Weekly Entertainment Recap: Week of March 27th, 2023

The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 4 (Disney+): It is pretty cool that Ahmed Best got the chance to play a pivotal role in the episode considering how poorly he was treated by the fanbase after providing the voice and motion capture performance for Jar-Jar Binks in the Prequel Trilogy. The addition of his character during Order 66 is a great addition to the lore and expands what happened in the Jedi Temple during the attack. That said, hopefully, this leads to an Arrow-esque continued backstory over the back half of this season because if this is all that’s going to be explained, it does not do a ton to tell us more than we already knew. Grogu was in the Jedi Temple and escaped and the semantics of how he escaped is not quite as important as what was going on with him between the end of Revenge of the Sith and five years after Return of the Jedi ends when Din Djarin rescues him.

The Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 14 (Disney+): When one takes into consideration the release schedule of The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch, it is interesting that this episode about the reprogramming of Crosshair comes the week after the reintroduction of the Mind Flayer (by the Republic) last week on The Mandalorian. At the same time, this episode is mostly just laying the foundation for what is going to happen in the finale that’s airing this week in two parts by setting up what mission the team will be going on, namely to see what Crosshair’s message was about.

Gotham Knights Season 1 Episode 2 (CW/CW App): The show is slow moving which ordinarily would be fine, however, the problem sets in when the pacing mixes with a story that doesn’t properly support the slow pace. The incremental reveals that more and more people are in league with the Court of Owls is not helpful for the story because the viewer should understand the scope of the Court of Owls by this point. The show should function closer to Andor (specifically the Mon Mothma and Luthen storylines) where they just understand that no one is to be trusted and the viewer should understand the constant risk any time they interact with anyone outside the circle. Unfortunately, this story is missing that key aspect.

This Week In Theaters:

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: The bigger release this week is the Dungeons and Dragons movie which stars Chris Pine, Justice Smith, Michelle Rodriguez, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant as an adventuring party that seeks to reunite a father and his daughter. For a full review, click here.

Spinning Gold: Spinning Gold tells the story of the rise of Casablanca Records, the record label that produced artists like Donna Summer, Gladys Knight, The Village People, and KISS. The all-star cast features Peyton List, Jason Derulo, Casey Likes, Jeremy Jordan, Jay Pharoah, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dan Fogler, and Jason Isaacs.

Last Week At The Box Office:

John Wick Chapter 4: $73.8 Million

Creed III: $10.4 Million

Shazam! Fury of the Gods: $9.3 Million

Scream VI: $8.3 Million

65: $3.2 Million

Programming Notes:

There are a number of new release dates given over the course of the last week. The second half of the fourth season of Titans comes out on Thursday, April 13th, volume two of Star Wars: Visions comes out on May 4th, the next Marvel show (possibly) has a release date of June 21st, 2023 (the qualifier only exists because there was a mistake within the Disney+ app to show the date and has since been corrected back to “Coming Soon”), Killers of the Flower Moon (the next Scorsese/DiCaprio collaboration) will be opening limited in theaters on October 6th before having a wider release on October 21st which also likely indicates a presence at the New York Film Festival around the same time, and Love & Death will be premiering on HBOMax on April 27th.