René Borg

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy: The Final Frontier of Dumbed-Down Trek If you ever wondered what would happen if someone stripped Star Trek of its philosophical backbone, its moral nuance, its sense of wonder, and replaced it with a YA soap-opera stitched together with quips, TikTok pacing, and tonal whiplash… congratulations, you no longer have to imagine. Starfleet Academy is here to boldly go where Kurtzman Trek has been dragging the franchise for years: straight into narrative remedial classes. This show takes what was once a layered, thoughtful universe where characters wrestled with ethical dilemmas, clashing ideologies, and the responsibilities of power and reduces it to the emotional maturity of a cafeteria meltdown. Instead of Picard-level diplomacy, we get high-school drama with warp nacelles (detached no less). Instead of the quiet confidence of exploration, we get characters who behave like they’re auditioning for a CW crossover event. The humour? It’s the worst kind: that forced, self-aware, look-we’re-so-quirky brand that breaks immersion every time it lands (which is almost always with a thud). Moments that should carry emotional or thematic weight dissolve into punchlines, mugging, and meme-bait dialogue. The worldbuilding suffers the same fate. Where Trek once treated its universe with respect: internally consistent, aspirational, intellectually curious; this show turns the setting into a loose backdrop for teen angst and contrived subplots. It’s all surface, no depth. All drama, no stakes. This franchise keeps trading away its core identity for something louder, dumber, and shallower. Starfleet Academy feels like the logical endpoint of that trend. The characters talk like modern influencers, the scripts feel written by committee, and the show treats long-established lore as a vague suggestion rather than a foundation. Star Trek used to challenge us, make us dream of something better. This show panders to us (and seem to think the youth of today are stupid, are they?). Trek used to make us think. Now you have to turn off your brain to tolerate the plot. If you grew up with Star Trek as a carrier of ideas: humanist, philosophical, strategic, curious then Starfleet Academy will feel less like a new chapter and more like a parody that escaped from a writer’s room that fundamentally misunderstands what made the franchise endure (perhaps willfully so, as it is well known that most of the current producers dislike original Trek). Star Trek in name only (and to its shame). A hard pass.

Started pretty good - like a weird semi-continuation of Tin Cup but slows down and is plagued by cliched. It really goes down the hill from episode 4 with the introduction of Lilli May's unbearable character who unfortunately appears bound to become a main stay of the cast. Will give the show a few more episodes but feel like giving up on it at this point.

If this movie was a parody of every non-sensical, DEI, globalist fever-dream messaging board, it would be a straight up five stars. Unfortunately, it takes itself seriously and comes across utterly ridiculous. Like Klaus Schwab ordered a movie helping the WEF brand hidden within a female-empowerment wish fulfilment narrative (or should I say 'pretend wish fulfilment' as this type of movie has no real audience - among either men or women).

Alien Romulus is the latest in a long line of films that show two things 1) expectations of audience intelligence has been dumbed down nd 2) modern updates of old material with better effect but worse writing is not a winning combination. There are a few positives here and there in this movie such as some rare insights into the general life in the Alien universe but they don't make up for the films many failings. A few mild spoilers to follow: Both the actors and the characters they portray are a massive downgrade on the original Nostromo crew. Instead of a largely competent set of hardened professionals trying to do their best (i.e. 'truckers in space') we get a group largely incompetent The movie relies more on the 'easy' horror tropes than anything truly deep and disturbing. - i.e. characters making unbelievable stupid choices to make the plot move forward (such as staring intently for long periods into a hostile alien egg - the movie taking a cue from Prometheus here), nothing working when it is meant to work (and when it works always last minute) and so on. This is a marked difference from the original where the crew did their best and came up with many clever tactics yet were thwarted by the sheer formidable nature of their foe. apart from these shortcomings, the additions and retconning of previous lore take more away from the original movie than they add. Having the Alien from the first movie survive being jettisoned into space and a nuclear detonation is ludicrous and the hugely accelerated growth of the xenomorph in this movie would need to be explained. The only good reason for this seems to be to fit with the 'counting clock' time estimation put into the script for no other good reason that someone read somewhere that this 'add tension'. Like has become the norm for most franchise instalments of late, there are endless memberberries and riffs off all the previous movies in the instalment: CGI reuse of a dead character for no good reason, post-third act showdown between monster and heroine clad in underwear, monsters being blown into space and so forth. At this stage even a small amount of creativity - let's say something radical like an Alien movie with a male lead would be welcome. It's a movie that you can passably watch in the background if you don't pay it too much thought. But the Alien franchise deserved better.

Another pointless spin-off about a character barely anyone cares about tailored to a nearly non-existant audience. The main purpose of this show - as is now standard for Disney - seems to be to create 'current talking points'. Ultimately that could have been ok if not for the ridiculous plot and the constant annoying over-acting and the glacial pacing (barely anything happens in the first two episodes). the greatest problem with shows like this is that they waste money that could have been spend on making something actually worthwhile.

My favourite Star Wars production since the original film trilogy. Mature, expertly written, tightly plotted with compelling realistic characters existing in a galaxy far away that has never seem more real and more gritty. The Empire here truly is shown for the totalitarian nightmare it is with deep lessons to be learnt for those in our modern world who fear the over-reach of centralised power and look for the inspiration to stand up for the freedom of individuals no matter the personal cost. Luthen Raal - Stellan Skaarsgaard - gives arguably the best speech in Star Wars history in the later episodes. He along with all the central cast members act their way superbly through this show. Dialogue is strong and impactful - a conversation between two charactesr usually more intriguing than a fight scene (although once the actions hits the deck in this show - it hits hard). I await the second season with bated breath. Any criticism? Yes, the first few episodes are a bit of a slow-burn and a storyline involving Andor's sister appears to be just dropped to the side (it may yet re-emerge) but if Gilroy can stick the landing with season 2, then this show (alone among Disney's productions) will be cherished for decades to come.

My longer review kept bouncing back (why Google?) so here follows a shorter version: like with most recent Marvel and Star Wars shows (bar Andor and X-Men 97), Disney appears to have lost touch with ALL (yes, all!) basic aspects of telling a good story through the visual medium: the script and dialogue ranges from poor to cringe-inducing, logic and basic physics are totally absent (statements are contradicted scene to scene, bonfires burn happily in space), CGI and costume design are weak and sets claustrophobic despite a massive budget of 180 euro, and the only two half-competent actors in the show (Carrie-Ann Moss and the guy from Squid Game) are wasted (in each their own way). Whether this is down to Disney's first priority appearing to be to comply with as many ESG/DEI requirements per show (to appease main investor Blackrock) and to hire people for their provocative profile rather than competence, is hard to tell (it appears so). It is a pity because there is the gist of a good premise in the Acolyte that any half-competent amateur writer could have turned into a fairly compelling tale. Any story told competently is welcomed by the broad fan-base and had the Acolyte headed this lesson and had somene like Tony Gilroy at the helm - it could have been a roaring success. As it is, you can extract a few tolerable scenes if you are willing to torture yourself with material as bad as the witches' chant in episode 3 (so bad you will volunteer for an hour long session of people running their nails over a blackboard after hearing it) but that is as far as it goes. There is a lack of craft, a lack of effort, a lack of true dedication to the original legacy of the Star Wars lore. Everyone seems to waltz into this franchise now think they can improve on it by rewriting and reframing the exact elements that unified the whole world in love of the originals. It always backfires and with each production, Disney maintains the loyalty of a smaller and smaller cadre of fans.

A shameful desecration of Jules Vernes original material. give it a miss and read the original or watch the more faithful prior adaptations.

You get fully immersed in Arrakis, the desert and the Fremen culture for the first time here. SyFy's miniseries (especially Children of Dune) came close but Denis Villeneuve maximise the visual and sensory impact of the film medium to maximum effect here leaving me satisfied both on an emotional level and as a life-long fan of the books who has read all six original Herbert novels (thrice) and watched all adaptations of them many times. Normally, I am a stickler for serious deviations from the lore or the established characterisation and the only small gripe with this book are that not all deviations seem entirely necessary to tell the story in the way Villeneuve goes about it. Unlike many more critical voices, I do believe these deviations can be easily moulded back so that all characters arrive at the point they need to be at in Dune Messiah (the source material for the mooted Part 3). Some have called the movie too long: if anything it is too short as I would gladly have spent another hour in the cinema (and in this world) if it had meant scenes with Thufir Hawat, a glimpse of Guild Navigator and more agency for the baron and the emperor (somewhat unconvincingly portrayed by Christopher Walken - but perhaps serving as a more visual symbol of the decline of House Corrino around the time of the events of the Dune books). Villeneuve decides to try and 'show' many things that in teh book we are 'told'. This is necessary as a book is primarily about interpreting words and heavily engages the intellectual mind whereas a movie needs to stimulate all sense: it needs to circumvent our purely logical and analytical experience of something and instead makes us FEEL it. There are rousing scenes late in movie, where the combination of voice, sound, and imagery makes you feel the same strong emotions inside that affects the characters in the movie. That is a powerful thing to tap into - especially for a story that grapples with the question of why we follow messianic and charismatic leaders. Here you are not 'told why' - you 'feel why'. I was only moments from unsheathing my own crysknife and joining the Jihad. Ultimately the film condenses the timeline of the book which works well on some levels and less well on others but as part of this a series of events are rushed at the ending. While the slight rush at the death could have been rectified with more run-time, it does mean we get an early glimpse of what is to come next in the series (something the book ending does not provide). This will work in the film's favour once part 3 comes out but also leaves this movie less self-contained than earlier adaptations. Despite these criticisms, I give it five stars as I thought Villeneuve truly brought Herbert's world to life so you felt transported not just in mind - but in body - to the sands of Arrakis. Now he just needs to ensure he sticks the landing with Part 3 and then he needs to change his mind and adapt the third book (Children of Dune) into a Part 4 to truly finish of the story of the first key generation of Atreides to this story.

Dipped back into True Detective with this and wished I hadn't bothered. It's clear that the lack of the original talented writers and directors left this project in hands unable to recreate the magic of the first season (something season 2 and season 3 also failed at but not as spectacularly). The two main characters are not properly developed and Jodie Foster largely wasted here which stands in stark contrast to the relationship between Rust and Marty in season 1. There seems to be a certain boring template for female characters that is now roled out in nearly every show robbing them of the ability to stand out as nuanced, interesting, and unique characters. the show leans heavily into the supernatural (too far) and without spoiling too much has an ending that ranges somewhere from bizarre to a total let-down. Would have been a better show without the True Detective moniker which set expectations higher than the producers of this show had the experience and qualifications to deliver on.