The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power And Everything Else You Need To Watch This Spring

Mostly shot here in New Zealand, The Rings of Power has been one prolonged controversy after another. First people thought it shouldn’t even exist to begin with. Then people found out about female dwarves not having beards. Then the studio announced they’d leave New Zealand for the filming of season 2, prompting a response from even the original Lord of the Rings cast. Not to mention people got upset by high concentrations of melanin. It’s a beloved series, and I think that if the original films were released in the age of social media, they’d have met an equal amount of blowback for every slight deviation from the source material.

One of the latest furrors comes from the fact that this prequel series, set in the Second Age, will be condensing major events to fit a succinct timeline.
“If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you’re jumping 200 years in time, and then you’re not meeting really big, important canon characters until Season 4,” says showrunner J.D. Payne. “Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things.”

This means major events uber nerds care about are now playing out concurrently, rather than a thousand years apart like they did in the books and appendices.

Will this stop me from enjoying it from coming out? Since I don’t hinge my enjoyment of things on how much they are like other things, no. No it won’t.

Black Adam

People have been turning the cogs on the Black Adam rumour mill for years now. Dwayne Johnson has found himself in the titular role in this new DCU movie and he’s absolutely killing it at being himself.
Black Adam is the antihero to Shazam, so if you wanted to do some homework, go back and watch that movie first. It’s a fun time! Black Adam isn’t a goody good hero, and doesn’t mind booting small time crooks over buildings or punching the wings off Air Force jets.

Other heroes in the mix include pretty much the entirety of the Justice Society, with Pierce Brosnan playing Doctor Fate. Other names include Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi), Sabbac (Marwan Kenzari), and Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell).

The film is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows) and is shaping up to be a solid entry for DC, a brand that has had a shaky reputation at the box office. Following Black Adam’s release by just a month will be the next Shazam movie as well, Shazam! Fury Of The Gods, but no word as of yet whether there will be any crossover at all. Surely this isn’t a coincidence though.

Funnily enough the original Shazam! Script had both Black Adam and Shazam’s origin stories converging. Dwayne Johnson thought it would do a disservice to Black Adam though, so made a couple calls to get him his own movie. I think it was a good move overall letting the two films have their own tone.

Andor Season 1

Andor is a 12 part streaming series prequel to Rogue One which is a prequel to A New Hope. Two prequels deep! That’s gotta be a record. The series follows Cassian Andor as he rises among the dissidents of the empire to become a rebel leader. The tone of the show fits the grimmer style Rogue One brought to the table and is another welcome offering to the fanbase.

Beast

Idris Elba goes on a trip to Africa to reconnect with his two daughters. Like any good story where a dad hangs out with his kids, they are all put in imminent danger by gangs and a blood thirsty lion. It’s a classic man vs the wild flick designed to have you stuffing popcorn in your face and not thinking too hard. Would recommend for dumb fun.