Wave, the Last Dance

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The quintessential summer movie turns 35 this year

Nothing says summer fun like sun and sand.  Or so I’m told, because I’m not a beach person.  If there’s one thing Anakin was right about, it’s that sand sucks.  It is coarse and it does get everywhere.  If I’m at a beach, it’s going to be in October, when it’s a bit cold and the sand is more hard packed.  But people seem to love it; going to the shore, going into the ocean (which I don’t understand; Shark Week is an annual reminder to not go in there).  So let’s pack the car for one last summer beach trip and get into one of the most definitive summer films, Point Break.

I should preface this by saying that I’m going to be talking about the 1991 original Point Break starring Keanu Reeves (Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Toy Story 4) as the ridiculously named Johnny Utah and the late Patrick Swayze (Road House, Ghost) as surfer/criminal mastermind Bodhi.  Not the absolutely joyless and terribly written remake from 2015.  You probably didn’t see that one, but I have and I had originally planned to do a compare/contrast between the two, but even on the internet, the Point Break remake isn’t worth the column inches.  That’s not the case with the original though.

Johnny Utah was a star quarterback through high school and college, but on the eve of going pro, he suffered a career ending injury.  So, just like I did when I realized a career in professional sports was off the table (because I wasn’t good at any of them), he decided to go to law school.  Unlike me, however, Johnny joins the FBI, gets assigned to the Los Angeles field office, and is partnered up with grizzled veteran and FBI iconoclast Angelo Pappas.  Pappas, played by Gary Busey (Lethal Weapon, Sharknado 4), has a wild theory about a group of bank robbers known as the Ex-Presidents because they wear rubber Halloween masks of the likes of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.  They are fast, they are efficient, and they are, well, professional doesn’t seem to be the right word to describe them as the first bank robbery we see them commit ends with one of the robbers mooning the security camera, but the point is that they’re very good at this.  In and out in under 90 seconds, long before the police are able to respond, and no one has ever been shot in the commission a robbery.  They have excellent crowd control and they’re quick and light on their feet.  They only hit cash drawers and they only rob banks in the summer.  So Pappas has developed this theory that his clean cut FBI colleagues think is ridiculous, but Johnny is more open to it.  Pappas thinks the Ex-Presidents are surfers, robbing banks to fund their lifestyle during the height of the season.  Sounds wildly specific, doesn’t it?  But we’ve got a movie on now.

Lori Petty was one of my first crushes, there, I said it.

So Johnny buys a surfboard and heads to the beach to learn to surf.  And in the process of learning what I view as a nearly impossible feat (I have terrible balance), he nearly drowns, but is pulled to shore by Tyler, an experienced surfer and since it was the 90s, pretty much the only woman in the movie.  So you know she’s going to be the love interest because, well, the world wasn’t ready for longing glances between Gary Busey and John C. McGinley (Scrubs, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), who plays his straight-laced boss.  I’m not exaggerating, either.  I’m pretty sure the only other named character who is a woman has fewer lines than Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis; as much as I enjoy this movie, Point Break will not go down in history as a bastion of representation in film.  Unless your definition of diversity is having every kind of long haired white guy in it.

Tyler, played by the legendary Lori Petty, who starred in pivotal roles from my childhood in movies like A League of Their Own and Free Willy, as well as the cult classic Tank Girl, is eventually convinced to help him learn the basics of the board, leading us to an 80s and 90s movie staple, the training montage.  Love it; if you don’t have nostalgia for the old-fashioned training montage, this movie will get you on their side.  Watching Keanu Reeves try to pop up on a surfboard on the sand while experienced surfers walk by and laugh at him is a lovely way to go through a montage.  It’s comforting to see someone that good looking struggle at something.  Through all this, the undercover Brian finally meets Dominic Toretto, the big man in a group of street racers.  I’m sorry, I meant the undercover Johnny finally meets Bodhi, the big man in a group of surfers.  Bodhi is a very talented surfer who lives to get pitted and hit those sweet barrels (I used to work with a surfer, I hope I used these terms right) and is a bit of a guru to those around him.  He sets the tone for every beach that he sets foot on and after he comes Johnny’s rescue when he’s jumped by a particularly aggressive group of surfers, that cements their relationship.  Like when Brian saves Dom from a police raid and drinks Vince’s Corona.  In case it’s not obvious, Point Break most definitely feels like the blueprint for The Fast and the Furious (though not the sequels, which have gone literally out of this world), just replace the cars with surfboards and the streets with waves.

The more you get to know Bodhi, the more you realize that he’s not just some kindhearted surf bum with an early-90s white guy understanding of Eastern philosophy.  He’s dangerous.  Surfing is more than life to him, it’s how he wants to die, too.  This guy is operating on a completely different level from everyone else, but I’m not entirely sure if he’s ascended, obsessed, or just out of his mind.  He believes that some mythical 50 year storm is going to hit a beach in Australia next year and that will result in the biggest waves in recorded history.  The kind of wave you know when you paddle out towards that you’re either going to tame it, tame the power of the ocean itself, or wash up on shore days later with the rest of the detritus; mangled, and half eaten by fish.  People say things are “life and death” like they’re two distinct, dichotomous options, two opposing forces at odds with one another and mutually exclusive.  But for Bodhi, to say that surfing is life and death is to mean that they are one; interchangeable, fungible, molded together.  There is no difference, there’s only the surf.  Surfing to Bodhi is both life and death simultaneously.  No wonder he’s willing to put his life and the lives of his crew on the line every time they don their rubber masks to continue to fund their wave chasing lifestyle.  I know that seems like a spoiler there, but it’s not really, and not just because the movie is now 35 years old.  But rather because it’s not a mystery.  Point Break isn’t about Detective Johnny Utah finding clues and gathering the surfers in the parlor before revealing who did it.  It’s not a whodunnit.  It’s an action film through and through.

But that doesn’t mean it’s weightless.  It’s not as straightforward as the FBI are the good guys and the Ex-Presidents are the bad guys.  Remember, no one’s ever been hurt and all the money they take, as they remind their hostages, is federally insured.  A little bit of trauma, some property damage, an afternoon ruined, and then the federal government steps in to make everyone whole again.  Sure, it’s not exactly a good thing to be taking things by force that don’t belong to you, but in a way, Bodhi and his crew remind me of Dutch Van Der Linde’s gang from Red Dead Redemption.  Maybe they are just outlaws, no good folks who don’t care who they hurt to get what they want.  But maybe they’re just out of lockstep with society and trying to live a life as an outsider leads them down a path towards crime because the lives they want are so incongruous with how we say everyone is supposed to live.  Maybe they are the ones really living while we zip up and down our freeways to jobs we don’t like.  But this isn’t the crime block I did last year, nor is Point Break deep commentary on societal issues.  This is summer fun and Point Break is the quintessential summer movie.  It has everything you want in a summer film.  The beach, the surf, the sun, wild parties, intense action sequences, even romance.  This movie has something for everyone.  Sure, the action isn’t exactly John Wick, but it was 1991; they had just banned smoking on international flights, it was a primitive time.

This movie is just fun and in some ways it’s even more fun now, precisely because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.  I only watched Point Break at the behest of my aforementioned surfer colleague, so I was well into adulthood when I saw it for the first time.  Nostalgia isn’t too much at play here; it’s just a good, honest action film.  It’s not going to light the world on fire and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s a classic the way that Casablanca is or a future classic like 2 Fast 2 Furious, but this movie is 2 hours and 2 minutes of a good time that streams on Peacock.  It is, however, rated R for language and brief nudity, so maybe let the kids watch Hoppers again instead of watching this on family movie night.  It’s no shining bastion of quality writing, nor quality acting; though I’ll say that Swayze and Petty put in good performances, with Petty’s trademark raspy voice punctuating her tough-but-vulnerable character.  As the chips begin to fall and the bodies begin to pile up, the movie races to a breathless conclusion that is sure to excite even modern audiences.  And you get to see just how cold Bodhi can be when the facade of Buddhism falls away and all that’s left is violence and blood money.  I enjoy this movie a lot and really the only reason that I prefer The Fast and the Furious to this is because I like cars and I don’t really care about surfing.  In a way, Point Break is the B-movie version of Heat; the blueprint for movies to come, to iterate on, and sometimes improve upon.  And for that alone, it’s worth a watch.  But its historical significance to B-level action movies aside, it’s got a great summer vibe that is a great send-off to the season.  And with Grand Theft Auto VI on the horizon, this could also be a fitting mood setter for your next gaming session.  Point Break holds up better than most from its era, I think in large part thanks to the expert helm of Kathryn Bigelow, who would go on to direct cinematic masterpieces like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.  Sure, the representation in the film is nonexistent, but even the extras aren’t overly sexualized and neither is Lori Petty (nor Reeves and Swayze).  The macho banter is largely not homophobic, which is rare for a movie of this time.  And while there are many things that could be improved upon to the modern eye, nothing stands out as tremendously horrible.  It’s an old movie that doesn’t make you feel bad watching it, which is a plus.  Pop some corn, put your feet up, and enjoy.

Thank you all for sticking with me through this block of summer fun. It’s the first time I’ve done a themed set of posts for such a long period and trying to focus on fun was an interesting exercise for someone who believes the best comedy is born from a kernel of sadness.  For a quick roadmap of what’s to come, September brings us back to school, so you know I have to have a special, a counterpart to how we opened this summer with Bad Words.  After that, I’ll be gearing up for spooky season, as every October I subject myself to horror movies to find the depth beneath the terror.  And in the meantime, I’ll be recording audio version versions of older posts and putting them up on YouTube as well, so new readers and listeners will have the option of audio.  I’m also continuing to stream on Twitch, generally twice a week, and you can find me at twitch.tv/aslam_c.  I’ve been streaming a variety of games, from Marvel Rivals to cozy games, as well as some LEGO building.  If that’s something you’re interested in, I’d love to see you in chat.

No, I’ve never fired my gun in the air and gone “Arr”

Big Blue (Trail)Blazes

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We are finally getting near the end of these brutally hot summer months here in the Northern Hemisphere, but I’ve still got some summer fun to squeeze out of this yellow-sun-soaked season.  Ever since James Gunn’s Superman in 2025, my whole head has been turned on the entire Super-family.  I loved that movie.  When I got new speakers for my TV, I put Superman on to test the sound…and then I ended up watching the whole movie.  I went to see Supergirl on opening weekend and I have become one of the movie’s biggest defenders.  Bought it on digital the second it went on sale.  So I decided to swing back around and check out a modern take on the animated Superman for the close of summer fun.  Let’s get into My Adventures with Superman.

My Adventures with Superman came out in 2023, but like I said, Superman media wasn’t even on my radar until James Gunn drafted in a boy from Philly to play the kind-hearted alien, and it very much feels like a precursor to the 2025 film when it comes to the vibe.  The story is completely different from the film and completely different from any other Superman story I’ve seen before.  Much like Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, it’s not strictly a retelling, but rather a reimagining of the Superman story.  Nothing fundamental has changed; he’s still a Smallville farm boy who fell from the sky after being jettisoned from his dying planet.  And he’s still figuring out his powers, just like Peter does in Friendly.  Actually, it’s a lot like Friendly.  Crime has leveled up in Metropolis and now previously petty criminals are in possession of some seriously advanced and possibly alien technology that enhances their strength and powers beyond anyone’s capability to deal with them.  Until one day, some mysterious figure comes to the rescue of Daily Planet interns Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Clark Kent by fighting off stolen giant military robots that would have obliterated anyone who got in their way.  See what I did there?  Clark dons a quick disguise and rises to meet the challenge.  Had he not, Lois and Jimmy would surely have been killed.  I know it’s a cartoon, but it was a genuinely moving moment.  Clark had spent his whole life to that point just trying to be normal, trying to be human.  And in that split second, he threw all that away, accepted that he’d never have a normal life, and decided that his power had to be used for good.  Hell of a pilot episode.

Before I get into the animation, I want to talk about the cast, because this was my biggest question mark about the series.  Superman is voiced by Jack Quaid (The Boys, Heads of State) and there are moments that I can only hear Hughie from The Boys.  But the more I watched the show, the more I settled into the fact that it’s what Superman sounds like here.  And while I generally bemoan the loss of voice roles going to dedicated voice actors, Quaid does an excellent job at portraying that earnestness and innate kindness you need to be Superman and Clark Kent.  Voicing Jimmy is Ishmel Sahid, whom you’ve probably never heard of, but have definitely seen if you followed my advice and watched Jury Duty.  However, the real standout here is Alice Lee as Lois Lane, who seems to be primarily a screen actor herself, with roles in titles such as Suits LA and People We Meet on Vacation.  But she just is Lois.  From the second I saw her, despite not looking like any Lois I’ve ever seen before, I immediately knew it was Lois just by the vibe.  This version of Lois is very different from the ones I grew up with (with the animated Superman’s no-nonsense Lois Lane being my strongest impression of the character).  Lee totally embodies this young, headstrong version of Lois and she feels just like the best portrayals of the intrepid reporter that I’ve seen in the past.  And that bodes very well for the series as a whole, because like I said when discussing the film, Superman is almost defined by Lois instead of by his villains. 

Batman has the Joker to remind him why he does what he does; Superman has Lois.  A great Lois leads to a great Superman.  And we have a great Lois here.  And the relationship between the two of them, as it progresses, is very sweet, but also not completely without troubles.  I’ve never dated anyone with superpowers, but I think it’s fair to say that it would add some complications and Lois is a fully realized character and, thus far, has been consistently written.  Through the nine episodes I watched of season one, she has been consistently excellently played.  Every moment, every emotion, every feeling of doubt feels totally organic and not simply what the plot needs to move forward.  And, I might be mistaken here, to my knowledge this appears to the first time Lois Lane has been played by and portrayed as an Asian woman.  Which I think is pretty groovy and a testament to how easily diversity can be added into these old IPs without everyone losing their mind.  Jimmy is also portrayed as and played by a Black actor, but we have seen that before in the CW’s Supergirl.  Still, that’s a win for representation in animation.  And they definitely didn’t stop there.  There’s genuine thought given to the diversity in this show, it’s not just a few instances of tokenism.

Which, if this isn’t your first time here, you know I think is a great thing.  Especially as Adventures isn’t meant for adults specifically.  This is Batman: The Animated Series, but the Friendly Neighborhood version starring Superman.  I realize that might have only made sense to me, so let me explain.  Adventures is a maturely written narrative series with an ongoing story that can be enjoyed by adults because it’s good and mature storytelling.  But it’s also really funny and fun and sweet and cute and like the best of kids’ media, it teaches them stuff while entertaining them and adults alike.  Just like Batman: TAS.  And it’s a reimagining and modernizing of a story we’ve heard a thousand times like Friendly Neighborhood.  And it’s done really well.  It’s too early to say it will stand with Batman: TAS in that truly upper echelon of animation, but I am really loving it in a way I was surprised that I would.  Normally, I watch about three episodes of a series before I write about it, but this time, I found myself through episode six before I tore myself away and sat down to write.  And I’m currently thinking about watching more of it once I’m finished.  Unlike Gotham, which is a city perpetually cloaked in darkness, Metropolis is sunny and bright all the time and Superman seems to mostly deal with daytime crimes (I guess it’s up to Moon Knight to protect the overnight travelers in Metropolis, because even though he’s from a completely different comic universe, the moon haunts you), so while it’s not strictly set in summer, it has a very bright and colorful aesthetic that goes well with these long days and short nights.

And that brings me to the animation style.  It is gorgeous.  I absolutely love looking at it.  It feels so good on your eyes to watch.  It’s hand-drawn 2D animation with an anime-influence that leads to some really stunning and fun visuals and very emotionally expressive characters.  This isn’t the wild, style-changing animation we see from Sony in movies like Into the Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters, but it looks so good.  The animation is simple without being basic or lacking detail.  It’s immersive, it’s natural; it may be animated, but it makes Metropolis feel like a real place.  It’s just so pleasant.  And familiar.  It borrows just enough elements from anime to look fresh and new, while also being reminiscent of the classic 90s animation that I grew up with.  The really inventive Sony-style animation is incredible and breathtaking at times; we’ve seen how far they can push the envelope of visual storytelling, but Adventures offers a similar level of beauty while maintaining a simplicity that is refreshing in a world where we’re constantly overstimulated.  It’s simultaneously new and nostalgic.

Simultaneously new and nostalgic sums up Adventures pretty well, actually.  Tapping into the renewed popularity of a kinder, gentler Superman and the nostalgia of 90s-era Saturday morning cartoons is a brilliant move.  In a time when hollow nostalgia surrounds us (the Super Mario movies, Minecraft, even the Big Bang Theory spin-off, if you have nostalgia for that show), My Adventures with Superman offers nostalgia, fresh takes on long-running characters, and good storytelling.  I know I disparage trips to the nostalgia well as much as I am susceptible to being taken in by them, but as someone who never really liked Superman until about a year ago, I think I can be somewhat objective when I say that this is one of the best modern cartoons you could watch at any age.  It’s a grown-up level of storytelling that doesn’t go nearly to the levels of X-Men ’97 or Caped Crusader, but never leaves adults bored with the comedy or the story.  It’s something you can easily watch on your own as an adult, with your kids if you have them, or if the kids are a little bit older than the Young Jedi Adventures or Bluey age range, you can confidently let them watch it on their own and be assured they’re getting wholesome messages with excellent representation and a hero they can aspire to.  Like I’ve stated many times, I don’t know anything about kids, but some of the action sequences might be a little intense or a bit scary for really small children.  My Adventures with Superman is rated TV-PG and streams on HBO Max.  The third season just aired it finale on August 16th, so now there are three full 10 episodes seasons to watch, with episodes running about 23 minutes on average.  If you grew up on Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men, Spider-Man, or Superman: The Animated Series, then this is definitely for you.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got two more seasons to catch up on!

Hack-and-Slashrooms

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Summer jobs, like any kind of temporary employment, can be rough.  You show up on your first day of work, you don’t know anybody, and you don’t know if it’s going to turn into a long term thing.  And if it’s your first day as a maid at the Virgil, an exclusive Manhattan co-op, you’re a mix of nervous and excited.  You’re on the precipice of something new, maybe even a new chapter in your life.  Things are changing, you have new opportunities, you’re about to be attacked in the middle of the night for use as a sacrificial lamb in a dark ritual.  Summer fun may be coming to an end soon, but that doesn’t mean these last few days are just for the kids.  Let’s get into 2026’s They Will Kill You.

We start ten years ago, with a young woman and her little sister on the run from their abusive father.  So close to getting away, their father finds them and an altercation occurs in the parking lot of a gas station in which she ends up shooting her father.  The police arrive, she runs.  After all, she’s young and she’s Black and she just shot a white guy.  Cops have come out blasting for far less than that, so I understand the impulse to run. Now, she’s starting a job as a maid at the Virgil and it’s her first day.  She tells them her name is Isabelle and they show her to her room and give her a quick onboarding.  Isabelle, played by Zazie Beetz (Atlanta, Deadpool 2), tries to go to sleep and get ready for her first full day, missing the chilling fog-activated message left on her bathroom mirror.  It simply said “They will kill you”.  Unfortunately, writing in a steam-based medium rarely leads to permanence, so it’s an easy message to miss.  But in the middle of the night, she’s visited by a masked and hooded figure.  And then another.  And then another.  It turns out the whole place is designed to be a death trap; if you’re the odd one out, anyway.  For those holding the keys, well, things are very different for them.  It’s a playground.

What follows is a bloody, breathless fight for survival, because it turns out that Isabelle isn’t exactly who she seems to be.  Which, to be fair, just about no one in this movie is who they seem to be, so I think it’s okay that she fudged a few details on her CV.  After 10 years in prison, who can blame her?  But no, Isabelle is no mere sacrificial lamb.  No, no, this lamb’s got chops.  And by chops, I mean she’s pretty damn handy with sharp objects.

The Virgil is an elaborate maze of dangers around every corner, designed very specifically to keep people like Isabelle from escaping.  But they never really expected one of their tributes to start fighting back.  But it turns out that Isabelle is much better with a machete than she is with a feather duster, so this is when things start to get interesting.  Hemoglobin starts spraying like a fountain and the night starts to go in a direction that nobody involved thought it would; not Isabelle, not the residents of the Virgil.  Creepy apartment buildings are getting their moment in the sun, it seems.  I’ve still not forgiven Netflix for cancelling Archive 81 and whatever ABC Family is called now (Freeform, I think) had a 2023 show The Watchful Eye.  I suppose Only Murders in the Building counts as well, but it’s thriving.  Perhaps it’s hard for a series to survive, but as a movie, you can get that hard, pulse-pounding action and keep it going for the duration of the movie without tiring the audience out or getting too bogged down in the lore and world-building.

They Will Kill You isn’t about the writing or the acting, but that’s not to say that there aren’t good acting performances in here.  As over the top as some of the acting might be, it’s in fitting with the whole conceit of the film and it all works just fine.  Zazie Beetz is a talented actress and manages her role well, and it’s also the meatiest role in the film.  The whole experience of the movie hinges on Beetz’s acting and her emotions in the moment are palpable.  The residents of the Virgil are played by Tom Felton (Fackham Hall, The Flash), Heather Graham (The Hangover, Arrested Development) playing very much against type, and Patricia Arquette (Severance, Medium), who has the biggest role of the antagonists.  Don’t get me wrong, she’s a chilling presence on screen and has been proving that since her role as Harmony Cobel in Severance, but, oh boy, was I distracted by her ever-changing accent.  I know change is a constant in life and we’re meant to go with the flow and roll with the punches, but I didn’t think that applied to accents.  I think she’s meant to be playing Irish, which seemed to be the dominant accent of the movie, but she also, at times, sounded British, southern American, and at one point I’m almost certain I heard a slight Dutch accent.  It’s a tad bit off-putting in the scenes where there’s a lot of dialogue, but luckily for the majority of the movie, you’re just in for some bloody, endless, over-the-top fun.

And I do mean bloody; They Will Kill You definitely earns its R rating.  Generally speaking, gore in movies does nothing for me.  It usually doesn’t add anything to a movie for me unless it’s done poignantly, but it has to be fairly gross and truly excessive for me to wince at it and I don’t care for body horror.  So while this movie’s level of gore doesn’t bother me, I feel like I should give a warning.  It’s not a strictly scary movie as far as horror goes, though the first act does have some genuinely creepy moments, the tension is lifted largely in the second act by the sheer amount of action and frequent dark comic relief.  If you thought Abigail was bloody, They Will Kill You takes it to another level and injects some body horror to it.  It never did quite reach the level of bothering me, but I would recommend some caution over this movie if that’s not your thing. The entire second and third acts of the movie are spent covered in blood and viscera, so consider yourself warned.

Stylistically, They Will Kill You is very striking.  There are moments where it feels eerily like I’m watching a Wes Anderson film; ornate gothic settings that feel out of place in the modern world, characters moving through static spaces, spaces moving around static characters, and of course, some of that lovely symmetrical shot framing that Anderson is so well known for.  But then things shift out of a Wes Anderson film and into a Tarantino one, but with less focus on misogyny, women’s feet, and white people casually using the N-word.  They Will Kill You marries these two very dichotomous styles really well, lending a surreality to the proceedings without the pretense or baggage that comes with it.  Director Kirill Sokolov does a commendable job of paying homage to his influences without feeling like a copy by comparison, especially considering this is only his third feature film and the first one in English for American audiences.  Apparently, he lists his influences as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Evil Dead 2, and Kill Bill, which, well, is evident when you watch the movie.  None of that takes away from how good the movie feels to watch; it just feels like it flows naturally visually and the storytelling, while not complicated, is aided by the strange combination of highly stylized shots.  As a film nerd, it’s a fun movie to watch.

And if you’re a normal, well-adjusted person who lives primarily in the real world, it’s also very fun to watch.  If you like to sit down and watch a movie that entertains you for 94 minutes of nearly nonstop action, They Will Kill You is undoubtedly something worth checking out.  It’s not earth-shattering, it’s not groundbreaking, and it’s unlikely to be a movie that blows you away.  But summer fun isn’t about that.  The bad guys are really bad, the good guys are on the path to redemption, and there’s a lot of hacking and slashing in between.  If chaotic and bloody sounds like fun to you, They Will Kill You is right up your alley.  That’s not to say there isn’t anything lurking beneath the surface, but I wouldn’t go into this movie particularly looking for depth of storytelling.  I don’t think it will touch you emotionally the way that Abigail could in moments, but that’s not a negative.  Sometimes you don’t want watch a 2 hour long or longer movie that makes you feel all the feelings.  Sometimes you just want a route one, over-the-plate action-horror comedy with a straightforward story.  So yes, it lacks depth, but that’s kind of the point.  There is something to be said about redemption, yes, family, yes, and even a commentary on how out of touch with humanity the ultra-rich are, but that’s hardly the point of They Will Kill You.  The point is to entertain you for about an hour and a half, and I can say fairly confidently that it’s mission accomplished.  The film also has a great soundtrack, with eclectic song choices that span a variety of genres.  I don’t think I’ve watched a film and been as into its soundtrack since I saw Birds of Prey or Into the Spider-Verse (well, Yesterday’s all Beatles soundtrack is compelling too, but I think that’s kind of cheating, since it is a movie about the Beatles’ music).  While They Will Kill You only boasts a 65% RT score, it’s an insane ride that doesn’t overstay its welcome thanks to that short runtime; had it been a 2+ hour epic, it most definitely would have worn thin, but the credits roll before you have a chance to get worn out by the action and just in time for you to catch your breath.  They Will Kill You is rated R and runs 1 hour and 34 minutes, streaming exclusively on HBO Max.

Big Bang Dreary

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

Every once in a while, something comes along that’s so good, it makes you stop in your tracks, put down what you’re doing, and just stare, slack-jawed in amazement.  Sometimes, the opposite happens, and something is so bad that it elicits the same response.  Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is the second case.  So I’m going to put a momentary pause on summer fun, because there’s nothing fun about this show.  Let’s get into it.

If you’ve never seen or heard of The Big Bang Theory, in many ways, I envy you.  I wouldn’t lie and say that I never got a laugh out of the show, but I can honestly say that I didn’t enjoy the series.  Whatever laughs it did manage to drag out of me were fleeting and cheap, and while it fit the definition of a sitcom, like a meal at a dodgy fast food joint, it left me feeling full and just a bit queasy.  But now that it’s over and Young Sheldon is all grown up, Chuck Lorre and co. are returning to that once overflowing well to squeeze handfuls of mud to get the very last drops of revenue out of it.  This time, Leonard and Sheldon have finally ripped a hole in the fabric of space and time and created a bunch of rifts that led to a multiversal crisis and somehow Stuart, the comic store owner, is the only one who can save the multiverse.  Now, sure, in practice, all the characters in The Big Bang Theory are pretty stupid, but they at least have the trappings of being intelligent with all those degrees and superhero t-shirts.  Considering that Leonard and Sheldon were the ones who created the rifts, why aren’t they the ones trying to solve it, being, you know, physicists?  The answer, of course, is budget, and therefore we’re left with Stuart, the only recurring who has zero science knowledge.  But I have to imagine his quote is low by comparison.

Budget is the word that comes to mind when watching this show.  Clearly a large portion of it went to paying for cameos to remind you that this show is part of the TBBT universe.  It doesn’t seem like they’ve been able to bring in much along the way of writing or characters, but they love a one episode feature.  Kunal Nayyar returns as Raj for the pilot episode before he gets the multiverse treatment of a shock death, then Kaley Cuoco and Brian Thomas Smith return in the second as Penny and Zack for a few minutes.  Christine Baranski gets a cameo that seemed like it could have been filmed on Cameo, playing herself.  Third episode sees Melissa Rauch return as Bernadette and Wil Wheaton as himself.  It’s usually nice to see Wheaton pop up in any sort of project and I hope to see him in the upcoming The Guild film that was funded on Kickstarter.  I’m just happy he’s still going after all those years being the subject of jokes about Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: TNG.  As for the rest of them, I don’t know.  I suppose that if you have a great deal of affection for these characters, it might be some sort of thrill to see that no matter the universe, the brown guy still can’t find happiness before meeting his tragic demise, or that Penny has become the extremely ineffectual leader of a resistance movement in a universe where everyone has behavior-correcting implants, or maybe you just like seeing your beloved characters killed in predictable ways.  But for me, all I can see in this kind of stunt casting is where all the money went.

Because it definitely didn’t go into the rest of the show.  The opening sequence is trying hard to be meta and self-deprecating, but when you’re putting out a product as bad as this one is, pointing out how lazy everything you do seems doesn’t mitigate how bad it is, the way Deadpool writers hope it does.  It doesn’t even do the opposite and shine a light on how shoddily made the show is either; rather, all it does is serve to annoy because it means that they know how poor of a job they’ve done with this show and and they’re taking their terrible jokes and laughing all the way to the bank.  And if the first three episodes are any indication, they’ll be the only ones doing any laughing.  Not to mention that there is heavy and credible suspicion that the intro sequence is AI generated, which, well, is almost comforting to think that a real human wasn’t the one coming up with something so bad, but also very annoying because certainly a real human could have been paid to come up with something much better.  Or even a little better.  Or even just as bad, but made by people would be an improvement.  Generative AI is an ailment that humanity is inflicting on itself; burn the drinking water to save a few bucks at the top.  I don’t know if you know this about me, but I am staunchly against the use of generative AI for many, many reasons.  Not least the environmental impact, the intellectual property theft, the way it discourages people from thinking, the way that it’s being used to eliminate jobs so those at the top of corporations can make even more money until this ouroboros finally eats its own tail and there’s no one left with a job to spend the money on products and services that these folks made their fortune on, the abuse of gen AI to make nonconsensual explicit images, the fact that I can’t use an em dash anymore; I could go on.

Furthermore, it appears that the vast majority of the show has been made without physical sets.  I have a hard time recalling a physical set until near the end of the pilot episode.  Look, I’m not saying you have to film on 35mm and go analogue for me to respect the craft or anything like that; technology has come a long way in enhancing and aiding storytelling.  But we’re not talking about the huge airplane hangar with a giant curved screen and video game engine like Disney uses when filming The Mandalorian; I’m talking about run of the mill, green screen technology that dates back to the 1930s (back then it was primarily blue screens until green started to become more common as filming changed over to digital).  And it shows.  The camera angles are strange, often utilizing tight, waist-up or even chest-up shots to try to obscure the fact that they’re standing on a soundstage.  And in the wider shots, backgrounds appear flat and out of scale with the characters in shot.  And for a show that loves to use special effects, they look more at home on a pre-SyFy branding Sci-Fi channel original movie than on the same network that made Doom Patrol and The Last of Us.  There appears to be very little care given to how this show looks or feels.  And the addition of occasional swearing does little to help the writing, which, in three episodes has failed to make me even smile.  Nor is the story compelling because, well, I watched Sliders the first time around, which this show has completely cribbed its format from and I’ve listened to the excellent podcast Fullmetal Bazinga, where four video game podcasters posit their own multiversal adventure using the world of TBBT and actual human creativity to tell a surprisingly wonderful story.

None of that is here.  It’s not only not funny, there are some things about this show that I find patently offensive and wildly tone deaf in this day and age.  I talk about how it’s hard to go back and watch comedy from other eras sometimes because the things that aren’t acceptable now were acceptable then and if you’re a person with any level of compassion or empathy, it can become uncomfortable to see that kind of comedy from bygone eras.  Stuart Fails is a show from 2026, but it feels like it relies on the same kind of comedy from TBBT, which felt stale when it was new, because it was right out of the 90s eras of “can men and women really be friends?” before emphatically saying no and pairing them all off by the end of the series.  Except it was “can men and women really be friends if the men are sexless nerds who are desperate for human contact?” and the answer is still no.  But when we find out that Barry Kripke, the character whose speech impediment was played for laughs at a time when only presidential candidates could get away with it, has become a Negan-like tiny despot, complete with a harem of women who have to sleep with him or die, he becomes the third protagonist in the series.  That’s right.  Here in 2026, the creators of The Big Bang Theory want me to root for the rapist murderer.  I thought this was a TV show, not Fox News.  Again, it’s thrown away for laughs.  When Lauren Lapkus’s Denise refuses to sleep with him, he orders her executed.  He’s the tertiary hero in this series.  And it’s not like he even realizes that what he’s done is wrong; he goes along for the ride all while bemoaning the loss of his little fiefdom.  Unrepentant is the word a judge would use, hopefully, at his sentencing.  Now maybe he’ll have a heel turn later in the series and become a true villain, but when you’re this shit as a protagonist, how could you even tell when he’s turning into a villain?

Spin-offs aren’t all bad.  There have been some great ones in the past, even from shows I didn’t like.  Take Better Call Saul, for example.  Spun off from show about a science teacher who makes increasingly bad decisions that are mostly all his fault that I didn’t like, Better Call Saul is a masterpiece.  Frasier was smarter and better written than Cheers and funnier too.  Pinky and the Brain benefitted from standing on its own away from Animaniacs and has far more creditable science behind it than Stuart Fails.  And we wouldn’t have the The X-Files had Fox Mulder never found the file about a mysterious island that trapped the survivors of a three-hour tour aboard the S.S. Minnow (okay, this one is a joke, The X-Files wasn’t a Gilligan’s Island spin-off, but if Stuart Fails isn’t going to be funny, I at least had to try).  But this spin-off is very, very bad.  I don’t like to trash something without giving you viable alternatives because it’s cheap and hollow to just hurl insults from the sidelines.  There’s the aforementioned Sliders, which may not have aged that well, but it’s aged better than this show, which is brand new.  I will never stop recommending that people listen to Fullmetal Bazinga, which is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.  HBO Max’s own Avenue 5 is a far superior science-fiction comedy series.  I can even recommend watching The Orville over Stuart Fails because at least that show had some capacity for improvement and did something through its run.  Futurama is a great alternative to this if you want wacky storytelling in a fantastical science fiction setting, but still with the ability to tug at the heartstrings (go watch S4E7 “Jurassic Bark” and come back to me if that one doesn’t get you).  Resident Alien and Doom Patrol are shows that are so much better than this on every conceivable level that it feels like an insult to the amazing work done by everyone on those shows to even mention them in the same breath as Stuart Fails.  Good god, even Rick and Morty is better than this and I find that show largely insufferable.

Episodes release every Thursday at 9PM on HBO Max, but don’t watch it.  It’s not worth your time.  This is a skip.  And not in a “Well, maybe you’ll find something in it that I didn’t” kind of way.  I always try to give a show three episodes before I start to pass judgment and because of a packed schedule and a severely delayed post, I was able to watch three of these.  And I can now confidently say that Stuart doesn’t just fail at saving the universe.  Stuart Fails at absolutely everything.  Watch it run for 10 seasons.  Summer fun to return shortly.