Peak Viewing

This week we dip our toes into Leone’s Dollars Trilogy with the first film, A Fistful of Dollars. We’ve got gunslingers, tricksters, Spanish countryside, whistling, and enough stolen plot points to warrant a lawsuit! While this is neither of our favorite westerns, it undoubtedly features a fantastic finale that got us very excited for the next two films in this trilogy. We also discuss time-of-day peak viewing experiences, differences in the Italian and English dubs, another giant statue, and our vitriol for American TV executives in the 1970s.

We’re kicking off our Sergio Leone miniseries with The Colossus of Rhodes, a sword-and-sandal epic centered on one of the seven wonders of the world. This film, which came near the tail-end of the peplum film’s heyday, is a serviceable good time, and gives us a lot to look forward to over the next six weeks. We discuss the next time we’ll cover a historical epic, the funhouse design of the Colossus, The Mount Rushmore of humanoid monuments, the absurd layout of David Lo-Pan’s lair, and incredible 1950s special effects.

Our journey through the cinematic endeavors of Star Trek comes to a close this week with 2016’s Star Trek Beyond. This sequel may not quite live up to the first Kelvin movie, but it was certainly a step in the right direction, and we would have loved to see one or two more sequels with this same formula and tone. We discuss the lighter tone, the development of Kirk and Spock, end credits watching habits, insane takes about American coins, and dubious Starfleet Academy classes. Plus: our final Star Trek rankings, and our next miniseries!

Star Trek Into Darkness stinks! The lightning-in-a-bottle magical energy of the first Kelvin film has been replaced with a serious tone, less characterization, worse VFX, and a muddied plot. The result? We (mostly Henry) kinda hated this movie. We get into all the ways it goes wrong, including the return of an iconic villain, the continued objectification of women, the disappointing reduction in lens flares, and the needlessly complicated mechanics of putting cryogenically frozen superhumans inside of space torpedoes.

We’ve entered the Kelvin timeline! The 2009 reboot of Star Trek brought with it a lot of things: fresh faces on iconic characters, modern cinematic action, and enough lens flares to blind a small child. That said, we really enjoyed revisiting this one! Is Star Trek actually just a utopia because they got rid of email? How much was Kirk living rent-free in the head of “cupcake guy”? Will we ever stop talking about browser-based movie trivia games?

(CW: Brief discussion of the sexual assault scene from 1:18:00 to 1:21:00.)

Y’all are wrong about Star Trek: Nemesis. We get disliking the CGI, and the silly off-road vehicle action, but everything related to Picard’s clone works. Tom Hardy gives a performance full of emotion that is achingly sincere, and the bittersweet mood for the main cast is just right. We discuss the confusing reaction critics and fans have continued to have to this film, along with a long-winded tangent on CineNerdle strategies, and our (redacted) peak viewing experiences!

Star Trek: Insurrection is a film of peaks and valleys. On the one hand, the villain isn’t particularly memorable and the drone special effects suck. On the other hand, it provides some pretty damning commentary on the perils of forced relocation. But then back on the other hand, it muddies the forced relocation message with a bunch of twists out of nowhere! All of this left us very mixed. Does this movie feel like TV? Should Data have died? Is Picard correct in his choices? All that and more!

The most well-regarded Next Gen movie is First Contact, but does it deserve that recognition? Yes! This time travel romp is an exciting adventure that pretty expertly weaves together all the things that make Star Trek so special. We get into all that plus the historic week we had that made this movie even more special, our touching personal history with this film, browser-based movie games, more donut talk than you could ever imagine, and a potential lucrative laser tag sponsorship.

It’s time to enter a new era of Star Trek films. Last week we said goodbye to (most of) the original cast, today we say hello to the Next Generation! This film is a classic example of the “passing the baton” sequel we see attempted often nowadays, and on that front it mostly succeeds. Where it struggles is with the writing, as most of the dialogue is egregious and forgettable technobabble. We discuss all that as well as why this feels like television, how underserved this cast is, and how fun this Enterprise would be to explore.

This week we make it to the end of the Star Trek movies with the original series cast. The final swan song for this crew somehow features a murder mystery, courtroom drama, a prison escape, and lots of touching moments of finality for this original cast. Topics discussed include Samuel’s less-than-ideal peak viewing experience, Klingons learning all the wrong lessons from Shakespeare, the Jetsons, and the best drinking buddy in Star Trek.