Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the final part of my epic three-part Star Wars: The Force Awakens review! If you missed PART ONE or PART TWO, then click the text to jump right there.

It's not a coincidence that I'm writing about the movie now, just before The Rise of Skywalker comes out. I mean I started writing it ages ago, but I realised that this was the ideal deadline to hit. It probably would've made more sense to write about The Last Jedi, seeing as it's the film that actually leads into the new movie, and to be honest I think it'd be more interesting to examine, but I figured I should start at the beginning of the trilogy. This way I get to talk about whether Rey is a Mary Sue or not, and I bet you're dying to read another opinion about that on the internet.

This will contain SPOILERS for the movie, but you know that as I've said it twice already. I say it on all my reviews in fact, even though there's a spoiler warning in the side panel over on the right. Maybe I could change the colour of the warning text next week, add a bit of variety.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still going through J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens!

Actually I don't think the 'Episode VII' part is in the name this time, which is a shame because I like it when films get numbers; they let me keep my stories straight. If I ever decide to watch the Harry Potter movies I'm going to have to find a guide just to know what order to watch them in. Star Wars, on the other hand, has handy episode numbers that... well okay this is actually a bad example, seeing as episodes 1, 2 and 3 came out years after 4, 5, and 6 and everyone's got their own ideas on which order works best.

Fortunately it's easy to figure out what order to read this review in, as you start with PART ONE, then you read this part, then part three finishes it off tomorrow.

I'm going through the movie scene by scene so this will be full of SPOILERS. I'll also be spoiling parts of the earlier Star Wars movies (episodes 1 to 6), but somehow I doubt that's going to be an issue for anyone. I'm just making sure you know what you're in for.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Part 1

Written by:

Lawrence Kasdan & J. J. Abrams and Michael Arndt

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Directed by:

J. J. Abrams

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Release Date:

2015

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first Star Wars movie where the film number and the episode number is the same! It's the seventh instalment either way.

It's also the first movie in the final trilogy of the Skywalker Saga. It still blows my mind that they finally made there in the end, as I still (vaguely) remember when there was only one trilogy and no sign that George Lucas was ever going to make the others he had planned. Not that these three films are anything like he'd planned.

I mean I doubt any of them were really, seeing as we're still waiting for Annikin Starkiller to show up, but this trilogy was created after Lucas had sold Star Wars to Disney and his involvement was minimal. His most recent concept for the final trilogy apparently focused on the microbiotic world and midi-chlorians, but Kathleen Kennedy's crew have gone in a different direction and to be honest I'm kind of glad.

Okay, this is going to be the same deal as with my Star Trek Into Darkness review, as I'm splitting it into three parts to save you from having to read too much in one sitting. Though you could just wait a couple of days until all three parts are out and read it that way if you want to climb that mountain of words.

There will be MASSIVE SPOILERS below for The Force Awakens and I'll also be assuming that you've seen the earlier films as well. No spoilers for The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker though, and not just because that last film isn't out for a couple of days at the time I'm posting this. But these are genuine pre-Rise of Skywalker opinions.

Star Trek Into Darkness - Part 3

This is it, the last Sci-Fi Adventures until December, and the last part of my unintentionally epic review of Star Trek Into Darkness (no colon).

I feel like I should be bothered by that missing colon, but I can respect the choice they've made there. It separates this era from the numbered movies with the Original Series actors, and the colon movies with the Next Generation crew, so there's no confusion. Plus I like that they're owning the 'trek' part of the title more. This is going on a trek into darkness, the next movie takes a trek beyond. They're trekking. Seems like a bit of a backslide though to go dark after the last movie rejected the prevailing trend of Battlestar Galactica grittiness and turned things up so bright that you got lens flares in the face in every other shot.

This is part three of this review by the way, so if you're looking for an earlier part you can click one of these convenient links: PART 1, PART 2.

Here's the SPOILER WARNING: I will be spoiling Into Darkness, Star Trek: Discovery's first two seasons, and various bits from other episodes and movies. I will not be spoiling Star Trek Beyond.

Star Trek Into Darkness - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still writing about Star Trek Into Darkness! If you missed the first part of my review you can find it -> HERE <- and there's still one more part to go after this. It's a long movie.

Speaking of second parts, this was the second of the Kelvin Timeline trilogy kicked off with Star Trek 2009. But it's the last movie by the Star Trek 2009 team, as director J.J. Abrams had to go off and do the Star Wars: The Force Awakens afterwards. Trek 09 writers Alex Kurtzman (current overlord of TV Trek) and Roberto Orci also returned, and were joined this time by Damon Lindelof, who had a bit of experience writing sci-fi himself as he'd just finished working on the movie Prometheus. Oh plus he'd been co-showrunner on Lost for six seasons (which is considerably longer than J.J. Abrams worked on the show).

Anyway, this review contains SPOILERS for Into Darkness, Star Trek: Discovery's first two seasons, and probably other episodes and movies too. It didn't seem right to spoil anything from Star Trek Beyond though, so I didn't.

Star Trek Into Darkness - Part 1

Written by:

Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof

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Directed by:

J.J. Abrams

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Release Date:

2013

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures... is going to be the last for a while I'm afraid. I'm taking another two month break, so the site will be going into cryosleep until December. But I figured I should give you something to read while you wait, so I've written about an entire movie this time! It's the second of the Kelvin Timeline films, Star Trek Into Darkness!

Though I ran into a slight problem with the first draft of my review, as it turns out that the movie shares the record for the longest runtime of all the Trek movies with The Motion Picture, and it's about people constantly running everywhere and doing things instead of staring at the viewscreen in awe. I ended up with twice as many words as my average movie review and three times as many as my average TV review! Though my recap is still slightly too short to qualify as a novel, so I can't joke about it being the unofficial novelisation.

I never like doing this, but I've decided to split the review into three parts and publish one part a day, for the sake of all humanity. That way each post is merely excessively long, not ridiculously long. But they are all going to include SPOILERS for the whole movie, and I'm considering basically anything in Star Trek besides Star Trek Beyond to be fair game this time as well. So there'll be a few Star Trek: Discovery spoilers from its first two seasons.

Star Trek

Written by:

Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman

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Directed by:

J.J. Abrams

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Release Date:

2009

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September 8th was the day that Star Trek: The Original Series first aired on US television back in 1966 (Canada got it two days earlier, but don't tell anyone), so today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm celebrating its 50th birthday by sharing my thoughts on the movie Star Trek! Or 'J.J. Trek' or 'Star Trek 2009' or whatever you want to call it (the DVD volume label says it's Star Trek XI). The first Trek movie is called Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so they technically haven't given two films the same title here, but it's still unnecessarily confusing and I don't like it. What was so wrong with calling it Star Trek: The Force Awakens or something?

I love that they brought the old school font back though, as it looks great with that blinding J.J. Abrams lens flare. Some people aren't so keen on the lens flares though, or the fact that this is a prequel, or that it's a semi-reboot, or that it's an action movie... in fact a lot of things about it have aggravated certain fans. Critics on the other hand seem quite fond of the film, with Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 95% of movie reviewers recommended it, which means it's beating Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (88%), Star Trek: First Contact (92%) and The One with the Whales in it (85%)! That makes this the second most acclaimed movie on my site so far, after Aliens (98%).

Right, as usual I'm going to be taking screencaps from the DVD release and writing a bunch of SPOILERS underneath them for this film and maybe even those that came before it. I'll even throw in a couple of spoilers for Star Wars as well, because this movie's begging for comparison. Into Darkness and Beyond are 100% safe though.