Episode 128: Star Wars Is Screwed

Has it come to this? The 80s Kids have never done a Star Wars show before, and now they are doing one it's one about this... and things were looking so good a couple of years back. Round about the time of Rogue One the future of the galaxy far, far away (or the past as it was, a long time ago) looked rosy, the new owners of Lucasfilm were feeling their way into their new acquisition and appeared to be making many of the right noises.

A couple of movies later and it's all gone to pot, however. How could it all have gone so wrong? And is there anything to be done to fix matters?

The 80s Kids pull on their blancmange resistant shoes and wade into the mire of poor decision making and awkward problem-solving that has resulted in Star Wars being a thing that Star Wars fans are feeling it hard to care about any more. Oh, the misery! Oh, the sadness! Internet message boards are still full of posts that say: "Discovery doesn't feel like Star Trek but I'm watching it anyway" but equally are they full of "Star Wars still exists but I am finding it hard to give a crap". When we recorded Star Trek is Screwed little did we know that it's flashier cinematic rival would soon be in worse shape.

Let's send 80s Kids Season 3 into its slumber until Christmas with a consideration of how the whole business just appears to have gone, well, totally Jar Jar.

This episode uses Excerpts of John Bartmann's My Time Done Come, available on Bandcamp and used under a Creative Commons License

Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/305StarWarsIsScrewed/3-05-Star-Wars-is-Screwed.mp3

Episode 124: Summer Review 2018

So the time of reckoning has come once more unto the kids from the 80s. It was a summer of blockbuster box office but also some bluster and blocked profits for titles that surely should have been bankable even though they were... erm... going solo. We ruminate for the mandatory amount of time about Sci Fi shenanigans, underwhelming dinos, overwhelming Star Wars ennui and purple dudes with universe-altering bling. But we are the 80s kids, and we are disciplined so on we trot in good time.

Horror movies, kids movies, comedies, how did they fare in the summer of 2018, well, a hell of a lot better than your straight action thriller, that's for certain. As we ruin the Quiet Place with our noise and moan about the annoying rabbit we have to wonder, will Joe Carnahan ever get a break?

In the comedies it would appear to be all about those Crazy, Rich Asians, leading to a question about whether things are as questionable as we first thought if they're making bank at the box office. One thing's for certain the summer of 2018 had its ups and its downs but Action Point still didn't make any money.

This episode uses Excerpts of John Bartmann's My Time Done Come, available on Bandcamp and used under a Creative Commons License

Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/301SummerRoundUp2018/3-01-Summer-Round-Up-2018.mp3

Episode 120: We Are The 80s Kids... - Summer Predictions 2018

As we may, possibly, have remarked, we are the 80s Kids, and as we further may have mentioned, we predict the future. We only mention the former because no one knows who we are. We only mention the latter because, like latter-day Cassandras, no-one listens to our prophecies, so the only ones wigged out when they come to pass is us.

It should be pointed out, to be fair, that we're a bit like those Cylons wired up in bathtubs from new BSG, parsing out our spooky visions of the future is rendered impossible because of the surrounding word salad, most of the time. This is our annual attempt to actually focus on the predictions at hand, a breakdown of what we consider to be the likely winners and losers in Summer 2018.

It's no surprise that Superheroes are back at the cinema this summer, enough of them to get their own category, but what's the point of speculating on those, really? SF and Fantasy, on the other hand, asks us to nominate Solo or more Jurassic World, among a smorgasbord of other delights. In the world of action, it looks like it's all about Skyscraper and MI: Fallout. Then it gets tricky, can one really pick apart a slate of comedies including Game Night, Life of the Party and Super Troopers 2? Family movies wave the big shinies of Incredibles 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3 in our direction, but all of this may lead one to wonder WTF happened to a variety of entertainment, sure Avengers, Solo, Rampage and the Stath punching a Megalodon are all amusing, but where are the zingers and shouldn't there be a minion in here somewhere?

Summer predictions, either they seem easy or they quite blatantly tell you they're impossible to pick. Let's see how the 80s Kids get on with this mess, shall we?

Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/203WeAreThe80sKids2018SummerPredictions/2-03-We-Are-The-80s-Kids-2018-Summer-Predictions.mp3