Weekly Entertainment Recap: Week of July 24th, 2023

iCarly Season 3 Episode 9 (Paramount+): This feels like a return to form for the show, but it still does not quite feel like the characters are authentic humans. Having Carly neurotically try to create a perfect situation to break the news to Gwen that Freddie and her are in a relationship is in character, however every other character playing into this nonsense is where the problem comes in because the original introduction of Gwen is a misunderstanding where Carly is hiding her friendship with Gwen behind Freddie’s back and Freddie is hiding his friendship with Gwen to Carly so if everyone is friends and everyone likes each other, what’s the point of all this? On top of this, the threat to take Millicent away makes zero sense from a pure logical sense because it is nowhere near in the best interest of her for her to go and live away from her friends and the rest of her family, especially when the worst of the “disfunction” is people arguing about a wedding.

Invincible: Presenting Atom Eve (Amazon Prime): In advance of the release of season two at the end of the year (and to tie into this announcement at San Diego Comic Con), Amazon Prime released a special episode about the origin of Atom Eve this weekend. The episode is pretty good and does a solid job of explaining who she is as a character, it just appears that the parents are not well characterized. Considering that they were told their daughter died during childbirth and then miraculously came back to life (not what actually happened), they’re pretty hard on her for being a little different and liking science a little too much at a young age. Maybe portraying the father as wanting the child and being somewhat relieved when she dies would explain that a little better but he just has an irrational borderline hatred for this child that is not really explained. Besides that, the episode really works to add context for who she is going into season two.

Secret Invasion Episode 5 (Disney+): The majority of the Disney+ Marvel shows have the same issue when it reaches the penultimate episode. They are almost entirely set up for the finale where they go out of their way to explain a lot of key information and set all the pieces in play so they can inevitably fight in the final episode. In fairness, a lot of these shows were originally movies that got turned into shows so the narrative structure of a movie is mostly intact but this makes the penultimate episode of these shows a little lackluster. The show is also not leaving a ton of room for its promise to upend the MCU because (and this is another issue with these shows) the average show will have less viewers than the movies and they have to tie to the movies without feeling like required reading, thereby eliminating a lot of the major changes that could possibly happen.

My Adventures With Superman Season 1 Episode 4 (Max/Adult Swim): With two episodes left, it makes sense that Lois has figured out that Clark is Superman at this point and the development of Superman’s powerset in this episode being that he’s learning how to strategize is an important part of who he is. His conversation with Ivo at the end of the episode is poignant as well, especially when it comes to defining this iteration of Superman, especially when juxtaposed with the Superman of the movies of the last decade.

They Cloned Tyrone (Netflix): John Boyega really gets a chance to showcase his acting ability alongside Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Paris in this engaging science fiction/mystery/comedy film. The movie is a ton of fun while still maintaining its social satire and emotional moments. The twist at the end is something that viewers will probably never see coming and Kiefer Sutherland brings a lot of charisma to his villainous role. The only issue is that the movie was not released in theaters when it definitely should have been and Netflix does this weird thing in all its original movies where it is trying to build a franchise so there is a lot of sequel-baiting and setup that may or may not actually go anywhere.

This Week In Theaters:

The Haunted Mansion: A little history lesson is needed to explain part of the reason why Disney has been making movies based on their rides in recent years. Back when Disneyland was created, Walt Disney Pictures would charge the Parks side of things a licensing fee to use their characters for rides and attractions. In an effort to save money, this resulted in a lot of older rides being generic versions of family friendly attractions that were based on things that were popular at the time. For example, Jungle Cruise is loosely based on The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. That said, as the popularity of these rides increased in America and Disney started to expand its footprint abroad with parks in Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, simply porting these rides is a difficult task because international audiences do not have the attachment to these rides because the underlying IP is not based in something the average person would know unless they traveled to California or Florida. This leaves the parks in the situation where they either try to turn the underlying IP into an international powerhouse with a major motion picture or rebrand them with another IP to try to capitalize on things that are popular there, like how Space Mountain in Disneyland Paris is rebranded to be Star Wars themed.

All of that said, much like Jungle Cruise from a few years back, The Haunted Mansion is an attempt to bring the long-running ride to audiences in an effort to sell more tickets to the parks. The cast is massive with appearances from Tiffany Haddish, Danny DeVito, LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Jared Leto, and Rosario Dawson.

Last Week At The Box Office:

Barbie: $162.0 Million

Oppenheimer: $82.4 Million

Sound of Freedom: $20.1 Million

Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part 1: $19.5 Million

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: $6.7 Million