GTA Online: Kortz Center Heist Review
The Kortz Center Heist is part of GTA Online’s 2026 update. This heist is similar to many other heists, but this article will discuss whether or not it’s worth the effort. Let’s explore.
Preface
The Kortz Center heist, like the Cayo Perico heist, supports 1 player in its job mission. It is now the only other heist that supports 1 player. However with 1 player, your maximum take is around GTA$2 million because of the loot bag size. There are other bugs that you may encounter during the heist that actually make completing the heist much more difficult than it should otherwise be.
The terrain around the Kortz Center also makes this mission into a captive area. When attempting to leave the area, you are forced to make your way down or up very steep hill terrain. There’s no way to make a clean getaway from this specific location in the game. There are also very few places to hide during the getaway.
This issue is compounded by the job mission saddling you with very limited types of weapons, very limited access to vehicles and that no Mechanic vehicles called during the mission will spawn on the Kortz Center hill. No, they won’t spawn in the parking lot area or on the road leading up to the Kortz Center. The closest spawn area for vehicles is on the road running in front of the Kortz Center entrance, a very very long way away if running. Don’t expect to call the Mechanic to deliver a vehicle to your position wherever you have exited.
Also, don’t expect to get down any of the hills quickly on foot. You will literally be running for minutes trying to run down the hills to get to a road.
It should also be noted that even though you can call the Mechanic for a vehicle and park it on the grounds prior to entering the Kortz center, that vehicle will be despawned upon exiting the Kortz center; it won’t be where you left it. You are forced to use the getaway vehicle you selected when you began the job, assuming you can even find where that vehicle is actually parked.
Prerequisites
As with all heists, you will need a number of prerequisites to even begin the heist. These prerequisites include the following:
- CEO (Agency property) OR Bike President (Clubhouse property) OR VIP (~GTA$1 million) (GTA$1-3 million)
- Own at least ONE Mansion property … PLUS (~GTA$3 million)
- Purchase the Art Studio expansion room for the mansion (~GTA$3 million)
- (Optional) Arcade Property with Drones
To get access to the heist mission planning board, you will need all of the above. These items above will cost you roughly GTA$9 million to GTA$10 million, not including the arcade property.
If you don’t have these, you can join in on someone else’s heist and still help them perform the heist. If you want to be the heist leader, you will need to own all of the above to launch it.
The Heist Setup
As with all heists, there are a number of heist setup missions required (and some which are optional) to begin the heist. I won’t get into the details of every single heist setup mission, but suffice it to say that if you’ve played any other heists, there are no surprises here.
These setups are mostly time wasting missions that really do nothing to help you complete the heist, nor do they provide you with any income. You perform them, waste time and then that “unlocks” some objective. Rockstar is primo at providing heist setups that do nothing to actually help the outcome of the heist itself. Such setups include unlocking heist getaway vehicles, unlocking various weapon loadouts and unlocking various entry and exit points for the Heist. This is not a complete list. Suffice it to say that there are no surprises. Most of the setup missions are relatively easy, but they often require you to traverse the entire map bottom to top to get to the area to complete the objective. You’ll need a fast helicopter, Opressor or Deluxo to move you around faster.
Note that while the heist setup missions allow you to use special vehicles and special weapons, the heist job doesn’t. Be warned.
The Kortz Center Heist Preplanning
The actual heist begins by pressing START on the mission board within the Art Studio on the lowest level of your Mansion. The START button will only become available once you have completed the above mentioned required setup objectives. There are around 5-10 of them. You don’t need to complete everything, but you might want to complete it all to unlock maximum choices during the heist.
This heist also requires that you start and abort it multiple times so you can actually learn things that you can only learn while actually playing through the heist. This includes things like guard placement, camera placement, camera and guard cones of vision, hiding places, sneaking places, how and where you can move without being seen and so much more. There is no way to learn this without starting and aborting this mission multiple times. It also includes learning which entry and exit points offer the best access to the vault.
Unfortunately, there is no way to abort this job without your character losing all of its lives via dying. If you abort the mission by leaving the game via “find new session”, Rockstar penalizes you as potentially a “bad sport” because this mission is started as a “job.” This is one of the bugs I have found with this mission. As a matter of course, there is NO WAY to run through a test mission in advance to learn all of the required details of the mission area. You simply have to deal with Rockstar’s stupidity.
To be able to complete this heist in the way that you prefer, you will need to need to run through the heist multiple times as “trial and error” to find the best ways to get into and out of the heist itself with maximum bank. Yes, that means getting to a specific point in the mission, then aborting it.
Sure, you can “wing” it and get away with whatever amount is left over, but using the actual heist to learn how to navigate through it is the only way to finish the heist with maximum bank.
Stealth Option?
The heist itself leads you to believe that there is a stealthy way to get through the heist, while also getting away clean and undetected. Don’t believe it! That option doesn’t exist. Upon exiting the building after getting through the vault undetected, Raf will say, “It looks like a silent alarm was tripped” followed by a cut scene cinematic of the entire Los Santos SWAT team pulling up in front of the Kortz Center.
Even if you manage to get through the entire heist undetected, get through the vault undetected, get through the laser grid undetected, get through EVERYTHING undetected, the SWAT is still called in and you are still required to “lose the cops”, while trapped on top of the Kortz Center Hill with no way to call any vehicles to you.
You may be saying, “But what about the getaway vehicles?” What about them? I have still yet to find where these vehicles get parked after exiting the building. Clearly, they are nowhere near the exit location chosen. The HUD visibility bug doesn’t help me locate where they are either.
Entry Points
There are 4 main entry and exit points that you can scope. These include the following:
- Rappelling through the Skylight on the roof
- Using the sewer manhole located in the Maze
- Using the employee entrance into the art gallery (upper or lower level)
- Using the basement entrance in an AlphaMail van and outfit
Rappelling
This is probably the most difficult entry point because it requires making your way to the roof, avoiding a number of guards and cameras getting up there. Then, once inside the gallery, you have to again avoid a number of guards and cameras to make your way down into the basement.
See the AlphaMail entry point below to learn more about the basement area. Ultimately, to rappel, you will need to visit and traverse through at least 3 heavily guarded areas before getting into the vault. Wearing any gear other than the AlphaMail or Hazmat suit will work for rappelling. Though you can probably rappel in those outfits. You must wear those two specific outfits for the AlphaMail disguise entry and the Sewer, respectively.
Sewer
The manhole sewer requires obtaining a manhole tool to open the manhole cover to enter into the sewer. It also requires wearing the Hazmat suit. You will need to perform the setup that obtains the Hazmat suit if you want to enter through the sewer.
Once inside, Raf will send you a text message describing the proper gates to enter to get into the basement area. You will need a weapon with a flashlight to be able to see the markings on the wall to enter the correct gates. This entry point lands you into the basement, but at a different entry point from the AlphaMail entry point.
Employee Entrance
The employee entry point requires a keycard to enter. You get this keycard during a heist setup mission. You will need to get past a number of guards and cameras to make your way to the employee entrance keypad. You don’t need to hack this keypad when you have a card. You will enter on either the first or second level of the gallery depending on which entry point you choose.
This entry point is very similar to the Rappelling entry point in that you’re in the gallery and you need to make your way down to the basement, which means avoiding a bunch of guards and cameras inside the gallery.
Note, for maximum haul inside the gallery, you will need at least two people. There is a gate that is down on the second level that must be opened using the CCTV camera room. It requires one player to handle opening the gate and another to get into the room to smash and grab. A minimum of two players is required for the upper gallery area.
AlphaMail Van and Outfit
This is the final entry point into the Kortz Center and probably the easiest of all entry points to use. There are limited guards and cameras that you need to handle along the way. This is the only of these four entry points that you can successfully sneak and stealth your way through.
With this one, you’ll wear an AlphaMail employee outfit and drive an AlphaMail van (you get this in the setup). This one gets you into the loading bay of the Kortz Center with no difficulties. You can even walk your way past the two initial loading dock guards with no combat. You will be required to get an employee card to unlock the door, but even doing that doesn’t alert the guards.
This entry point is, by far, the simplest and easiest. You only need to stun about 6 guards and shoot out one camera to get into the vault laser grid area. It’s super simple up to that point.
Getaway Vehicles
The getaway vehicles offered are 4 Manchez motorcyles (one for each team member), an Annihilator Helicopter or an armored Caracara 4×4. None are particularly better than any other in terms of getaway vehicles. I’ve never used the copter because I assumed it would be parked on the roof as a getaway vehicle.
From every exit point, it almost impossible to make your way back up to the roof to get into the copter. That getaway vehicle is nearly pointless, unless you want to lose nearly all of the contents of your loot bag. I have no idea where the Caracara gets parked nor the motorcyles. One thing is certain, they are parked nowhere near the underground exit when following the AlphaMail entry type.
Loot Bag
And here we come to the sour part of this heist. Each player has a loot duffel bag that they carry around as part of the heist. Each player can fill their loot bag with a limited amount of smash and grab gallery loot.
Unfortunately, Rockstar has intentionally made the loot bag size so small per player as to make the gallery area of the heist almost useless. One player loot bag can hold at most two cut paintings. Even though the gallery has probably 30-40 (or more) items that could be scoped and nabbed, the loot bag is so small that there’s no point in even going into the gallery when you’re the one handling the vault.
In fact, there are 4 paintings inside the vault besides the primary target painting (which doesn’t consume loot bag space), only two of those cut paintings will fit inside of the player’s loot duffel. Once you nab the three paintings from the vault, there is no reason to even enter the gallery to smash and grab. This not only negates the entire gallery area as a single player, it forces you to use multiple players to even consider entering the gallery area.
Heist Strategy
If you have 1 player only, the heist strategy should be to use the AlphaMail vehicle and outfit. This gets you straight into the basement and very close to the vault. Because the loot bag is so small, you should ignore the gallery area and focus solely on getting into vault and nabbing the primary target painting along with two of the other stored paintings. This will fill your loot bag.
If you have two players, the second player can loot portions of the gallery while one player loots the vault.
If you have four players, three of the players can focus on the gallery and nab whatever they can fill into their loot bags, with one player focusing solely on clearing out the vault. If attempting this with multiple players, don’t worry about stealth at all. Simply set the alarm off and get started nabbing and grabbing.
Entering the Laser Grid and Vault
There is nothing that you can pre-prep that will help you get past the laser grid. It’s simply a matter of timing to avoid the laser beams. It’s best if only ONE player attempts to get past the beams undetected. Multiple players will inevitably set off the beams.
Inside the laser beam area there are three switches covering three grid areas. Each switch turns off the laser grid behind the player. You will need to sneak your way through the beams to get to each switch.
It is definitely possible to get to the switches and turn them off without touching any of the beams. It simply requires precise timing. However, it’s also a very slow process and rando players joining into this heist may not be patient enough for this kind of stuff.
Also, two new player actions are available while in the beam grid area: 1) crouch flat and 2) jump-in-place. The jump-in-place feature is actually not needed here. The jump-in-place feature is as it sounds. You can ONLY jump in place, not while moving. If you time the area with the ground sweeping beam correctly, you can turn off the switch without needing to jump. The jump in place feature is also not very precise. Inevitably, it’s more difficult to attempt to jump the ground sweep beam than it is to avoid it by correct timing.
This laser grid area will require multiple plays through to get the timing down pat. This is why you may need to abort and reattempt this area multiple times to figure out the timing. It took me about 8-10 attempts to finally get through the entire laser grid undetected.
Once you get past all three laser grid areas and turn them off while undetected, Raf will commend you on getting past all three grids. However, it doesn’t really help with the vault area and it doesn’t buy you anything other than remaining undetected. There is still effectively a “thermal detection” timer to exit the vault before being detected. You’ll want to nab the primary target painting as fast as possible, then grab two other random paintings in that same area and exit the vault and laser grid area.
This is why it’s important to scope out all of the paintings in the entire Kortz Center area before attempting this heist. If you don’t pre-scope those paintings in the vault, you may not be able to grab them.
Once you are out of the laser grid doors, you can use the SecuroServ app to EMP blast the power and turn the lights off. This will help you escape the building easier. There are four exits from the basement including the way you came in, including the sewer, the gallery and the basement loading bay.
Bugs
Vehicle Disappears
There are many bugs present that help ruin the immersion of this mission. If you arrived via the AlphaMail van, that van will have disappeared in the loading bay area. You cannot use it to exit or leave the area. You must run your way up the loading dock road area and back to the exit. You will exit this garage on foot.
Guards Respawning After Vault
Even if you’ve taken out all of the guards in the basement before entering the vault, after exiting the vault and grid area, those guards will ALL have respawned. I recall that this even included fixing the cameras you have formerly taken out. This is a fairly big bug. If you’ve remained undetected this whole time, those guards shouldn’t respawn. If new guards have showed up while inside the vault, those new guards would have alerted that someone is breaking in because of all of the stunned guards. Yeah, big bugs.
Exiting from the Vault / Silent Alarm / No Stealth
Once you reach an exit, Raf says that a silent alarm was tripped and once outside you instantly have a 3 star wanted level. There is no exit that leads you off of the grounds. Meaning, no matter which exit you choose, you will face a 3 star wanted level with not only Kortz guards, but also SWAT and helicopters.
Don’t bother following Raf’s advice by using an Arcade drone to disable guards as that drone will instantly alert the guards that you’re there. Raf suggests using it, but it never works to remain stealthy. Use a stun gun instead. Basically, don’t take Raf’s advice at any point during the heist.
Touchy Alarms
The entire grounds of the Kortz Center is completely touchy for detection. You may find yourself doing nothing at all and still having the guards alert you for detection. It’s really annoying and touchy that this area can instantly alert everyone that you’re there. Like, for example, I drove my car up next to a wall where it can’t be seen like I had done several other times, and somehow it alerted the guards. I place the car up against this wall because I can stand on top of the car and then grab onto the wall. This allows me to get into an area to head up to rappel or use the employee entrance. It’s much faster to do this than having to walk nearly the entire grounds, avoiding many, many guards and cameras.
The touchy alarm nature of the Kortz area is incredibly frustrating. Once the alarm sounds, you’re forced to endure listening to that blaring alarm for the duration of the entire heist. This loud annoying alarm NEVER SHUTS OFF and NEVER quiets. You can’t even shut it off from settings. You have to mute audio on your entire rig. Yes, this is a bug and it needs an accessibility update.
Bad Sport
This part of GTA has been an ongoing bug for years. I’ve also reported this bug at least once. This “Bad Sport” aspect applies only to missions that start up as “jobs.” Not all missions operate as jobs, but many do. All heists operate as “jobs.”
Jobs are a special type of mission that allows for multiple players and for player matchmaking when in a public multiplayer lobby. Technically, you can only be a “bad sport” if you abort a multiplayer job, meaning that there are actually other players in the job with you. If you launched a job alone, you can’t be a “bad sport” because no other players are affected by your abrupt departure from the job. This “bad sport” issue is a bug that needs to be removed when players are playing jobs alone, especially when they’re playing it in an invite only server with one player. Single players should not be penalized after leaving “jobs” when no other players are participating.
Loot Bag Size
As mentioned above, the loot bag size is way too small for this heist. A real duffel bag would be capable of cramming in at least 10-20 rolled up paintings of the size allowed. This overly restrictive duffel bag size is blatantly obvious and I would consider this a bug.
Hard Game Freezes
This bug is unrelated to the heist itself, but instead affects general GTAO gameplay. Since the update that rolled out adding this heist and the Art Studio, the game now periodically hard freezes while moving around the map. The hard freeze happens at frequent intervals and lasts for between 5 and 10 seconds. While I can’t recall experiencing these hard freezes while inside of the heist, it happens often while near my Nightclub, Bail Office, Agency and various other random map locations. I’ve had something like a hard freeze about every couple of hours of play, but since this update, it’s increased in frequency to about every 5-10 minutes.
Radar HUD Unavailable
This bug is absolutely frustrating. When performing heists, I change my settings to use the bigger local map display on the HUD. It allows for better visibility of the guards and their cones of vision. The tiny HUD is just too small for this.
For regular playing, that tiny HUD is fine. For heists, it’s not. The problem is that sometimes the larger HUD remains stuck on the world map, not showing the local map. This means that you are forced to switch settings back to the tiny HUD map and then use the actual full screen map to see where the guards and cones of vision are. This is not optimal for game play. Both the tiny and the large overlay HUD map should display the SAME version of the local map.
Another related bug is that the local area map of the Kortz grounds doesn’t allow for moving very far from the player’s position. This is why I can’t see where the getaway vehicles are. The restricted limits of scrolling this local map means I can’t move it far enough to see where everything is. Even more than this, the local map has stupid view limits. Even if you can move it far enough away from the player, it stops displaying objects too far away from the player’s position. Moving to the world map is just as pointless and doesn’t show anything useful.
Effectively, there is no map that really works properly for this heist.
Gun Loadouts
For this heist, you get the choice of one of three different gun loadouts. Only one of the gun loadouts has a stun gun (Military). All three gun loadouts are very similar (Street, Military and Security), each with a different type of automatic weapon, a shot gun and a pistol. In the Military loadout, the pistol is replaced with a stun gun.
If you’re intent on trying a stealth approach, the stun gun is the only way this works. That means raiding Fort Zancudo to get this weapon loadout as part of heist prep. This weapon loadout is probably the most difficult to get of the weapon gathering heist preps.
The reason it’s great for stealth is that the stun gun drops a guard in ONE SHOT. Because the guards are wearing armor and helmets, it takes multiple shots to take them down with all other weapons provided. The stun gun is the ONLY weapon capable of one shotting the guards and preventing them from sounding the alarm. Keep in mind that some guards groan and gurgle loudly which can sometimes alert nearby guards, which will instantly set off the alarm. The stun gun works to subdue most of the time, but it is not perfect.
As mentioned in the bugs area, Raf does suggest, assuming that you own an arcade with drones, taking out guards with those drones. Trying to use a drone almost instantly alerts the guards that you’re there. Don’t do it. You don’t need to do this anyway.
Best and Worst Strategies
The best strategy to get into the Kortz center is using the AlphaMail van and outfit. This entry point gets you into the basement and into the vault area the easiest and fastest. This strategy requires avoiding only ONE set of guards to get inside. Two of those guards aren’t even combative in the loading area.
The worst strategies include rappelling and the sewer. Rappelling requires avoiding three different sets of guards to get into the vault. The first set is outside on the grounds. The second set is inside the gallery area. The third set is inside the basement area.
The sewer requires running around the grounds to find a sewer key. You can’t pre-prep this one stupid tool and bring it with you. Noooo. You have to find it on the grounds at the time of the heist in one of about 5 different spawn places. That means running around the grounds to each of these different spawn places to find it, increasing the chances of being detected. Once in the sewer, you exit into a different area of the basement that doesn’t make it any easier than using the AlphaMail van. Just stick with the van.
Commentary
Everything above describes mostly what’s needed to complete the heist. This area will discuss the problems and issues with this heist.
No Trial and Error
The first and foremost problem is the required “trial and error.” To be able to complete this mission correctly, it requires scoping out the entire heist actively while it’s live. This live “dry run” gives you information that you can get in no other way, like how many guards there are, where their cones of vision are, their walking patterns, how the cameras sweep and so on.
There’s literally no other way to gather this kind of information other than doing this during a live heist. Unfortunately, Rockstar gives no way to abort the mission other than by losing the character’s life. Rockstar also gives no way to “dry run” the heist and see the grounds as it is with a heist in progress. You’re simply left with two options, 1) do the heist without knowing anything or 2) to keep trying to do it for real over and over until you succeed. I always consider “trial and error” gaming a bug.
When will Rockstar finally allow us to launch a heist as a “dry run?” Meaning, a “dry run” that doesn’t allow for nabbing or grabbing or even completing it, but allows “trying out” various strategies against the guards to see what is successful and unsuccessful, try out various entry and exit strategies and try out other methods like stealth.
No Way to Abort the Mission
Note that calling Raf to request aborting the Heist doesn’t actually abort the live mission in progress. Instead, it resets the entire Heist as though you hadn’t started it at all. You will need to pay GTA$100,000 to re-initiate setup of the heist. Calling Raf is not what you want. This likely also means doing all of the setup and gathering missions all over again. Simply accept the “Bad Sport” consequences of hard “dry run” aborting and move on.
Too Complicated
This heading has many different aspects involved. From the poor choice in guns in each of the 3 loadouts to the lack of using special vehicles during the job mission. Rockstar always feels the need to overly hamstring the player by forcing them to use very limited weapons and limited vehicles, but also using up the player’s actual inventory of supplies, like ammo, armor and snacks.
This means that after the heist is over, whether aborted or completed, you’re going to need to buy more supplies, wherever you get them.
If we’re being forced into a job with limited and forced features, then the pool of supplies should be provided BY the job, not from the player’s inventory. When we exit out of the heist in whatever way, our actual supplies should remain untouched.
This heist also wouldn’t be this complicated if we could simply use our existing weapons, our existing vehicles and our existing perks, like calling Lester to call the cops off. That the heist forces us into these silly hamstrung situations and then restricts our ability to use basic features we already have, it’s stupid.
Is It Worth The Time?
This question is worthy of a debate, but in this author’s opinion, it’s a conditional no. Conditional, because it may be worth it IF you have enough players and IF you have the correct players who can help you through the heist properly.
Matchmaking Problems
Often, matchmaking throws in randos who not only sabotage the heist efforts, they actively play stupid games during the heist to try and cause it to fail. Because GTAO’s matchmaking feature is so poor, it’s really only worth playing this heist with people you know and whom you have specifically invited.
Poor Payout
As with all heists, the payout for The Kortz Heist is too low for the amount of money you’re required to spend up front to get started as well as all of the wasted time doing heist prep.
In this case, because you have to buy so many expensive properties just to be able to run this heist, getting maybe GTA$1.5 million out of the heist is simply not worth the GTA$9-10 million you had to put in. You’d have to run this heist at least 8-9 times to exceed what you had to pay to get access to the heist board.
The Art Studio heist board touts up to a GTA$4 million payout, when in fact the best that you get is around GTA$1.5-2 million per player. You can make this amount of money in an hour or two just doing non-job activities. You don’t need to waste time and frustration on this heist.
Lack of Stealth
Because GTAO intentionally negates the way stealth could be used to complete the Kortz heist, it’s not even worth trying a stealth methodology. With Cayo and the Diamond Casino heists, stealth is not really usable. With a museum heist, stealth is nearly a prerequisite. That is, performing the heist completely undetected. It’s worse, though. The game titilates you into thinking stealth is an option, but it really isn’t.
The game actively prevents this outcome when exiting. You are forced into a three (3) star wanted mode, but not just any three (3) star wanted mode. It’s a “special” five (5) star type of three (3) star wanted mode, with helicopters and SWAT and massive amounts of them… while trapped on the Kortz Center hill with very limited ways to leave.
Not only is the Kortz Museum grounds over-covered with too many cameras and far too many guards, the SWAT response at the end is a severe over-reaction. That painting stolen is not worthy of that level of police action. Rockstar overdid the response.
I realize why. Gamers expect a “hard” level experience, and that kind of police action at the end ensures that it’s difficult for the player to get away. Unfortunately, that over-reactive ending penalizes those of us who choose to want a stealthy option. Stealthy players should be able to end out this heist without a massive police action.
If you try to leave on foot heading downhill away from the Kortz center with the stars still flashing, the helicopters instantly find and target you. What’s worse is that because you’re saddled with a handful of piss poor weapons designed to help you against a handful of museum guards, these weapons do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING against helicopters shooting at you and SWAT teams in armored trucks. Rockstar, where was the pre-heist planning for this absolutely expected level of police action at the end?
You don’t have a homing missile launcher or any necessary long range accurate weapons needed to take down a helicopter. I’m uncertain if the Caracara 4×4 is still weaponized because I’ve not been able to even get to it after exiting the building. The Caracara 4×4 was weaponized when I picked it up from the Arena, but did Rockstar modify the vehicle at the Kortz Center? Even if it is, it’s not really enough to take down the multitude of helicopters flying around the Kortz Center. The Manchez bikes certainly aren’t. The Annihilator copter is really only good at sneaking away, but good luck at getting to wherever that getaway copter has landed.
Overall
This heist’s design is stupid and insipid. It’s exactly what you would expect from Rockstar, but the actual heist itself is stupidly designed. The loot bags are too small to be able to get away with much other than the main painting. Why even bother to head into the gallery itself when you can only fit two paintings in the bag beside the main target painting? Without a usable stealth outcome, the heist is again, stupid.
When all of this is combined with all of the bugs, it’s just not worth playing.
I’m also tired of Rockstar teasing players with a stealth option only to not provide or even allow a stealth closure to the heist. Stealth is actually the most difficult methodology to use because of the touchy nature of the entire area. It’s incredibly difficult to stay in stealth mode through the entire heist, but it’s incredibly easy to set off the alarm.
It’s like Rockstar laughs at all of the people who try to use stealth to make their way through these heists. It’s like Rockstar devs are saying, “Sucker!”
Yeah, no. Don’t bother with this heist… unless you really enjoy wasting your time.
Rating: 1.2 out of 5 stars (it could be much better)
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Is DealDash a Scam?
Updated for 2023. I’ve always been fond of online auctions, until I found DealDash several years ago. I’ve also seen a number of people who have complained about DealDash and how it operates. Let’s explore if it’s a scam.
Auctions and Bidding
In a traditional auction, you’re actually buying from a seller who has put an item up for consignment to the auction house. This is how eBay works it. The seller uses the eBay platform to pay for their auction. If the item sells, eBay gets a cut of the profit. This is a typical auction from a typical auction house.
Bidders pay nothing to bid at eBay. You simply join the platform and off you go on your merry bidding way. You will pay for any auctions you win or any Buy-It-Nows you buy, but if you bid and don’t win, you pay nothing. This is important when understanding the difference between a site like eBay and DealDash.
At eBay, auctions have a finite end. If the auction closes at 6PM today, then it’s over at 6PM. Whomever was the highest bidder at 6PM is the winner of that auction.
DealDash Auctions
With DealDash, the auctions here work a bit differently. Instead of joining and bidding for free, you must pay for your bids. The bid cost can range between 12¢ and 60¢ per bid. In order to get started on DealDash, you’ll be required to pay for some initial bids. Sometimes DealDash offers bid sales for as low as 12¢ per bid.
As for the auctions themselves, they work quite a bit differently from eBay. Unlike eBay’s fixed close time, DealDash has no fixed auction close. Their auctions infinitely run and continue to extend until the 10 second countdown timer runs out without any further bids. As long as even one bid happens within that 10 second countdown, the auction extends with another 10 second countdown timer. Basically, an auction can run infinitely or until no one else places a bid. Bids also increment the item cost at 1¢ per bid. You spend 12-60 cents to raise the bid on an item by 1¢. Admittedly, that means the item cost goes up very slowly, but it also means that the bidding can go on for days with enough bidders.
Bid Extensions
You’re probably wondering about how people can manage to bid within 10 seconds. To answer your question, they don’t. Bidders use a feature that DealDash offers known as Bid Buddy. See below for more details. Suffice it to say that DealDash’s automated system continues punching in those bids in an automated way so users don’t have to. You’ll also notice that many of those bids are made right at the last moment of second 9. There’s no way a human could time a bid that precisely.
However, there has been some speculation that some of the bidding is rigged by DealDash. That speculation alleges that DealDash itself has its own set of automated bidders driving up auction prices and bringing attention to those auctions. I can’t tell one way or another if this is true. I’ll leave that speculation alone because of Bid Buddy and how it works.
Buy-It-Now
Both eBay and DealDash offer a Buy-It-Now option. However, these work entirely differently between DealDash and eBay. The eBay Buy-It-Now feature can be standalone or attached to an auction. If it’s standalone, you can only buy that product through Buy-It-Now. If it’s attached to an auction, you can only use Buy-It-Now before the auction begins. Once an auction has a first bid, the Buy-It-Now option disappears for that item.
With DealDash, if you bid on an auction, you are eligible to Buy-It-Now when the auction finally closes. You’ll buy the item at whatever price that DealDash offers, which they claim is usually at a substantial discount. In addition to buying the item, you’ll also get all of your bids back for free. This means you can reuse those bids again on future auctions. It’s not a bad deal if you really want that item. However, if you decline the Buy-It-Now purchase, you lose all of your bids. There’s a big incentive to bid on items where you are likely to buy it when the auction closes no matter the price.
Bid Buddy
DealDash offers an automated bidding service called Bid Buddy. It continues to bid on your behalf even when you’re not around to do so. eBay also has a similar feature, but it’s tied to the actual bidding process and doesn’t have a name. If you put in your maximum bid on an eBay auction, eBay will continue to bid on your behalf at the current bid increment until your maximum bid is reached. After that, you’d be responsible for upping your maximum bid or bidding manually.
Bid Buddy works in a similar way. It continues to bid on your behalf until you’ve run out of bids or reached the maximum number of bids set on that auction. The reason to use Bid Buddy is clear. Those who are using Bid Buddy get priority over those who are manually bidding. It is in your best interest to set up and use Bid Buddy rather than manually bidding. Otherwise, your manual bid will always be last in line.
So far, So good
So far, there’s nothing here extraordinarily bad about how DealDash works. Other than the infinitely open auction which I don’t personally like, it’s pretty straightforward in how it all works.
Products and Quality
Here’s where this site falls down hard. Do you go to DealDash to buy merchandise for a great deal or to spend time gambling to win? If it’s the former reason, then you might run into problems considering all of the below. If it’s for the latter reason, you might want to seek gambling help.
DealDash claims to offer overstocked products at “discount” prices. The difficulty with this business model is that DealDash is in this business to make money off of bidding with the side effect of an eventual sale of a product. They are not a retailer, not a discounter and definitely not in any way a reputable store. They are an auction house and that’s how they run it.
As a buyer, you’ll notice there’s nothing mentioned about a Return Policy or what to do if you receive damaged or unacceptable goods. Indeed, there’s nothing on any of DealDash’s auction listings that even mention the quality or authenticity of the merchandise that you will receive if you buy or win the bid.
The products purport to be genuine, but are they? Also, unlike eBay where there’s a seller behind each and every product, with DealDash, DealDash is the seller. This means that if you have a question about the sale of a product, you have to go to DealDash to get it answered. Worse, buyers have tried doing this with no response from DealDash.
If you’re actually wanting the product you’re bidding on, you might want to consider that what you’ll receive may entirely differ from the listing. In other words, the trust level with DealDash’s merchandise is very, very low. If you really want that merchandise, you can probably find it cheaper from a more reliable seller on eBay or Amazon without the bidding fees. On eBay, both the sellers and the products themselves have a reputation score. You can see what buyers are saying about both the product in the listing and of the seller’s reputation. You’ll notice that on DealDash, there is no reputation information about the seller nor reviews from buyers about the product or what they received. DealDash is a black box.
Being the black box that it is, unfortunately, DealDash is about as scammy as it can get from a site like this. If you can’t readily see what other buyers have received from a listing, then how do you know that you’ll receive anything of value? You don’t.
Additionally, because DealDash is not a traditional store, returning any merchandise may be next to impossible, particularly when you can’t get in touch with anyone at DealDash. If the item you receive is damaged, misrepresented or outright garbage, you’re stuck with it. Otherwise, you’ll have to dispute the credit card charge. The only other thing you can do is complain about DealDash… and many people have done exactly that on RipOff Report. However, other than venting your frustrations to the world or forcing a chargeback, you may not be able to get your money back.
Jumpers and No Jumper Auctions
Here’s where DealDash also gets just a little bit more scammy with their auction site piece. A jumper is a person who jumps in at the last minute and begins bidding on an auction when they think the auction time is about to run out. Unfortunately, jumpers on DealDash effectively mean nothing. A “No Jumper Auction” is simply a way to allow early bidders not to be outbid by someone who wants to jump in at the last minute. With DealDash, there is no such thing as a ‘last minute’. On eBay, there is a ‘last minute’ because auctions have a hard close time. On DealDash, the auction is infinitely extended so long as even one person continues bidding.
A “No Jumper Auction” sets a minimum bid point that after that no new bidders are allowed to enter the auction. If the no jumper point is set to $5, that means new bidders attempting to bid after $5 will be unable to do so. Only bidders who placed at least one bid below $5 will be able to continue bidding on that auction.
This then excludes users from auctions after the no jumper bid price has been met. On eBay, this is called ‘sniping’ or ‘snipers’. A sniper is a little different from a jumper in that because the auction close time is finite, snipers join in during the last 30 second countdown to try and outbid the current high bidder. With DealDash, a “No Jumper” feature is entirely pointless and just gives DealDash a way to manipulate auctions and who can bid. This feature only serves to force people into auctions early or wait for another one to start. This feature is simply a way to lower competition and allow early birds to win the auction more quickly without extra folks jumping in and keeping the auction open much longer. That seems to go against the idea of DealDash making more money. It’s kind of a weird feature for DealDash to add such a limit to their auctions and prevent even more bidding, losing DealDash even more money in this process. As I said, it’s weird.
The scammy part of this is that apparently these “No Jumper” auctions don’t work properly, or DealDash is able to manipulate the “No Jumper” price randomly against would-be bidders. Some bidders have claimed to join in on standard “No Jumper” auctions with the default threshold set to $5. Yet, the auction price never reached $5 and they were unable to bid with DealDash claiming they were a jumper. Fishy. It seems this feature is being manipulated by DealDash in a way that prevents certain bidders (new or not) from bidding on that “No Jumper” auction.
Is DealDash worth it?
DealDash is ultimately an addictive form of legalized gambling, but it actually feels much like playing slot machines in Vegas. Mostly you lose, rarely you win and you spend a lot of money doing it…. which is how DealDash likes it. It’s what keeps them in business. If you’re willing to Buy-It-Now, you can buy back some of your bids at the cost of the product stated in the listing. But, don’t expect the price of the Buy-It-Now merchandise to be any less expensive than what you’ll find in a retail store, according to many who have done this.
Some complainants who’ve used the Buy-It-Now option have been quite disappointed in the process. One user claimed that instead of getting their bids back as promised, the “total value” of the bids was deducted from the price of the Buy-It-Now item. However, the “total value” of the bids applied to the reduction in the item’s cost were substantially lower than what the user paid for the actual bids. They might deduct at 12¢ per bid when the user paid 60¢ for the bids. Assuming you can actually get your bids back instead of this deduction thing, that’ll buy you a little more time to bid on new items and addict you further to this form of legalized gambling. This getting-bids-back idea is a little like losing $500 at BlackJack and then winning back $100. You’ve still lost $400. It’s simply a way to make you feel a little better about having lost $400 instead of $500.
If you get a high off of gambling, DealDash may be worth it… particularly if you don’t care about whatever it is you might win.
If you do happen to win the bid on item, then you’ll lose all of your bids plus whatever the winning cost of the item. If you happen to win a bundle of bids, then you’ll lose your bids only to gain some back. If you win the bid on a pair of earrings, you’ve lost however many bids it took to win that bid plus the cost of those earrings.
Consider if you don’t do Buy-It-Now often and you continually keep losing bids, you need to keep track of how much money you’ve spent there. You need to keep track because all of your lost bid money adds up when you finally do win a bid. For example, if you’ve spent $500 buying and losing bids for a while, then win a $50 coffeemaker, technically you’ve spent $550 for that coffeemaker. That’s not such a great deal. You could have bought 11 coffeemakers for the amount of money you spent to win that bid at DealDash. You simply can’t ignore all of the money you’ve spent on bids as non-existent. Those bid costs add into the cost of any items you bid and win. This means you can’t claim you got a toaster for $5. It was $5 plus the cost of however many bids it took you to get there.
Scam or Not?
The idea behind the site is fine, the execution of it is poor. If DealDash had partnered with legitimate sellers to back each of the auction products and if DealDash had allowed buyers to review the product listings for quality and authenticity and if DealDash offered a buyer’s protection plan and an actual Return Policy like a legitimate store, I might be more inclined to say it’s not a scam.
As it is, because DealDash doesn’t act like a legitimate store and also doesn’t offer feedback from buyers nor is there a buyer and seller relationship to ask questions, I cannot recommend the use of this site for any purpose… not for buying products and definitely not for getting a gambling fix.
There’s too much of a chance to lose far too much bid money and very slim chances you’ll actually win a bid. Of course, you’ll be given the option to Buy-It-Now and get your bids back on auctions where you lost the bids, but that’s of little consolation if the merchandise you receive is trash, assuming you receive anything at all. Between the bids you pay for and the Buy-It-Now, this is how DealDash makes money. The rest is all an addictive game.
Testimonials in TV Ads
DealDash has been recently running heavy TV advertising for their site in 2023. Don’t be fooled by those advertisement folks holding up a piece of merchandise that they claim to have received from winning an auction at some insanely low price. There’s no guarantee those “winners” are legitimate. You also have no idea if the merchandise received is legitimate, counterfeit, refurbished, used, hot or in any other condition.
Even if the “winners” are legitimate and not just staged by actors, you don’t know how much those people actually spent in buying DealDash bids over many months or years to “win” the privilege of buying that item at that price. They could have been bidding for years and may have already spent a ton on bids before they finally won that iPad for $35. In fact, they could very well have spent more money in bids + cost of product than simply going to the Apple store and paying full price for an iPad. Even then, when buying from the Apple store, you know you’ve purchased a legitimate iPad backed by an official Apple return policy. Getting that same device from DealDash, you don’t know what you might get; it could even be an old generation iPad from years ago.
DealDash is just like being in a Casino. When you hear the bells ring and see the lights flash on a machine because someone has hit the jackpot, you really don’t know if that’s a true win or if someone is simply making back a little money towards money they’ve already lost.
Recommendation
Site Recommendation: 👎 Avoid!
Reasons:
- Highly Addictive
- Form of gambling
- Not a store
- No Return Policy listed
- No Product Reviews
- No User Reviews
- No Seller Reviews
- Auction items don’t describe authenticity or condition
- Pay to bid
- Pay to win (separate from item cost)
- Costly
- Difficult to Communicate with DealDash
- Mostly a scam to separate you from your money
- Doesn’t operate like a legitimate store
- May be less costly to shop elsewhere
- Questionable business practices
The bottom line is, DealDash has a very scammy business model.
As always, if you find Randocity a fascinating read, please leave a comment below and please click the Follow button in the upper right under the Search bar to be notified of any new Randocity articles.
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Retro Movie Review: The Blue Bird (1940)
This Shirley Temple film vehicle, The Blue Bird, attempts to be a then modern fairy tale. It also wants to be technically trendy (for 1940) all while attempting to reboot Shirley Temple’s career. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully succeed at any of these. At the same time, it has some oddly creepy moments. The artwork created within the pages of the book used in the title sequence is quite impressive. Makes you wonder if the book survived the production. Let’s explore.
The 1940s
This film was released in 1940, but portions may have been filmed in 1939, the same year that the MGM’s Wizard of Oz released, starring Judy Garland. Apparently, Shirley Temple was considered for the role of Dorothy Gale, but we know the part was ultimately given to Judy Garland… and the rest was history. However, this film may have been designed to be a similar vehicle to compete with The Wizard of Oz.
The Blue Bird
It’s easy to draw many parallels between 1940’s The Blue Bird and 1939’s The Wizard of Oz’s in technical execution, in that both films begin with a black and white opening sequence. Each film then segues into a full Technicolor fantasy romp. One might even argue that The Blue Bird’s producers lifted this Technicolor idea directly from The Wizard of Oz film. Still, with The Blue Bird, switching to color portions makes sense strictly because of the story. Since the story revolves around a blue bird, filming this one black and white throughout would make it difficult to understand this color aspect of the film. Some black and white films have tried this with marginal success. With that said, the producer’s lack of vision around the use of Technicolor leaves the film somewhat poorly executed.
However, as a viewer in 2023, seeing Shirley Temple perform in color is actually treat, but strictly for nostalgic reasons, not for reasons of story. For story purposes, the Technicolor sequences are more or less dictated by the color of the bird, even though the Technicolor sequences are mostly wasted because the audience literally won’t see the blue bird until the final 2 minutes of the film. Talk about slow burn.
Story Analysis
Even though there are obvious technical execution similarities between The Wizard of Oz and The Blue Bird, the stories themselves are wholly dissimilar. Here’s where a lot of reviewers drop the review ball. The Wizard of Oz is more or less a modern story (at the time) about a girl and her dog seeking to get back home after being thrust into the fantasy world of Oz.
The Blue Bird hearkens back to ye olde traditional Germanic fairy tales (complete with Lederhosen, Dirndl dresses and even includes a character devoted to toy wood carving). This film’s story, like many fairy tales, features children in peril all throughout the tale. Where The Wizard of Oz uses modern names like Dorothy for the main character, The Blue Bird chooses the odd fairy tale names of Mytyl and Tyltyl for the two main children.
Honestly, what sane parent would ever name their child Mytyl or Tyltyl? Ignoring these oddly strange fairy tale Mxyzptlk-style names and the Technicolor sequence, the story itself remains mostly dissimilar to The Wizard of Oz.
The Blue Bird‘s story starts off with two children, Mytyl and Tyltyl in a forest.. the primary character of the two being played by Shirley Temple as Mytyl, pronounced as me till. The boy child is played by Johnny Russel as Tyltyl, pronounced as till till. Unfortunately, the character of Tyltyl remains more or less background fodder throughout this film and is intentionally underused to focus the spotlight on Shirley Temple. Clearly, the person intended to carry this fantasy fairy tale romp is Shirley Temple. This is also one of Shirley Temple’s later films in her career, where she had lost much of her younger child cuteness and exuberance. However, a small amount of that allure does remain, but in only a few scenes.
By the filming of The Blue Bird, Temple was clearly on the edge of losing her child actor badge when filming began. Still, some of her child charisma does remain, but in many scenes it’s entirely gone. Mostly this is due to the story seeing the Mytyl character waver between being an ungrateful, unhappy, selfish spoiled brat and, much more rarely, being a loving, thoughtful, sweet child; the latter being what you’d expect from a Shirley Temple film.
The story opens in a “Royal Forest” with Mytyl and Tyltyl capturing a bird in a small trap. If you’re clueful enough, you might even see where this is leading. From here, the children head home with the bird (ignoring the separate “sick kid” scene that’s solely used to establish how selfish Mytyl is). After a contentious dinner exchange where Mytyl more or less tongue lashes her parents, further establishing Mytyl’s grumpy selfishness, Mytyl and Tyltyl head to bed.
Upon waking to the sound of confused knocking, gone is the black and white sequence and now the film reveals its now grander Technicolor portion. Clearly, this falling asleep in black and white and waking up in color is almost identical to The Wizard of Oz. Even though this Technicolor use is nearly identical between both films, this story completely diverges at this point. No tornadoes. No Toto. No witches on broomsticks.
Instead, lifting its heaviest story cues almost directly from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, The Blue Bird plods Dickens’s story onward through the veil of a fairy tale.
In fact, within moments of becoming Technicolor, Fairy Berylune (played by Jessie Ralph) appears as an old woman wrapped in what seems to be a psychedelic tattered and patched garb, like 60’s second-hand clothing. In fact, Fairy Berylune actually appears to be more of a psychedelic witch (kind of like Witchiepoo in Lidsville, played by Billie Hayes… that 1971 trippy Sid and Marty Kroft kid’s show on Saturday mornings). I’ll let this bit of misplaced psychedelia slide, however.
Fairy Berylune’s costume is probably the only costume in this entire film that seems to understand the purposes and uses of Technicolor. Just look at it! Unfortunately, that costume and the character of Fairy Berylune only appear briefly in the opening of the Technicolor sequence, never to be seen again. It’s too bad, too. The Fairy Berylune character could have been brilliantly used all throughout.
Fairy Berylune, nevertheless, works hard (a little too hard) to sell this opening setup of the film’s story along with turning a dog, a lamp and a cat into humans (Cinderella much?). Why humans? Of course, to help Mytyl and Tyltyl find “The blue bird of happiness!”, according to Berylune … duh!
After Fairy Berylune transforms such into humans, she summarily disappears and leaves the children to their own devices and fully in the care of these now very strange, newly minted companions. The kids’ dog in human form, Tylo (pictured left), becomes a cowardly man dressed in brown and white garb. Their cat, Tylette (pictured right), becomes a mischievous woman, dressed in black with white trim and a big red bow, reminiscent of Cruella De Vil. Their lamp becomes the character Light (pictured center); a blonde, blue, female dressed very much like Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Though while Light, in fact, comes and goes like Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, Light ultimately becomes the children’s new guardian for the remainder of this film’s tale. Though unlike Glinda, Light performs no magic other than producing light.
Before departing, Fairy Berylune asserts that the children MUST look for a blue bird to find their happiness, simply because she says so. It’s actually the whole pretext of this film. Exactly where should the children look? According to Fairy Berylune, in the past, present and future (just like A Christmas Carol). Mytyl has proven herself to be a grouchy, stingy, difficult person, too much like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Mytyl doesn’t ever outright say “Bah Humbug”, but you can see this behavior driving her very language and body mannerisms. Further, Fairy Berylune reminds us heavily of the Fairy Godmother who appears in Cinderella to transform Cinderella, a pumpkin and some mice… even though the primary story of this film most matches the story ideas presented in A Christmas Carol. You should be able to figure out how this all ends for Mytyl. The writers, however, clearly borrowed from wherever they could to tell this story.
Because Mytyl and Tyltyl are told by Fairy Berylune to search everywhere including in the past, present and future, this is where the story ultimately begins.
Story wise, the past is taken quite literally when Mytyl and Tyltyl must traverse through a graveyard in the dark, complete with skeletons, bones and open graves. After making their way through this scary graveyard, they remember their dead grandparents and end up revisiting their grandparents’ home complete with their grandparents now very much alive; the grandfather being a wood toy carver of somewhat creepy dolls with heads that move.
Before entering the graveyard, Light warned the children to be back within the hour or remain forever stuck in the past. As a result, the children are in a hurry to leave, watching a wooden cuckoo clock. Unfortunately, the grandparents don’t want the children to leave because they themselves will once again fade back into death’s slumber. The children spend only a tiny bit of time dawdling at the grandparents house, long enough for Mytyl to sing a song. However, the children do understand their need to leave quickly. This is the first of many segments where Tylette actively attempts to sabotage the children by moving the clock’s hands backwards. Mytyl realizes that there’s a problem afoot with the clock and quickly decides to make haste away from her grandparents home all without finding the blue bird. Note that this “hurry up” clock-ticking trope used in this segment is entirely dropped when searching all further locations.
At this point, the children again meet up with Light who urges them to check the present, but Tylette has other ideas. Tylette interrupts and instead encourages the children to visit Luxury. Even though Light tells the children they won’t find anything there, the children head to Luxury anyway.
This part of the story is solely intended to lure the children in and, once again, strand them at Luxury by Tylette. While the children are able to get all of the material things they desire while at Luxury, including a pony, the one thing they cannot get is love and compassion from Mr. and Mrs. Luxury. This makes the children grumpy and selfish. Eventually, the children realize this, come to their senses and wish to leave. The children narrowly escape Luxury after Tylette again tries to sabotage the children’s exit.
After narrowly escaping Luxury, the children meet up again with Light who urges them to try looking in a forest, located in the present. After entering the forest, Tylette once again conspires with all of the forest creatures to lure and keep the children there. This results in a forest fire that ultimately kills Tylette (more about this later), but not Tylo or the children. The children and Tylo narrowly escape a very long winded forest fire running sequence, but they leave empty handed.
Again, the children meet up with Light who then leads the children up a staircase and into the future. The future brings us to an area with a bunch of children who are not yet born. These are to be the future children of earth. To become born, the unborn load up onto a boat with silver sails destined for Earth as their destination. After various discussions with various unborn (discussions which don’t help the story), Mytyl and Tyltyl finally leave with Tylo, again without finding the blue bird. Before leaving, however, they meet their unborn sister who explains she won’t be with them for very long. Mytyl is oddly excited by this both happy and grim news. And yet, here’s another dying reference.
As they return back home, the children awake from their slumber. Unlike The Wizard of Oz which returns back to black and white at the end when Dorothy returns home, The Blue Bird remains in color… for one very obvious reason. We haven’t yet seen the actual blue bird.
As the children get some good news about their father, the mother explains the father had time to craft a cage for their bird (???); the bird that Mytyl caught the day before in the Royal Forest. I’m a little perplexed at how the father could have crafted this bird cage overnight?! That is, unless the kids were in a coma-like state for days? This bird, which we couldn’t see in the small box cage earlier and which was shrouded by black and white footage anyway, we now see has been transferred into a large, fully completed bird cage. Voila, it’s now indeed a very blue bird… and with just minutes to spare! The story has come full circle.
At this point, Mytyl is so happy at these turn of events that she appears to now be “redeemed”, in the same way as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. In fact, she’s so elated that she decides to gives her sick friend her blue bird as a token of her generosity and friendship… when in the opening of this story, she refused and wanted nothing more than to keep the bird for herself.
Death and Dying Motifs
Unlike The Wizard of Oz, which that film only touches on the topic once in the beginning of the film and once again later with the Wicked Witch, The Blue Bird touches on this topic again and again by putting the children in mortal danger throughout, by traversing through a graveyard at night, by the death and redeath of the grandparents, the death of Tylette and the birth (and death) of Mytyl’s as yet unborn sister. Yes, a lot of death and dying references make their way into this film. A little bit overly morbid and macabre for a fairy tale.
Overall
The film is interesting for its age. It touches on many topics which are sometimes typical of actual fairy tales, but which border on the macabre. However, this film also does it in an oddly weird and creepy way. Tylette in particular is one of the creepiest characters I’ve seen in a film of this type. This character easily exceeds the creep factor of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Tylette also meets her demise in fire almost in similar, but opposite fashion to The Wicked Witch with water. These story similarities are obvious.
The Blue Bird film itself doesn’t mimic The Wizard of Oz with the exception of a handful of mostly technical similarities. The Blue Bird also bombed at the box office, unlike The Wizard of Oz, even though this film was later nominated for awards.
The Blue Bird wasn’t the first film to bomb for Shirley Temple. That distinction occurred one year before 1940’s The Blue Bird with 1939’s Susannah of the Mounties. This 1939 film bomb is what began the downward slide of Shirley Temple as a box office draw. The Blue Bird simply continued that trend for Temple. I can definitely see how this film might not appeal to children.
As a fantasy fairy tale style film, it’s okay. Not great. Not fantastic. It’s definitely no Disney film. Its fantasy is, at times, dark, creepy, macabre and meanders a lot for no good reason. While there’s no gore, the horror of some of the situations is all too real. With Tylette pretending to be a protector, but instead putting the children in harm’s way, that’s an odd play. The dialog in the film is also, at times, stilted and also unchildlike. It’s hard to believe that some of the dialog from Shirley Temple’s mouth would have ever been said by a child of that age. As for Tyltyl, he’s more or less used as a doormat.
As a color film curiosity from 1940, though not Temple’s first color film, The Blue Bird is worth seeing. The Technicolor isn’t as vibrant or as rich as I have seen in other Technicolor films, particularly The Wizard of Oz. It’s possible that costume colors may have been intentionally toned down to enhance the darker tone of the film.
There’s also a marked amount of chromatic aberration in this film’s imagery. I don’t know if this is due to the film transfer to video or if this was simply as a result of the cameras used to film this production.
The costumer also seems to have chosen more earthy tones for many of the costumes versus vibrant rich reds, pinks or yellows; colors which Technicolor makes super vibrant. Instead, at Luxury where you expect such color and opulence, Temple is seen wearing a pastel rose colored satin robe before bed. When riding the carousel at Luxury, she’s seen in a somewhat muted blue dress.
Part of the reason to use Technicolor is to take advantage of the vibrant rich tonal quality of certain colors, to which the filmmakers of The Blue Bird didn’t do. However, the forest fire scenes do offer rich vibrant fire colors, which served to somewhat enhance the children’s peril in a forest fire.
Unfortunately, the special effects employed during the fire scenes utilize low quality bluescreen-style effects to overlay the actors, which the questionable quality couldn’t have been lost on the producers.
The Wizard of Oz chose to employ practical effects on set; effects that at once look more realistic and make the film seem more like a stage play. The overlay special effects used in The Blue Bird, while impressive to see in a film from 1940, didn’t always sell the children’s peril, as shown in this still shot, due to the low quality result. I guess the filmmakers thought that by making the scenes shift very quickly, the viewers might not notice.
Commanding Presence
One thing that’s entirely missing from this film is a commanding adult presence. None of the adult leads in this story have enough of a role to truly lead the kids properly. Like Julie Andrews’s Maria character in The Sound of Music, Maria was front and center to always properly lead the children. This is what was needed in this film, even if the character turned out to be bad at the end. The story tried to make Tylette into that character, but the role just didn’t work. In fact, the story always attempted to shift the spotlight back onto Shirley Temple. This ultimately doesn’t work. If there had been a strong, commanding, likeable adult lead character to constantly stay with and guide Mytyl and Tyltyl, this film might have had a better chance to succeed.
Additionally, since the film also tried to introduce at least some musical elements, this film would likely have been even stronger if it had fully leaned into becoming a musical during each of the past, present, future and luxury segments, to lighten the continual dark tone of the film. Having a strong adult singer to complement Shirley’s child singing would have allowed this film to possibly have a radio hit and help carry the film. Adding a strong musical score to this film might have even made The Blue Bird a stronger film than The Wizard of Oz.
What this film all boils down to is this. The Blue Bird is a simple retelling of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, a story of redemption… sans the wintry Christmas guise, all while using a somewhat macabre fairy tale story format combined with the waning star power of Shirley Temple. Though, the screenwriter also took liberties to include concepts from the likes of Cinderella and Pinocchio along with The Wizard of Oz, but only in small amounts.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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Movie Review: Smile Movie
Paying to see a film in the theater, particularly a film that I already know is bad, is out of the question. And so it goes with the movie Smile. Let’s explore this film’s problems.
Spoiler Warning: Don’t continue reading if you want to watch this film.
Derivative
Another movie reviewer suggests that this film takes some of its cues from The Ring (2002). I didn’t get much of a “The Ring” vibe while watching Smile. However, I did get a heavy Final Destination (2000) vibe. While the movie doesn’t feel like a Final Destination film in its story, the predestined outcome, once revealed by Rose, feels very much like Final Destination.
What that means is that Smile is very much derivative of other films which have come before, like Final Destination. Thus, the film feels already way too familiar while watching it.
Hitchcockian?
While I’m sure that the director and producer(s) had wanted to produce something that felt like a psychological thriller, in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock, unfortunately Smile never achieves that level of professional treatment. That’s mostly because the story fails the film. Instead of watching a solid thriller unfold, what we get is something that feels at once all too familiar, but with an overly problematic story. Unfortunately, as I said, that leaves the film never reaching the level of foreboding suspense of an Alfred Hitchcock production.
Story Problems
This story feels a lot like a very long episode of the Twilight Zone. Unfortunately, the writers more or less fail this film almost completely. The first act of this film begins by unfolding Smile’s narrative of a crazed young woman named Laura Weaver who complains of being stalked by an unseen entity. Rose (an overworked therapist at a hospital) initially diagnoses Laura’s condition as a psychotic break. It isn’t until she witnesses the brutal suicide death of Laura where Smile truly begins. Laura’s suicide is odd because she does it all with a smile on her face; a smile that remains even after she’s dead by her own hand.
This is where Rose’s life takes a huge turn and where the Smile movie’s first act can begin in earnest. During the first act, Rose doesn’t fully understand that something’s amiss for quite a long time. Too long, actually. She goes about her daily life believing that her being overworked is the source of her anxieties and “seeing things”. It isn’t until her cat ultimately disappears and then turns up in a rather awkward place that she really begins to understand something more than merely being overworked is at play.
This is when Rose herself begins to see her former psychiatrist. More than this, Rose begins to understand that what Laura had said in her first encounter is actually unfolding in the same way for her.
Let’s stop right here…
Story and Plot So Far
To this point in the film, Smile is relatively slow burn, but the plot is unfolding in a way that’s not overly far fetched or out of line for its premise. However, most viewers by this point probably have a strong inkling of where this film is heading and where it is likely to head. That’s always a problem. The director and writer didn’t actually do anything counter this audience second-guessing problem, instead they double down on it… which ultimately doesn’t work.
What do the writers do? They begin Act II by waking Rose up and having her take her experience and knowledge and trying to determine if there’s truly something amiss… and more importantly, exactly how to resolve it. Of course, none of the characters around her believe any of her ramblings, partly because the entity is making her see people who aren’t actually there.
Act II
As we enter Act II of this film, Rose has decided that there’s a real problem that she needs to investigate. Rose dons her investigator cap and begins web surfing along with using an on-again-off-again boyfriend cop to get information related to her investigation of “the cycle.”
Suffice it to say that this investigatory process lasts way too long considering how it’s ultimately used in the film. Once again, let me stop right here.
Investigation and Horror
The only reason to launch a long drawn out investigation within a horror film is to try and break “the cycle.” Rose eventually determines that there is a cycle afoot; a cycle that could lead to her death if she can’t get out in front of it. This investigation leads her to one person who seemingly was able to break the cycle and lived to tell the tale.
Unfortunately, who and where this person is ultimately tells us exactly how the cycle was broken. Yet, the writers insist on taking us to where he is to actually talk to this person IN person to confirm it. Once we get there and Rose confirms the reason why this person was able to cheat the cycle, she instantly blurts out that she is unable to perform the act that got him out of the cycle. She blurts it out so fast, in fact, that it was somewhat difficult to understand what she said.
At first, I thought this admission was just the Rose character jumping to far-too-quick of a conclusion without truly thinking it through. If Rose’s life is on the line, her need for self-preservation should have eventually kicked in. After all, Smile is a suspense and horror film. For Rose to completely blow off the idea so readily and instantly tells me that the writers were hopelessly lost at this point. It’s a horror film, guys! Get with the program!
Second half of Act II
The second half of Act II was the time for a twist from the writers. Unfortunately, that twist just never materializes. Everything set up in the first act leads us in a very straightforward manner directly into the second act. Everything predicted by the cycle exactly comes to pass with no deviation… even though, Rose has had well enough time to investigate the cycle and even break it if she had so chosen.
Instead, the second half of the second act is merely devoted to just how the Smile entity can take over the mind of its victim making that person believe whatever it wants. In that goal, Rose decides to head out to an isolated house in the middle of the woods with no one there who can try to bring Rose back to reality… not that that would have been possible. Her rationale, though, was that with no one else there, the entity is trapped. Rose way underestimated the entity’s prowess.
Possession
One topic that was never really outright said in the film, demonic possession, was clearly the hallmark of this situation. This entity turns out to be some kind of demon who delights in seeing its victims commit suicide in front of others in a very brutal way. If the writers had embraced the idea of demonic possession, either Laura or Rose could have attempted to stop the demon from possessing them. Unfortunately, by the time the possession takes full effect (a slow buildup taking several days), once possessed, that leaves minutes before the person commits suicide in front of another, beginning the cycle anew. I have to assume the writers were thinking that the entity’s possession takes days because it takes that long to wear down the psyche of the person being tormented.
Overall
The film is derivative and unimpressive. The demonic smile isn’t demonic. It’s just a smile. The smile needed some major CG enhancement to make the smile wider, wierder and more sinister than it appears on the faces of each of the victims… perhaps, even tearing the face apart to achieve it.
Worse, the whole overly long investigatory aspect for Rose left the viewers wondering what the hell happened. Since Rose spent a large swath of screen time trying to make sense of the situation and, more importantly, trying to find a way out of it, you would think that Rose could have seriously contemplated what was needed to get herself out of it and survive. She didn’t. More than this, because it’s a horror film likely wanting to begin a franchise, killing off your lead character doesn’t allow for that.
If the writers are thinking that they can make Smile 2 using the ex-boyfriend cop as the lead, they need to think again. Of course, they can simply use him as the setup, like Laura, to initiate another lead character to try their hand again at trying to unravel the mystery of this demon. The question is, can a second Smile film actually pull that off? I’m not so sure.
For this film, the story doesn’t really work. If Rose had actually contemplated and achieved breaking the cycle, that would have been the twist that Smile required to make it satisfying. Yes, the cycle would have been broken for Rose, but someone else would have still inherited the demon to deal with later. Unfortunately, this all too predictable story was all too predictable in its ending.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Recommendation: Watch only on “free” streaming services
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Retro Review: Earth Final Conflict
In the mid-late 1990s and after Gene Roddenberry’s untimely passing, Majel Barrett Roddenberry pitched a new Sci-Fi series which was conceived by the late Gene Roddenberry based entirely on Gene’s notes. That series? Earth: Final Conflict. Let’s take a retro dive and explore and review this series.
Premise of Earth Final Conflict
Aliens arrive on Earth bearing the promise of peace and gifts to humanity. It seems ideal. Yet, that’s where the series begins its subtext and subversion. After all, the series is called “Final Conflict”. Thus, there must be some level of “conflict” involved or the series isn’t correctly named.
Season 1
As the first season unfolds, it is clear that the concept and execution is both rough in some areas and polished in others. Much of the first season, then, seems to have been lifted almost directly from some of Gene’s notes; notes which crafted many of the episodes. Most of the episodes were, for the most part, well written. The pacing and situations unfolded in a logical and progressive manner. Every story tended to build upon the last, laying groundwork and foundation for what could make a very profound series. In this first season, there was hope for something positive. There was nothing given away in Season 1 to indicate the endgame, but the series itself was, as I said above, mostly well written.
With William Boon (Kevin Kilner), Lili Marquette (Lisa Howard), Ronald Sandoval (Von Flores), Augur (Richard Chevolleau) and to a lesser degree Jonathan Doors (David Hemblen) rounding out the “Human” cast of characters in this series, the stories worked reasonably well. The Taelon cast primarily consisted of Da’an (Leni Parker) and, later in the season, Zo’or (Anita La Selva). Majel Barrett Roddenberry also lent her acting hand as basically a “Doctor Chapel” to help implement the Taelon medical agenda on Earth. However, her character was effectively dropped before the end of season 1.
For the stories throughout season 1, the Taelons were mostly in agreement on how to move their agenda forward, with only differences in how the agenda would be implemented by specific companions.
That’s not to say the series was perfect at this point. There was definitely some inane writing involved at times. The most prominent writing problem was focusing on Da’an as the “primary” Taelon. To understand this further, it became understood that Da’an was the “North American Companion”. What about the South American Companion, the Asian Companion, the UK or even the Russian Companions? Where were those companions? Why did we never get to see those or, indeed, hear their sides of this agenda? Why weren’t their inputs as important as Da’an’s? There’s a big plot hole here which could have been rectified by season 2, but it wasn’t. Instead, the series attempted to capitalize on this disparity, instead of trying to explain it.
Season 1 wasn’t perfect, but it was a very first and important step in explaining why the Taelons had come to Earth, why a growing faction of “Resistance” had formed and how both parties would interact with one another as the series progressed.
Cast Changes
Unfortunately, by Season 2, the producers had introduced their own agenda. They wanted a younger (and hopefully larger) audience and in so doing began one in a series of rather odd personnel changes. Let’s stop right here and discuss this aspect.
Personnel changes in series can be the kiss of death for a series. While some series have been able to endure personnel changes to some degree, the series is never the same after. The most prominent personnel change in a series was in Charlie’s Angels. This series lost Farrah Fawcett after one season to her demand for more pay. Because the producers were unwilling to agree to her demands, but also because she was locked into a contract to complete a certain number of episodes, a compromise was met. Farrah would appear in fewer episodes over a longer amount of time, making it so she received the same pay as she did when working in every episode. Effectively, she got her raise, but worked less and made less money overall.
This change was the beginning of the Charlie’s Angels series tanking. Farrah’s departure opened the door to a revolving cast of wannabe actresses moving in and out of the series. From the progressively worse Cheryl Ladd to Shelley Hack to Tanya Roberts… with Cheryl Ladd being the one who was able to hold her own most of the time, but could be just as awkward at times. Even still, the amazing and iconic chemistry between Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett was undeniable and was entirely lost as a result of Farrah’s departure. The producers should have kept Farrah with the series at all costs, yes even agreeing to her higher salary. Yet, failed to do so.
Getting back to Earth Final Conflict, this same situation unfolded on this series. At the end of Season 1, the William Boone character was killed off. It is unknown why Kevin Kilner (who played Boone) left the series, but it has been theorized that the producers were looking for a younger face as a leading man. Apparently, at the time, Kevin Kilner was around the age of 40. He certainly didn’t look it on small lo-res TV screens, but apparently the producers may have thought so. To that end, William Boone was killed off, leading to a completely preposterous scenario to literally born a new character in Liam Kincaid for season 2.
In Season 4, probably due to cost cutting measures, Richard Chevolleau’s role as Augur was replaced by a new female lead in Juliette Street (played by Melinda Deines). Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. Deines was apparently so overjoyed that she landed this role that she incessantly smiled for the vast majority of her performances, as though she were some kind of EFC cheerleader. Her “better than Augur” technical persona was so overwhelmed by her scenery chewing deliveries, her character just didn’t work well for the vast majority of the episodes where she appeared.
I won’t even get into the inane naming of this “Street” character in replacement for Augur. While Richard Chevolleau’s performances steadily improved throughout the first 3 seasons to the point where his deliveries actually became more or less acceptable, the series producers forced us viewers to start all over with yet another very green actress to play yet another Augur character. So what was the point in all of this anyway?
These are by no means the only examples. Oh, no no no. Season 5 ushered in a nearly brand new cast of characters, replacing the Taelons and everything we had come to know about the series. Keep reading below for more details on that immense mistake.
Acting
Before I get into season 2, let’s discuss a hot topic that has been widely debated about this series. Yes, acting was a problem with this series. That’s to be sure. Not so much in Leni Parker or Anita La Selva (Taelons), but in the human actors. From Doors, to Augur to Marquette to Boone, the acting was fair. It was utilitarian enough to carry the stories forward, but there was nothing award winning about the acting. This is partly due to the directors. Some directors are able to draw out excellent performances from mediocre actors, but not in this series.
Kilner’s William Boone, for example, had a delivery that sounded like he was in dress rehearsal reading the lines for the first time. His delivery is so dry and unaffected, it’s occasionally difficult to watch. Augur, on the other hand, delivered lines like he was in a Saturday morning children’s show. With his clownish outfits and his near chewing the scenery, Richard Chevolleau’s Augur made for a difficult watch at times.
Howard’s Marquette delivery ranged from decent to excellent for most of her episodes. Her delivery worked well, mostly, and she was able to hold her own with the material. In fact, I’d say that Lisa Howard’s Marquette, being one of the strongest of the actors involved in the series, was the glue who more or less held the “human” cast together.
Leni Parker and Anita La Selva worked well within their “Alien” constraints as Da’an and Zo’or, respectively. From the the hand gestures to the head bobs to the constraining costumes to the prosthetic makeup, this left the acting constrained to specific “Alien” mannerisms. These constraints, when combined with the “Alien” attitudes, delivered a more stilted performance… which is more or less what we got. Whether this delivery was intentional or a product of the costumes and prosthetics remains unknown. For the sake of this article, I will assume that the alien mannerisms and stilted performances were all intentional, as the role demanded to sell the Taelons. I’ve not seen these two actresses work in other acting parts, so I can’t speak to their full range or abilities. However, as Taelons, their subtle and constrained delivery worked well… particularly Leni Parker, whose occasional smile said volumes about Da’an.
Speaking of smiles, well smirks actually, Robert Leeshock’s incessant smirk after delivering a line of dialog is not only annoying, you can’t even tell the seriousness of the delivery. In his own way, Leeshock replaced Kilner’s dry, flat affect with his own level of oddly smirky, but also dry, flat delivery.
Season 2
Here’s where things start to get rough. This sophomore season didn’t help the series much at all. The first thing to notice about Season 2 is the cast change from William Boone to Liam Kincaid. As I discussed earlier, Kincaid’s setup was entirely preposterous. At the end of Season 1, Ha’gel (a Kimera who looks like a Taelon) impregnates the Irish protector, Siobahn Beckett (played by Kari Matchett). The fetus and then the baby to child to adult grows at an astonishing rate. From birth to adult is no more than a couple of hours.
Because Ha’gel is Kimera, the baby (who becomes Liam Kincaid) is half human, half Kimera. Why this plot device was included is entirely unknown. However, the writers failed to explore Liam’s Kimera abilities the vast majority of the time in season 2 or even 3, eventually explaining it off as his “Kimera” side as slowly vanishing. Yeah, right, whatever… as if DNA genetics magically vanish over time? Whenever Liam is placed into a combat scenario, he reaches for a gun 90% of the time rather than using his innate Shaqarava… with the Shaqarava being primarily used as a palm embedded energy projectile weapon. Though, I believe the Shaqarava could be used for other purposes, like healing or as a telepathic instrument.
It gets worse. In the episode Hijacked, a reporter captures Liam’s use of his Shaqarava (palm energy organs) on camera. When confronted, she acts all surprised as if, while standing around on the mothership surrounded by literally tons of Taelons, Taelon implanted humans and Taelon technology, that it’s the most surprising thing she’s ever seen in a human. It’s such stupid and preposterous writing, I don’t even know how the showrunners thought we could swallow this trash.
Yet, this surprise is presented in all sincerity. The only thing Liam needed to explain to the reporter is that it is Taelon technology. It is actually Taelon in origin and he wouldn’t be lying by saying that. It’s just not Taelon technology from these specific Taelons. It was inherited Taelon technology back when the Taelons and Jaridians were one race… which is what and who Ha’gel is (an “old style Taelon”). Worse, why does it matter anyway? Liam acted like his being exposed for having Shaqarava is the worst thing ever. With literally thousands of Taelon implanted and enhanced humans running around, many using Skrill as weapons, Liam’s Shaqarava is something to be concerned over?
However, that’s not the worst of season 2. There were so many bad lines of dialog written, I can’t even document them all here. There were lines delivered by Zo’or that literally made no sense. Zo’or would ask questions of the humans that all Taelons should already know the answer. So then, why is Zo’or asking these questions? It would be one thing if Zo’or were asking the questions sarcastically, but the writers had Zo’or ask them in all seriousness, like Zo’or genuinely didn’t know the answer. It doesn’t make any sense. The Taelons are superior to the humans in practically every way and have vastly superior knowledge and intelligence. Why is Zo’or asking such basic and degrading questions of humans?
There were so many stupid lines of dialog in too many of the season 2 episodes, the writing felt cloddish. It’s clear, the writers had no finesse for the scripts or the source material. They didn’t understand where to take the Taelons and, indeed, attempted to rely on silly and foolish action scenes to carry the weight of the episodes rather on using the story to drive the overall narrative. While the first season was rough, it wasn’t cloddish. However, going into season 2, we began with the absurd and it gets even more inane as the season progresses.
In fact, some actions scenes are so out of place and come from nowhere, I’m at a loss to figure out what the writers were thinking. Is the only way out of a story dilemma to throw a chase and gunfire scene in? I don’t get it. There were so many unnecessary (and unproductive) shootouts, I eventually lost track. Worse, in all of those shootouts, Liam almost never uses his Shaqarava. There are so many times where he has no weapon on him, and yet he takes punches or gunfire like he’s unarmed. It’s like, come on writers, he has the Shaqarava. Let him use it to end the conflict. Yet, Liam almost always ends up on the floor face down unconscious without ever having used his Shaqarava.
The only time he ends up using his Shaqarava is when there’s a stupid plot device involved, like in Season 2, Episode 18’s Hijacked.
Let’s talk about Hijacked again in another way. This episode is so preposterous and absurd, I can’t even fathom why it was written. If the Taelon mothership is so vulnerable to takeover, why did it take this long for the human resistance to abscond with it? The dialog that “justifies” the episode is that, paraphrased, Taelons didn’t design with vulnerabilities in mind. If that were the case, then every Taelon technology is sufficiently vulnerable to takeover.
There is zero chance a dying race as advanced as the Taelons would be that naïve towards technology vulnerabilities. Claiming that and then writing an episode around the mothership being taken for a joy ride is jump-the-shark preposterous. It’s as preposterous as the first episode when Liam Kincaid comes into existence.
It’s like the showrunners for season 1 were fired and replaced. Then, new showrunners were allowed to retool the series to their own whims and desires. Season 2 felt like it was simply a playground for the “new” producers, not to tell a story, but for them to put up all action stories that the writers can devise, stupid or not.
Atavus
Before I get into season 3, let’s talk about this specific season 2 episode. The stupidity of this episode should be understood immediately. We need to understand this episode to further understand how it shaped seasons 4 and 5. The primary mistake the writers made with the Atavus episode is that the series had already established that Taelons don’t revert to an atavistic state upon severance from the Commonality (psychic bond to other Taelons). That fact was established by Ma’el thousands of years earlier. Ma’el didn’t have access to humans to “suck” their minds to keep from reverting. Either Ma’el figured out a way that has never been known to Taelons or Taelons simply don’t automatically revert. I’m betting on the latter.
When Ma’el came to Earth to learn about humans, he severed his ties to the Commonality. Yet, he didn’t have the luxury of near death humans to sustain him in Taelon form. He also didn’t revert to an Atavus. Or, if he did, he quickly figured out a way to revert back to Taelon form. However, it was never established that Ma’el ever became an Atavus or remained in that state after severing his ties to the Commonality. That means that Season 2, Episode 2 made no sense for when Bel’lie comes to Earth from a different Taelon colony strictly to become an Atavus.
That either means that Ma’el was immune to becoming an Atavus or this whole “become an atavus” thing was made up by the writers for sheer convenience strictly for this silly Season 2 episode.
Season 2 also employed one entirely questionable and throw-away episide in S2E8’s Redemption. This episode consisted almost entirely of flashbacks combined with maybe 5-8 minutes of “new” content to carry the segments. It wasn’t even handled by a primary character. It was handled by the tertiary character, Siobhan Beckett (Kari Matchett)… as if we actually cared about the fate of this character? This also wouldn’t be the first or last throw-away character that the writers would devote an entire episode to.
One other extremely bad episode to call out is the final episode of Season 2. The entire story is so dumb, I don’t even know why the idea was greenlit. The whole series up to this point had been grooming Jonathan Doors (played by David Hemblen) to become President of the United States. In fact, Zo’or was nearly ready to profess his loyalty to Doors. Yet, this episode sees Zo’or with his right hand man, Sandoval, lead the charge to assassinate Daniel Thompson, the then President of the United States in the series. The assassination was to be carried out during the presidential debate. In fact, what we come to find later was the plot intended to injure Thompson and pin it on Doors with the intention of discrediting him. Why is it bad? Because while the Taelons are malevolent in a very hands-off way, this plot shows the Taelons to be not only overt in their dangerousness, they’re fully willing to play with people’s lives to further their agenda, they hadn’t ever done this so overtly prior.
Honestly, the show would have been better had Doors won the election. This convoluted plot kept Thompson in office, an actor (Barry Flatman) whose bit parts were okay, but nothing to write home about. Now, we have to have more involved plots with this actor more and more. David Hemblen’s acting was far superior to Barry Flatman. Why the producers chose to sideline David Hemblen’s character in lieu of Barry Flatman’s character is beyond me. Yet more stupid showrunner decisions.
Season 3
More personnel changes. At the opening of Season 3, we come to find that the Season 2 prophetic vision of Augur’s holographic computer interface being pregnant and having a baby actually served a real life purpose. Lisa Howard was apparently pregnant and showing towards the tail end of season 2. Showing Augur’s computer character as pregnant and then having a child would have allowed Lisa Howard to continue her dual role, playing both Lili Marquette and Augur’s holographic computer assistant in the shape of Lili Marquette.
Going into Season 3, we come to find Lili has been killed… or at least, so we’re told. Behind the scenes, Lisa Howard had apparently requested maternity leave from the producers for the first half of Season 3. The producers were apparently somewhat obliging to her request and reduced her role significantly. Not only did Augur delete his holographic interface, so too did Lili Marquette mostly disappear from the series… appearing only in a few episodes in Season 3. This allowed Lisa Howard the time she wanted to be with her new family member.
Unfortunately, this personnel change put a hole in the series for a leading lady character. In that effort, they hired actress Jayne Heitmeyer to play Jonathan Door’s new right hand, Renee Palmer. Lisa Howard apparently claimed that Heitmeyer wasn’t intended to be a replacement for Lili Marquette. While that statement may have seemed true in some small way, that’s not really how the series turned out. In fact, by Seasons 4 and 5, Heitmeyer’s character, Renee Palmer, had become the primary lead character who carried the entire series (along side Sandoval). So, yes, Renee Palmer did eventually come to replace Lili Marquette and most of the rest of the “human” cast.
Season 3 is just as ludicrous, unfortunately, as season 2. This is mostly because of the newly introduced Renee Palmer character. When this character appears, there’s no questions, no background checks, nothing. She’s so readily accepted into the fold, it’s as if she’s been there all along. This is part of the reason I despise personnel changes in TV series. The writers could have at least had the Taelons perform some kind of fiduciary responsibility around Renee’s appearance. Yet, crickets.
As for Jayne Heitmeyer, her mostly flat affect left the series, once again, mostly without a strong actor to carry the series. The character was mostly utilitarian, just enough to carry the role. It’s the same problem with William Boone and again with Liam Kincaid. The producers kept trying to inject fresh blood into the series, yet kept failing at it so amazingly. While the series started out with a strong enough cast, particularly the Taelons, the “human” cast keeps changing as often as people change their socks.
The character changes don’t necessarily make a series bad all by itself, but when coupled with amazingly bad scripts and no way to properly use these characters, it most certainly does. As I said above, character changes are ultimately the kiss of death for a series… and Earth Final Conflict proves this out in spades. It’s really not solely the cast changes that made EFC bad, but also the bad, bad writing.
As a prime example of this extremely bad writing, in Season 3 Episode 14, Da’an opens the episode by saying, “The Jaridians carry within them the demon of violence which we removed from our species.” This stupid line of dialog is uttered to Liam Kincaid by Da’an one episode after Zo’or kills Ram, the “Latin American Companion” along with a human using an interdimensional portal and nearly kills T’Than, the war minister and another human the same way.
Liam Kincaid is well aware of what happened to Ram and nearly T’Than at Zo’or’s hand having almost been killed himself. Yet, Kincaid’s response? “What you call the demon of violence is the willingness to fight your own battles”. Kincaid was nearly killed because of Zo’or perpetuating violence against his own species, yet Kincaid makes no mention of this fact to Da’an? The Taelons have no more removed violence from the Taelon species than humans have. Yet, the writers aren’t willing to admit this.
In another episode, Season 3 Episode 9 “In Memory”, Lili wakes up and thinks she’s on Earth again. Yet, so many clues tell her strongly that she’s not where she thinks she is. Additionally, her hospital captors seem to forever press her to repair the interdimensional drive in her damaged shuttle, a very big clue in itself as to what’s going on. It’s not like the series hadn’t told both the audience and the characters repeatedly over many episodes that if the Jaridians manage to get their hands on a working interdimensional drive that that would allow the Jaridians to reach Earth much, much sooner.
You would have thought the Lili character was far smarter than this and had a brain in her head. Lili should have recognized these clues, especially those that continually press her to repair the drive system. It’s not like the Taelons haven’t repeatedly warned not only her, but every human around the Jaridian’s plan. Yet, there Lili sits, being asked to do the very thing that could help the Jaridians out majorly, all without a single suspicion? I figured out the ruse in under 5 minutes. Yet, Lili doesn’t figure it out until the very end? I don’t think so. Again, grossly bad tropes and horribly bad writing. Writers must treat characters as if they actually have brains in their heads, particularly when stories have previously demonstrated that they do. Barring that, the writers should have kept Lili drugged up and constantly in a brain fog so that she couldn’t put these pieces together. Yet, nothing in the episode unfolded in this way.
Seasons 4 and 5
I have chosen to lump both of these crap seasons together as one. With the beginning of Season 4, this effectively where Jayne Heitmeyer takes over as a lone character driving this series. By Season 5, the Tealons are fully gone (but even by Season 4, the Taelons are more-or-less already on the way out with that “core energy” stupidity). In Season 5, we see the Taelons replaced by the two Atavus: Juda (Guylaine St-Onge) and Howlyn (Alan Van Sprang). Even by Season 4, gone are most of the characters we had come to know and (ahem) love. By Season 5, we now have a nearly brand new cast of characters we don’t know and ultimately don’t care about. What TV show producer replaces nearly the entire cast and expects viewers to hang around? No offense, Juda and Howlyn.
Season 4 marks where the writers had truly lost their way and had no idea where to take this series. With Season 5, though, this is where the whole thing takes a completely sour turn. When Earth Final Conflict could have ended with an uplifting story, it instead attempted to turn itself into a competitor TV show to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series which was effectively in the #1 spot at the time). The producers and writers made a grave mistake with this series, one that ultimately turned the series into trash.
Instead of embracing the roots and uniqueness of what was setup in season 1, they choose to embrace a concept foreign to the series. Effectively, the series turned the Taelons into energy sucking creatures, similar to that campy and crappy 1985 movie “Lifeforce” in an attempt to compete with Buffy the Vampire Slayer on another network. In essence, the series became Renee the Vampire Slayer with Renee Palmer becoming the primary character who runs around slaying the Atavus, much like Buffy slays Vampires.
After the questionable choice of having Taelons merge into fewer characters, who then revert to becoming Atavus, the whole series takes a 180 degree turn. No longer is EFC about Taelons being a friend to Earth. Now it’s about the Atavus let loose on Earth to suck energy from humans to survive.
I can’t even fathom what the producers were thinking. Here you have a show about Tealons who come to Earth and who understand their fate is inexplicably linked to Humans. Then, the producers derail that premise entirely and effectively kill off the Taelons only to replace them with the Atavus; primitive creatures who look like vampires, act like vampires and kill like vampires. It’s then surprising to realize that the Atavus storyline managed to last a full season (and several “hint” episodes before that) before the series was cancelled.
Assignment Earth’s ties to Earth Final Conflict
It’s worth noting that Gene Roddenberry attempted to create a spinoff series at the time Star Trek: The Original Series was in production in 1968. This new series was to be called Assignment Earth. It featured an Alien, Gary Seven, who comes to Earth to study humans and human culture and intervene as necessary to keep humanity safe. However, one episode was made in the form of a Star Trek episode featuring Robert Lansing and Teri Garr as what is intended to be the series pilot. Unfortunately, this spinoff series failed to materialize and was not picked up.
How exactly is Earth Final Conflict related to Assignment Earth? Clearly, Gene Roddenberry wanted Assignment Earth to succeed. However, due to the feedback he received after Assignment Earth failed to get picked up, it appears Gene may have retooled the idea into what ultimately became Earth Final Conflict. In the 1960s, limited special effects were available. As Gene moved into the late 80s, computer effects were becoming available along with much better film effects by companies like Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). This allowed Gene to retool some of these previous ideas into concepts which could now be filmed properly with current effect technologies. Thus, the idea of using energy beings like the Taelons could now be realized on video or film.
Even the premise between Assignment Earth and Earth Final Conflict are similar enough to draw correlations between both. For example, Gary Seven is assigned to Earth for as yet unknown reasons, but he is an alien. He is accompanied by his metamorph companion, Isis, who could transform between a house cat and a human form. Clearly, the human forms of Gary Seven and Isis were not native to these Aliens. They are simply using these forms to allow for better interaction with humanity. This same can be said of the Taelons. Their human form was only created to better interact with humans. When Taelons are in their energy form, they only somewhat resemble a human form.
Additionally, the Taelons were effectively “assigned” to Earth to help humanity, the same goal as Gary Seven in Assignment Earth. The parallels between these two story ideas are more similar than they are dissimilar. I won’t dive into all of the parallels between these two series ideas. You simply need to watch both to understand them. These parallels have led this author to believe that Gene Roddenberry had ultimately retooled the original Assignment Earth ideas into what became Earth Final Conflict.
Additionally, the original series title for Earth Final Conflict was to be titled Battleground: Earth, similar to Assignment: Earth. At the time that Earth Final Conflict hit the airwaves, L. Ron Hubbard’s movie Battlefield Earth was showing in theaters. Because of the confusing naming similarities between Battlefield Earth and Battleground: Earth, it was decided to rename the TV series to Earth Final Conflict to avoid that confusion. Thus, it is this author’s opinion that Gene Roddenberry’s original Assignment Earth idea morphed into Battleground Earth, which ultimately became Earth Final Conflict. Thus, even though Assignment Earth was never realized into a series during the 60s, it did finally become a series, as Earth Final Conflict, in the mid to late 1990s.
I’ve seen many comments from fans who have wished that Assignment Earth had come to pass as a TV series. In effect, it did… in Earth Final Conflict.
Overall
It’s too bad that Majel Barrett Roddenberry didn’t retain enough control over the series to keep it from taking this direction. I would really liked to have seen the Taleons return. Then, have the humans help save the Taelons, at least in some small way. Earth Final Conflict should have been an uplifting series, not a dark depressing survival series.
If you ignore seasons 4 and 5 as if they don’t exist and focus on seasons 1-3 as if these are the only seasons that matter, it’s not a bad series. The inclusion of seasons 4 and 5 simply turns Earth Final Conflict into a throw away and worthless series in the annals of science fiction. I’m quite sure that if Gene Roddenberry had been alive to see his creation come to exist, it would have turned out much differently. I’m also surprised that both Majel Roddenberry and Rod Roddenberry allowed for this series to take this unusual and completely distasteful turn at the end.
↩︎
Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Usually, I write reviews and analysis immediately after I see a film. Well, I have to be honest, I did just see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker recently. You might be wondering why that is? Well, let’s explore.
Obligatory Note: This review contains major *spoilers*. Stop reading now if you haven’t seen this film.
Rewarding Poor Business Decisions
I’m not one to necessarily boycott businesses, but with Star Wars I’ve made an exception. I boycotted seeing the film in the theater and I, likewise, boycotted paying money to see it at any rental venue. The reason I saw it last weekend is because finally a channel has released an on-demand version that’s included with something I already pay for.
To be honest, Disney will get a small amount of money from me watching it via on-demand. It’s called the pay-for-play royalty system. That means that every time someone plays it, Disney will derive some amount of money from the playback (probably 10-25¢ at most). I’m okay with that because that’s about what it’s worth. Though, I don’t have to pay directly. I refuse to reward companies for producing crap. I simply won’t do it. I know that this paragraph’s sentiment is entirely brutal… but hey, that’s part of the review.
Retroactive Continuity Bonanza
Congratulations! You’ve hit the Retcon Bonanza! One thing about applying retroactive continuity (retcon) to a story line is that it’s fairly obvious. See, the thing is, retcon runs all through Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in very blatant and obvious ways. I already knew going into The Rise of Skywalker that it would be chock full of retroactive continuity.
So what’s wrong with retconning a story? Let me count the ways.
- Trite
- Cliché
- Poor writing
- Bad planning
- Bad storytelling
- Contrived
- Unsatisfying
Great storytelling sets up little bits and pieces all along the way. Then brings those bits and pieces together at the end in a cohesive way to explain why those seemingly unrelated bits and pieces were included. It’s a standard storytelling practice that shows the writer had planning of forethought when crafting their story.
It’s also an immensely satisfying storytelling practice. If you’re an astute observer, you can put these foreshadowing pieces together early to conclude what’s about to occur. If storytellers are too obvious with their clues, it makes guessing the ending too easy. For example, many people were able to easily guess the premise of M. Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense, when the ending was all but revealed by four words of dialogue spoken very early in the film. However, this situation also depended heavily on whether you believed the visuals of the film or you chose to believe the spoken words. It also means the writers concocted a poorly conceived clue delivery system. It should have been way more subtle than that. In fact, those words shouldn’t have been uttered until much later in the film.
That’s not the case with The Rise of Skywalker, though. With this film, it wasn’t a matter of clumsy clues. It was the fact that no clues were given at all, not in The Force Awakens and not in The Last Jedi where it makes much more sense to leave these clues behind.
Emperor Palpatine
Palpatine was the primary villain in the first 3 Star Wars films. He was dispatched at the end of Return of the Jedi by being dropped down a power shaft. This villain was firmly dead. However, The Rise of Skywalker latches onto this story context for all that its worth. That, and cloning.
The thing is, Attack of the Clones wasn’t really referenced… or more specifically, Kamino. Specifically mentioning this planet somewhere along the way, such as earlier in The Force Awakens would have set up the notion of cloning as a possibility somewhere in the story. For example, if Snoke had been found to be a clone based on DNA testing or something similar after he’d been chopped in half in The Last Jedi, that would have explained what was said by Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker. Yet, no such reference in either of the first two films exists.
As an another example, even the simple act of dropping Palpatine’s name in any small kind of way, such as mentioning the similarity to Snoke’s villainy. Even simple name dropping can open whole doors up later and it’s those kinds of clues that avoid retroactive continuity problems. Simple name dropping Palpatine or Kamino or Cloners in any capacity along the way in The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi would have been enough to prove the writers were thinking about closure of the story at the beginning of it.
Instead, the writers and filmmakers were so self-absorbed in their own self-indulgence that they couldn’t even consider such prior setup in the writing of the first two installments.
To be honest, this is really the fault of J.J. Abrams. He had the task of opening the storyline in The Force Awakens, but fails to really give a hint at what’s to come. Hints and clues are what make great stories. It’s called foreshadowing and it’s an incredibly impressive storytelling tactic when it’s done correctly. When it’s not done at all, then it’s called retroactive continuity… or building a new story by making up establishing facts instantly rather than relying on clues laid down earlier.
Sure, the original films and the prequels had information that could be leveraged, but not in a way that would be seen as clues for Disney’s trilogy. You don’t just pull crap out of the air and hope people somehow magically get the reference. Proper build-up is essential to a story. Without it, it makes a story fail.
Palpatine Again!?
When Palpatine is, again, introduced as “the man behind the curtain” in The Rise of Skywalker, it’s groan time… ugh! I’m thinking, “Not again”. Can’t these guys think up anything original? At least there wasn’t yet a third Death Star… at least we’ve made some progress, I guess. Not much, though.
Bringing Palpatine back to life without really so much as an explanation is such a bad storytelling idea that it makes the rest of the story feel like garbage. You either believe Palpatine is back or you don’t. The worst thing about Palpatine is that he stands there like a statue and simply taunts people with words. Granted, in Return of the Jedi, he was also fairly catatonic. Though, he did get up and walk around a little. In this film, he’s a literal statue standing in one spot the entire time spouting platitudes. It’s his same old tired self-assured, over-confident, self-righteous Sith rhetoric about eliminating the Jedi. He died for those same clichéd thoughts in The Return of the Jedi. Has he learned nothing? You’d think that after his first death at the hands of Vader, he’d be a little more cautious and wiser the second time around. Yet, *crickets*.
The storytellers don’t give Palpatine an ounce of credit as intelligent or thoughtful. The man is made out to be as dumb as brick. Seriously, after Palpatine’s trip down the power conduit, you’d think he’d rethink his over-confident, self-assured, self-righteous threatening demeanor and, instead, try something new. Nope.
Snoke
You might also want to point to Snoke as an example of that, but then you’d be wrong because Snoke was summarily chopped in half midway through The Last Jedi. That was that for Snoke. It’s one thing to use Snoke as a puppet, but it’s clear that that puppet failed utterly to its own demise. Stupid Villains!
Just to make it perfectly clear, none of the above was mentioned anywhere in The Last Jedi. Again, no such clues were left behind for bringing it all together in the end. Nope. No where was it mentioned that Snoke was a puppet of Palpatine, though a clue should have been left somewhere in TLJ if not by Snoke himself. For example, a quick scene where we see Snoke nodding to a shadowy figure in a cloak which fades out followed by Snoke going directly into communication with Ben. That would have been something.
Of course, in Star Wars revisionist tendencies, Disney may go back into both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and retrofit dialog, extra scenes and whatnot to shoehorn these clues…. which is an even worse practice than what they did in the contrived storytelling in The Rise of Skywalker. Revisionism has no place in movies, let alone Star Wars films. To be honest, what George Lucas did with his revisionism was add better FX and reintroduce scenes that he wanted, but those changes didn’t fundamentally alter the storyline and were not introduced to ‘fix’ a story problem for a later film.
No, George’s stories were solid from the beginning, so the stories didn’t need ‘fixing’.
Disney Hires Crap Writers
Part of the problem here is that Disney doesn’t have a clue how to run a live action film business, nor exactly what a good live action script is. Disney comes from an animation background. The stories in Disney’s animated films have been simplistic and intended for children.
For some reason, Disney thought they could insinuate themselves into a live action movie business and have those films turn out great. Well, it’s clear, that’s not true.
No where is that more apparent than in how the stories for the Disney Trilogy were handled. The first mistake was hiring J.J. Abrams to write these films. Instead, Disney should have hired actual film writers with experience in writing. Before that, they should have hired actual story writers to come up with the overall story arc encompassing the three films prior to embarking on filming them. This would have meant that going into each film there was an outline of the necessary elements needed to craft each film’s story which would support the rest.
The director might take some liberties in some areas around portions of the story telling, but the required story elements must be included for the entire story arc to work. This would have also meant that all three films were essentially written up-front. Instead, Disney apparently allowed the writers of each film to craft their own story in pre-production for each film. Basically, the films were made up at the time of each production.
This isn’t a recipe for success. In fact, it’s a recipe for failure. It’s exactly why J.J. Abrams Alias and Lost series failed to ultimately work. The stories were “made up” as they went along rather than attempting to at least write an overarching story outline that encompasses the entire season. Each story doesn’t need to be written, but certain specific points must be included in the season to reach the conclusion properly. Without such inserted clues, the conclusion absolutely cannot be satisfying… and so it goes with Lost. Lost‘s conclusion was such an awful mess that not only did it make no sense, what little pieces did try to make sense were awful. It was like watching a train wreck unfold.
So then, Disney hires this two-bit hack to pen Star Wars? Here’s a guy who can’t even write two TV series properly and yet Disney hires him for Star Wars? Yeah, I could see this wasn’t going to end well… and so it goes.
Endings
Speaking of things not ending well, let’s continue with The Rise of Skywalker and its ending. Disney would have been smarter to leave a thread open that could be followed up with a new trilogy. Instead, Disney, and more specifically, J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy were so focused on damage control that they forgot to add intentional cliffhangers leading into a new series of films. However, I believe at the time the film was being created, damage control was the primary means of closure for the The Rise of Skywalker storyline.
With that said, the ending is simultaneously satisfying and disappointing. On the surface, it’s a satisfying conclusion to this series of films. Diving deeper, the entire story is incredibly unsatisfying, thus leaving the conclusion disenchanting. The whole shoehorn-this-story-into-a-Palpatine-issue is deeply distasteful. Not only does it ruin the thought that Palpatine is, in fact, dead, it does so in a way that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and simultaneously leaves a gaping hole open as wide as the Grand Canyon.
The original Palpatine was shrewd, cunning and incredibly intelligent. Yet, this film treats Palpatine as one of the dumbest villains to have ever graced the Star Wars universe. Granted, the Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker is supposed to be a clone. I suppose one could argue that the cloning process dumbs down its clones unintentionally (or even intentionally). The Kaminoan cloners might have seeded its clones so that they would never become aggressive towards Kamino, thus dumbing them down in other ways. It would make sense for the Kaminoans to protect Kamino from its clones turning on its masters or on the world. This argument could be said of all of the Clone Troopers. Yet, this fact has never been established in canon outright.
Palpatine, the original, would have also known and understood this dumbing down limitation of Kamino Clones and probably would have attempted to mitigate it long before it became a problem. Yet, it seems that didn’t happen based on clone Palpatine’s overall dumb self-righteous behavior. This cloned Palpatine is one of the least intelligent villains I’ve yet seen in a Star Wars film, save that perhaps Snoke was likely also a clone considering that Palpatine claims to have “made Snoke” (implying a clone).
Whether Palpatine used Kamino to produced the clones or if Palpatine bought and established his own cloning technology separately, it’s not really stated. Watching this film, I assumed that all of the cloning occurred on Kamino… or at least, Kamino cloning technology was utilized by Palpatine even if not cloned directly on Kamino.
I know that Palpatine suggested bringing the dead back to life in the prequel Revenge of the Sith (which was lightly referenced in The Rise of Skywalker). Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the conversation from Palpatine himself.
This platitude by Palpatine may have been a veiled reference to cloning or to an unseen force power or both, which by the time of this scene, the world of Kamino and its technology had been established by the prequel, Attack of the Clones. Of course, this information wasn’t definitively stated in The Rise of Skywalker or even in Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith. The information in The Rise of Skywalker was all left to the audience to put 2 and 2 together and theorize Palpatine was talking about cloning and/or the conversation above. If you hadn’t watched the prequels before seeing The Rise of Skywalker, you wouldn’t be able to correlate this information, leaving the means by which Palpatine reappears as a mystery that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and isn’t resolved in the narrative.
What this all means for the ending is a somewhat convoluted, complex, yet simpleminded ending. In fact, the ending was so simpleminded and single tracked, it was easy to predict the outcome.
Is It Over?
This is a lingering question that remains. If there’s one clone, there can be many. Did Rey fight the last and final clone? We don’t know. This is the gaping hole the size of the Grand Canyon. If it took Rey to the point of death to kill one single clone, then fighting any more means she probably won’t succeed in killing any others. After all, she won’t have Ben there to give her his remaining life force and bring her back to life again.
For the reason of clones, the ending is entirely unsatisfying. Once you open this story door to clones (plural), it’s a never ending cycle. You simply can’t win against potentially thousands of Palpatine clones strewn throughout the Star Wars galaxy. This is why the ending is simultaneously satisfying at face value and completely unsatisfying when you dig deeper.
Cheap Cop Out
Ultimately, the two main problems in this story stem from relying on the concept of cloning combined with using a duplicate (cloned) Palpatine to carry this story. Out of thousands of better possible ideas, JJ chose these two weakest and most trite ideas over any others? This simply shows just how inept a writer JJ actually is. Though, the “Mary Sue” idea was almost completely squashed by introducing the “Palpatine’s Granddaughter” idea. My problem with the ending of this story is, why did we miss a generation? In fact, the whole “Palpatine having children” storyline could have been a far better story idea to base this final set of films on over what’s included in this mess of a trilogy. Definitely, the “Palpatine having children” story idea is a far, far superior story in establishing the idea of the carrying forward of the Sith vs Jedi conflict over the mess-of-a-story shown in this bankrupt trilogy. This is particularly true if you truly want to hand off this conflict to a new generation of Sith and Jedi. Unfortunately, JJ has already given away the farm.
Following the “Palpatine had Children” idea, when did Palpatine procreate and with whom? Why wasn’t it THIS story that begins these final 3 films? If, as a storyteller, you’re going to tease us that Palpatine had children, then we need to know more about this situation. Who was his “wife”? How many children did Palpatine have? Was Rey an only child? Have these children chosen to be dark or light? None of these questions are answered. They’re left open. JJ’s story elements weren’t added to tell us that Palpatine had children. They were useless contrivances included simply to carry The Rise of Skywalker to conclusion. These contrivances are the very definition of retroactive continuity, “Let’s add something random about the past that lets the future proceed in a specific way.” That’s entirely retroactive contrivance
If past historical events had been introduced early in The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi, I’d not be critical of these “convenient” story elements included in The Rise of Skywalker. It would have meant that the writers were thinking ahead to the future film. It also means that the story arc was properly planned. Without these elements in any prior films, it’s included for mere convenient storytelling. It’s also the very definition of a “hack writer“.
Palpatine’s Children
Before we dive deep into the the “hack writer” concept, let’s explore what we could have had in this final trilogy. Oh, and boy is it a doozy! It’s actually hard to believe that JJ chose not to run with this story idea, which would have made the final trilogy not only completely satisfying, but would have opened the door up to so many more films and TV shows. Disney could have made twice the amount of money off of this (and it would still be going) and the Star Wars brand would be stronger than ever instead of petering out after The Last Jedi ended up like dropping a gallon of water on lit candle.
If The Force Awakens had opened, instead, using one of Palpatine’s children as a primary villain with that child obviously dark side leaning, the whole tone and concept of this entire trilogy would have completely changed. Talk about introducing a “new generation”, well this was the way to do it! It would have also changed the entire story concept over these three films. Instead of a Mary Sue story unfolding around Rey, we could have focused on the brashness, harshness and destructiveness of a Palpatine child and in a growing Jedi order to combat that new Palpatine threat.
Except, this time it’s not Palpatine. It’s the child of Palpatine and they have a completely new idea on how to squash the Jedi order, not using Palpatine’s old, tired rhetoric… that didn’t work anyway.
If Palpatine had had more than one child, which of course we knew nothing about those other children, another child could emerge as a conflict mechanism, both against the Jedi and also against the Sith. This would allow the story to pit both Palpatine children against one another, but at the same time against the Jedi. See, so much potential lost!
This could have turned Star Wars a bit darker, more modern, updated, yet still fall within Star Wars ideas and visuals. Instead of the crappy Disney trilogy that we got, which was a bunch of cotton candy fluff, we could have dived deep into a darker, more sinister plot involving Palpatine’s children. Snoke could have still been involved as a puppet of this Palpatine child, but we don’t even have to bring back Palpatine as a clone to accomplish it. We simply need this dark side leaning child to “carry the torch”.
So many ideas and so any concepts swirling, it’s amazing JJ didn’t realize that THIS is where the story should have headed… not with his carnival of cotton candy and candied apples. JJ’s trilogy was, in fact, so candy-bar sweet as to get diabetes. No, that’s not where Star Wars needed to go. Star Wars needed to begin with a darker, more sinister villain to launch the story, then slowly emerge (over 3 films) from that darkness with a huge win at the end… a win that perhaps doesn’t even stem from the Jedi. Such a win could then lead into not only more films, but also spin off into a whole bunch of TV series.
Disney missed the boat here in an immense way. So much potential completely wasted and lost.
Hack Writer
A hack writer is a pejorative term for a writer who is paid to write low-quality, rushed articles or books “to order”, often with a short deadline.
That’s exactly how J.J. Abrams comes to The Rise of Skywalker. He was most definitely paid to write a rushed low-quality script and the film most definitely reveals that. It also reveals that JJ doesn’t have the creative chops to come up with solid, great story ideas and concepts, such as using a Palpatine child to not only bring Star Wars to a brand new generation of children, but also breed a whole new generation of Sith and Jedi alike. Instead, we got…
High Gloss Cotton Candy
One of the things that most disturbs me about this film is its high gloss nature. This gloss defines the term putting “lipstick on a pig“. This phrase means taking a low quality, bad product and dressing it up to disguise its fundamental failings.
The “gloss” here is the film’s far too quick pacing and the overuse of CG effects, right from the opening. Yes, it’s a pretty film. It also includes throwing random and rapid paced information at the viewer, but not giving the person not enough time to react to that information. If the viewer attempts to think anything through, they’ll miss the next scene of the film. This is intentional. You can’t really go into deep thought and stay focused on the film in front of you. You can only go into deep thought after the film is over, at which point you’ll already be initially “satisfied” (or at least sated) by the film’s intended conclusion.
However, thinking the film through, you’ll understand all of the points I’ve made above.
That’s the whole point of the “glossy coating” and, thus, to put “lipstick on a pig”. It’s not that the story is the worst story I’ve ever seen in a film, but it’s definitely not a great story by any stretch. It was cobbled together from elements not established in this trilogy. Instead, the story had to fall back on story elements established from the prequels and the original films, but which hadn’t been discussed in this trilogy until the final film. Yes, that’s the very definition of a “Cop Out”.
Instead, this trilogy should have relied on itself and its own stories to carry its way through to conclusion. It didn’t need a cloned Palpatine to carry this story. That’s perfectly clear. Here’s one of the primary problems I have with this whole cloned Palpatine issue. How and when did Palpatine become cloned? Is someone else pulling the strings? Was that cloned Palpatine merely a test for Rey? Was it merely the first in a series of tests? Was that clone the only one?
So many questions left unanswered. So many questions that needed to be answered for a proper conclusion. Yet, no. These are not “cliffhanger” questions. These are fundamental questions which should have been answered over the course of the Disney trilogy, yet were not. To really underscore the Cop Out problem, we must examine…
The Last Jedi
The closing shot of the kid in the The Last Jedi shows a force capable child. Yet, The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t even attempt to close that narrative. The ring that Finn and Rose bestow onto that kid meant nothing? The whole almost 30 minute romp through the Casino was pointless? Indeed, it means the whole Rose storyline was more-or-less pointless considering they set up an almost blatant new romantic interest in The Rise of Skywalker in Naomi Ackie’s Jannah character. Yet, neither the romantic storyline between either Rose or Jannah materializes in The Rise of Skywalker. Rose has a few scenes in the Leia camp, but it’s all for naught and is a fairly useless means of closure for this character. Set her up in The Last Jedi to be a romantic interest, then ignore Rose as mere wallpaper in The Rise of Skywalker. The interest around Rose was molded into yet another new character of Jannah.
Yes, The Rise of Skywalker trounces all over The Last Jedi in an attempt right-its-wrongs for better or worse. More specifically, The Rise of Skywalker simply chooses to ignore those things it deems as unimportant from the previous film. Examples: the force-capable kid, the Casino romp, Rose and even the ring. Whatever The Rise of Skywalker writers deem as unimportant are left without acknowledgement or conclusion. Indeed, The Rise of Skywalker plays too much fan service and not enough at closing elements already opened in prior films.
It wouldn’t have taken much to include a small scene showing that force-capable kid wearing the ring somewhere in The Rise of Skywalker. It doesn’t need to be a long or even important scene, it simply needs to be in there. Maybe a scene between Rey and that kid moving rocks around briefly, as though she or Leia is training him. We don’t need to know more about the kid other than he’s still around and he may or may not become important later, just not in this film.
Change of Clothing
One of the most obvious and out of place elements is that Rey wears the same outfit and hairstyle throughout much of all three films. At least Leia was given proper costume changes along the way including her film’s iconic opening outfit with buns, her braided pony tail ceremonial outfit at the end of Episode 4, her Hoth ice outfit, her Bespin outfit, her ever important Jabba Bikini and so on. With each new environment, she changes clothing. No, it’s not explained how Leia does this, but she does.
Rey, on the other hand, almost never changes clothes. She effectively has two outfits. Her scavenger outfit which she wore in The Force Awakens and again in The Rise of Skywalker. In The Last Jedi, the costumers gave her a new darker outfit and a new hairstyle while on the Luke Skywalker banishment planet, but that was a short stint with that outfit. However, once she leaves, she’s back into yet another version of her scavenger outfit. For battling, I guess that outfit is fine, but you’d think that Leia could have issued her more appropriate resistance clothing along the way. For scavenging on a hot planet, what she was originally wearing was fine. For a resistance member, she should have changed into something more befitting of her new role. Additionally, being a budding Jedi, she should have at least donned more Jedi befitting clothing. Nope, she was placed right back into her scavenger outfit all throughout The Rise of Skywalker, even at the end of the film.
This is a small point, but it’s a relevant point to the development of a character. The costumes indicate growth of a character as much as her actions and words.
Story
After all of this lead up, let’s finally talk about the film’s story as a whole. The story itself is both simplistic and meh. It concludes in a way that leaves a bad taste for Star Wars and for Disney in general. Because hack writers were chosen to not create a cohesive whole, but a chopped up mess of a hack-job over three films which almost have no relation to one another other than characters, it ends up a truly sad affair. It also concludes in this way.
However, Disney also felt obligated to conclude this problem child. They did so only because they had started down this road and felt the need to finish it. Personally, I think Disney should have shelved the entire project after The Last Jedi and called it done. The whole thing was too irreparably damaged by that point, at least as a creative project. For Disney, the dollar $igns lingered too much in front of someone’s eyes to give it up.
Let’s talk about the film itself. When we begin The Rise of Skywalker, we’re greeted by the familiar text crawl followed by the familiar and obligatory space pan shot. Before we step into the visuals, let’s talk about this text crawl. The text crawl mentions Palpatine by name and that he’s back, never mind those pesky details of exactly how. Basically, the story opens with retroactive continuity before an actor ever graces the silver screen. We already know the lay of the land before one single actual live action shot. From that crawl alone, we now know exactly what we’re in for in The Rise of Skywalker, but we don’t yet know how it will unfold. Though, giving it two minutes of thought, you can understand where the story is heading, we simply need to see it visually.
How it actually ends up playing out is a series of scenes, the Millenium Falcon, a cameo by a now aging Lando Calrissian and a bunch of throwbacks and nods to the original Star Wars, simply to keep the visual interest high. In other words, visually the film relies almost solely on reminiscing over the original three films by attempting to ignore the failings of The Last Jedi specifically, but also glosses over some of The Force Awakens. The Rise of Skywalker attempts to be the one and only one film that matters in this Disney trilogy. In fact, it tries way too hard at this and ultimately feels hollow and disappointing.
It’s a film that feels whole and solid while you watch it, but like a chocolate Easter Bunny once you bite down and realize it’s hollow, the film ultimately lacks any real reason to exist. For this reason, this is why George Lucas decided not to create films 7, 8 and 9 himself. He realized that once the 6 films were complete, there was nothing left to say.
The Rise of Skywalker proves this fact out in amazing abundance. At the end, we’re left not with the question about how great Rey is, but what the hell just happened? More importantly, what was the point? How exactly does Rey’s existence perpetuate the Star Wars narrative in a positive or useful way? Rey is clearly not a Skywalker. She’s a Palpatine. She’ll always be a Palpatine. She’ll always have the potential for falling into the dark side. Yet, she takes the Skywalker name because, plot.
Was it necessary or important for Rey to be a Skywalker? *shrug* I’ve no idea. There’s nothing that comes after to explain the need for this inexplicable naming. Yet, that’s exactly how the story ends. She’s now Rey Skywalker in name only. She’ll always be Rey Palpatine or whatever her father’s family surname was. We don’t even know if it was her father or mother who was the daughter or son of Emperor Palpatine. For all we know, Palpatine didn’t even have a child. Instead, he may have made a clone of himself who ultimately broke away, got married and had a child. We just don’t have enough backstory to know how this whole Rey situation came about.
We came too late in The Force Awakens to get this backstory. It was also never explained throughout the Disney trilogy. We’re simply left in the dark. Even at the very end of The Rise of Skywalker, we’re still left in the dark about how Rey came to be the granddaughter of Palpatine. Bad storytelling. If you’re planning on including retroactive continuity, you could at least fill in these rather important details so we can better understand how and from where Rey came… or, more specifically, how Emperor Palpatine managed to have kids. We don’t even know if Palpatine’s kids were from the “original” Palpatine or if one of Palpatine’s clones had kids. Yes, I said clones… as in the plural form, meaning “more than one”.
Ben and Rey
One thing that The Rise of Skywalker postulates is that Rey and Ben are a force dyad. The only way that’s possible is if Ben and Rey are twins, or at least from the same parent. That implies that Leia may have given birth to twins (like her mother who also had twins Luke and Leia) and somehow Rey was kidnapped by a Palpatine clone and assumed it to be his own child birthed by, well, whomever was on the ship with Rey whenever she was left on Jakku.
Again, this was not explained in the film, but a force dyad doesn’t make much sense unless they’re siblings or, in some way related… which makes that kiss at the end all the more “ewww”. Again, not explained.
Never Ending Ending
Here’s the ultimate problem that exists and persists after closure of The Rise of Skywalker and it’s a big one! An ending that never ends is what we have left over from The Rise of Skywalker. What exactly do I mean? I mean that because Palpatine is a clone, there were likely many Palpatine clones. If Palpatine were to make one clone, he would make several. Why? To ensure the survival of at least one of the clones, there must be many.
The question remains, how many and where are they? We don’t know. Clearly, Rey seems to have fought a particularly weak clone. Perhaps they’re all weak. The fact that they’re clones, they might not have inherited all of the force strength of the original. Because Rey couldn’t defeat this Palpatine clone all by herself implies that she herself was most likely born of a clone and not the original Palpatine. While that may or may not be a problem, the bigger problem is that the ending of The Rise of Skywalker has no end.
As Rey heads off into the galaxy for future travels, she’ll inevitably encounter more Palpatine clones and she’ll be forced to dispatch each and every one. In fact, it’s highly likely she’ll have to dispatch many Palpatine clones, because like the original Palpatine, even the clones will have the drive to survive and those clones will also hire cloners to clone the clone making yet more Palpatines. Like a virus, this situation perpetuates and never ends. Rey will never run out of an army of Palpatines to defeat.
This is the problem you bring into a story when forcing such concepts as clones as a story element for story closure. Like waking up from a dream sequence as an ending, using clones to close the final story element leaves the story’s ending unsatisfying. There’s nothing at all satisfying about the possibility of hundreds or thousands of Palpatines all infesting the universe waiting to attack the next Jedi that happens along.
See, I didn’t even have to resort to holding up the unmitigated pretentious disaster of a story that was J.J.’s Star Trek to illustrate just how much of a hack writer J.J. Abrams really is. Oops, I guess I just did. Yes indeed, J.J. seems to have the uncanny ability to ruin just about any franchise he touches.
Graphics: 5 out of 5
Story: 1 out of 5
Pacing: 2 out of 5
Overall: 2 out of 5 (wait until it’s available to watch without paying)
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Game Review: Days Gone
This former Sony PS4 exclusive game (now also available on Windows), while sporting only the rare fun game mechanic, is hands-down one of the worst single-player games I have ever played. It’s not bad in the same exact way as Fallout 76, but it is definitely the absolute worst game of its kind. Days Gone needs to begone. Let’s explore.
What’s wrong with Days Gone?
That’s a good question. Let’s dive deep into this Sony Interactive / Bend Studio disaster. It’s funny. You would think that Sony could put together good games… especially considering that they seem to keep hiring large ghost developers behind the scenes to put these games together. Well, you’d be wrong. Let’s take a look at Ghost of Tsushima to understand where Day’s Gone goes so horribly astray. Even though Ghost of Tsushima would be released not quite one year after Days Gone, they both share similar problems. Both games must have also been in development during the same time frame.
While Ghost of Tsushima could have been a good game, it copied way too much of Assassin’s Creed for its own good and didn’t do it very well. Though, both Days Gone and Ghost of Tsushima are very pretty games, looking beautiful can only take a game so far. The blowing reeds and flower petal particles in Ghost of Tsushima are wondrous to behold, same for the Oregon mountainous landscape in Days Gone. It’s the game’s mechanics which undermine all of that beauty. Why would I want to play Assassin’s Creed set in feudal Japan when it’s not even written by Ubisoft? Yeah, so there’s that. Regardless, the problems that plague Ghost of Tsushima are the same problems that also plague Days Gone, except Days Gone is even worse than Ghost of Tsushima by an order of magnitude.
With Days Gone, the problems start right from the beginning. First, the game steals the hero’s bike away from him. An unnecessary start to this disaster. If that were the only problem, I could live with it. Second, the sole point to stealing the motorcycle is in giving the player a way to spend time rebuilding the bike… a completely unnecessary included mechanic. That’s the least of the problems with the bike in this game, however. It’s perfectly fine to allow us to rebuild the bike to our own whims and on our own time, but the stolen bike storyline was entirely unnecessary.
Even More Bike Problems
The motorcycle given in concession to the stolen bike is crap by comparison. This crap bike requires the game player to grind, grind, grind for money to repair and enhance the bike. That means heading out to do all of the missions in the game. Except we then run afoul of all of the insipid bike mechanics.
Gasoline Usage — Stupid Mechanic #1
That this bike mechanic exists is entirely insipid. Real world motorcycles get between 35-40 miles per gallon on average. That means a full 6 gallon tank of gas should see a motorcycle go around 240 miles. In Days Gone, a full tank of gas lasts about 5 minutes of driving, or maybe 3-5 miles. The game literally forces you to stop and gas up about every 5-10 minutes of play. It’s an incredibly time wasting game mechanic. I get that the game wanted to add some measure of realism around requiring gasoline, but this mechanic is overkill and overly burdensome on the player.
If you’re planning on adding this level of burden to the player, then at least have the decency to allow us to disable requiring gasoline as a game option. Grand Theft Auto isn’t that stupid. Why not follow GTA’s formula which doesn’t require gas at all? Gassing up the motorcycle constantly is not only repetitive, it’s insanely stupid. If you’re going to include a gassing up mechanic, at least make it realistic enough that you can drive from one side of the map to the other and back on a single tank. This problem is the first in the tip of this game’s cracking iceberg. Oh yes, it does get worse.
Paying for Gas — Stupid Mechanic #2
When you’re out and about running around, gassing up every few minutes, you can find gas canisters and gas pumps which offer infinite free gas. You just pump and go. However, when you finally meet up with the various factions, these factions require that you pay for gas. Why would you ever do that? Just drive a little bit up the road and find a gas can in the back of a truck that will completely fill the tank. It’s the complete opposite of how this mechanic should have been designed. You should be required to pay for gas at pumps and get free gas with the factions.
Repairs — Stupid Mechanic #3
Motorcycles don’t just randomly fall apart as you ride them. Yet, in this game, they do. Hopping over the most insignificant little ramp immediately causes damage to the bike. Meaning, by the time you land, the bike already needs 15-30% repair work for each and every little bump. See, I told you that it gets worse.
Further, as you get clothes-lined or snipered by road side ambushes, the bike’s damage level immediately goes from 100% to 0%. There’s no chance of seeing less damage from an ambush. The bike’s repair level is always at 0% after an ambush of any kind. It’s like the bike is some kind of child’s toy made of plastic or something. This tiresome repair mechanic combined with the constant tank refilling makes the bike more of a hassle than a help.
Worse, it takes at least 10 pieces of scrap, probably more, to repair the bike from 0% to 100%. Looking for scrap in this game is also pain in the ass… finding two pieces here, one piece there, cracking open hoods of cars in among a bunch of ghouls. Anyway, you can drive around when the bike is 20% repaired, but that means one tiny little bump and you’re back at 0% again. Both the gas refilling mechanic and the repair mechanic combine to make the entire bike worthless and clinch the disaster that is this game. You could probably walk to locations faster than riding a bike, were it not for the ghouls.
Ghouls and Apocalypse
Here’s where we finally get into the Days Gone story, such that it isn’t. Basically, the world has undergone an apocalypse. A virus has been released that has turned many people into zombies, not unlike the ghouls in Fallout 76. The ghouls are pretty much ripped straight out of Fallout, lunging attacks, screaming and all. It’s like the developers said, “Fuck it, let’s just steal the Feral Ghouls right from Fallout”. So, that’s what they did. While Fallout 76 has modified the Ghouls to be able to run like the Bionic Man at supersonic speeds, the Ghouls in Days Gone remain at least a bit less superhuman than that. That doesn’t make them any better.
The point is, it’s basically an apocalyptic world pretty much like Fallout. Instead of radiation being the culprit, it’s a virus. Regardless, the power plants don’t work, towns are abandoned, ghouls roam the land and the story attempts to unfold what went on and why the ghouls act as they do. It’s a very weak story designed only to give the hero character motivation to find his girlfriend after they get separated.
He also has a brother who loses an arm to burn damage because of other threats across the land. Of course, the world wouldn’t be complete without some deranged faction with loony toons followers, which seems to indicate the first stage of the virus. The second stage of the virus is the ghouls who have no mental capacity other than instinct to kill only. The third stage of the virus is when the ghoul turns into an albino version and gains significant strength. There is a fourth stage of the virus when it turns a ghoul into a hulking brute beast. Not sure how that happens, but the hero encounters one as a boss. If there are further stages, and there probably are, I’ve not yet played far enough in to encounter them.
The ghoul mechanic works okay as an enemy, but it’s also way too much like the ghouls in Fallout. Couldn’t they come up with something new? The ghouls are only a small part of this game’s problems.
Quests and Map Markers
Here’s where the rubber meets the road, literally. The game has you traipse all over the map using that weak ass bike for each and every quest. Noooo, the quests can’t possibly unfold close in proximity. The game literally has you go to one side of the map, perform a quest, then drive all the way across to the other side for the next one. This constant and incessant yo-yo movement is tiresome and highly annoying, particularly when you’re constantly required to refill and repair the bike halfway across the map each and every time.
There is no efficiency in layout of the quests on the map. It’s super annoying and yet becomes completely predictable. This means you’ll need to drive by a refill station at the halfway point before completing the trip to the quest marker… every single time.
There’s no fun to be had with this mechanic. It’s simply becomes tiresome after the third time doing it. Repetitive? Oh, yes. Fun? No way. This game is certainly on its way to being one of the worst games ever.
Ghoul Hordes
Here’s another game mechanic that seems to have been added just to see if it could be done technically. Sure, there’s a story element that weakly ties into the hordes. Additionally, the hordes seem mostly to have been included to also inconvenience the player. There are literal times where the horde goes right over your bike which is parked somewhere away from you. When you want to go back to your bike, you can’t because the horde is right there.
Let me also state that, in general, hordes are basically unkillable under most circumstances. What I mean is that for a player to attempt to attack a horde means certain death. There are so many ghouls in a horde, you simply don’t have enough bullets or melee damage to kill every single one. The only thing you can do is hide in the bushes and wait for them to walk by… slowly… which is like watching paint dry. You can’t do anything else while waiting on a horde. Yet another insipid game mechanic.
That isn’t to say there isn’t a way to defeat a horde as I’ve done it. You must do it at a location where the horde can’t get to you, like on top of a small cliff where only your bike can reach. So long as the ghouls can’t climb up, you’re safe. You can stand on the edge, craft and rain molotovs down onto them. Molotovs are actually the best way to handle ghoul hordes in this game… and these are the easiest grenade-style weapons to make. Unfortunately, ghouls are very agile and can amass in very large numbers quickly and silently. Don’t take a horde on unless you know they can’t get to you.
With that said, hordes are an unnecessary inclusion. I get why they were added, but they’re mostly a nuisance since there’s no general means of taking them out. Taking out a horde requires a very specific set of circumstances which don’t occur often… unless you explicitly know how to plan for it.
Motorcycle Chases
Inevitably, you’ll run into one of the many poorly designed motorcycle chase routines in the game. In fact, these seem to happen about every 5th quest. You’ll arrive at a quest marker and a random motorcycle will speed by requiring you to chase and “subdue” them. Oh no, you can’t kill the biker. You must keep them alive.
Worse, though, is that your gun holds perhaps 10 shots and you’re limited to which guns you can use while on a bike. Oh, but you’re not just chasing one bike, you’re chasing 3 bikers: a primary biker you need to subdue and two random bullet sponge bikers riding just behind. These bullet sponge bikers were included simply to waste bullets. By the time you get those two gone, you’ve already wasted half of the ammo in your gun. This means you have maybe 3-5 bullets left to attempt to stop the fleeing primary biker… not enough to actually do the job.
If the game mechanic only had you chase ONE biker, you would have well enough ammo to do the job. Instead, the game forces you to waste ammo on unnecessary random bullet sponge bikers that honestly make no sense being there.
This chase routine wouldn’t be so bad if there were ways to carry more ammo with you on the bike, but you can’t. All the ammo you carry on your character is all of the ammo you have for that gun. Because there are limited guns you can use while on a motorcycle, once you are out of ammo, the whole thing is done. Without ammo, you cannot subdue the biker without trying to ram him off the road, which is next to impossible on the crap bike they’ve given you. If you could swing your melee bat at him or his bike, you could easily subdue him. The game doesn’t let you use this weapon while on a bike.
Here’s where the game gets its crap reputation and why Days Gone is one of the worst games I have ever played. If, as a developer, you’re requiring us to use a bike, then damn well let us carry as much ammo as we please. Why 10 pieces only? Ammo doesn’t weigh much and even if it does, you could store it on the bike somewhere. You might have to stop to reload, but you could then continue. Unfortunately, the game offers the player no such mechanic. Once you’re out of ammo, you’re pretty effectively forced to abandon the chase and try to buy ammo, find some in a cop car or attempt to locate ammo at some other place. This means you simply can’t finish that quest. It also means you’re going to be redoing that quest over and over and over until you can find just the right set of circumstances to get that dumbass on the bike to stop. Why the game developers didn’t allow us to use all of our weapons, including the melee weapons (which can be used one handed), I have no idea.
One last thing about this chase is that the game refuses to let you go faster than the bike ahead. The game always keeps the biker ahead of your bike regardless of how fast you are traveling. This makes it almost impossible to straddle along side the biker to knock him off. Oh, and guns? Yeah, the primary biker gets to carry not only pistols, but shotguns and molotovs… something the game doesn’t allow the player to do.
Again, nothing fun about these chase scenarios… at all. Simply tedium and frustration only.
Factions
Here’s where the game takes a U turn. There are three factions which you can “join”. By “join”, I mean become a mercenary for. Ultimately, you’re only in it to take quests, fetch things and kill intruders. These quests earn you reputation points and money with each of the factions. Though, why you’d want to be friends with these factions, I’ve no idea. All three of them are run by stupid, insensitive schmucks. None of them understand the gravity of what’s going on out in the world, nor do they really care to know. As long as they have the fence that blocks out the ghouls, they’re happy. All three of the factions really make no sense being there in the way that they are.
It’s actually one of the dumbest game mechanics I’ve seen in an apocalyptic game… especially considering that all three factions are nearly identically configured. Other than in a video game, how could that ever happen?
Ultimately, the factions are only there to dole out quests for the player and offer up money to buy crap.
Disappearing Quests
Here’s another mechanic that always makes me angry every time I see it in a game. You’ll be playing along and something randomly comes along and kills the player’s character. With this game, not only is there an incredibly LONG reload time waiting for the entire game to almost completely reload, once it does reload the quest you were on has completely disappeared along with any enemies who were there.
Worse, these are apparently one-time quests which appear once, but don’t appear again… so you can’t retry. This is true of the roadside ambushes. When they appear, you have one chance to subdue the attackers. If they kill the player, that mini-quest is long gone and won’t appear again… so no vengeance in this game. This situation is entirely frustrating to the point where I want to break the game disk in half. Thankfully, it’s a digital copy and that’s not possible. Though, I most certainly have considered deleting the game from my console several times. For whatever reason, I keep coming back to it in hopes that it might get better. It never does.
Fun in the Game
There are a few places in this game where I have had at least a minimal amount of fun. Though, it has nothing to do with that crap ass bike, the rail quests or any other story progression. The one and only one fun element is taking out the ghoul nests. These are side quests that are solely designed to enable fast travel to points beyond the nest site. However, these activities are probably the most fun thing to do in this game world. The reason is, there are no artificial constraints forced onto the player, like the bike chase artificial weapon constraints that sap all of the fun out of what could have been great fun.
Because clearing out the nests is entirely an open world side quest, you can use whatever weapons you want, choose whatever tactics you like and do it as you see fit. The developers don’t stand in your way by having you do it in some very artificial and unusual way. With all of the primary quests, it’s all so rail based. Each of those primary quests are so artificially constrained, so in-your-face and so unnecessarily burdensome, the player must fully play by the developer’s rail-based rules to complete it. You can’t venture off of your bike and choose to do it your own way, otherwise the game will detect that and fail the quest.
With many of the side quests, there are few, if any constraints on how you to achieve your goal. If you wish to be sneaky, that’s your choice. If you want to lure the ghouls into a specific spot and take them all out with a bomb, go for it. It’s all left entirely up to the player. It’s these open world tactics that make this game fun. It’s also the artificially constrained main quests that make the game repetitive and tedious.
Game developers need to learn that open world games without any play constraints are way more fun than rail-based quests. Such quests, in the case of this game, force the gamer into artificially constrained play methods to complete that quest… such as being forced to craft and throw a molotov, but you cannot use any other weapons. While molotovs have a place and a use, they are not always useful for every situation. Let the player determine the best strategy to employ for quest closure. Don’t force the use of a strategy onto the player as it makes no sense and saps the fun out of allowing the player to choose their play style.
Enforcing a specific play strategy onto a player is best left up to a game’s tutorials. Tutorials are designed to show the player how to use a molotov or a pistol or a sniper rifle. This is the one and only one place where artificial constraints can be used. Players understand that tutorials are designed to teach how to use a specific game mechanic. However, once in a open game world, those constraints need to disappear. When they reappear as part of a primary quest, the quest becomes more about fighting the constraints and less about actually completing the quest.
Open world games need to remain open world 100% of the time, not whenever is convenient for the developer. That developers seem to think we want to play under super-artificial constraints is both stupid and asinine. We don’t.
Side Quests vs Main Quests
If side quests can offer fully open play, thus allowing the gamer to choose his or her strategy, then why are the main quests so constrained? It’s a valid question… one that game developers need to pose internally to their team. If the game can offer fully unconstrained questing with side quests, then it can also offer fully unconstrained questing with the main story quests.
For example, the NERO quests require eavesdropping only. You can’t engage the enemy at all and you cannot be spotted. Why? This is insipid. There is absolutely no reason why I can’t choose to engage this enemy and take out those who get in my way. If I can take out random ghouls all over the place, I can take out the NERO guards as I see fit. Again, insipid.
Yet, when you go to burn the nests (side quest), you can choose exactly how you want to do this quest, though you will have to use molotovs to burn the nests. But, if you choose to take out every single ghoul, that’s your choice. How you choose to take them out is also your choice. You can sneaky-sneak up behind them and use your boot knife or you can pull out your favorite pistol and gun them down. You can even stand on a ridge and sniper them. Again, your choice.
With NERO agents, you’re given some weak story context about them wearing Kevlar. Hello, Kevlar doesn’t cover every exposed portion of their body. This is a virus laden apocalypse, their Kevlar is probably damaged. Yet, no. The game prevents pulling out the weapon to even try. Kevlar also can’t stop damage from grenade or fire based weapons.
If side quests can offer the flexibility of choice for how to complete them, then the main quests need to also offer this same level of flexibility. As I said, these main quests are too artificially constrained to specific tasks and objectives, deciding for the gamer in advance how to complete it. For the main quests, there is only one correct path, all other paths lead to failure.
Repetitive
With all of the above stated, the game is highly repetitive, main or side quests. Once you do about 10 quests of any form, you’ll find yourself repeating them over and over… such as burning nests. This activity is always the same, the only thing that varies is where the nests are located, which locating them can sometimes be the only challenge. Being an errand-boy is also one that becomes repetitive. Indeed, you’ll even find yourself performing similar quests in the same town multiple times. Yes, it gets old.
Most games which offer quests do have a repetitive nature, but Days Gone is overly repetitive. Not only do all of the enemies look identical, they are identical, particularly the ghouls. To make money in this game, for example, you have to hunt ghouls or animals and collect meat or souvenirs. These items can be sold to faction merchants for credit in that particular faction.
This money can be then used to buy weapons, supplies and bike parts depending on which of the 3 factions you visit. Once you embark on the chore of hunting ghouls, it’s very, very repetitive and not much in the way of fun. The ghouls themselves have specific attack types which are easily avoided once you understand their inane strategy. The same can be said of most enemies in the game, not just ghouls.
The one type of attack that you cannot avoid is being clothes-lined or sniper ambushed. By the time you see either, they’ve already pulled the bike out from under you and sent it to 0% repair land. Again, these ambushes are both predictable and identical each and every time. The part that isn’t predictable is where the ambush is located. The game randomly spawns them in trees or in places you can’t see. Because there’s no warning system, it can be almost impossible to avoid being ambushed. Yes, there are flashing question marks on the map (?), but these sometimes appear without any warning.
Gas and Missions
This game is also, unfortunately, terribly inconsistent with gas usage while in missions. Some missions don’t use any gas at all. Some rely on the gas that’s in your tank and will run it out. You have no idea which mission uses gas and which doesn’t… that is until after the mission starts. This is probably one of the most ridiculous inconsistencies in this game.
Either all missions need to use gas or none need to use it. Having some require it and some not and not knowing which is which makes me again want to break the game disk in half.
This inconsistency is probably one of the more egregious problems in this game and is a serious enough problem that has made me want to rage quit this turd of a game several times. Gas isn’t something you can find easily or quickly. If you’re going to toss me into a bike chase to take down some random NPC, then you damned well better make sure gas isn’t consumed during the chase.
If gas were readily available all over the place in this game or if you could carry extra gas in a can on your bike, I wouldn’t rail so hard against this problem. However, gas is very difficult to quickly find in this game. It’s even more ridiculous that you also can’t carry spare gas on your bike. It’s worse that you can’t drive more than about 2-5 minutes before the tank is empty… that’s just overly stupid.
Again, if you’re setting me up for a chase, then the gas consumption needs to halt for the duration of the chase. There’s simply no time to take a detour to stop and fill the bike up in the middle of the chase. That just doesn’t work. Attempting to locate gas during a bike chase will end that chase in failure. It’s the same problem as running out of ammo. You can’t carry spare ammo with you or on your bike. You’re forced to go to a merchant or hunt for a cop car and spend time cracking it open to raid the trunk. Ammo is another item that’s not easily found simply lying about. It can only be found in very specific locations throughout the game and it takes way too much time to find it. Invariably, the chase will take you in some direction no where near a gas pump or any ammo.
Overall
This game is trite and cliché. The play value is crap. The quests are uninspired. The game is repetitive and insipid. The game is not thoughtfully designed for either functionality or fun. There’s really very little redeeming about Days Gone other than its very pretty rendering engine. I feel sorry for the graphics and map designers. They spent a lot of time and effort to make the game seem very realistic. Unfortunately, the game mechanic designers completely failed the graphics guys. The game’s mechanics are horrible, insipid, repetitive and, at times, unplayable. The story is even worse to the point of being unengaging. Why should we care about these people, Bend?
Graphics: 9.5 out of 10
Audio: 8.5 out of 10
Combat: 3.5 out of 10
Bike Combat: 2.5 out of 10
Main Story Quests: 2.5 out of 10
Side Quests: 7 out of 10
Overall: 1.5 out of 10
Recommendation: Rent only. Do not buy this absolute turd of a game.
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Applebee’s Review: A Long Time Coming
When I visit restaurants, timeliness of a review is paramount. Even just a month or two later, the entire restaurant staff could have changed and along with them, a restaurant’s bad practices. However, with this particular situation, I don’t really even care if that specific restaurant location is open any longer. Yes, there is still an Applebee’s open in that specific town and at that location. Let’s explore.
Restaurant Visit
Around 1990, I visited an Applebee’s in a small Texas town about a 20 minute drive away from my college. I didn’t know much about this restaurant when I visited, nor that it was even a chain of restaurants. This was to be my very first visit to an Applebee’s. When I arrived, I thought that the interior felt quite a lot like Chili’s. Even the menu appeared mostly like Chili’s. Because it had so much of a Chili’s vibe, it felt quite comfortable visiting. Yes, I was taken in by that. I visited this restaurant around 1:30PM for a late lunch. My classes were done for the day and I had decided to take a drive and get some lunch. As I said above, the college isn’t located in this town and is a 20 minute drive away by Interstate.
It’s common for this college’s students to visit this somewhat larger town because it has better grocery stores, more diverse restaurants, bigger restaurant chains and a much bigger Walmart. It’s also way less of a drive than the 1 hour it takes to drive into Dallas. Dallas trips were reserved for specific shopping, which was not available when out in the boonies. Keep in mind that Amazon wasn’t yet a glimmer in anyone’s eye, so ordering online wasn’t yet a thing. Driving into Dallas was the only option for obtaining such items as drafting supplies, for example. I digress.
Anyway, around 1:30PM I pull into the Applebee’s parking lot. I enter. I’m seated relatively quickly and order a chicken with veggies meal. The service is average, similar to Chili’s. My drink arrives quickly. I can’t tell you exactly which chicken dish I ordered, but it may have had grilled chicken of some variety in some kind of sauce along with broccoli, green beans and/or corn. It could have even been Chicken Piccata, which is not grilled. The meal actually tasted fine. It wasn’t super outstanding, but it wasn’t undercooked or overcooked. Mind you, I hadn’t eaten any meals at all before this meal as I typically chose not eat breakfast during my college years. This bit of information is needed for what happens next. I finish my meal around 2PM, pay the check and leave.
Shopping
Immediately following the Applebee’s visit, I decide to shop the local Walmart, which is incidentally very close, and a couple of other stores so as to not waste the drive. Around 40 minutes after eating the meal and while shopping, I feel begin feeling intestinal distress, like I need to visit the toilet. I do, but then quickly head back to the car. I still have a 20 minute drive back and intestinal distress typically prevents further shopping.
I had gotten maybe around 40 minutes into my shopping spree before cutting it short after the toilet visit. Cramping and intestinal churning is not too unusual right before having a loose stool. I wasn’t that concerned, but I decided to leave the store. By the time I reach the car, it worsened quickly at about the 45 minute mark, when I felt flu-like symptoms wash over me including fever and chills. That’s when I realized it was food poisoning. I hopped back in the car and waited about 5 minutes longer to see if would subside. It didn’t. I drove to the nearest drug store, bought a few things to help with symptoms including a Tylenol and Pepto, took them and and drove the 20 minutes back.
Nothing comes on that fast other than food poisoning, particularly flu-like symptoms. I wasn’t in a position try any methods of getting the food out and by then it was pretty much too late anyway. Around that time during my college years, I might have been considered to have an iron constitution… that is, I could eat pretty much anything, though occasionally I did have bouts of loose stools. Of course, in 2021, that situation has changed a lot. I’m much more selective on what I eat today than what I was eating in the early 90s. I also have way more sensitivities today than back then.
On the drive home, it was clear, Applebee’s was the culprit. I believe at the time, that restaurant may have been new, having opened perhaps only a few months prior. I wasn’t sure exactly when that restaurant had opened, though. I didn’t much keep up with that sort of thing. Upon visiting, it did seem relatively new. Still, it’s clear that restaurant’s food handling and storage practices at that location were questionable. Other than feeling lousy the whole way home, the drive back was uneventful. Though, I did visit the toilet a few more times, then hopped into bed for the remainder of the day. On the way home, I recall thinking that I should have eaten at the Golden Corral instead. Even though Golden Corral’s buffet was more expensive and the foods were worse in quality, I’d eaten there many times without problems.
That would be the first and last time I ate at an Applebee’s.
Two Months
I’ll spare you the details of what transpired exactly, but suffice it to say that it took approximately two months before I regained my similarly standard constitution, except it wasn’t. Before Applebee’s, I really didn’t have too many food allergies or food problems and could eat almost anything. During that two month recovery window, I seemed to have developed way more food sensitivities. Though, not for chicken. A couple of times I would even have to visit the hospital for epinephrine shots after I ended up with full body hives after consuming foods that hadn’t caused prior problems. At the time, I disconnected these health events, but I’ve since connected them together with the food poisoning event being the starting point.
Once Bitten, Twice Shy
In the early 1990s, there were no such sites like Yelp. Thus, no way to post an immediate review of a restaurant. Thankfully, we now have such review sites where such reviews can be posted. Unfortunately, because this event was before those review sites existed, it meant the loss of opportunity to post this review.
Even if I had called the restaurant to discuss the event, the manager would likely have only given me conciliatory coupons to visit again with a promise to do better. No thanks. That’s like putting fuel on a fire. Once I get that sick from eating at a restaurant, I don’t eat there again. Coupons don’t cut it.
The only thing I can presently equate with this restaurant and the Applebee’s name is feeling severely ill. There’s no way I can visit any restaurants in this chain and feel good about it. To this day, I have never visited another Applebee’s. I won’t visit any in the future, either. If Applebee’s food handling and storage practices are poor enough to cause that level of food poisoning once, I simply can’t trust any of the restaurants in this chain. Perhaps that specific location had poor management practices at the time which led to the food poisoning, but I simply can’t trust that it was solely a local issue. Once I get sick at a restaurant chain, it disgusts me thinking about visiting again. There’s just nothing appetizing at all about Applebee’s. Whenever I see an Applebee’s advertisement, I mute it and leave the room until it’s over.
The reason I have decided to write this article at all is that Applebee’s seems to be ratcheting up their TV advertising. I’ve decided to convey my very old story in hopes that someone else who might have also been food poisoned by Applebee’s can sound off here.
Typically, if a restaurant’s food handling practices are improper, it goes deeper and affects more outlets than one in a chain. If you have gotten sick eating at Applebee’s, please leave a comment below describing your circumstances.
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Netflix: Lost in Space Season 2
On the whole, I enjoyed season 1 of Lost in Space on Netflix. The premise stayed fairly true to the original Irwin Allen idea. The actors chosen are not bad for a TV series. However, by Season 2, the series veers way off course. Let’s explore.
Spoilers
This review contains spoilers. If you wish to watch this series for yourself, I’d suggest that you stop reading here. The spoilers won’t be huge, but this review must reveal certain plot elements to critically discuss how this series goes so off course.
Additionally, because Netflix has dumped their ability to leave reviews directly on its site, I feel that it is important that someone reviews Netflix original series somewhere. I’ll begin this one as a new series of reviews as I watch various Netflix efforts. The posts will always be prefixed with ‘Netflix:’ when it is a review of a Netflix original series.
Lost, Lost and more Lost
The original premise of Lost in Space is that the Jupiter 2 gets, you guessed it, lost on its maiden voyage. The original 60s series starring June Lockhart and Bill Mumy kept to this premise all throughout the run of the series, changing format only to move the Robinsons around, but not disband the “alone” premise.
However, this Netflix original series sticks to the original plot only for the first season. The second season sees only one episode that holds true to that original plot. In fact, after inexplicably resolving their “stranded” predicament in pretty much “Lost in Space” form, the whole series takes a turn for the worse and it goes downhill from there. Let’s get into it.
Robot Lost
The first problem is that the Robot has disappeared and is lost. This is supposed to be about the family lost, not the robot. However, in an attempt to escape the planet they find themselves on, one with inexplicable lightning events that traverse across the planet at a specific location and in flashing sequence no less…(a location they can see from shore), they shrug it all off as a natural event. Before they can leave, they first need to understand that there’s absolutely nothing natural about that lightning event. Yet, Maureen, the “mother with a head on her shoulders” shrugs it off as “part of the planet”. There’s nothing at all natural about a clock work lightning event on a planet. She, of course, gives some nonsensical explanation citing a location somewhere on Earth that seems to have a similar kind of storm activity. A lame justification at best.
Worse, Maureen then concocts a plan to turn the Jupiter 2 into a sailboat to “sail” out to the lightning storm to recharge the Jupiter 2’s batteries. I guess that’s one way. Yeah, lightning is, at best, unpredictable. Predictable lightning events are even more unpredictable. At worse, it could fry every electrical system on the Jupiter 2. Yet, Maureen mentions nothing of that danger. Instead, she goads John into turning the Jupiter 2 into a sailboat by attaching rigging and a mast. Yeah, its fairly far fetched.
After doing all of this modding to the J2, they push the J2 into the sea and head out to where the lightning occurs. After a few mishaps on the ocean (to be expected), they find the need to let Dr. Smith out of her confinement to help the sailing process. It seems that Dr. Smith is some sort of a jack of all trades. She can do everything and she always does it exceptionally well, even though she also happens to be a ruthless, conniving, cold psychopathic killer. We all must shrug her behavior off and let her become “friends” every time the family needs her. This whole story premise is so badly concocted, I’d have stopped right here. But, I decide to press on and boy does this series go from bad to worse.
The Resolute
After finding an inexplicable structure that rings the planet creating a huge waterfall in the middle of the ocean (yeah, how is that supposed to work exactly?), they find writing on the bottom of this trough and some huge spikes that “they don’t know what they do”. Um, Maureen, are you all right there? Clearly, the spikes attract the lightning. For what reason the builders want to attract lighting isn’t exactly made clear. But, use some logic here, hon.
One thing is clear, the spikes are likely collecting electrical storm energy for capture. More specifically, if the trough is man made to capture the lightning, then it’s crystal clear that someone or something is harnessing that lightning for energy use purposes. Yet, Maureen’s head is clearly not in the game here. It’s like she’s taken a dumb pill or something.
The short of it is, after a few struggles and silly setups, lightning strikes “The Chariot”. That lightning is then miraculously captured by the J2 which then gives it all the power it needs to lift off and fly away immediately. No waiting on charging up couplers or anything.
After getting into space, they locate and land on the Resolute, a floating ring station that allows docking of multiple Jupiter crafts. After a few moments on the Resolute, they find an abandoned child with the rest of the station not having been inhabited for seemingly weeks or months (it’s never made clear). It also seems that those who formerly lived on the Resolute left in a hurry as food is all still sitting out in the mess hall.
While Maureen, John and the rest of the Robinson family wander the empty halls of the Resolute, Dr. Smith does her own nefarious thing of managing to hack her way into the Resolute’s security computers. She then changes her identity to Dr. Smith, implants her wrist with a new RFID sensor that she’s conveniently ripped out of the real Dr. Smith, whom she happens to find on board in suspended sleep (convenient!), which allows her to gain access to higher classified areas. Oh, so she’s implausibly good at medical implantation too? Yeah, so…. let’s skip the rest of the Dr. Smith stuff here. This part is incredibly badly written. Eventually, the family simply uses Smith as a tool to get what they need from the now returning Resolute crew. I can’t even believe that such a conniving person as Dr. Smith would allow themselves to be so easily manipulated by the Robinson family, after having gone to the trouble of “becoming legitimate”. Let’s move on.
Robot Found
Here is where the series takes it biggest sour turn. Inexplicably the abandoned Resolute crew “hear a signal” coming from the Resolute and fly their Jupiter back up to the Resolute to find out what’s going on. In doing so, they find the newly minted Dr. Smith and the Robinson family wandering its halls.
In fact, there’s apparently a rogue robot of some form wandering the halls loose on the Resolute. After a few moments, Maureen concocts a plan to capture the loose robot and she does it so quickly and efficiently that you’d think Maureen is some kind of miracle worker! After her lapse in judgement on how capturing lightning works, I guess she’s trying to make up for that here?
Inexplicably, the rest of the Resolute staff decides its time to return to the Resolute (with no explanation). Now that Jupiter 2 is back, I guess that means “everything is okay” and they can all return to the abandoned Resolute station. Oh, but there’s one catch. The Resolute’s jump engine has been taken by a robot. Sad face. Maureen again concocts a plan to take the jump drive from the Jupiter 2 and place it back into the Resolute so they can get to Alpha Centauri. The only problem is, no Robot as it’s still lost… somewhere.
Without Robot, they can’t use the jump drive. Suffice it to say that after some toiling and a lot of fill time, they discover Robot (and other similar, but hostile, Robots) on the planet just below the Resolute (convenient). They bring Robot back, but he refuses to help because of “family” issues. After doing things for Robot, he decides to help but not before…
Hastings Interferes
Hastings is a security officer over the Resolute, but clearly seems to be in command over the whole thing. Even the captain seems to take orders from Hastings. Additionally, Hastings seems to also be psychotic… willing to strand the vast majority of the “colonists” on the planet below simply to get the Resolute to Alpha Centauri.
Let’s just stop here to understand exactly how badly written this is as a story concept. If this is supposed to be the best and the brightest sent into space, how does a man like Hastings, with clear psychological problems, get a job aboard a critical mission like the Resolute? Wouldn’t mission protocols enforce subduing potentially psychotic individuals to prevent further damage to the mission? How is a person like Hastings left to roam free on the ship to do whatever he pleases?
The captain of the Resolute should have seen to Hastings removal the moment his intentions to abandon 500 people became known. That’s not the mission. Anyone with a brain could easily see Hastings mental faculties have been compromised. Whether that’s from a pathogen or from space sickness, it’s clear that Hastings is not in his right mind. Yet, no one even questions this man’s mental state.
Any organization putting together a space mission would have not only clear mission objectives, but also personnel sanity protocols in place. If a person gets beyond their ability to lead, then someone else needs to assume command of that role. Hastings was clearly compromised. Both he (and anyone loyal to him) should have been relieved and brigged. Yet, Hastings remains free to not only abandon 500 colonists, but also endanger with intent to kill Maureen and John and anyone else who stands in his way. Hastings is not rational. Yet, even after that, no one sees it. No one acts on it. No one even mentions it. The biggest danger to the Resolute is not John and Maureen, it’s Hastings. While Maureen’s stunt to capture ammonia from a gas giant to clear out the water supply of a foreign contaminant borders on insanity, at least her idea was born out of good intent to save ALL colonists. Hastings has no good intentions. Hastings isn’t at all rational and shows all of the signs of space sickness. Being in a position of security, that should have immediately thrown up red flags throughout not only the rest of the Resolute’s crew, but also to John and Maureen. Yet, everyone seems to blindly overlook Hastings’s delusional behavior.
Gone Astray
This season’s story flaws and woes go way deeper than the above. Lost in Space is a show about the Space Family Robinson who, through no fault of their own, become lost and on their own. This show is not about finding other backstabbing humans. They have already enough of a backstabber in their midst with Dr. Smith. They don’t need another one in Hastings. Hastings was an unnecessary antagonist. In fact, everything that transpires between the Robinson family and Hastings could have been handled by Dr. Smith. In fact, all of that story should have been given to Dr. Smith. We’re still trying to come to terms with our trust levels of Smith. Keeping not only the Robinson family on their toes with her treachery (along with the audience), giving this arc to Smith would have cemented her two-faced personality.
That this arc was given to an extraneous character, Hastings, who is effectively wasted and a throw-away, is in fact a pointless exercise. We as an audience learned nothing. The Robinsons also learned nothing. Dr. Smith gained nothing. It’s better to give these kinds of story arcs to characters who will remain with the show season upon season, building their character arc. Giving such deep story arcs to effectively throw-away characters shows just how amateur this show’s writers really are. Think, writers, think. Give important story arcs to the recurring characters, not to characters we don’t know and don’t care about.
If all of what Hastings had done had been given to Dr. Smith, this would have nailed down Smith’s treacherous nature. Instead, we are treated to John and Smith colluding to determine what the Resolute staff is actually planning. Why? What point did this serve? It showed us that Dr. Smith wasn’t beyond manipulation by John Robinson. John also didn’t need to really know the Resolute’s details. However, if John can manipulate a character like Dr. Smith, then John Robinson is way beyond the amateur status of Dr. Smith. Instead, by giving Hastings’s arc to Dr. Smith, this would have shown us that while Dr. Smith appears to be nice and good on the outside, she’s as treacherous as they come… something that the show dearly needs to prove to us.
Instead, we get a watered down Dr. Smith who is about as strong willed as a turtle.
Overall
Season 2 is definitely a sophomore effort in all senses of the word. The writing is convoluted, logically bad and in places asinine. The music is top notch, but that’s not enough to carry the weak and silly plot lines. Molly Parker, as an actress, needs to let go of using her smirk at the wrong times. It seems to clog up the character and makes her seem silly and less serious than she should appear.
Overall, the show was decently okay, but there were plenty of times where I wanted to tune out and go watch something else. Unfortunately, it’s 20 far too long episodes. If you’re really a die-hard Lost in Space fan, then you might like parts of season 2. I was hoping for far better with season 2, but it delivered much, much less than it should have.
In fact, the writers need to ditch the Resolute quick in season 3 and go back to the Robinsons on their own flying around in the Jupiter 2. Let the story focus on the Jupiter 2 rather than a ship we care nothing about. If the Resolute must make a reappearance, it should only be one or, at most, two episodes in length and then move on. Oh, and let’s not lose Robot again, m’kay?
Overall Rating: 2.2 stars out of 5 (with music being the best part of this season)
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Star Force Book Series: A Review
While Audible and Amazon both allow you to review individual books separately, they don’t really offer a way to review a book series as a whole. Let’s explore B.V. Larson’s Star Force book series.
SPOILER ALERT: If you wish to read this book series, this review may contain spoilers.
Book Style
Let’s start by how these books are written. Unlike many books which might jump back and forth between several unfolding story arcs between different characters, this book series is written entirely linear with a single story thread told to us in first person by the protagonist. Unfortunately, this linear unfolding is a bit detrimental to this series of books because there are a number of characters who could have benefited from having their own separate story arc. Seeing these events unfold separately from the main character’s story would have given us deeper depth into this universe and its series of unfolding events.
Instead, the author chose to focus entirely on Kyle Riggs, our protagonist of this series, and his specific circumstances, always from Kyle’s point of view. In fact, the book series is almost written as a fictional memoir… as if Kyle is recounting these stories from some distant future rather than being told to us “in the now”. This aspect was neither confirmed nor denied by the author. It’s simply left open.
Swarm
The Book Swarm starts the series. Kyle’s kids are killed by an unknown UFO when they are summarily nabbed by, then ejected from the UFO. When Kyle himself is nabbed by the same UFO, he is able to solve the riddle and remain alive. This is where the entire series sets its foundation for what comes in every later book… sort of.
Unfortunately, there were many missteps in this series along the way. Well, maybe not exactly missteps, but definitely missed opportunities to delve deeper not only into the Kyle’s psyche, but into the psyche of the machines (and ultimately “The Blues”). “The Blues” being the creators of not only the “nano” tech used to create the nano ships that killed Kyle’s kids, but they also created the “macros”. This one race of beings created the entire series of circumstances that set this entire series in motion… and imparts important technology to humanity that allows it to become space faring.
Kyle meets most of his important contacts in this first book including Sandra and Crowe. Other characters would make appearances later on and remain throughout the series. Some characters are killed for various sometimes unexplained reasons. Swarm is the foundation book that lays the groundwork for all that comes in the remaining 8 other “Kyle” novels.
You might be thinking, “9 total novels? I thought there were 14?” Well, kind of. Beginning with the novel Outcast (book 10), this is the first collaborative novel between B. V. Larson and another author. Usually when I see an extra author name on the cover, the lion’s share of work is likely done by the co-author, not the original series author. This means that beginning at Outcast, I’d consider this the beginning of a new series even though it continues with the same numbering scheme and is under the Star Force label.
In fact, because Outcast begins with Cody Riggs, the offspring of Jasmine and Kyle, at a point in the future when he’s “coming of age”, I’d consider this no longer about Kyle Riggs. His story is done and ended at book 9. For me, I consider the series actually complete at book 9. All books after 9 are intended to carry on in this universe, but with an entirely different cast of characters and years later… even though Marvin, the ubiquitous robot, is still at play and so is Kwan.
Let’s Get Started
With the above story groundwork laid, I can begin this review in earnest. One thing that irks me is when authors abscond with pop culture references in works without really giving due credit to any of the original creators. For example, the transport “Rings” in this novel are almost ripped off entirely from Stargate… and in particular, the Stargate SG1 TV series. Most notably, B. V. Larson’s use of not only the ring itself, but absconding with the idea that ‘Ancients’ created the rings, the exact terms used in Stargate SG1. Whenever I run into such references, I have to shake my head.
While I can’t begrudge B. V. Larson being a fan of SG1… hey, I’m a fan of that series too… I can’t really agree with using such blatant copying of ideas right down to the use of the same names.
Other such references include Star Wars, with Phobos… a moon-like space station with a “gravity canon”, in similar form to the planet killer weapon of the Death Star. These references are quite immediately apparent. Another pop culture reference includes the nano technology used throughout the book series. While B. V. Larson uses these nanites in specific ways to improve humanity, the technology was actually again ripped from both Stargate SG1 and Terminator 2. However, in SG1, the “nanos”, actually the Replicators, were enemies and could not at all be tamed and used from the betterment of humanity. The liquid metal described by Kyle always resonated with me in the same way as the T-1000 terminator in T2.
Kyle Riggs
Within this story, Kyle Riggs is our protagonist. He’s the one we are supposed cheer on. In some cases, his actions are worth cheering. In other cases, his actions are questionable and his motives are not explained. In fact, there are many ideas left unexplained in the series and we’ll come to that section of this review a bit later.
Kyle Riggs begins this tale as a computer science teacher turned farmer and ends this tale as emperor over the known earth… who then steps down and goes back to farming with his new kid, Cody, in tow. Basically, the book ends where it begins. In many ways, it’s a contrived tale that comes full circle. What happens between book 1 and book 9 simply fills in Kyle’s gap between these two bookends. That’s not to say that everything that happens between book 1 and book 9 is uninteresting, but know that if you delve too deeply into its meanings, you’ll definitely come up short changed.
Kyle makes his way from school teacher, to nanoship pilot, to nanotized warrior to colonel of the Star Force fleet. It’s a somewhat slow-ish progression predicated by the fact that we have no other character tales unfolding in the background. We can accept this series of events because we are not told of many other characters seeking similar opportunities in the flying fleet. When such characters do present such as Crowe, Kerr or Miklos, they are summarily and rapidly sidelined by all-too-convenient plot lines. In the beginning of this tale, there were hundreds of nanoships. There had to have been at least one other nanoship pilot capable of performing as well or possibly better than Kyle Riggs. We must, therefore, simply accept what’s happening at face value and not question this series of events at all. That Kyle Riggs was the “smartest” and “brightest” of the bunch was something we simply have to accept to buy into this book series. If you can’t buy this concept, then the books won’t work.
Kyle also acts in all sorts of odd ways throughout the run of the novels. At first, he’s a school teacher trapped in a ship fending for his life. He’s steadfastly against what these ships are doing and pro-humanity (and protector of all “biotics”). Later, he converts into a commander over Star Force… which conveniently more or less disappears until they can rebuild. He then changes his tune a bit. He’s still more-or-less pro-human whenever it suits his fancy. He’s brash, impulsive and reckless. He likes to show us that he’s in charge and that he knows what he’s doing. In fact, he tells us that he doesn’t know what he’s doing over and over and over.
This part was a little overdone. We get it. He’s unsure of himself, but he does whatever thing that seems most logical to him at the moment in time, which usually turns out okay. He’s an okay protagonist with a bit of a streak of meanness built-in. Granted, he is sour over his loss when the story begins, but he seems to quickly forget all about that.
It’s really odd, too. He never properly grieves for his kids, yet he goes way over the top when Sandra dies.
The Blues
During the run of the novels, there comes a time when “The Blues” deliver Kyle a dire warning. The Blues claim that Kyle and his team violated some fundamental universal law that you don’t create or link anything to the existing “ring” system or if you do, you’ll face the wrath of the “Ancients”. Yet, the entire series ends out Kyle’s saga without having this event occur. Why even bring up large such a story event and then not even follow through with the thread?
Worse, the warning from the Blues is entirely illogical. Why? Because the Ancients would go after “The Blues”, not the humans. Why would the Ancients do this? Because “The Blues” gave the technology to the humans that let them hook anything to the ring. The Blues gave humans nanotech and brain boxes. These fundamental tools allowed Kyle, in turn, to create Marvin… who, again in turn, then created technology to hook into the ring system. It is, therefore, the Blues who are at fault for allowing additional things to be hooked into the ring system, not the humans.
Without “The Blues”, none of what happened in any of these books would be possible, let alone hooking up to the rings. The Blues are entirely responsible for the mess that occurs after their own meddling with the universe. It is the Blues whom the ancients would wipe, not humanity.
As smart as the Blues are, I was entirely surprised they couldn’t logically deduce this outcome. Yet, it doesn’t much matter after Kyle’s second bombardment of The Blues home world. A bombardment, I might add, that while it might be satisfying for Kyle, there’s no confirmation it actually did anything to the Blues. The only way to wipe out the Blues would be to reduce the Blues home world to star dust. We never get confirmation that Kyle’s second bombardment did anything at all. It just all ends with Kyle’s retirement from Star Force.
Untold Tales
In among what is spun in these books, there are a number of un-closed threads. Let’s explore some of these now:
- Fate of the Nanoship swarm — When the nanoships leave Earth because they have decided it is no longer of interest to them, they take their captive pilots and disappear. Riggs, however, manages to escape this fate, along with Crowe. Though, we don’t find out about Crowe until a bit later. These, apparently, were the only two nanoships convinced to return to Earth? The rest disappeared into the void and we only hear of them again once more in passing and then they are no longer heard from again. We assume them to all be destroyed, but I got the impression that there were many more nanoships that we never learned of their fate. This thread is left hanging.
- Crowe — After Crowe becomes “emperor” on Earth by using his nano factories to outnumber and outgun the planet, we are left with only questions. How did this happen? Why did it happen? Yes, Crowe was basically a scoundrel, we never get the full details of how this coup was accomplished or even why. We get a minimal tale from Jasmine, whose own personal agenda isn’t really known even at the very end. Yes, Crowe was a money hungry person, but was he the kind of person who would do what he was alleged to do on Earth? I’m not so sure. I was never even much convinced that he had taken the nano injections as he always seemed a bit too skittish about doing that. Yet, he manages to become Emperor? Out of sight, out of mind. This is a story that should have been told properly.
- Crowe as a Cyborg — Eventually, Crowe must have become nanotized (or cyborgnized) because he was able to fight a nanotized Riggs and survive. Still, Crowe seemed goldigging, but timid. This isn’t the worst part of Crowe’s tale. When Riggs comes face to face with Crowe to sign the peace accord much later, it turns out that Crowe was a cyborg. Wait.. what? How do we go from mindless automaton robots with limited human portions which mindlessly attack the Riggs pigs ships to thinking, speaking, walking, talking, fighting, rational human looking cyborgs? I’ll let the cyborgs that attack Riggs’s ships slide. Sure, the nanos might be able to create such an abomination with a limited brain box. I can see that. But, replacing a human being entirely with a cyborg? That story line came out of nowhere with entirely no explanation.
- Crowe escapes? — Assuming Crowe is actually smart enough to invent walking, talking cyborg clones… any cyborg created that appears like Crowe is merely a facsimile of Crowe. Not the real thing. Crowe was way too chicken to actually fight Riggs for real. Yet, at the time when Riggs fights cyborg Crowe, not once does this thought cross the minds of Riggs or, more importantly, Jasmine or even Marvin (who can see many, many steps ahead). Probably one of the biggest oversights in the book series.
- Marvin’s Progression — Marvin was created by Riggs from a data stream that was transmitted to his ship. He thought this transmission originated from the Centaurs. Later, we come to find that that wasn’t entirely true. In fact, Marvin surmises his own reasons for his existence. You’ll need to read the novels to know who and why it was transmitted, even though it was never confirmed. Anyway, Marvin acts in increasingly odd ways as the story progresses. At first, Marvin acts mostly like a computer. In the end, Marvin acts contrary to a computer… making decisions that are, in fact, questionable and problematic. Though, many of Marvin’s actions are questionable and problematic. I’m not entirely sure why Riggs really kept him around.
- Sandra — Sandra was Riggs’s love interest for most of the series until B. V. Larson decided it was time to kill her off. I’m not entirely sure the actual reasoning behind her death as nothing was really accomplished, nor did Riggs really mourn her in any meaningful way… unless you count getting drunk for months on end mourning.
- Cyborgs — This is a story that didn’t get told and also needed to. First, we see the mindless half machine, half flesh cyborgs that come attack Riggs ship and Phobos (the Blues death star). Other than being a somewhat convenient plot device that keeps Tolerance (the Blue aboard Phobos) occupied, the story of these things is never explained. Were they nano constructions? Were they some other tech that Crowe managed to get hold of? Were they something not from Earth? Riggs made a lot of assumptions about these cyborg drones that never got explained. Additionally, when Crowe turns out to be a Cyborg, we have no way of knowing if the Crowe cyborg was the same as or entirely different from what Riggs encountered in space.
- Macros defeated? — Were the Macros truly defeated? Time and time again, the macros showed themselves to be a resilient robot species. Sure, they may have had a base located on the dead sun that Riggs destroyed. But, why was it assumed that that was the only base that the Macros had?
Cody Riggs
At the birth of Cody, the series summarily ends seeing Riggs gallivant off to his farm (where the series started) and become a farmer again… never to command a space fleet again. It’s an odd abrupt transition for a character who was methodical about contemplating all of his options. While this section probably should have been under Untold Tales, I found it questionable to bring Cody’s tales into this series as a successor. This tale was about Kyle. When Kyle ended his reign, to me the series was over. Bringing in Cody to carry the torch just doesn’t work… at least not in Outcast. The Outcast book is all over the place and bungling in all of the most inane and trite ways. It tries hard to rekindle what we liked about novels 1-9, but it fails pretty tremendously throughout. While I found each of books 1 through 9 very worthy, even though they are completely told from a single point of view, I found book 10 hard to get through.
Book 10 is disjointed. It starts off on the wrong foot by killing Cody’s girlfriend as the first major event… an entirely unnecessary random thing. Yes, it brings in some measure of action right out of the gate, but it’s the wrong action. The opening action in Swarm at least made sense for the circumstances. The opening of Outcast didn’t actually make any sense. While Cody is Kyle’s offspring, why would anyone have put a hit out on a kid who hasn’t yet done anything? If anything, they would want to hit Kyle, not Cody. That would have been a more suspenseful book opener. Let Cody rescue his dad from yet another assassination attempt.
There were many ways this Cody series opener could have gone and still involved Jasmine and Kyle in more important ways. Instead, Cody’s first book is all about Cody and his first command… not at all about his family.
Ancients
While I have discussed this above, I want to reiterate how much this part of the series relies on Stargate for its premise. The “rings” are almost identical in complexity and functionality to Stargate’s gate rings… right down to them having been built by “Ancients” (a term used in both Stargate and in Star Force).
In books 1-9, “The Blues” warn Kyle Riggs of impending doom from the “Ancients” which, unfortunately as I said above, never materializes within these books. This to me was a huge miss. If you’re going to tease such a power exists in the universe, you should at least show it to us before Kyle’s retirement. I don’t want to see Cody deal with these ancient aliens. I want to see Kyle do it. It was warned on Kyle’s watch, it should be Kyle who handles it.
I’m also generally okay with limited uses of copying from other science fiction as long as you give a nod (in the form of credit) to the material somewhere. Perhaps naming Kyle’s ship “Samantha”. Just give us a nod to the science fiction universe from where you stole your ideas so we both know what you did, can agree to it, smile at the nod and move on. Without a nod like this, it just looks like theft of ideas… and worse, without credit, it simply looks like you can’t come up with your own original ideas. Sure, the transport ring system used in Stargate was an excellent transport device. But, so was the matter transporter in Star Trek. Why didn’t you use that, too?
If the use of the word “Ancients” was supposed to be the nod to Stargate, it failed. Don’t use an obscure reference when giving a nod. Nod by giving us a tongue-in-cheek reference to a main character such as Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, Teal’c or Jack O’Neil. Don’t use “Ancients” which makes your theft look more like a theft than a nod. Make us understand that the reference is intended towards another pop culture icon series. The use of the word “Ancients” doesn’t read as a proper nod.
Overall
Books 1 through 9 are decent reads with the exception of a few eye rolling passages here and there, a few logic errors and a few oddities that were included but never followed through. I’d give the whole series a solid 4 out of 5 stars.
If you’re into science fiction which relies heavily on concepts introduced by Stargate, then you may like the Star Force book series. If you’re looking for more original and cerebral science fiction content, you’ll want to keep looking. This is not the book series for you. The books in no way blaze a new, distinct trail in the science fiction universe. Instead, it retreads many older formulas in sometimes new, but sometimes tired ways. The story is mostly fresh, but the technology concepts have already been introduced by the likes of Star Trek, Stargate and Terminator. In these series cases, many times it was done better.
With that said, I’d call the series quits at book 9. Book 10 effectively starts a brand new series set in the same universe, except with Cody (Kyle’s son) at the helm. Cody is okay, but the author tries way too hard to fit Cody into the same mold as Kyle… to the story’s detriment. The setups in book 10 are contrived, unoriginal and, in many ways, juvenile. As I said above, because Cody is so young, the story just doesn’t read as genuine or fresh. It reads as forced. It also reads as a genre change from mature science fiction to young adult. To me, this genre change almost seems like a slap in the face to the readers. Anyway, why is Cody so gung-ho to follow in Kyle’s footsteps? Why did he want to board a starship and head to the skies? What was the urgent urgency of this decision? This wasn’t set up at all.
It seems to me that Kyle and Jasmine would have brought up Cody with ideals of staying on the farm and helping out there… not gallivanting off into the universe on a starship. Cody’s whole premise simply comes out of nowhere with no explanation. One minute Cody is in a barn with Marvin setting stuff on fire and the next minute Cody is aboard a starship heading off to new adventures. It seems to me that Kyle, as headstrong as he is, would have had something to say about that… but where are dad and mom? No where really. Jasmine only makes an inconsequential appearance, long enough to nurse Cody to health. Kyle doesn’t even really make an appearance. Book 10 starts out so weird and progresses to nonsense in short order.
My advice is to read books 1 through 9 and call it quits. Leave book 10 and the rest unread. If you really want to know what happens to Cody, sure go ahead. But, know that Cody’s stories don’t in any way tie into Kyle’s stories. They’re all new adventures in all new universes with all new friends and foes. Basically, with these stories, they’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater to start a new series starring Cody. Start and end with the “Kyle” books and you’re set. Only do the “Cody” books if you really want this additional post-story content.
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