Category Archives: Media

The Rise of Skywalker

by Revis Edgewater

When I first watched The Rise of Skywalker in the theater, I felt anger. Anger led to hate. Hate led to suffering. Once the movie ended, I really didn’t think I would ever watch it again.

Then, a few days ago, I was scrolling around on Disney Plus, looking for something to watch. When I saw it, I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to put myself through that again. I decided to give it one more chance…

It wasn’t as bad this time around.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a flawed movie. There are many things about it that I don’t like. But, it wasn’t as horrendous as I thought it was the first time I watched it. That was weird to me because normally, it’s the other way around. Normally, I would like something and then dislike it the more I watch it. Then I started wondering why that might be, and the only explanation I could think of was unreal expectations.

I grew up watching the original trilogy movies over and over again. They were, in my young mind, movie perfection. When the prequels and sequels came out, that was the standard I set for them. I wanted them to be as perfect as I thought the original trilogy movies were.

Looking at them now, objectively, I know the original trilogy movies aren’t perfect. No movie is. There are a few that come close. The Dark Knight. Serenity. Tombstone. None of them are actually perfect, however, and it’s unfair to expect them to be.

So, if you look at The Rise of Skywalker by itself, without any of the other moves coming into play, is it a good movie? No, but it’s also not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. There are definitely worse ways to kill a couple hours.

Oxenfree

by Revis Edgewater

To be honest, I thought I did a post about this game a while ago. When I went to write a post about the sequel to it, and looked for the old post so I could put in a link to it, I was a little surprised to find it wasn’t there. So, that means I either somehow convinced myself that I did write it, even though I didn’t, or that Jetpack’s search bar didn’t find it for some reason. Since I don’t have the time to go back through all my posts and look for it, I’m going to assume that I’m at fault and write this post as if I didn’t post about this before. After all, I’ve been on this blog for 14 years now, and sometimes it’s hard to remember what I’ve written about and what I haven’t.

Back when Xbox Live was still giving away free games every month, one of those games was called Oxenfree. I watched the trailer for it, and while the graphics didn’t look great, the story looked like it might be interesting. The premise of the story is: a group of teenagers go to an island because they heard rumors that if you tune a radio to certain frequencies at certain places on the island, strange things happen. The rumors were true.

So, I gave it a try.

Oxenfree is unlike any other game I’ve ever played before. Pretty much every game I’ve played are sports, fighting, or RPG games. There’s generally a lot of button pushing involved. That’s not the case with Oxenfree. There’s not much gameplay involved. It’s almost all story and character interaction. You control where the main character goes, interact with the radio (and other various objects), and pick what, if anything, she says. Compared to other games that I’ve played, the story gets done fairly quickly, but when you beat it, you’re not done. You find yourself right back at the beginning of the story.

You play through it again, only it’s different this time. There’s spots where the dialog is changed. You’re even told by the story’s antagonist that you’ve been through it before. There are also a few spots in the story where you can give yourself some advice. On your first playthrough, if any of your friends played it, it will show what dialog they chose. On subsequent playthroughs, it will show what you chose the last time.

When I first started playing it, I didn’t think I was going to like it, but I really did. The story was indeed interesting, even through multiple playthroughs. I think I went through it three or four times.

Then, not too long ago, I saw that they released a sequel. Once I beat all the Final Fantasy games I needed to catch up on, I started Oxenfree 2 immediately. It, too, had an interesting storyline. The events of the first game bled over onto a neighboring island, and you have to walk a new main character through it. The island is bigger in this game, with more areas to explore. They added a few new minigame type things to go along with the radio, but the gameplay was mostly the same.

The biggest difference was the ending. Unlike the original, Oxenfree 2 had one. They even had some dialog where two of the characters talk about a book where the story ends where it began and how much they hated that (which I found amusing). Judging by the options at the final decision you make, I’m thinking there’s at least two other endings, so I’m going to play through it again to try to see them all.

If you like story driven games, I recommend these two. I played the first one on Xbox, but the sequel wasn’t available on it. I had to buy Oxenfree 2 for the Playstation.

NCAA Football 25

by Revis Edgewater

Like everyone else who bought the game faithfully every year, I was incredibly upset when they announced that the 2014 version would be the last one. I spent the next couple of years getting a little pissed off when it would get to be the time when it would normally release. Whenever I’d talk to other people who played, we’d complain about how stupid it was that they stopped making the game and all the cool things you used to be able to do on them.

So, when they announced that the 2025 version (which comes out in 2024, yet is still considered the 2025 version for reasons beyond me), you’d think I’d be excited about it, right?

…not really.

You see, back then, I loved college football. Now? Not so much. In fact, it’s probably been close to five years since I’ve sat down and watched more than a few minutes of a game. My enjoyment of it has diminished over the years, and I just don’t like it anymore. In fact, I dislike it. I don’t like all the conference shifting by the schools. I don’t like players transferring constantly (I think I remember reading something about a player going to 5 different schools during his collegiate playing career, which is only supposed to be 4 years at most). I don’t like all this NIL nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the players themselves should profit more from their name, image, and likeness than the schools do, but I don’t think it’s good for the game.

And, ironically, the thing I dislike the most about college football used to be the thing I liked best about it: the rivalries. People take them far too seriously. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been yelled at just because of the team I support. I only have a couple Ohio State shirts still, but I rarely wear them out in public anymore because I’m tired of being harassed by strangers. It’s just a game, and it’s not worth the hassle.

Will I get NCAA Football 25? A part of me wants to, my nostalgic side, but I doubt I will. Maybe if it goes on sale for real cheap, I’ll think about it. Even then, I’m probably going to stay away from it. College football just isn’t fun for me anymore.

Agents of SHIELD

by Revis Edgewater

Whenever Mrs. Revis and I don’t have anything in the current TV season to watch, we’ll go back and rewatch a show we’ve already seen before. A while back, we went through the entire series of Castle again. Castle was such a good show. I just wish they would’ve gotten one more season so they could give the show the finale it deserved.

Our current rewatch series is Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. There are 7 seasons of this show, but we only watched until somewhere between midway to three-quarters of the way through the fourth season when the show was originally airing. The first half of the fourth season was pretty good, but the quality dropped really quickly as the season went on. Back when it originally aired, there weren’t streaming services where you could stop watching something and easily pick it back up again. So, when we stopped watching it to focus on shows that we liked better, we never picked it back up.

We were scrolling through Disney Plus not too long ago and saw that they had added it. When we needed a new rewatch, we decided to go with it… and I’m glad we did.

At this point, we’ve only gone through the first two seasons and a handful from season 3, but right now, the series is just as good, if not better, than I remember it. There’s a good mix of humor, superhero action, and intrigue. Agent Colson is one of my favorite MCU characters, and each member of his team adds a little something to the show.

I’m hoping that we’ll be able to make it past the part we left it the first time and finish the show. Only time will tell, though.

Code 8

by Revis Edgewater

Code 8 is a movie that is currently on Netflix. It stars the Amell cousins, Robbie (who played Firestorm in the first season of The Flash, among other things) and Stephen (who played the Green Arrow in Arrow). Code 8 is about superpowered people, but there are no superheroes in it. The synopsis, on IMDB, reads: “In a world where people with “special” abilities are living in poverty, Conner Reed (Robbie Amell) is a powerful young man who is struggling to pay for his ailing mother’s medical treatment. To earn money, he joins a lucrative criminal world led by Garrett (Stephen Amell), who works for a drug lord (Greg Bryk).“

I watched Code 8 a few years back and I really liked it. There’s a grittiness to it that you don’t see too much in superpowered stories. Like the mutants in Marvel, the people with superpowers are vilified just because of what they can do. Unlike the X-Men, however, the superpowered people in the Code 8 universe don’t use their powers to try to save the planet. They just want to live normal lives, to be normal. Their society won’t allow that, though.

The reason I bring this movie up is because I learned yesterday that the sequel was already out. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know it was already available to watch. So, after the girls went to sleep last night, I stayed up and watched it. Both of the Amell cousins were back, which was cool. The main protagonist in the movie is played by a guy who only had a minute or two of screen time in the first movie, but I’m really glad he had a much bigger part in the sequel. His name is Alex Mallari Jr, and I know him because he played Four/Ryo Ishida in the series Dark Matter.

I dislike spoilers, so the only thing I’ll say about the plot is what’s on the IMDB page: “After witnessing the murder of her brother and subsequent cover up, a teenage girl with abnormal abilities seeks the help of an ex-con (Robbie Amell) and his former partner-in-crime (Stephen Amell). Together, they face a unit of corrupt police officers who deploy advanced robotic technology to prevent themselves from being exposed.”

I liked Code 8: Part 2 just as much as I liked the first one. Maybe a little more. I still haven’t decided for sure. Either way, if you haven’t watched them yet, and you like those kinds of movies, I definitely recommend that you give them a shot. Well, the first one, at least. You don’t absolutely have to watch the first one to enjoy the second one, but it would certainly help.

Twisted Metal

by Revis Edgewater

Way back in the Playstation 1 days, I used to play the game Twisted Metal 2 quite a bit. I never really played the first one, and the third game wasn’t as good, but I used to love playing the second one. Driving around in cars, shooting and blowing other cars up? That’s all kinds of fun. Once I bought the original Xbox, though, everything Playstation got pushed to the back burner and eventually faded from thought.

So, when I was randomly scrolling online a while ago, and saw that Peacock adapted Twisted Metal into a TV show, it filled me with both nostalgia and dread. The nostalgia, obviously, is from all the great times I had playing the game. The dread was because there was a very good chance that they were going to mess it up.

Because I have kids, and there’s a lot of stuff in the show I didn’t want to watch while they were around, it took me a while to make it through the 10 episode season. I’m glad I did, though. Don’t get me wrong, it had its flaws, but overall, I liked it.

I don’t want to get into specifics, because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who may want to watch it, but the finale definitely had the car carnage you’d expect from a show carrying the Twisted Metal name.

If you have Peacock, you should give it a try

The Last Son

by Revis Edgewater

Tombstone is one of my favorite movies. I absolutely love it, and you can say whatever you want about Val Kilmer’s career before and after, but he was pure perfection in this movie as Doc Holliday.

With that being said, I’m not generally a fan of westerns. Sure, I liked the Young Guns movies, and 3:10 to Yuma was pretty good (the Russell Crowe/Christian Bale remake. I’ve never seen the original), but overall, I just never really got into them.

I think the reason I never really got into westerns is the same reason I don’t like horror movies: the plots are basically the same. Let’s face it, every horror movie ever made has the exact same plot: someone or something is going around killing stupid people. Sure, the details differ from movie to movie, but the basic premise is always the same.

Granted, westerns aren’t as bad as that, but most of them are similar. Most of them, like Tombstone and Young Guns, are revenge stories. Not that there’s anything wrong with revenge stories, but a little variety would be appreciated.

That’s why, when I found The Last Son while looking through Hulu, I was intrigued when I read this description: Sam Worthington stars as Isaac LeMay, a murderous outlaw who learns he is cursed by a prophecy: one of his children will kill him. To prevent this, he hunts down each of his estranged children including long- lost son Cal (Colson Baker aka musician Machine Gun Kelly). With bounty hunters and Sheriff Solomon (Thomas Jane) on his tail, LeMay must find a way to stop his children and end the curse.

It wasn’t technically about revenge, plus the curse aspect gave it a supernatural twist. I decided to watch the trailer. The trailer made it look pretty good, so I watched the movie. Like so many others before it, the trailer was much better than the movie.

I don’t want to get into too much detail, so I don’t spoil it for anyone who wants to watch it later, but I didn’t like it. The movie took way too long to develop. While there were a few gunfights, there weren’t as many as I thought there would be, as there should have been. Most of the time, all the people acted robotic, with very little emotion. Unless that emotion was anger, of course.

I will give the movie one thing. It did surprise me a little. Halfway through the movie, I thought the movie would end one of two ways. It actually ended up being a combination of the two, which was kinda cool. Not cool enough to save the movie, but still kinda cool.

If you enjoy westerns, maybe you’ll end up liking this movie more than me, but I still would recommend passing on this one.