Historical Entertainment: Vikings Knightfall

Not necessarily historically accurate...

Who would win a sword fight? My money's on Landry...

Vikings

Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) is an ambitious viking who simply wants to improve his life by almost any means.  This six season show follows his and his families exploits as they travel the world to meet, kill and enslave all sorts of people.

While it might start off a bit slow, this certainly becomes a very fascinating (and bloody) show to watch with some cool battle sequences and interesting insights into Viking life. As long as you don't look for plot holes or historical inaccuracies, you will probably enjoy this series. I give it three blood eagles out of five.

Knightfall

This two season drama focuses on the Knights Templar and their quest to retrieve the Holy Grail amidst traitors, cover ups and later on from the monarchy itself. While there are actually a few decent twists in the plot, it's mostly too slow especially in the first season which involves a lot of investigation and intrigue.

The best parts are the sword fights though, and they capitalized on the action for the second season which is much better pacing wise. Adding Mark Hamill to the roster helps too. Still not to a level I'd recommend, but if you've run out of things to watch you might enjoy this. I give it two pyres out of five.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Mark Hamill is still awesome.

Continuing on from The Force Awakens, the majority of this film sees the rebels on the run from the Empire First Order while Rey attempts to convince the retired Luke Skywalker to come back into action. Once more, the acting and CGI are good but this time around I do have to question some decisions made about the plot.

New cute critter to market - check.

Rey's arc - I quite liked everything there from the island and almost everything with Kylo. The rebels running is fine and drives most of the movie. Luke is great. There's just one "side quest" which is mainly moving pawns across the board in a very round about way. This is completely useless. COMPLETELY.

Why? (spoilers ahead - highlight to read) I am talking about Finn's role here. Without the thief's info, more rebels would have made it to their destination resulting in a bigger final battle like Hoth, than what seems to be a final "skirmish". Alternatively, they could have played the "not everyone is good/evil card" better by making a rebel traitor (the thief) because his family/friend is held hostage by the enemy, giving him the same motivation as Finn. 

The mechanic girl could have been introduced the same way and had her major role finding and stopping him. Rey might have rescued said people, and the thief could have had a redeeming bit. No Finn required - they could have made a stronger movie by killing him. No odd phone call to the glasses alien who was clearly too busy to take a call either.

On things are more complicated than good and evil note, I wish they ballsed up and actually made Kylo not evil, but nope. After the epic co-op part of the movie someone just put their foot down and said they needed him as a villain. Shame. I'd love it if they can make Kylo the Jedi and Rey the Sith in the next flick but I doubt they will deviate much further from their stock standard formula.

An entertaining action film and one I'd probably watch again eventually. The thing is my wife and I just watched LEGO Batman the day before and guess what? LEGO Batman is better. I give this 2.5 Jedi mind tricks out of 5.

Dragons: Riders of Berk

It wasn't till recently that I stumbled across the TV series of How to Train your Dragon entitled Dragons: Riders of Berk. As to be expected, the quality of the textures is definitely not a match for the movie counterparts but the animation, expressions, voice acting and most surprisingly - the story lines are! Extra bonus for having Mark Hamill lend his talents for some episodes!

Also known as Dragons: Defenders of Berk

Taking place right after the first movie the series examines the difficulties faced by the Vikings of Berk by befriending dragons in compact, 25 minute episodes. Yes, most of these are still designed with kids in mind but for me and my wife we still find it very entertaining. Besides - anything with more Hiccup, Toothless and the gang is almost an automatic thumbs up! In fact the only negative I can think of with the first season is the lack lustre "opening".

I was also surprised to find at least five different How to Train your Dragon games floating out there... Alas, the only one I tried entitled "Wild Skies" has something wrong with the texturing in that all organics are very... blue? Lol. Still, for those who are How to train your Dragon fans (*pokes Ravanel*), the TV series might be worth a look. ^_^