About this Episode
Trailer Town
Can we just start calling both prequels and sequels “‘quels”? We’re tired of remembering which is what and debating whether a given movie is one or the other—it’s definitely one of the two, though, since originality is almost officially passé in Hollywood. Anyway, Jump Cuts features two ‘quels. (Catch that? We’re the change we wish to see.)
First up is Alien: <whatever Ridley Scott’s calling it today>, and guess which Screener gets to sit out this trailer review because he hasn’t seen any of the original series. Is there story left to tell, or should Scott have left well enough alone with the franchise’s success (...then failure, then moderate success again)?
Next, though, is Captain America: Civil War. Its first trailer is out now, and it’s a little different from your standard superhero punch-fest (don’t worry; there’s probably some punching in there). What are the Screeners’ first impressions of the new installment coming off their rave reviews of Winter Soldier?
Can You Say “Thematically Divergent”?
This episode’s main event is a rare beast indeed—a hat trick. A triple play. Three in the hole. We’re pretty sure that last one’s not really a thing. Anyway…
First on the docket is Creed. It’s the latest in the Rocky series, or we suppose you could say that it just “takes place in the Rocky universe” since we’re all way, way too familiar with that phrase by now. Anyway, once you get past the fact that the main character’s name is Adonis, son of Apollo (should we be calling him Phoebus Apollo at this point?), it turns out there’s a good bit of discussion fodder to be had in the film. We’ll start things off here: Is this a shameless money grab, a loving homage, or an actual story in its own right? Do we need another Rocky movie, or should we have left well enough alone after Rocky Balboa nearly a decade ago? What do we mean when we say “rags to riches”? We’re sure Josh can find something to complain about in here, too, but we’ll leave that for the episode.
Next, we’ll revisit something we teased in the last episode: The Man in the High Castle. Visual adaptations of Philip K. Dick stories are nothing new, but this is Amazon’s first attempt at portraying his brand of sci-fi. The swastika doesn’t get a lot of airtime these days, but things might be a little different if the Nazis had won World War II. That’s the theme of the show, right—swastikas? Kidding—there’s definitely more to talk about, but is it enough to win over the Screeners? We’re a little concerned it won’t have enough earthquakes for Daniel…
To round out the episode, the Screeners travel back in time a few weeks to review Pixar’s newest offering, The Good Dinosaur. It’s gotten mixed reviews, from the high praise Pixar included in the trailer all the way down to a painfully obvious slam floating around the Internet: “The Mediocre Dinosaur”. (Well done, blog critics. Must’ve taken you ages.) Pixar’s always aimed at a specific audience, though, and all of the Screeners except one have young kids now, so let’s see how this plays out.
The Flickchart session last time was embarrassing enough, right? None of that this episode; we dedicated all the game time to Hitler. See you on Facebook—and back here next episode, when we’ll be talking about Creed.