franchise | the m0vie blog

367. Star Trek: Generations (#—)

Posted on February 24, 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, David Carson’s Star Trek: Generations.

Disaster strikes during the maiden cruise of the USS Enterprise-B: James T. Kirk is killed in a freak accident, an encounter with a cosmic force beyond all reckoning. Nearly a century later, Jean-Luc Picard commands another Enterprise. Grappling with horrific news from home, Picard finds himself drawn into the sinister machinations of the mysterious Tolias Soran. A survivor of that fateful tragedy that killed Kirk, Soran is pursuing something beyond even Picard’s deepest imaginings.

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: addiction, ending, film, finality, franchise, guinan, imdb, kirk, Malcolm McDowell, mortality, nexus, nostalgia, picard, podcast, production, soran, star trek, star trek: the next generation, Television, The 250, time, Whoopi Goldberg | Leave a comment »

351. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers – All-o’-Ween (#—)

Posted on October 28, 2023 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney and Joey Keogh, this week with special guest Peter Keenan, 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, Dwight H. Little’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

It has been ten years since Michael Myers’ rampage through Haddenfield. For that decade, the killer has lain dormant. However, during a routine transfer, the innocuous mention of Myers’ last surviving blood relative stirs the slasher from his slumber. Myers makes his way towards Haddenfield, and towards his innocent young niece: Jamie Lloyd.

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: america, culture, dwight h. little, evangelicals, franchise, halloween, halloween 4, halloween 4: the return of michael myers, halloween iv, horror, joey keogh, michael myers, moustapha akkad, peter keenan, politics, religious right, sequels, slasher, stabbing, stranger danger, violence | 1 Comment »

349. Halloween II (1981) – All-o’-Ween (#—)

Posted on October 14, 2023 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney and Joey Keogh, this week with special guest Billie Jean Doheny, 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, Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II.

In the immediate aftermath of Michael Myers’ brutal killing spree, the lone survivor is rushed to hospital. As Sam Loomis searches desperately for the monster stalking Haddenfield, Laurie Strode makes some startling discoveries about her own family history that suggests the violence of the evening was not as random as it initially appeared to be.

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: ben tramer, dick warlock, franchise, halloween, halloween 2, halloween ii, horror, hospital, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter, michael myers, rick rosenthal, sequel, slasher, splatter | 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 »

New Escapist Video! “Scream VI is a Safe but Sturdy Slasher”

Posted on March 9, 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 Scream VI, which was released in cinemas this weekend.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: escapist, franchise, high-concept, horror, Randy, review, Scream, scream vi, sequel, slasher, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Scream 4” Took the Franchise’s Self-Awareness to Its Logical Endpoint…

Posted on March 8, 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 upcoming release of Scream VI, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the criminally underrated Scream 4.

The last film in the franchise to be written by Kevin Williamson or directed by Wes Craven, Scream 4 exists in a weird space. It is separated from the two film either side of it by more than a decade, the only point in time where the franchise wasn’t coming out on a regular basis. However, it’s a movie that feels very firmly ahead of its time. It was released years before Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens and David Gordon Green’s Halloween, but it feels in conversation with a wider culture caught in a feedback loop of Gen X nostalgia.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 1990s, Emma Roberts, franchise, gen x, horror, Kevin Williamson, meta, nineties, nostalgia, out of focus, Scream, self-awareness, slasher, wes craven | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Wakanda Forever” Picked the Wrong Black Panther…

Posted on February 10, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on Disney+, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about the movie with spoilers, given that now everybody who might want to see the movie has had the chance to see it.

Even though it was a foregone conclusion, the identity of the new Black Panther was treated as something of a spoiler in certain fandom circles. Still, four months after the movie’s release, it seems fair to concede that the film made the worst possible choice. Shuri was the logical choice to assume the role based on comic book continuity, but she has the least compelling arc of any of the major characters in the superhero sequel. Wakanda Forever would be a much stronger movie if it made a bolder choice.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: antivax, Black Panther, controversy, disney, franchise, legacy, legacy character, letitia wright, scandal, shuri, wakanda forever | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Scream” Went From a Deconstruction to a Celebration of Horror Tropes…

Posted on January 23, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Scream VI, it seemed like as good a time as any to consider the state of the modern horror franchise.

When Scream premiered, it was a radical deconstruction of classic slasher movie tropes that breathed new life into the genre. It even helped to resurrect troubled slasher franchises like Halloween or Child’s Play. So it’s interesting that, as the series has progressed, it has become more and more like the kinds of movies that it was originally a reaction against. It’s a fascinating illustration of how these franchises evolve over the decades since their original release.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: deconstruction, franchise, horror, in the frame, Movie, Scream, scream 6, slasher, trailer | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On What Disney Should Learn from Andor…

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist over the weekend. With Andor winding down its first season, it seemed like as good an opportunity to take a look at what Disney could and should learn from the best of their franchise streaming show.

While there is some suggestion that Andor might be less popular on initial release than other Star Wars streaming shows like The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett, there is some sense that Disney recognises that they have created something very special and unique. So what is it that makes Andor so compelling? More than that, what can Disney do to capitalise on that success and replicate it?

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: andor, artistry, auteur, creativity, disney, franchise, freedom, streaming, the last jedi, Tony Gilroy | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Uncanny Valley that “Star Trek: Picard” Occupies Between “Star Trek” and Prestige Television…

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The seventh episode of the second season released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

One of the big problems with modern Star Trek has been the extent to which the franchise finds itself caught between the past and the future, between a nostalgic impluse that pulls it back to the plotting that defined the franchise’s long history and something more ambitious that pushes it towards prestige television. The recent shows have never quite managed to square that particular circle, and this problem comes to the fore as Picard tries to delve inside the head of its protagonist.

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