This week I review the most recent Star Wars film The Last Jedi and analyse its politics. I discuss its anti-war and progressive tokenism, and why this is ultimately undermined by being symbolic, and not narrative-based.  None of the ‘progressive’ character moments or dialogue in the film have any meaningful ...
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In 2015 Admiral Robert Papp, the State Department's Arctic envoy, spoke multiple times about trying to broker a deal with Disney to use characters from Frozen to promote climate change issues to children.  Recently released State Dept. documents show that negotiations broke down because of conflicts with Disney's corporate messaging, ...
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In this month's podcast for patreon subscribers I review Rogue One: A Star Wars Cash-In.  The film is a spy movie/war movie about the rebellion stealing the plans for the Death Star and has a much darker tone and grittier visuals than most Star Wars films.  The problems arise mostly ...
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In less than 10 years Marvel has created the biggest money-making film franchise of all time with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, this probably wouldn't have been possible without the help of the Pentagon. In this episode we examine the rise of the MCU, the Pentagon's involvement, and the fallout ...
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The first two Iron Man movies are far more important to cinematic history than their daft scripts, super-arrogant star performer and cartoonish presentation might suggest.  Between them they made over $1.2 billion worldwide and established the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has since become the biggest film franchise of all time.  ...
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The Department of Energy has a minor but interesting role in the history of Hollywood, providing shooting locations for Tron (1982) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  I am still awaiting documents on Star Trek but the DoE have provided me with another of ...
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Tron is a classic piece of transhumanist cinema and the first of a string of films where someone is sucked into a digital realm and has to battle it out with computer programs in order to save the day (the Matrix trilogy being the most popular examples).  It was also ...
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James Evan Pilato is our latest guest as we dissect the 2009 Disney UFO adventure Race to Witch Mountain.  We start off looking at Disney as a corporation - its long standing interest in UFOs and extraterrestrials, the connections to government agencies and their recent takeover of the fantasy genre.  ...
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