Weekly Entertainment Recap: Week of February 6th, 2023

The Last of Us Episode 4 (HBOMax): This episode does a lot of the narrative groundwork to move Joel and Ellie’s relationship to where it needs to be for the show to move through the plot beats it needs to over the course of the next five episodes. The evolution of Joel’s responses to Ellie’s jokes is a perfect narrative throughline to show their relationship as it develops and the scene where Ellie saves Joel goes a long way towards showing Ellie’s competency as an entity that needs to defend herself out in the wastelands.

The Bad Batch Episode 6 (Disney+): This episode feels like it doesn’t play with continuity the way that it should, specifically the way that it treats the returning character from The Clone Wars. The audience knows what happens to the Wookies and Kashyyyk under the Empire, not just through extended universe materials but also through Solo: A Star Wars Story. The Wookies end up enslaved as the planet falls to the Empire so to devote an entire episode to the team reuniting Gungi with the planet is a strange decision considering there is no positive ending for this character because he either dies or he ends up enslaved. The parallels to Pandora are a little strange and (this could be me misremembering the wider EU) unprecedented within the history of Kashyyyk.

National Treasure: Edge of History Episode 9 (Disney+): Anyone who is shocked by Billie’s turn to being the real villain has probably never watched a television show or movie before because it is so predictable considering that Billie’s motivations for wanting the treasure in the first place are never actually said to anyone that it makes no sense that this reveal was held this long. Also, the ability to track an airplane through antennas is so laughably ridiculous that it is the point where this show breaks the ability to suspend disbelief.

This Week In Theaters:

Magic Mike’s Last Dance: Channing Tatum returns as the titular Magic Mike as he steps into the next phase of his career. After a business deal goes poorly and Mike is left tending a bar in Miami. He meets up with a socialite (Salma Hayek) who offers him one last chance to perform one last time on the stage in London.

Titanic: Just in time for the 25th anniversary, Valentine’s Day, and Avatar: The Way of Water to unseat it for the number three slot at the all-time box office, Titanic hits theaters yet again with a wide release. The movie is remastered in 4K with premium sound enhancements and 3D screenings.

Last Week At The Box Office:

Knock at the Cabin: $14.2 Million

80 For Brady: $12.5 Million

Avatar: The Way of Water: $10.8 Million

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish: $8.0 Million

BTS: Yet To Come In Cinemas: $6.3 Million

Programming Notes:

This week The Last of Us will be debuting episode five on Friday instead of Sunday, probably due to the Super Bowl on Sunday and HBO not wanting to counter-program what is the largest televised event of the year. Outside of that, HBOMax will be debuting Harley Quinn: A Very Problematic Valentine’s Day Special on Thursday, February 9th. Wednesday, February 8th on CW11 is the beginning of the ninth and final season of The Flash. While it will be available during the standard primetime broadcast on Wednesday, it will be available to stream the next day on CW Seed.

In other news, this past week James Gunn stuck to his promise and released the initial plan for DC films going forward following the shakeups at DC Studios. The old DCEU continuity that has existed since Man of Steel in 2013 is dead and will be replaced with a new continuity starting in late 2024/2025. This continuity will feature a nice slate of upcoming releases including The Brave and the Bold (a Batman movie about Batman and his relationship with his son Damien Wayne), Superman: Legacy (a Superman movie based on the iconic All-Star Superman run), The Authority (an unconventional team of superheroes with a very black-and-white morality out of the Wildstorm imprint created by the great Warren Ellis), Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (a comic from Tom King about Supergirl that gives the character her own identity as a more jaded version of Superman considering her age at the time of Krypton’s destruction), and Swamp Thing. On the television side, Waller (a series about Amanda Waller), Creature Commandos (a team of monsters from the DC Universe that Amanda Waller unites to solve problems), Lanterns (a grounded True Detective-style show starring John Stewart and Hal Jordan’s Green Lanterns), and Booster Gold (the story of a time-traveler from the 25th century who comes back in time to fight crime and be the hero he couldn’t in his own time) were announced to be HBO or HBOMax originals.

These plans do not interfere with other DC projects in development including 2024’s Joker: Folie A Deux with Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn joining Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, 2025’s The Batman: Part II with Robert Pattinson reprising his role, 2024’s The Penguin with Colin Farrell reprising his role from The Batman, all four of this year’s DC projects (Shazam!: Fury of the Gods, The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom), anything previously announced to be coming to direct-to-video animation including Legion of Super-Heroes, Teen Titans Go! on Cartoon Network, a possible continuation of the CW's Superman and Lois, HBOMax’s Harley Quinn or Netflix’s The Sandman. That said, the status of movies like Black Canary, Zatanna, Nightwing, Static Shock, Plastic Man, and Gotham City Sirens were not addressed so it is unknown when they will be coming, if ever.

An interesting point about this new overall plan for DC is that it intends to take everything put out by DC and keep it within the same continuity, including video games. This could be cumbersome in the future, not just for the games needing to keep continuity within themselves and within other games in the same medium, but games take substantially longer to develop at the AAA level than movies and shows do. This could lead to discontinuities or issues with developers not properly communicating with each other regarding what’s happening. Ordinarily, this would be fine but just ask Disney how things go when a studio takes an “everything is equally canon” approach for expanded media and then things don’t line up the way they were advertised.

Finally, video game fans in general should note how odd the release schedule is for Hogwarts Legacy which selectively hits shelves this week. If one preorders the deluxe edition, it will be available to be played on Tuesday the 7th of February. If they preorder the standard edition, or opt to wait for the release date, it will be available on the 10th of February. Now the important thing to note is that these two dates are only applicable to the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and PC (via Epic Games and Steam) versions of the game. If a player has not gotten their hands on a next-gen console yet (or their PC can’t handle the game), they will have to wait until April 4th for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One iteration of the game. If they are looking for an edition on the Nintendo Switch, the wait is even longer and that will not be available until July 25th. It is also worth noting that the Switch edition will require cloud gaming which means a constant and strong internet connection will be required to play the game.