ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY was released this past month, one of the first in many now annual Star Wars film releases. Are Star Wars fans ready to handle the excitement of a Star Wars movie being released every single year? We are now feeling the effects of it by having a new movie, unrelated to the last, arrive. The overall reaction was very positive but it seems to have created yet another subdivision of nerd culture. Most like both, but take a hard loyalty for one over the other. Some even are dead set against it, which the last movie didn’t seem to have. In fact it seems that the last movie received universal praise with little backlash while fans became very critical of this one. Perhaps it’s the lack of prestige that comes from the “official” saga releases. ROGUE ONE actually feels very ancillary and supplemental. Like a well done comic book or novel. But we’ve found that a mainstream audiences rarely looks to the deep dives of a franchise to satiate their desires for storytelling. So maybe it was a little too inside baseball for some? We think that it had savvy for hardcore fans of the series that didn’t alienate new comers. A perfect blend of it that allows you to enjoy it at your own pace. What do you think?

The coming of Doctor Strange is Marvel Studios’ latest movie to change the definition of the super hero genre and set new precedent for everything that will come after it. It also is a triumphant in the way it uses IMAX 3D to change the audience’s perception of space and time. It’s as close to an acid trip as you can get without actually breaking any laws. The visuals propel the concept so well that even some of the short comings of character and story melt away, literally, as the mix of special effects and performance and classic Doctor Strange mythology blend together to form a crowd pleasing spectacle on an epic scale. As always, we are excited for newbies to discover the character for the first time and be intrigued enough to delve into the books and see for themselves where the character has been and where the charater can go. It’s a pretty textbook success for Marvel and fans themselves.

This past weekend, we had a chance to watch all three LORD OF THE RINGS extended editions in a theater, back to back to back, at the historic Aero Theater in Santa Monica, CA. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen them and this blogger has never partaken in the extended editions of the films before. There is so much more nuance and character in these versions, that it was like watching them for the first time. Twelve hours flew by like the Great Eagles into the siege of Gondor! Each film, nearing the four hour mark with a food truck outside the theater, nearly the entire audience stayed the entire time. They cheered the appearances of the main heroes and actually HISSED at the appearances of such treacherous villains such as Wormtongue. This audience was primed and their excitement fueled everyone else’s. Classic moments were punctuated by hoots and hollers and sad moments were so quiet that you could hear a pin drop with the occasional soft sobs. Everyone was so engrossed the entire time, except for the girl who played candy crush in the 4th row for nearly 3 HOURS during THE TWO TOWERS. One of my favorite audience moments is when the hipster guy in front of me who was sitting alone and had been pretty silent for nearly ten hours screamed “YES!!!!” when Eowyn dropped some science on the Witch King with a “I am no man” right before she stabbed him in the FACE. I loved him for that. We all rubbed our eyes in the light of the pale moon as we emerged well past one in the morning. Our blood boiling and simmering like the firey lavas of Mount Doom. So moved from this experience that the residual feelings lasted well into the next day as I debated watching the entire HOBBIT trilogy that day. I couldn’t put those blu-ray’s in the player fast enough. Even after nine hours of that, I was still feeling as though my heart was full but still yearning for Middle-Earth. After a quick trip to Game Stop, some LORD OF THE RINGS video games are now left to satiate our Ring fever. We’ll let you know when we calm down a bit.

Well, the chutes are empty, the halls are bare and another Comic Con has come and gone. We at Blast From The Past had ourselves a banner year getting to see many of the great Hall H panels and getting many of the exclusive surprise goodies as well. After much waiting in line, our Saturday morning started off with executive producer of the new2017 CBS All Access series STAR TREK: DISCOVERY handing out coffee and donuts in the wee hours of the morning to all those waiting to attend the STAR TREK: 50 YEARS panel. When we were finally let in, the first panel was Warner Bros. Pictures moderated by Conan O’Brien. The walls of Hall H were stretched back making the screens surround the audience, enveloping our vision with new logos and imagery from the upcoming Warner Bros. movies they were showing us first look footage of the new DC Comics films. For the FANTASTIC BEASTS & WHERE TO FIND THEM portion, Eddie Redmayne himself handed out wands to the audience of 6000 and everyone got their own. The next panel was retrospective of the last 50 years of Star Trek with a panel of cast members from the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise. After that, the 30 year reunion panel for ALIENS attended by Director James Cameron, and cast members Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Hendrickson, Bill Paxton and Paul Reiser. The day ended with massively cool Marvel Studios panel showing us brand new footage from THOR: RAGNAROK, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, DOCTOR STRANGE and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL.2. Plus a first look at the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: MISSION – BREAKOUT! ride coming to Disney’s California Adventure next summer. It was an overwhelming wave of cool stuff, which every Comic Con ends up being, and we’re all gonna need a few days to recover but we can’t wait for next year to do it all over again!