Darren

New Escapist Column! On How “Strange New Worlds” is a Relic of an Older Form of Television…

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The second season will premiere later this week.

Strange New Worlds is an inherently nostalgic piece of Star Trek, a throwback to a kind of franchise storytelling that was inexoribly rooted in the realities of nineties television. Indeed, given the decline of the franchise during Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, there is a solid argument to be made that this mode of storytelling was specifically tied to the medium of syndicated mass media broadcast television during the nineties, which makes it an awkward and uncomfortable fit for the modern age of streaming media.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: Broadcast, format, medium, star trek, star trek: strange new worlds, strange new worlds, streaming, televison | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Question of What Even is a Movie Anymore…

Posted on June 12, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. Given the summer blockbuster season will see the release of Fast X, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One, it seemed as good a point as any to ask a seemingly simple question with a surprisingly complex answer: what even is a movie these days?

In theory, it has always been relatively easy to define a film. Not only is that the name of the medium itself, it has always historically been a self-contained unit of narrative. There is a palpable difference between a film and a television show, or a film and a stage play. However, in recent years, those boundaries have become a bit more porous, and it’s come to feel just a little bit like blockbusters are just very long and very expensive instalments in long-runing television shows.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: cliffhangers, dune: part two, fast x, film, format, medium, mission: impossible - dead reckoning part one, spider-man: across the spider-verse, Television | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On Understanding Michael Bay’s “Transformers” Films…

Posted on June 11, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday evening. With the release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at Michael Bay’s Transformers films.

Bay’s Transformers films are not good. It’s important to stress that. However, they are a fascinating piece of blockbuster cinema, the work of a genuine action auteur who bends an intellectual property so completely and so thoroughly to his artistic sensibility. It’s something that could only have happened at a particular moment in Hollywood, in the transition from director-driven blockbusters to brand-driven mega-franchises, and exists as a historical quirk on the bubble between those two trends.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: auteur, Filmmaking, franchise, hollywood, intellectual property, mark wahlberg, michael bay, toys, transformers, violence | Leave a comment »

337. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (#19)

Posted on June 10, 2023 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and with special guests Graham Day and Deirdre Molumby, This Just In is a subset of The 250 podcast, looking at notable new arrivals on the list of the 250 best movies of all-time, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Sixteen months into his career as Brooklyn’s one-and-only Spider-Man, teenager Miles Morales is reunited with his old friend from another universe, Gwen Stacy. However, Gwen brings word of a team of multiversal spider-people headed by the mysterious Miguel O’Hara. Miles quickly discovers that things are not as he expects, and that membership of this team may come at too high a price.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 19th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: animated, belief, comic books, coming of age, defund the police, deirdre molumby, god, graham day, male bodies, miguel o'hara, miles morales, multiverse, Oscar Isaac, podcast, politics, sony, spider man, spider-man: across the spider-verse, Spidey, superhero, The 250, The Talk | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” and Boring Blockbuster Third Acts…

Posted on June 9, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, it seemed like as good a time as any to reflect on one of the blights on modern big-budget blockbusters: the bland computer-generated third act throwdown in a big empty space with no sense of geography or texture.

In recent years, it has become increasingly common for these sorts of spectacles to climax with a gigantic final battle in a vast computer-generated wasteland, with no defining features or landmarks, but instead just a big empty space with no sense of where objects are in relationship to one another. Rise of the Beasts is perhaps the most egregious example of the trend, but there are plenty of others: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther. It’s a hollow, empty, cardboard world.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Battle, cgi, civilians, Computer-generated imagery, computer-generated wastelands, death, destruction, finale, in the frame, marvel, mcu, rise of the beasts, scale, spectacle, the escapist, third act, transformers, urban devastation, war on terror | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Review: A New Franchise Low”

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie and television reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a five-minute film review of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which was released in cinemas this weekend.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 3mr, review, rise of the beasts, the escapist, three minute review, transformers, transformers: rise of the beasts | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “I Think You Should Leave” as Peak Internet Comedy…

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Darren

We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every Wednesday, and the plan is to use it to look at some film and television that would maybe fall outside the remit of In the Frame, more marginal titles or objects of cult interest. With the release of the third season of I Think You Should Leave this week, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look the show.

It is ultimately reductive to try to boil a sketch comedy show down to a single thematic idea. However, there is something fascinating in how I Think You Should Leave operates as a sketch show that isn’t just perfectly suited to internet distribution – short clips, memes, absurdist gags – but also how it feels like a show that is in some ways about the internet. Obviously, not in a literal sense, in that I Think You Should Leave is about awkward social situations. However, it captures the sense in which online spaces can truly break social interactions.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: comedy, escapist, I Think You Should Leave, internet, netflix, Online, out of focus, Sketch comedy, social media, tim robinson | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is Sweeping Web-Slinging Wonder”

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie and television reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a five-minute film review of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which was released in cinemas this weekend.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: animation, comic book, comic book movies, gorgeous, review, spider man, spider-man: across the spider-verse, the escapist, wachowskis | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Across the Spider-Verse” as a Superhero Story About Parenting…

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, it seemed like a good opportunity to delve into what the movie is about, particularly what it has to say about parenting.

Perhaps reflecting the aging demographic of superhero movie fans, a lot of recent superhero films – from Thor: Love and Thunder to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – have been about parenting. However, Across the Spider-Verse stands out from the crowd because it’s a film that is rooted in the question of what it means to be a good parent, particularly to an exceptional child. It’s a warm and humanist fairytale that argues that the best thing parents can do for their children is to prepare them for the outside world and to listen to them when they speak.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: across the spider-verse, Adulthood, children, coming of age, fatherhood, growing up, Gwen Stacy, into the spider-verse, miles morales, motherhood, parenting, spider man, superhero movies, superheroes | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Unfulfilled Promise of “Into the Spider-Verse”…

Posted on June 4, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. With the premiere of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, it seemed like a good opportunity to consider the legacy of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse five years after it was originally released.

The influence of Into the Spider-Verse can be keenly felt on animated films like The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. However, it’s strange that the movie has had no real impact on comic book adaptations. Despite early adventurous comic book adaptations like Hulk, Sin City or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the modern comic book blockbuster has demonstrated a lack of visual experimentation that feels very much like a betrayal of the source material. What’s the point in making a comic book movie if it can’t be as visually inventive?

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.