The Wild Robot is, simply put, almost as perfect an animated movie as there could be. I am in awe of it. The writing, the character work, the multiple incredible scenes. If you have not yet experienced this movie—even if you’ve been spoiled on the plot—you should seek it out immediately.
I fear repetition in my review of Rouge Protocol. At this point, it’s clear that the series is a continuous stream of one-off adventures. SecUnit goes to a place—usually to find out the answer to something—and meets some humans and is then pushed into an action scenario where SecUnit has to save those humans.
Dark Matter takes a premise I’ve certainly covered before. Everything Everywhere All at Once dealt with relationships across multiple dimensions, and what it means to want a different life than you already have. But, while I will not claim Dark Matter is a better show than All at Once is a movie, I will say that this series presents a fascinating alternative to multiverse fiction—both in the story and in its storytelling.
Rebuild The Galaxy was an absolute treat. A series that has no business being as good, as dramatic, and as funny as it is. Though it was already clear from several Lego movies that the “medium” of those bricks could result in good storytelling, this once again blew me away.
Tales of the Empire Tells Us Parts Of A Whole Story After having such a good time reviewing Tales of the Jedi, I figured that Tales of the Empire would be similar. That it would also contain a bunch of interesting looks at the history of various familiar characters. But I wouldn’t call these characters…
Empire of Death has weird pacing, a rushed ending for its conflict, and tries to pretend unrelated moments from the season actually reincorporate into the plot. But I didn’t hate watching it. Little sci-fi and fantasy ideas sprinkled throughout are interesting—and I’m glad that the episode finally explains Susan Triad.
“The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is the first part of a two-parter. We spend a lot of time being given mysteries, and then most of them are resolved at the end of the episode, or in the next one titled “The Empire of Death.” It’s not a stand-alone adventure by any stretch.
“Rogue” is a fun enough episode that could’ve been better with more time. Or, ideally, being split into a few different episodes. The pacing, storytelling, and character motivations suffer because we need to have four separate stories interlocking with each other.
“Dot and Bubble” is maybe my favorite episode of the new season so far. Yes, it does rely on a tired critique of people overusing cell phones for its whole premise to work, I won’t deny that—but, if you can accept that slightly cringey idea, this is one of the most poignant, emotionally devastating, and interesting episodes we’ve gotten since “Wild Blue Yonder.”
“73 Yards” is a confusing episode. I’ll admit that immediately. I did not fully understand the plot of it. The inclusion of supernatural elements might have something to do with that, but the conclusion and middle section left me uncertain of even the magic’s rules.
“Slow Time Between the Stars” has almost no plot. And that’s perfectly fine. If you try to read it expecting a plot—or really even conflict—to arise, then you’ll be disappointed. This is pure idea-based science fiction. It’s continuous interesting ideas. That’s it.
“Boom” is an episode that is clearly trying to be as morbid and macabre as possible. The story’s insistence on bleak moments, casual character death, and tragedy is so frequent it’s almost overplayed. I can’t believe I’m calling for the horror to be toned down—but here we are.
