Pedro Pascal Archives - GeeksHaveGame

January 16, 2023January 16, 2023

THE LAST OF US [TV Show Review] – On The Yellow Brick Road.

HBO’s highly anticipated adaptation of Naughty Dog and Sony’s groundbreaking video game The Last of Us is finally here. The video game was lauded as GOAT since its release in 2013 earning unanimous praise and getting two remasters and, a not so beloved, sequel. With fans hyped since the casting of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, as Joel and Ellie, everyone’s been wondering how true it will stick to the source material.

We’re introduced to the world of The Last of Us through the eyes of Sarah (Nico Parker) Joel’s daughter that has a compassionate quality to her. What starts as an idyllic day unravels into chaos and madness as we see the fungal virus take a stranglehold of the citizens of Austin, Texas. Joel and his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) arrive in time to stave off an attack from Nana, the elderly infirmed neighbor, leading to a harrowing escape as our protagonists are engulfed in pandemonium. Just as the audience is endeared to Sarah the rug is pulled from under us as she and Joel are heinously gunned down by an overzealous soldier and she passes away in his arms.

This is only the first thirty minutes y’all.

Fast forward twenty years later and Joel is a broken man with no real purpose except as just another cog in the Boston quarantine zone doing menial jobs. As survivors are burning bodies of the dead one of the workers sees the body of a child and hesitates, fumbling over her words and stammering she taps Joel for help. Without hesitation Joel hefts the body and tosses it into the pyre.

The quarantine zone looks like it is lifted from Alfonso Cuaron’s classic Children of Men; it’s unforgiving, drab, dangerous and grimy where the citizens have nowhere else to turn to and are trying to eke out an existence. Here we meet Tess (Anna Torv) Joel’s partner and romantic interest as they unknowingly become intertwined into the Fireflies latest mission, transporting valuable cargo out of the QZ: Ellie. Who, when we meet her, is a fiery and robust ball of energy, a complete 180 of Sarah and someone Joel wants absolutely nothing to do with.

Pascal’s rendition of Joel deserves high praise as you see two different sides of the persona, going from a family man to a shell that’s been grinded down to nub by the world at large. Same with Ramsey. Her Ellie is someone who was born to an uncompassionate and cruel world where she had to mature quickly and who’s defenses are always up. In a way these two characters belong with each other, both sides of the same coin. In the coming weeks it will be a pleasure to see their relationship grow and evolve.

Fans of the video game series will recognize the major story beats matching up the thrilling exodus from Austin almost shot-for-shot. So far, we’ve only seen the infected on-screen with snippets of the full blown Cordyceps but make no mistake these mutants are grim, kind of like the running zombies from Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later but more ferocious and aggressive.

The Last of Us is not so much a story about the cruelty of man and Cordycep created mutants, but more so a tale of survival and finding the eroded humanity that’s calloused over. Joel and Ellie will encounter wondrous and terrifying things on their journey that will irrevocably change them. Prestige television does not get any better than this.

Episode 1 = 5/5 Fireflies

-Lauro Rojas

December 25, 2020December 26, 2020

WONDER WOMAN 1984 [Review]: Wish Upon A Star.

Premiering Christmas Day, director Patty Jenkins‘ follow-up to her blockbuster, classic hit Wonder Woman might not be the slam-dunk sequel on par with its predecessor, but given the state of blockbuster cinema, and inspiring stories, it has its heart in the right place, even if it has feet of lead…

Set (obviously) in the year 1984, this pastel-hued film follows Gal Gadot‘s superheroine Diana Prince, who has been crisscrossing the globe for the past seventy-odd years, searching for one of her own Amazons who had disappeared some decades prior. She has settled down in Washington DC, working at the Smithsonian Institute, and trying to reconnect with humanity in general. While the film opens with a jewelery store raid at an ever-so-80’s shopping mall that she thwarts, she continues to hide her existence from the world.

As this goes on, we are introduced to Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a smarmy, oily con-man looking for his big break into the world of oil speculation, where he hopes to not only peddle influence, but to be something resembling a success to his young son, Alistair. And finally, we are introduced to the mousy, awkward Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), a gemologist/cryptozoologist/archeologist who soon grows to admire…and then resent…Diana.

This is a silly film. Compared to its predecessor, it is lighter, brighter, and more broad in scope and ambition, but in aiming for more, it loses some of the focus and determination that made the first film such a rousing success.

There are some great moments, mind you: the opening sequence at Themiscyra, for one, really really strove for scale, and given the aspect ration on the TV, was screaming for an IMAX screen; a mid-movie sequence involving a military convoy was exciting and innovative, if not more than just a bit goofy with its physics; Diana figuring out of to fly seemed like one of those moments that seem lost in modern superhero films where the characters actually enjoy their marvelous abilities (it also harkened back to a similar scene in Man Of Steel where Superman also figures out how to fly…that scene, surprise surprise, is also my favorite of the whole movie); and finally, seeing Maxwell Lord’s difficult journey growing up actually leant a bit of depth and pathos from what could otherwise have been a stock character.

You might notice the lack of mention of Chris Pine. There’s something so…awkward…about his reintroduction here; my fiancée had the exact same questions the characters themselves had within the movie about how he returned, but the answers were less than satisfying. It’s a shame, because he adds a much-needed bounce to the movie with his fascination with 80’s culture, and Pop-Tarts. Even the anachronistic elements with the character (how would he know what a jet is?) can be forgiven since he and Gadot have actual chemistry– something Wiig and Gadot, sadly, do not. At no point did I believe those two women would actually go out for a meal together.

That said, Wiig fares a bit better than I had anticipated as one of the villains, although she seemed to be playing big with the awkwardness of her character; it also seemed a shame that some of her one-liners fell flat in her early scenes, but I was surprised that she actually sold some of her more physical scenes.

Lord’s plan seemed to have no true end point, which seems to be apt for the setting, the era of excess and gaudiness, but as a result there was no real sense of what the stakes were until the third act, when it turned out the stakes were everything. But Pascal does well here: he can play a likeable(ish) asshole well, while still maintaining a sense of constant desperation to not be a “loser”, as well as play a father desperate to be seen as a success to his son, although his son did seem to have only one expression: one of empty detachment.

What this movie does right, though, is set aside the cartoony climactic fight that weighed down the first film, and actually have the villain and hero actually talk their way down. At a time of hyper-polarization, and self-centeredness, this is a film saying sometimes you have to give up what you want right now so you can have a better future, and help make a better future for everyone else. At first the opening flashback seemed out of place, but seen through a longer lens, it shows that knowing what truth is is much more than being Right.

Winning and succeeding aren’t always the same things, and sometimes giving up on what you want most is the best decision you can make because it is the right one to make. Sure, we want our superheroes running around, slapping the bad guys and making the day right, but sometimes making the day right means giving something up. And that’s fine, because ultimately we all succeed. By giving in to base desires, as Lord grants in the film, the world becomes an unlivable mess.

Hans Zimmer‘s score, as is to be expected, is rousing in the right moments: the use of the Wonder Woman theme is sparse, though, which elevates those moments when it does appear; and thankfully he reworks it so it isn’t as blaring as it has been in its past appearances. The cinematography seems better suited for the small screen, however; cinematographer Matthew Jensen couldn’t seem to quite grasp the scope and epic scale that he’d captured in the first film (there was something definitively small about the jewelry store raid) that made it feel a bit like a Netflix movie. And there was something so off about the physics of this movie that kept pulling me out (to say nothing of several coincidences and plot conveniences that were waved away by a line or two).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKUxMjPunUc

This is a fun movie, almost stupidly silly, and, if Jenkins’ assertion that the series be treated more like the James Bond franchise, not necessarily linked by continuity, is to be followed, this film is more akin to “Diamonds Are Forever” or “A View To A Kill”: disposable, but not franchise ending. It does not have the cultural or story impact of its predecessor, nor does it have any Big Moment akin to the No Man’s Land sequence. But it has a message that perhaps needs to be heeded more, and it is actually refreshing to see another DC Comics movie actually embrace its goofiness.

This movie has heart, but not logic, and it suffers a bit for that, but there have been worse adaptations, and for a family-friendly superhero film, you could do much worse. 3.25/5 Asteria Golden Armors.

–J.L. Caraballo

October 30, 2020October 30, 2020

STAR WARS – THE MANDALORIAN [Season 2 Premiere Review]: Yak Face.

I figured it would be fun to write this review of The Mandalorian‘s Season 2 Premiere from a collector point-of-view. Because — why not? — I’m always in A Toy Kinda Mood. Chapter 9 instantly tracks everybody’s current favorite Star Wars characters, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and The Child (um, Baby Yoda) through a dark passage, complete with bright red druid eyes and properly timed Halloween vibes. Gamorrean Guards take over the squared-circle at NXT this week, and they’re seemingly more ripped and Crossfit-trained the one’s we last saw guarding Jabba’s Palace, who would eat craft service pastries whenever George called cut. An official Star Wars wrestling ring would be something, but that Gamorrean Swanton Dive though…

The Season 2 premiere definitely focuses in on a lot more of Djarin’s gadgets and abilities. In the first scene alone, Mando shows off his remote darts, with the assumption that these were more lethal than the weapon’s previous strength of paralysis. And if you like electronic gauntlets that come equipped with numerous sheath-blades, bruh’s got you covered. Bye-bye, gangster grunts of Gor Karesh (John Leguizamo). That grappling hook sure came in handy, too (grrrrrrr).

Mando def saves his coolest trick for last, which required being swallowed whole by a carnivorous reptile before an intense phase-pulse blast courtesy of his trusty Amban rifle, thus jet-packing away from the literal jaws of defeat. It’s so great that the show closes with two suns, and the father of Boba (Jango Fett) turned son of Jango (Temuera Morrison) stalking from the shadows…

So a helmet-less Boba Fett action figure will be both Timothy Olyphant and Morrison? Sounds like an SDCC@Home II Hasbro Pulse Exclusive Star Wars Black Series Deluxe thing-a-ma-jig to me. Now, I take you back to the last time we caught Djarin “talkin’ scrap” with Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris), the wise-cracking shipyard repair mechanic, which was just last week. I noted with the “Meme” clip how I’d never pay “500 credits” for the HasLab TVC Razor Crest…

Well, $383 dollars and an instant panic to find room for a 3-foot long plastic vehicle later, the Meme goes the other way, but who could blame me after seeing that downright jaw-dropping paint job and all the extra unlockable goals (Flight stand! Exclusive.. Jawa! OK, still no LED’s??). Oh, hi R5-D4! Thanks to your appearance, your fellow R5 droid-in-arms probably won’t be a Galaxy’s Edge pegwarmer any longer.

Speaking of purchases, how many of you would grab a diorama of that perfect Tatooine lay-out we see as Mando rides his chill speeder into town? Fam, those townsfolk were none too pleased to see Mr. Djarin. Shame on them– I love how he just cruises on in, ever so nonchalantly. Why Mando gotta be so cool…

This is also the section of the show where we see the intense Western influence. Mando is a man about the space town, a Clint Eastwood with shiny armor, and we even get the piping flute notifications when the Marshal, Star Wars: Aftermath novel’s Cobb Vanth (Olyphant), shows up at dawn, and nearly has a “Justified” showdown with our boy until the sand dragon searches for some Bantha-spiced supper. But tell me Timothy doesn’t appear like a cross between a “Good” Walking Dead Negan and your favorite Comic-Con Boba Fett Cosplayer?

Vanth’s presence takes a few minutes to get used to, especially when you realize that he’s not the Holiday Trooper! But as the two cowboys gallop through the CG sands of Manhattan Beach Studios, we get a pretty awesome — and a very much-needed — origin tale of how Vanth became Holiday Boba Fett, met a few druids via the Sandcrawler (from A New Hope), and found a deal on his shiny new Sarlacc-survived duds. Now that we love Vanth, we love him even more when he refuses some boiling pisswater from a handful of Tusken Raiders. Yeah, good luck finding those in stock now.

It’s also apparent that The Mandalorian loves its campfires, as yours truly Moody briefly played a Klatooinian Raider meddling around one in Season 1. If you find that now discontinued Best Buy exclusive AT-ST, get one, because it’s gonna be worth meeeeeeeellions someday when Dave Filoni (Okay, Central Casting) ever decides to give me a better role. You can thank me later.

Now we enter slight Game of Thrones territory. In a scene slightly reminiscent of “Beyond The Wall” (Season 7, Episode 6), Vanth and Djarin spend the day gathering unlikely heroes, uniting sparring factions, gathering supplies and artillery, and planning full tactical on.. a Krayt Dragon. Welp, there’s our next HasLab, complete with LED acid-vomit effects since the Razor Crest sadly doesn’t look to have any lights and sounds. Oh, and speaking of LED’s, hurry and grab a Black Series Boba Fett Helmet if you still can, because, hell, Vanth got himself one and, you know, scalpers.

The cinematic quality of the episode, highlighted by scenes that take place entirely in Star Wars’ Outer Rim, is top-notch. Jon Favreau delivers his keen film directing sensibilities to the forefront: sweeping camera pans, lots of high-angled, shift-focus crane action, and the signature still frames of George Lucas (we even see the classic “swallowing” effect of the frame during a scene shift!). The Krayt monster itself looks menacing, and you wouldn’t know exactly how fracking lengthy broheem is until Cobb ‘n Din hilariously discuss “scale” with their own lil’ sand diorama, complete with mini-bone dragon and Sand People-represented pebbles. I wonder if this will wind up a Target exclusive?

Chapter 9 = 4.75/5 Mando Mondays.

-Travis Moody

You can catch Baby Yoda in all its The Mandalorian Season 2 glory on Disney+ right now.

November 12, 2019

THE MANDALORIAN [Series Premiere Review]: I Have A Good Feeling About This.

At long last, here we are: D Plus Day. My head was spinning with all the content I could watch. Throwbacks from my youth, favorite blockbusters of today… but who was I kidding? There was only one title that truly drew my eye. One D+ original that has shown so much promise and intrigue, I had to watch it as soon as I could. The Mandalorian, at the very least, does not disappoint…

Star Wars is a touchy subject for many these days. Many of my generation have been let down time and time again, whether it was the prequels in our mid teens, or the sequels now in our mid 30’s, Star Wars fans have become disillusioned at many turns, and some have written off the franchise altogether.

This particular reviewer, however, has approached most SW related content with hopeful optimism, giving way to general apathy as time goes on. The Mandalorian seemed different. There was something visceral and, well “Star Wars” about it. It’s new and yet somehow familiar, as a place I knew once in a memory or a dream but am now seeing in living color.

The first episode opens with our main character barren, cold planet– doing what he does, and that’s being the best damn Bounty Hunter in the guild. I’m fully refraining from spoilers; this show deserves it. Throughout the first episode, the writers — led here, by Iron Man and live action Jungle Book/Lion King director Jon Favreau — do such a great job of “show, don’t tell” that the new battalion must be commended.

We see Pedro Pascal’s Mandalorian and his skills, his morals, his outlook, if not his command of dialogue. He is very much a man of few words, and I LOVE THAT. He has no need for soliloquy, for expository dialogue; he just executes. His methods, his tactics, his approach is cool, methodical, cunning, and not without a fair helping of daring as well.

There’s a few subtle nuances that I want to give a call out to before I wrap this up… I applaud how well this show embraces what it doesn’t have to be. Much of the maligned main Star Wars movies have the issue of over-blowing everything. There’s so much unnecessary nonsense going around at all times that it’s distracting. One tiny detail I have to mention is that when our hero is scouting an encampment, he pulls out this very simple looking tube, might as well have been a heavy gauge straw that you’d get from 7-11, but it was his scouting scope. It didn’t have to be some giant technological terror constructed to sell toys. It’s very much stripped down, and showcases the less-is-more mentality that I pray this show continues throughout the series.

The Mandalorian’s a spaghetti western in space. It’s full of intrigue and just the right amount of world building that has me hooked and waiting on the edge of my recliner for the next episode (it’s actually week to week, not bingable). I loved it. It was Star Wars again. It was exactly what I wanted. 5/5 Beskar Bibles.

-Dan Witt