(series review) [STREAMING] - DC's Stargirl

Greg Berlanti is the one guy who I can imagine in the most recent of years to be the living and breathing depiction of Scrooge McDuck jumping off of a diving board into a pool of money.  You see, he is solely responsible (to my knowledge anyway) for every single DC show you are seeing now, hearing of or have seen in recent years.
In 2012, the show Arrow starring Stephen Amell played the DC character Green Arrow.  Fans and critics alike deemed the show to be a Batman "Rip-off", not rip-off per-say but, his enemies were Batman's enemies.  That didn't stop the show as the show was great and improved by each season.  I believe it was season 2 where they introduced Barry Allen whom would later become The Flash, to then have his own series a year later, introducing crossovers from each show and then expanding the now aptly titled 'Arrowverse (Arrow universe) wider to include lot of other heroes and different teams throughout DC history.  Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman and the up and coming Superman & Lois, not to mention other DC shows he helps to produce, Titans, Doom Patrol and Stargirl.  Even when you watch the Chillin Adventures of Sabrina, Greg's name is there! But without him and his input and efforts, Stargirl may not have been made and be as good as it is.

I'm not sure which year Stargirl takes place, whether before the Arrowverse characters as I'm assuming, techinically, it is meant to be as Stargirl is part of the Justice Society of America which comes before the Justice League of America, but the JSA have been wiped out by the villains.  The villains win and the sole survivor, Stripesy meets and marrys a lady named Barbara, Courtney's mother and they move to a town called Blue Valley and he leaves his past behind him.  Unfortunately, Courtney stumbles across the Cosmic Staff, previously held by Starman and would ONLY work for Starman, Courtney, now Stargirl wants to pick up where Starman left off and try to uncover a plot of villainy.

This show is decent and well worth the watch.  Having watched ALL of The Arrow episodes season after season, fairly caught up with The Flash, up-to-date with Supergirl, Black Lightning and Titans (although Titans is a separate thing, kinda), I'd like to say that Stargirl has the tone of the Arrowverse, especially shows like Supergirl and The Flash as it is fairly lighthearted, but it does have some slightly darker elements, not enough to be Arrow dark or Black Lightning dark in some cases, but we are talking about a bunch of teens taking on supervillians and these supervillains are no joke.

With that said, the choreography, like all the aforementioned shows have been amazing.  This show, blatantly wirework, but the use of movement with these characters are excellent.  As stiffly fluid as they possibly can as most of if not all of the fight scenes are practical.  There are some fights that are blatantly special effects but most of the special effects are for other elements of the show, so i found that the fighting scenes were very entertaining.  Yes you can tell it is wirework, but the fights are just great.  These teens get slapped up soo much, it made me laugh out loud on numerous occasions.  They do give as hard as they get in some cases and the work with the cosmic staff is excellent.

The cosmic staff is essentially its own character.  If you are into Marvel movies and know about Thor's trusty hammer, the cosmic staff is similar to that in the sense that only the user can use it, but the staff is sentient.  The staff moves by itself, helps the user to fly, flashes a bright light and can be used as a formidable weapon in combat.  The way the staff moves with and around Stargirl helping her whilst she is wielding the staff is nothing like i've ever seen before.  The staff does however come across as very convenient to plot and story though.  When they want to have the staff work for the story or move/act in a particular way, it would. If they don't want it to work in a particular way and they want to show Courtney get hurt or whatever, then it won't.  There were times I felt like the Staff could have assisted Courtney in moments and it did nothing.

Onto doing nothing, some of these villains were just in the show for the numbers.  Some were pointless and others didn't really show face until the end and still didn't do anything.  I liked that some of the villains were selfish, had their own goals and ideas which caused conflict between some of them, that was good, but for the most part, you only had possibly 3-4 villains which were great and entertaining.  The music was decent and just overall, the story was intriguing enough to have you engaged.  A little fluffy and bubblegum in places but I liked how they managed to balance teenage angst and heroism.  If you can watch the show. It would be interesting how a second season would go especially how it ended.

(trailer review) - Enola Holmes

I do try to keep my ears to the streets in regards to the latest news on film.  And when I say streets, I mean the internet, Internet Provider permitting of course, but I remember when it was announced they were going to do a show/film on Enola Holmes, Sherlock and Mycroft's younger sister.  I think I remember them mentioning Helen Bonham-Carter but for the most part, I remember how I felt when they mentioned this project surrounding Sherlock's younger sister.  I believe my thoughts were, "Ok!?" "Why?" "Really?" something along those lines.  I might have even said "Who cares?" and then proceeded with "Anything to just milk a franchise for change".  You see, I know nothing of Sherlock's younger sister, never heard of her.  I've never read any of those books and the only Sherlock I'm familiar with was the ones I used to watch growing up.  I've only really found out recently about his older brother Mycroft through either the Robert Downey Jr. portrayal in the movies, which I really like (Guy Ritchie, get back on it for the third one) or the Benedict Cumberbatch BBC One TV series.  Upon seeing the trailer (and I'm going to be honest), I actually liked it.

From what is made known in the trailer, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) wakes up one day and her mother is missing.  As she has a close relationship with her, she sets out on mission to track and find her mother with the help of her older brother's Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), but when it seems her brothers are not interested, she goes about it by herself anyway.  

This trailer showed how fun this film may be.  Millie is a wonderful actress, famed for her role as Eleven in the Stranger Things series (which is a really really good series) and Henry aka Superman aka August Walker (from Mission Impossible) aka Geralt or Rivia (from the Witcher series) is an excellent actor growing in popularity and charm in nothing but great roles. I also loved him in The Man from U.N.C.L.E (one again, Guy Ritchie, pull your finger out mate).  Nothing but a superb cast, not to mention Helen and her plethora of great roles.  It looks like fun so it would be interesting to watch, albeit very kiddie friendly, which isn't a bad thing at all.

Directed by Harry Bradbeer and starring Millie Bobby Brown, Sam Claflin, Adeel Akhtar, Fiona Shaw, Frances de la Tour, Louis Partridge, Susie Wokoma, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter,

(trailer review) - The Batman

While a lot of us are trying to understand as to why there is ANOTHER Batman film, we need to first understand that Hollywood is a business and whatever makes the most money, they will milk it dry and then move onto the next.  With that said, we also need to understand that Warner Bros. who own Detective Comics (DC) in its entirety and all of its characters, will do whatever they can in order to gross the most amount of money in their films.  This also means using what has been successful.

The issue we had with Spider-Man (from Sony) and the multiple Spider-Men movies over the years were due to many things; too much studio control or influence, no plan or structure, lacklustre storylines etc and that isn't to mention the signed contracts and having to produce a movie every so often before the rights revert back to Marvel, like what happened with Daredevil, Punisher, Ghost Rider etc.  With Batman, it is a different type of "struggle".  Although Batman was successful on film in 1989 and then had a major dip a little later, Batman has been most successful in recent years since Christopher Nolan's 'Batman Begins'.  Everyone loves the Batman character and for the most part, he is easy to put together on film.  A lunatic dressed as a Bat goes around beating people up and stopping crime in his city, due to the loss of his parents as a child.  But the problem is, we now have Batman fatigue and we don't know who is playing Batman, which world/universe or whatever.  Do any of us even care anymore?

I do!  But for me, it's more of a, which story are they going to tell and are they going to do it successfully.  Also, is this a standalone movie not connected to anything or will we have other characters from the DC catalogue of heroes and villains.  Also Batman has a huge rogues gallery, so why do we need to see another Joker and the same faces over an over.
What I will say is, WB may have only just caught their stride and they are making movies whether it is a standalone movie or team/universe/interconnected movie and they are forcing the audience to understand that these movies will be different and while some will be connected, other may not and if I'm honest, I am totally cool with that.  If you think about it, they can make soo much more money with two Batmen running around, one connected and one not, because people will see Batman and people will be forced to identify which is which and that is not a bad thing.  Those who care will take note, those who don't, wont.  I just want them to introduce more characters now.

As for this teaser trailer though, it's not garbage at all.  From Matt Reeves, the guy that brought us the last two recent Planet of the Apes movies, this trailer looks great.  Dark, gritty, with a noir feel to it.  We see Jim Gordon, Catwoman and possibly a Robin.  Batman is using a grappling hook and beating up thugs like he should.  We even see the Batmobile.  This is Batman starting out which is different to Batman Begins and this looks good!  Imagine, they are currently still filming and this teaser trailer is great.

Directed by Matt Reeves an starring Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Barry Keoghan, Jayme Lawson, Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell