Star Wars The Last Jedi

After what felt like an eternity after our purchasing the tickets in October, I saw the newest Star Wars movie last night. I went in completely excited and left completely happy. I won't go into anything that could be considered spoiler related but do plan to give my thoughts here. Star Wars transcends movies to me, it is something that I love and is very dear to me. It's the exact starting point for all of my interests and has always been something of a friend to me my entire life. I think of it as a family member and hold it in a special place.

The Last Jedi is a excellent movie that follows the warning that Luke gives in the trailer in that this is not going to be what you think. TLJ doesn't bow to fan speculation and outright dares to be what it intended to be. Something that I believe is the source of anger some feel towards the movie. I've noticed this time and time again and notice it again. When fans swear one thing and it end up being something else, they more than often don't handle it well. Myself, I was pleased. Not everything has to be more than it is. Sometimes a character can be who they are without the relation of another to lean on.

TLJ is a story about loss and redemption. It's a story about making mistakes and learning from them. It's a more story based movie that leans on characters learning their place in things. The story carries the characters into their respective individual arcs that's full of twists and as the trailer told us from the beginning, doesn't go as you think it will. That's the hook of the movie and where it's beauty resides.

Visually the movie is striking, with stark colors and mixing the themes of ugliness underneath/hidden beauty. It delivers a mix of warmth and love with dark cold violence. If I have any complaints is that a few bits of cgi looked like they could have been done better. Nothing major, to me anyway. Because once again, as the story tells us, it's what's below the surface that counts.

In all, I love the movie and am 5 million percent happy with what I saw. I love Star Wars and my happiness with a new movie each year cannot be beaten. Thank you Disney for giving me this world where I get this magical experience once a year.

Titans Return Powermaster Optimus Prime

Prime, you gotta get your head on straight.

As I've talked about before, my absolute favorite Transformers toy is the wonderful Powermaster Optimus Prime. Love it. So, last fall when the Titans Return version was announced, you know I was salivating. Instead of pre ordering him, I decided to wait for him to arrive at retail here in my area. I vastly prefer buying a toy in a physical store. Not for any crazy reasons, I just don't get that same joy from waiting for a toy to show up in the mail that I do upon seeing it sitting there on the shelf. Not to mention my recent bad luck with pre orders (though Groove did come in a month early).

I'm still getting likes for this picture on Facebook.

So after buying him Friday morning, I finally got the time to open him up and just live in this toys majesty. Man, I spent a good few hours just looking at him stand on my TV stand. He's freaking awesome.

He could totally kick your ass.

PMOP is a heavy retool/reshell of the Combiner Wars Ultra Magnus mold. He shares the transformation scheme and a few parts. Outside of that, he almost looks like a different engineering job. This isn't really a problem as he can hold his guns better than UM, though the trailer transformation still isn't my favorite thing to do. Probably the worst leftover from UM is the lower legs tend to push against each other, which I can look over, but don't enjoy.

Apex can also fit into the cab, buy hey look at him standing up there like he's Teenwolf

In robot and truck modes, PMOP looks amazing. It's a wonderful update of design I truly love. They incorporated elements of his Apex Armor into his chest, which coincides with his Titanmaster being named Apex, though Apex looks like Hi-Q/Ginrai in robot mode. In head mode, he kinda looks like Orion Pax. That's a super nice touch. The Japanese version is indeed Ginrai and the face of the head looks more traditional. That Titanmaster is allegedly coming out here as a basic Titanmaster toy. I may or may not substitute it for Apex depending on however I feel upon getting it.

His base mode is a base mode. It doesn't look very remotely similar to the original toys base mode, but I can overlook that. The original kinda looked like a playhouse for kids. This one kinda looks like a robot folded up into squares that smaller toys can technically function with, which is 50% of base modes on TF toys that are not city bots. It gets a pass because it can link up with other Titans Return base modes to form a larger city. That and the while PMOP thing gets me all glossy eyed. DON'T YOU TALK BAD ABOUT HIM! I LOVE HIM AND HE LOVES ME.

I kinda feel like I missed a step.

In all I'm very, very, very happy with him. There's a million Optimus Prime toys released a year, but releases of my favorite version of him don't come around very often. When it did happen and also happens to be part of my favorite TF line in a long time, I feel a special kind of high. Sometimes when your a fan of something, you get this special kind of excited for things that can be very hard to describe. That's what releasing a PMOP in TR does for me, but times a 100. Ok, I'm being modest, it's a larger number.

If only I had a tiny Tommy Kennedy to stand on those pegs so Optimus can tell him about the touch.