Tag Archives: Sci-Fi

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story review

14 Saturday Jan 2017

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There were Asian people a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? 

by Thom Yee

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

If there’s one thing that’s rarely been central to (or at least pre-eminent in) the Star Wars movies, it’s an actual war. Star Wars has always involved its fair amount of physical conflict, but mostly it’s been about things like an individual hero’s journey, lightsabers, the Force, Gestapo-like imagery, whiny little protagonists, the tougher and smarter princesses they love, smooth-talking scoundrels, and funny mascot-type characters, and even the fall of the Empire (spoiler alert?) wound up being a battle where a bunch of adorable little bears were running around in the middle of the conflict zone, adding questionable value to the Rebel forces’ efforts. In fact, the only time I ever felt like there was a genuinely large-scale battle shown to us in the movies was in the opening scene of Revenge of the Sith when Anakin and Obi-Wan rescued Palpatine, the theretofore unrevealed would-be Emperor of the eventual Empire (spoiler alert again?), and that took place when the galaxy still had the Jedi Order around to keep the peace, clouded by the dark side though they and their Council may have been. Continue reading →

Arrival review

19 Saturday Nov 2016

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The kangaroo did it

by Thom Yee

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Arrival images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Most people don’t know this about me, but I didn’t grow up speaking English. That might not be a huge, shocking surprise given my Chinese surname and the… let’s go with “inward-looking nature” of my people, nor is it likely a huge stretch of the imagination to then conclude that my first language might have been Chinese. In my  case, it was a dialect of Chinese that you probably wouldn’t even recognize if I specified which (and I’m not going to), and looking back and thinking about my parents, both second-generation Canadians who were more comfortable speaking English (if at all?), it seems like a strange choice for them to have raised me in a Chinese-speaking environment. What I remember most of my first few years speaking Chinese was a great deal of isolation from all of the people I met who spoke English, then a brief a period of transition as I adapted to English and entirely forgot Chinese, followed by a great deal of isolation from the Chinese community of which I was allegedly a part (a feeling that continues to this day). I like to think sometimes that those early experiences with conflicting languages and incompatibilities gave me a unique perspective on grammar and the process with which I put sentences together, but really, I think it was mostly just an experience that made me hate everyone and the world around me. Continue reading →

Star Trek Beyond review

30 Saturday Jul 2016

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It’s been a long road getting from here to there

by Thom Yee

star-trek-beyond-head3We’ve been pretty fond of J.J. Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek here at GOO Reviews, with 2009’s Star Trek, the first entry in what’s now officially known as the Kelvin Timeline, still a standout favourite among the many movies we’ve covered here. Generally well received by critics and fans, it’s the movie that revitalized Star Trek as a viable franchise after it had been, more or less, run into the ground, its last ongoing series, Enterprise, not even airing on a major network as it eked out four seasons-worth of episodes to an audience that had long been growing tired and apathetic towards the whole… well, enterprise (and let’s not even get started on that opening theme song). Continue reading →

Ghostbusters (2016) review

23 Saturday Jul 2016

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Women Ghostbusters? What’s next, a female Slimer?

by Thom Yee

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Ghostbusters (2016) images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Do you guys actually think the original Ghostbusters was that good? ‘Cause I don’t. It’s overly casual and fairly shallow, it’s slow and meandering, and its ultimate resolution, crossing the streams, is a placeholder of an ending that ties into nothing else in the movie other than an earlier passing mention not to. No, it’s not a great movie in most of the usual, identifiable, quantifiable measures we like to apply to movies, and there’s only one significant reason why anyone likes it. Luckily, it’s the only reason that matters, and that’s that it works. For some reason, the 1984 Ghostbusters just works in a way that engages you, keeps you watching, makes you laugh, and even gives you an odd sense of contentment, and that’s an extremely rare thing to create let alone recreate. Continue reading →

Independence Day: Resurgence review

02 Saturday Jul 2016

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What, Adam Baldwin was too busy?

by Thom Yee

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Independence Day: Resurgence images courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Of all the, globe-spanning, widescreen, blockbuster movie genres, the disaster movie has been one of the most peculiar and inconsistent even as it’s persisted through decades of more contemporaneously popular sci-fi, action, and, lately, superhero movies. In some of them a high concept like hyper-intelligent monkeys are the problem, while many more lean towards environmental catastrophes like tornadoes or even global warming (“We didn’t listen!”). Some have even centred on the arcane, calendar-based prophecies of ancient civilizations, but no matter the premise, most of them find some way to specifically peg modern society as the real problem, and every one of them hinges on the notion that, no matter what’s come before, this time is different, and there’s nothing we can do but pick up the pieces. Sometimes I think that’s what made Independence Day’s alien invasion scenario so popular, because an alien invasion, an assault from outside forces, is an external threat, an easy one, one we can put a face to that isn’t our own and one we might be able to fight back against. The rest of the time I know that its popularity comes from the fact that most disaster movies are terrible. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean Independence Day was good. Continue reading →

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows review

11 Saturday Jun 2016

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Since when were ninjas so bad at hiding?

by Thom Yee

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

I don’t know what kids today do after school, what with their STEM programs and their social responsibility and their parents who actually pay attention to them, but back in my day, a lot of us kids took martial arts classes after school, and no matter what our parents may have thought about us getting good exercise or developing a hobby built on a system of discipline, respect, and honour, most of us were only taking those classes for one reason: To beat up other kids.

The thing you have to understand about being a kid in the early ‘90s is that we were coming up only in the afterglow of the truly great action movies of the ‘80s, and so that spirit of almost mindless killing was slowly being eroded while also being finely tempered against the more spiritual elements of what we assumed was the Eastern philosophies of violence as a last resort.  For kids who took martial arts, that usually still meant a lot of fighting, just not fighting with the intent to kill. Continue reading →

10 Cloverfield Lane review

19 Saturday Mar 2016

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Things really are bad everywhere

by Thom Yee

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10 Cloverfield Lane images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

It’s a strange feeling watching the sequel to a movie you’ve never seen and probably never will see.

The original Cloverfield was a movie that I was extremely excited about, mostly because of its great marketing campaign. Remember, this was arguably the point in Internet history just before it would become such a significant part of our daily lives, only months before the iPhone would be connected to high-speed mobile networks, but there were still hints all over the Internet of what Cloverfield was, with cryptic websites about the odd novelties and [evil?] corporations in and around the movie, and even social media pages of people who lived inside of the Cloverfield universe. Continue reading →

Star Wars: The Force Awakens review

16 Saturday Jan 2016

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before

by Thom Yee

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

What if a child grew up without seeing Star Wars in the same way that society sees it? What if a child found far greater meaning in the other stories he grew up with? That child would be me.

I don’t get Star Wars. I mean, I get it, it’s not like there’s some abstraction that makes it hard to interpret or understand, and I can see how it’s vast array of post-movie product offerings — toys, books, clothing, ornaments, lifestyle accessories — have allowed it to become such a big deal, but I don’t get why it’s become such an all-consuming behemoth of an intellectual property or why it’s managed to gain fan warship at a level and with a reach so far in excess of any other franchise that doesn’t count the Bible or Dianetics amongst its works. Continue reading →