolution introduced Mecha-Naruto, a character who did reappear in anime filler eventually but was made for this game series. We know there will be an original story featuring Boruto so it would be neat if that story featured an original antagonist.
Hagoromo Otsutsuki
His sons are going to be playable and while it might be nice to see his brother Hamura too if we only get one of these two brothers it has to be the sage of six paths.
Hiashi and Hizashi Hyuga
With Boruto as the protagonist now it would be nice to have his grandfather and great uncle. They’d probably play similarly enough that they could make one a clone of the other but if they only add one then it should be Hiashi since he’s still alive.
Himawari Uzumaki
She’s not really had much combat experience but the Storm games have managed to incorporate other traits of a character into full movesets before and I think they could make Himawari a fun character. I’d say there’s certainly more to work with than Hanabi had when they added her.
Shion
I want the non-canon movies to be represented in the Storm games. There are some Road to Ninja costumes (which I hope get brought back, for some reason they got left out of Storm 4) but it would be neat to have some characters from these movies. Plus looking forward at a potential Storm 5 if they don’t have enough Boruto content for a full game they could throw in all the movies. If they only add one movie ally I think Shion makes the most sense as she’s one of the more popular movie characters.
Menma
And for movie villains the obvious choice has to be Menma, the evil version of Naruto. He’s been on my wishlist before and I guess if they wanted they could just copy Naruto’s moveset and recolour his attacks.
Upgrade the rest of the support only characters
And let’s end this list with a call back to the way it started. Storm 4 got rid of support only characters as it changed the way support characters worked but that left a bunch of characters that never got upgraded. I already talked about Kurotsuchi and Chojuro at the start of this list but while I think they’re the support only characters with the best chance of getting upgraded I’d love to see all of them get upgraded. If it can’t be all of them then outside of the two kage Kurenai, Shizune and Anko are the characters that deserve upgrades the most.
And that’s the end of the list. Maybe after we hear more about the game I could do a costume wishlist, the Storm games do tend to add a decent amount of costumes.
First 2023 film I’ve seen this year. When this came out it sparked one of those discussions about Rotten Tomatoes ratings where people who liked it weren’t happy with the critic score and started praising the easily review bombed audience score (which is really just a Rotten Tomatoes members score). My stance is that considering the way their scores work a score close to 50% shouldn’t be considered a low score, it just means there’s more variety between positive and negative opinions. They shouldn’t give it the label Rotten though, that doesn’t exactly help avoid these arguments.
As for my opinion of the movie itself I thought it was pretty good, I liked it the most out of the three Ant-Man movies. Seeing this character who was introduced in a heist movie who has mainly played a supportive role in Avengers fights going up against a threat on a similar level to Thanos without the rest of the team is a fun setup and a great way of hyping up Kang for his role in future movies for those who might not have watched Loki. I should note sadly Luis isn’t in this but it’s at least understandable given how quickly the cast are brought into the quantum realm.
Something I’ve been looking forward to eventually seeing with the Ant-Man movies even before the MCU started frequently introducing different Young Avengers characters was seeing Cassie Lang become Stinger (or her original identity of Stature but Stinger fits the insect theme better). Since Ant-Man and the Wasp Cassie has been recast twice and while it would have been nice to see Abby Ryder Fortson or Emma Fuhrmann suit up as Stinger I think Kathryn Newton does a great job.
And of course the big highlight of the film, even for people who didn’t like it, is Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror. A character setup at the end of Loki who we know will be the focus on an upcoming Avengers movie. Majors does a great job making each version of this character we’ve met so far intimidating in a different way. It’s also clear to me why this movie isn’t for everyone, Kang talks about a lot of comic lore that will make people who know what he’s talking about excited for the future Kang appearances but without that these are just a bunch of words that will only mean something in hindsight looking back. There’s also another villain of note but for him I’d like to bring up an image I’ve been working on.
I’ve been taking note of times the MCU has a character that’s based on multiple characters rather than just one, a great example would be how Ms. Marvel’s powers in her show as based on the X-Men character Armor (which is why I’m fine with her being a Mutant in this universe, she’s partially based on one). This image most likely is missing some examples and I’ll admit Taskmaster is probably a bit of a stretch but this has been a topic I’ll often think about while watching a new Marvel show or movie. Anyway the reason I’m bringing it up in this review is M.O.D.O.K. is one of these characters and he’s pretty much exactly what I an MCU version of M.O.D.O.K. should be like, certainly a better take on the character than the Avengers game. Anyway on to the image I normally put at the end of an MCU review.
If you’re a fan of the MCU in general you probably already saw this before I wrote this. If you’re only interested in specific parts of the universe this will be worth watching for the upcoming Avengers storyline and season 2 of Loki but if you’re not that fussed about Ant-Man you can wait for the Disney+ release.
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