Ryan McGee

The stuff between Vader and Obi Wan mostly works, and the actress playing Leia does a nice job, especially in the early episodes...but everything involving Reva and the Inquisitors is awful and poorly written. The 'rebels' are also caricatures at best. Star Wars completionists may enjoy...but this doesn't add much to the overall canon.

The books are fantastic. If this show could adhere to them, it would be as well. But it does not, and suffers deeply as a result.

The visuals were impressive, and all the actors did a great job, but in the end this felt a little bit like the cliff notes version of Dune...all the spectacle, some references, but no depth. If you've read the books and know the characters and themes, you can fill in the depth yourself, and I think you will enjoy this movie. If you haven't read them, ymmv.

Shakespeare it is not, but it's an upgrade and spiritually a continuation of 90s and 00s teen dramas like Dawson's Creek and the OC. In summary, it's just a lot of fun, and worth a few binges.

I think I would describe the Falcon and the Winter Soldier as endearingly bad. It wears it's heart and it's message on it's sleeve...and it's a good message, but the lack of subtlety is to the detriment of the story, and some of it's characters. I appreciate a grey character as much as anybody...not every story needs a clear villain and hero...but by the last episode of this show, I know how I feel about Falcon/Captain America, but I feel very little about the fates of Karli, John Walker, and the Sharon Carter reveal was kind of a shoulder shrug. Sebastian Stan and Daniel Bruhl are great in their roles, but both end up being relatively minor. (Sebastian Stan, surprisingly so) Aside from characterizations, the show is littered with compelling action sequences, and occasional powerful dramatic moments...but the editing ranges from abrupt to incoherent. I heard the show described as one movie broken up into six episodes. It feels more like a 10 episode season with 4 episodes having been removed at random. In the end, there is enough goodwill generated by the MCU as a whole, and some of the actors specifically to pull me through, but I doubt I'll be watching any of this again.

I'm not a huge Zack Snyder fan. I thought Man of Steel and 300 were OK, and appreciated moments in Watchmen. The rest of his movies I have not enjoyed. So that is where I am coming from when I say that it is a cinematic crime what the WB released in 2017. Of course they couldn't release a 4 hour movie into theaters, but even a pared down version of this would have been leaps and bounds beyond what they did. This is quite possibly Zack Snyder's best work, and I'm glad that it eventually got to see the light of day. What a missed opportunity for the DCEU though.

A solid show, with an intriguing premise and some decent shading of the 'evil' side, making them more 3 dimensional than your average villains...even if the last episode undid a bit of it. Needs to work on character development a bit more in season 2. Strangely many of the side characters were developed quite well (Musa, Stella, Terra, Beatrix) while main characters Sky and Bloom were mostly cyphers. Aisha was extremely poorly written, and you could almost feel the poor actress floundering as her character took action after action without any consistent or reliable motivation, seemingly at the whim of the plot. The show was still entertaining, so I'm sticking with 4 stars...but it needs some work before it can get to the level of truly great fantasy shows. Right now I'd put it in the arena of Motherland: Fort Salem or Legacies. Also, I did not enjoy the source material...I felt this was a major upgrade...but I could understand why people who did enjoy it might not love the changes.

If there is still time to hire writers, I strongly recommend doing so.