Will's Watches - Vol. 5
Succession (Season 4, Ep. 1), Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Mandalorian (Season 3, Ep. 4)
We’re back with another edition of Will’s Watches, where I don’t sell wrist watches, but I do sell movie and TV reviews, for FREE! Please subscribe below if you aren’t already and share with your friends and I’ll give you a crisp high-five!
Another week of MADNESS with three reviews! For this week, we have the return of what might be the best show on television, the newest mid superhero movie, and another weekly Mando review.
Spoiler Free Section:
Succession - Season 4, Ep. 3 (2023):
What an incredible return for this show. The piano intro went so hard this week. If you’re reading this and you’ve never watched this show, go ahead and clear your schedule for a couple weeks and get a binge started so you can watch along. I think by the time this is wrapped up it might one of the best TV shows I’ve ever watched in entirety. We had all the betrayal action, all the incredible dialogue, all the effortless humor, literally everything you could want in the first (and sadly last first) episode.
Seeing the sibs all back together on the same team is such a joy. And boy did I miss Greg and Tom. The dialogue in this show is just top notch, and I 100% recommend watching/re-watching with subtitles to catch all of the little things the characters say under their breath/over each other that you might miss (especially Roman).
The acting, the writing, the music, the camera work, it’s all peak. All in all, great return, and we’re set up for a great final season of family drama, awkward Greg, and F#%& Off’s!
TLDR: Might be a perfect episode to ring in the beginning of the last season. Literally, the only reason I didn’t rate it higher is because I don’t want to box myself in for the scores for this season.
Ranking: 4.5 stars (92 raw score)
FUN TRIVIA TIME: The first season of Succession averages 64.9 F-Bomb’s per episode. Roman leads the pack with a total of 523 uses through three seasons. Logan unsurprisingly leads the pack of the number of times a character has told someone else to “F#%& Off”, while good ol’ Kendall has been told to “F#%& Off” the most for a total of 17 times. (theringer.com)
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023):
The most exciting part of this movie is the forced exclamation point in the title Shazam!
Now I have been into superhero movies since I was a kid. I go way too deep into all of this stuff and considering I grew up in a time when superhero movies became the biggest guaranteed box office bang in movie history, it’s not all that surprising. I think DC characters are FAR more compelling than Marvel characters as they were written in comic books, and I always thought Shazam was a cool character. But I didn’t love the first movie. Let’s just start with that.
This movie is a prime example of why people are losing interest in superhero movies. It is not the worst DC movie I have ever seen (Wonder Woman 1984 come on down), but it’s definitely on par with a lot of the other DCEU “blah” that has come out. Obviously it’s hard to get invested in a movie that’s part of a wider universe that is actively going into the can, so it’s not entirely their fault. It’s also not the movies fault that The Rock actively meddled in the entire franchise by not allowing Black Adam - the literal arch nemesis to Shazam - to appear in this movie.
This leaves us with a bland movie with boring stakes, cut-and-paste villains played by renowned actors just cashing a check, corny dialogue, and a movie that feels like an elongated TV episode I might’ve seen in one of the earlier Power Rangers episodes (regretted that as soon as I typed it, Power Rangers is so goated R.I.P. Tommy). Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu in this movie is basically the equivalent of a celebrity boxing match: they might say they’re taking it seriously, but we all know why they’re here. Watching Succession and this movie in the span of two days really shows the spectrum of scriptwriting. It’s like eating a wagyu steak and then someone comes to make you wash it down with a pinecone and punches you in the face.
TLDR: Not the worst movie I’ve seen, but it’s forgettable and, because of how little money it’s making (let’s just say I didn’t even pay money to see this) and the DCEU being reset, we might not even see these characters again. Worst Skittles ad I’ve ever seen.
Ranking: 2.5 stars (56 raw score)
The Mandalorian - Season 3, Episode 4 (2023):
Episode 4, titled “The Foundling”, is another solid episode that brings us to the halfway point of the third season.
Checking in at a little over half an hour, this was a short episode following Din’s cult going on a little rescue mission. I enjoyed this episode, and we got some intriguing flashbacks and a good amount of action squeezed into the short runtime.
Overall, it’s been a great first half of the season, but I think it’s time to ratchet things up a little bit for the home stretch. Because we’ve already accomplished what seemed to be the main task for the season in episode 2, I would assume this week we’ll get some more insight onto Bo Katan’s motivations and take some solid steps to set up the end of the season.
TLDR: Solid episode, a little too short, but the season is really open from here on how to go forward.
Ranking: 4 stars (80 raw score)
Thank you for reading this weeks edition of Will’s Watches. You can find some of my spoiler commentary below.
For next week, it’s time to talk about the best action movie of the year…
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SPOILER SECTION:
Succession - Season 4, Ep. 1 (2023):
Quote of the Episode: “She’s a firecracker, man. She’s cruuunchy peanut butter.” What does that mean, Greg!?
I would love an entire spinoff show of the alternate reality of the three siblings making a run at The Hundred
Happy we got to meet the “Disgusting Brothers” in an official capacity
The only fault I can find in the episode that I can fault is the fact that we didn’t get to see Greg’s conversation about “rummaging” in a guest bedroom at Logan’s. Please give me that deleted scene
Greg really was out in force this episode, his “you’re a mean old bastard” roast killed me
Roman’s entire conversation with Kerry as they got on their plane should be stitched onto a throw pillow
Shiv and Tom are just so sad to watch. Shiv clearly is so shook up that Tom betrayed her that her sole focus is trying to win back that power over him that she lost
There’s no way Mondale has ever set a foot out of that pen he’s in. Poor Mondale
So by the end of the episode, the kids outbid Logan and secure a handshake deal to buy Pierce for a pretty penny
There’s just not a chance that deal ends well, right?
Will be very interesting to see if Logan tries to stop the GoJo deal and sale of Waystar to freeze the kids out of the money they would use to buy Pierce (Megan’s idea)
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023):
One of the problems of bringing Shazam to live action: Asher Angel (who plays Billy Batson) is now a man. He’s 20 years old. We have a man turning into a middle aged man who acts more like a kid than the “kid” actor does
Freddy might as well be the main character. We see WAY more of him than Billy Batson
Rachel Zegler I love you
Mary Marvel actress, I love you
We just going to gloss over how Freddy is like 17 and his parents are openly fine with him dating a 6000 year old?? They even make a joke about it. CPS is on line one
Djimon Honsou is too good of an actor to be in this movie
Why did the wizard give his powers to children, I don’t care if that is the premise, what did you expect to happen
Darla’s character is infuriating
For those who didn’t see the movie (lucky you), I just want you to know that this was a real scene: the kids ride unicorns (that they recruited by giving them skittles) through the city to fight monsters while yelling “taste the rainbow”. That is not a joke. Well guess what, I tasted the rainbow, and it tasted terrible (that’s about this line of dialogue, not skittles, they’re fine)
What would be the plan for this franchise if it had not been canceled? Just continue until Asher Angel is bigger and more muscular than Zachary Levi?
Wonder Woman showing up at the end might be a little cool if she wasn’t IN THE TRAILER - just kidding, that never would’ve been good because that scene had to have been written by a golden retriever
Shazam dies and is magically brought back to life by Wonder Woman in a “alright it’s time to stop watching” moment
I will never watch this movie again
The Mandalorian - Season 3, Episode 4 (2023):
The little kid who is revealed as Paz Viszla’s son is such a square
Sidenote, how do Mandalorian’s have kids? Are they allowed to reveal their faces to their partners? Do they take everything off except the helmet? Is Paz dating the armorer? These are my questions
Grogu got strapped and totally lil boy’d the foundling
I am starting to have some issues with Grogu’s character. Because of how slow he ages, I am really interested to see how they continue to utilize him. He can’t really undergo any sort of character arc without a large skip in time and currently is more of a plot device than anything
If they’re going to continue to use him in action scenes, we gotta figure something out. I know he’s a puppet. But if he’s going to do anything besides jump, which already looks exactly like what it is (a weightless doll being thrown in the air), we gotta introduce a CGI element or some other solution. I currently cannot imagine our boy carrying a lightsaber or any sort of weapon and that needs to change in the future
The Order 66 flashbacks: man did they just order the most incompetent Jedi ever to protect Grogu? We got like four Jedi who get absolutely folded by a handful of clones. If anything, that might be natural selection
If you’re wondering who the Jedi is that saves Grogu - that would be Jedi Master Kelleran Beq. Why does he matter? Well for the show, I don’t know (I was always holding out hope for Mace Windu, but maybe one day that will come), but for real life, he is played by Ahmed Best
Why is that important? Ahmed Best was the actor for probably the most hated character in Star Wars history: Jar Jar Binks
Best has come out and said due to the hate he got from playing Jar Jar he nearly killed himself, so it was really cool to see him go out there and redeem himself. Hope my guy has peace and can be satisfied in his work!
We have foundling dragons? No way those guys fit in that ship. When they grow older how are you going to explain that you shot their mom out of the sky and she got eaten by the big water dinosaur from Jurassic World
Let’s see if we finally figure out what Bo’s up to. Is she going to make her power play for the throne? I’ve enjoyed the season so far, but need them to start dialing it up in the second half. Maybe we get introduced to whoever was behind the Tie-Bomber attack in episode 3?? (Shoutout Brett)