Review

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

When the manic Dr Robotnik returns to Earth with a new ally, Knuckles the Echidna, Sonic and his new friend Tails is all that stands in their way. – IMDB’s description

This movie is better than I expected. Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) has some pretty clever and funny lines throughout the movie. The nostalgia factor for a person who grew up in the 90s playing the Sonic games (a.k.a. me) is there. The introduction of two new characters Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and Knuckles (Idris Elba) works well. I am a little surprised they didn’t only introduce Tails, and then Knuckles in a third movie (as was the case with the original games), but I suppose writers gonna write. Given the box office performance of ~$400M my assumption is a third Sonic movie will be coming in the next few years. And a quick search reveals that yes Paramount has already confirmed a third movie is slated and that a Knuckles tv series with Elba will be coming in 2023. So the Sonic franchise is finally getting the successful movies they wanted way back in the 90s (Console Wars). Probably better that is happening now or we might have ended up with another Super Mario Bros. (1993). 

Netflix’s Space Force: Season 2

Space Force

This season picks up some time (maybe 6 months?) after the end of Season 1. The astronauts on the moon were all able to safely return to Earth.  While season 1 had 10 episodes, season 2 only gets 7.

The season-wide theme is downsizing, err, I mean budget cuts. The current administration hates Space Force and just wants to slash their budget into nothing. The ridiculousness of the show has been amped up for this season. Did I say ridiculousness? I meant implausibility.  They have a single manned mission, already enroute, to Mars. But because of budget cuts, the actual landing on Mars is cut. How is this possible? It isn’t. I am guessing the greatest cost is building a spaceship and launching it. Since this has already happened, that is what is known as a sunk cost. So why scrap a mission that literally will cost nothing more? Because the writers are writers, and not people with brains.

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The Batman in 100 words or less – Spoiler Free

The Batman

What if Batman but played by a plank of wood?

What if Batman but no emotion?

JFC that was long. (That’s what she said)

No, really. Why was it that long?

This may have had more endings than Return of the King.

Paul Dano was underused.

I didn’t hate it.

Orson Scott Card’s The Last Shadow

Orson Scott Card The Last Shadow

Orson Scott Card’s The Last Shadow is the long-awaited conclusion to both the original Ender series and the Ender’s Shadow series, as the children of Ender and Bean solve the great problem of the Ender Universe—the deadly virus they call the descolada, which is incurable and will kill all of humanity if it is allowed to escape from Lusitania.

This book ties Shadows in Flight and Children of the Mind together into a final story that resolves those divergent story arcs. At the end of Shadows in Flight, Bean’s three children are left on the Herodotus ship in orbit around a new planet. At the end of Children of the Mind, Jane has mastered instantaneous travel and they have discovered a planet that they think might be the origin of the terrible descolada virus, which they have dubbed Descoladora. 

This book is good, if something of a let down story-wise (at least for me). At the end of the book, Card explains his rationale and difficulty in bringing the two stories together to reach a conclusion. I suppose I can understand that. Descoladora turns out to be more like the Island of Dr. Moreau and less of the source of diabolical new alien species (not to say there are not new alien species and they aren’t diabolical). It takes some weird turns. That being said it is still well written and does provide closure to the main characters of the Enderverse and the Shadowverse. 

I do think that the cover art is bizarre. I don’t remember anytime in the book there were two aircraft (or spaceships) that had landed on some kind of zig-zag aircraft carrier floating in the sky. 

Previous Ender Posts: 

Guide to either loving or hating Ender’s Game (film)
The First Formic War (Ender’s Game Prequel Trilogy)
The Second Formic War & Fleet School

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