Welcome to September, the month of Sci-fi and Fantasy, because I say so. This month will be different compared to previous months because all three of these movies tie into the theme, so that kind of makes the genre of the month a bit redundant, and two of these movies won the poll that I set up about three weeks ago and we’re going to discuss them both and the movie that I chose right now!

If you want to have a say in next month’s polls then I’ll be leaving a link to my Twitter account somewhere below this paragraph. (I could also use Facebook but, the thing is, I really don’t like Facebook!)

Netflix Original

Next Gen (2018)

If you’ve seen any movie about a robot trying to bond with a human and you liked that movie and have watched multiple other similar versions of that first movie then I’m pleased to inform you that you have already seen Netflix’s Next Gen.

Next Gen is pretty much like every other friendly robot movie. You’ve got a human character going through a very rough stage in their life, then they meet a big hunk of metal who quickly reveals that it wants to be their best friend. The human and the robot become very close friends and the robot shows off it’s cool abilities. Then the creators/bad guys swoop in to get their creation back and then you have the low point and finally the robot proves that it’s willingly to sacrifice itself for it’s human friend by squaring off with the main villain. This will either end with the robot dying or, as in kids movies, they will try to trick you that the robot is dead but it’s really fine and happily ever after and all that.

Even though most of these movies play out the same the way they change it up is by how they go about presenting it. For example, in T2: Judgement Day the relationship between the T-800 and John Connors is pretty much on the sidelines as the movie is about preventing Judgement Day from ever happening or in Wall-E replaces the human character with another robot character so they could form more of a romance than a friendship. These are just a few examples and let’s see what’s unique about Next Gen.

Well, I couldn’t find much. The young rebellious girl reminded me of the kid from Big Hero 6 and then the robot is pretty much identical to Baymax from Big Hero 6. It’s a been awhile since I’ve seen Big Hero 6 but I think you could put the four characters side by side and you could probably come up with so many similarities. The Big Hero 6 similarities don’t stop there – from the city, to a larger plot about evil robots and the weak twist villain and I could go on if it hadn’t been years since I’ve seen Big Hero 6.

Now to the things that Next Gen does do differently. The first thing I could think of is the giant robot can understand what the main girl’s dog is saying. This dog has a foul mouth and that’s the joke and I’m already over talking about this useless character. The main girl is a teen so she talks all slang which I thought was kind of annoying.  When she was teaching the robot her ways it felt very forced and cringey.

My overall thoughts of Next Gen is it’s very average and forgettable. I imagine if I was still a young kid I would love this movie, but sadly the child within me left long ago because he saw it wasn’t worth sticking around anymore. Anyway, if you’ve got small kids I’m sure they would like it but for anyone who is over the age of child it’s a good movie to contemplate on what are you doing with your life.

Poll Winner of Fantasy Category

Vampire Academy (2014)

Vampire Academy is bloody terrible! Get it, because vampires suck blood and bloody goes with vampires.

This movie tied with another movie and the only reason I chose this is because I already had a children’s movie and I thought it could be fun to jab at a Twilight inspired movie. (It wasn’t fun!)

This movie is based off the book series that was riding off the success of the Twilight books and now this movie is riding off the success of the Twilight movies and boy does it crash hard! Vampire Academy follows bland heroine Rose Hathaway (I’m not kidding) and her weird British friend Princess Lissa Dragomir. (We haven’t even got to the movie yet and I’m cracking up.) They run away for some reason and then they are brought back by an old hot Russian Vampire man to Vampire Academy. Vampire Academy is a school for Vampires but it’s an academy because this awful movie wants to suck the life out of everything that is far superior than it. (You’re forcing me to give Twilight credit!)

I don’t know anything about this series, I didn’t even know it was based off a book until 5 minutes ago when I started typing up this review. So when I dived into this thing I took this as a spoof movie to Twilight so when they started explaining the lore I was half paying attention because I was distracted by the horrific dialogue and all the terrible nudges at the other popular franchises. It wasn’t until halfway through the movie when it got way more serious that it completely lost me – it turned into a completely different movie.

This happened with me when I watched Twilight and The Hunger Games where they did such a poor job at explaining their worlds that they force you to read their books to understand their plot and that’s an instant fail in my head. I don’t read books to understand poor adaptations. I read books to get more invested and learn more from my favourite franchises. If you want me to get invested in your world you’ve got to do better than just have someone narrating and explaining everything instead of slowly weaving the information in like, for example, Harry Potter or Game of Thrones which both do an excellent job at world building.

This movie also feels like it came out way too late. Twilight was long over, True Blood finished that year also, Fifty Shades of Grey was becoming a thing and I think the vampire phase was fading away by that point. It’s like that terrible Slender Man movie trying to suck out what’s left of this once popular fad. Hey this movie is also one of the few movies that had the guts to try to sequel bait you for another run. Which I found hilarious because who would really want to sit through this garbage again, unless you really want to suffer like me I guess.

Vampire Academy is a poor attempt at the definition of cash-grab. It’s cringey, full of bad acting, bad dialogue, bad fight scenes, terrible nods at things you like and it fails at being a spoof and adaptation to the popular book series. 2/10 for me. You’re better off watching Twilight again, which isn’t saying much.

Poll Winner of Sci-fi Category

Inception (2010)

Inception is a movie I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while, so when I saw it on Netflix I was secretly hoping that this would be the winner of the poll. To my surprise the people who picked Inception must’ve incepted my mind and I don’t know where I’m going with this. To those who voted I would like to thank you for participating and especially those who picked the movie that I really want to say is the most overrated piece of film schlock I’ve ever seen.

Inception was written and directed by Christopher Nolan and pretty much everything he touches is made of pure gold most critics will have you believe. Christopher Nolan is such a big director now that his name alone carries an entire movie. Excluding the Dark Knight films Inception is his most successful film and I think it’s even now considered a modern classic. I can see why people love this movie but personally I don’t like it, I have never liked Inception and I should shut and explain why.

I first saw Inception a few years ago just as I was getting more into films. I had IMDb’s Top 250 movies of all time and I slowly picked through them one by one. I made up a ranking list of the movies I watched and Inception was one of the first movies I watched and of course it was at the bottom. (Luckily I watched the Alien sequels and it pushed it up a bit.) Back then I thought it looked impressive with great special effects but it was also boring, overly complicated, I didn’t care about any of characters and it made me feel very sleepy. I think I was 15 back then and maybe my developing mind couldn’t take it. Here we are at Now and I still didn’t like it that much.

To be fair I did like it a little better this time than before. Let’s just say whenever they focused on Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb I could see why people like it. Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t really the best actor around but I liked his character and the journey he has to go on is the most interesting part of the movie. The other things I liked is the cinematography looked amazing, its well shot and the CG looks amazing. I understand why people love this movie now but I still can’t make myself love it.

Bad stuff time and that’s basically everything else. Every other character in Cobb’s squad I think could’ve been cut out. I can see where they all play in the story but they’re all really boring characters and add nothing to the movie. Especially Ellen Page who I would say is the weakest character in the movie, her purpose in the movie is to ask questions about the script. Oh yeah my other problem which I think could take up this entire review is the Incepting Inception itself. A cool concept that is overly complicated for no reason.

Cobb and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character (I don’t have a clue what his name is) they steal hidden secrets in people dreams, they sometimes use a briefcase to keep their subject and themselves asleep and sometimes they don’t need the case at all. The rules of dream travel is as long as you don’t mess around too much in people’s head their sub conscious doesn’t fight back. Cobb trains Ellen Page to be an architect and their purpose is to create worlds for the subject to play around in. Cobb can’t do this himself because he has issues and Joseph Gordon Levitt can’t do it because we need a character as clueless as the audience to explain everything. The only way to leave a dream is by killing yourself or by making yourself fall off something, but that’s until the plot needs to raise the stakes so you can die now in dreams and go into limbo dream land and I’ve got no idea what the hell that is.

I could go on but I feel like someone is going to call me a dummy or an idiot or say I wasn’t paying attention and I was but I think the movie could have done a better job at explaining what Inception is because do you really need 20 separate scenes explaining the basics of your world. It’s been a while since I’ve seen The Matrix but the first movie did a good job at explaining their world and I think I got the gist until the sequels messed it all up. I’ve seen tons of complicated movies and shows and I managed to figure out most of the stuff that’s going on in the first viewing. I think a better version of this movie is the Rick and Morty episode making fun of this movie which surprisingly makes way more sense without making your brain hurt.

In the end I don’t think Inception is the worst movie ever made nor the best. I think some things about it are 10/10 and others I think could use some improvement. If you got rid of most of the side characters and just had it all be about Cobb and make the Inception thing more condensed I think that would’ve made a much better movie. I’m not going to bother giving this one a score because I don’t think it’s needed here and if you really want to know then come over and Incept me! While your at it, explain how incepting works while I dream about other highly regarded movies that I secretly hate.

Can’t wait to hear people’s response on this one, I would love to see you all try and convince me that my opinions are wrong and best response I get, I’ll put up on display for next months Watch-a-thon which I doubt you’ll be able to guess what I have installed. (At this point even I don’t have a clue what I have installed.)

Til next time, BC out.