continuity | the m0vie blog

364. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (#—)

Posted on January 27, 2024 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This week, William Shatner’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

The planet Nimbus III was supposed to be “the Planet of Galactic Peace”, but it has descended into a wretched hive of scum and villainy. From the desert comes a stranger, a mysterious Vulcan named Sybok with an incredible gift for recruiting followers. Sybok has a divine mission. He plans to journey to the centre of the galaxy and speak to God. He just needs a starship to do so. And, to get that, Sybok will be reunited with his estranged half-brother: Spock.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250, The Original Series | Tagged: belief, characters, continuity, eighties, faith, god, imdb, kirk, nostalgia, podcast, religion, spock, star trek, sybok, the final frontier, William Shatner | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: The Star Beast (Review)

Posted on November 25, 2023 by Darren

“There’s just this… gap.”

“It’s no great mystery. You had a bit of a breakdown, sweetheart. And then you got better.”

“Sometimes I think there’s something missing. Like I had something lovely, and it’s gone.”

Doctor Who is back.

Who’s back.

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: continuity, david tennant, doctor who, Donna, Donna Noble, fan service, history, nostalgia, russell t. davies, the chibnall era, the doctor, the meep, the moffat era, the star beast | Leave a comment »

354. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later – All-o’-Ween (#—)

Posted on November 18, 2023 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney and Joey Keogh, this week with special guest Scott Mendelson, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This year, we are running a season looking at the films in the Halloween franchise. So this week, Steve Miner’s Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.

Two decades after the horrific Halloween night in which Michael Myers returned to Haddenfield, Laurie Strode finds herself desperately trying to put her life back together under an assumed name at an elite private school. Raising her son, Laurie is still haunted by the trauma of that night twenty years ago, unaware that a Shape is lumbering through the darkness directly towards her.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: clever, continuity, halloween, halloween h20, horror, Jamie Lee Curtis, joey keogh, John Carpenter, meta, pop culture, scott mendelson, Scream, self-aware, slasher, steve miner, trauma | Leave a comment »

350. Halloween III: Season of the Witch – All-o’-Ween (#—)

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney and Joey Keogh, this week with special guests Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This year, we are running a season looking at the films in the Halloween franchise. So this week, Tommy Lee Wallace’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

With just a week to go before Halloween, Doctor Daniel Challis finds his routine upset by the arrival of a mysterious patient. Raving mad and clutching a mask, the man is murdered later that night and his assailant imolates himself in a car bomb. Working with the patient’s daughter, Ellie, Daniel decides to investigate the case, which leads him to the gigantic Silver Shamrock corporation headed by the mysterious Conal Cochran. Daniel and Ellie soon discover that Cochran has a particularly malicious trick lined up for Halloween night.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

the250 · 350. Halloween III: Season of the Witch – All-o’-Ween (#—)

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: advertising, canon, children, ciara moloney, continuity, cult, dan o'herlihy, dean buckley, eighties, ftc, halloween, imdb, irish americans, joey keogh, John Carpenter, materialism, nigel kneale, podcast, Ronald Reagan, silver shamrock, The 250, the sundae, the sundae presents, tom atkins | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Strange New Worlds” Finally Confronts a Long-Standing “Star Trek” Blindspot…

Posted on June 25, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist earlier this week. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. So we thought we’d take a look at the second episode of the second season.

Strange New Worlds is obviously a nostalgic appeal to classic Star Trek, particularly the Berman era of the nineties. However, the show has been somewhat reluctant to engage with some of the blindspots of that era, in particular its refusal to acknowledge or engage with the ongoing debate around gay rights. Ad Astra Per Aspera represents a long overdue reckoning with this failure on the part of the franchise, constructing a very classic Star Trek narrative that reckons very overtly with the marginalisation of these minorities.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: ad astra per aspera, allegory, continuity, homosexuality, metaphor, queer, star trek, strange new worlds, transgender | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Secret Invasion” Finally Foregrounds Nick Fury…

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Darren

We’ll be running weekly reviews of Secret Invasion at The Escapist. To start with, the premiere.

Secret Invasion is notable as the first Marvel Studios project to truly foreground Nick Fury, a character who has been essential to the shared universe dating back to the closing credits of Iron Man. It’s interesting that it took the shared universe fifteen years to build a narrative around Samuel L. Jackson. Secret Invasion adopts an interesting approach to the character, treating him as an avatar for the increasingly beleagured media franchise, a veteran and hero that might be over the hill with his best years behind him.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: continuity, marvel, mcu, nick fury, secret invasion, superhero fatigue, veteran | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Flash” as a Movie About the Horror of “The Flash”…

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With The Flash releasing this weekend, it seemed like as good an opportunity to talk about the themes of the movie, and how those ideas exist in direct opposition to its central purpose.

Thematically, The Flash is a story about how the idea of a “reset” is fundamentally pointless. It is a tale about how individuals are often the sum total of their life experiences, including the traumatic ones, and that any attempt to erase those traumas would be to erase the person that they created. However, this is very much at odds with what the film functionally is. It is an opportunity for Warner Bros. to shift around their established continuity and intellectual property, to reset characters and to recast actors. In short, The Flash is a movie about its own monstrosity.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: continuity, film, intellectual property, metaphor, Movie, production, reboot, reference, reset, the flash, theme, trauma | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Strange New Worlds” Performs “Star Trek”…

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Darren

There is a fascinating recurring emphasis on the idea of performance within Strange New Worlds. In particular, the idea of performing Star Trek. It is not enough for Strange New Worlds to be Star Trek, or even to engage in the familiar Star Trek tropes. The show has to constantly remind and reassure viewers that it is Star Trek. This is distracting and ultimately undermines the series, which seems to spend more time asserting that it is Star Trek than it does actually being Star Trek.

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

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: continuity, fandom, nostalgia, performance, performativity, references, star trek, star trek: strange new worlds, strange new worlds | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “The Flash Isn’t a Film, It’s a Corporate Mandate”

Posted on June 16, 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 The Flash, which was released in cinemas this weekend.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: continuity, dc, dc comics, Ezra Miller, flash, review, the escapist, the flash | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Across the Spider-Verse” as a Superhero Empowerment Fantasy…

Posted on June 2, 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 its relationship to other recent superhero movies.

After all, what is the point of superhero movies? What are they about? What purpose do they serve? In recent years, the superhero genre has come to be shaped by the language of militarism and law enforcement, treating superheroes as cops and soldiers who just happen to wear masks. Across the Spider-Verse is a film largely about grappling with the legacy of that trend, in which the central villains are “an elite strike team” of “all the best Spider-People” whose job it is to maintain the status quo, no matter how many innocent people suffer to maintain the established order.

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