feyipuk

Reboots and restarts of long running franchises are just like kids playing in the garden. Why be constrained by lore and all the long running baggage, when you can have whizzy graphics, fight scenes, characters and peril created for plot purpose and all wrapped up with poor acting. Kids may be having fun, but it's a hot mess to those watching!

They have South African Sven Ruygrok with a terrible Irish accent, yet didn't throw in a few of Miles O'Briens "Jaysus" to really bring it home.

And that tie in is a big disappointment here. Section 31 in DS9 was a shadowy organisation who manipulated the Federations finest to bring about the destruction of "gods" (well, The Founders) through subterfuge. The only connection this motley assortment have to Mission Impossible is they probably all came from the disavowed list. Compared to Sloane and his associates, this lot spend large parts of the films arguing with each other.

If they'd made this a part of Discovery, with Michelle Yeoh as Georgiu on a redemption arc with flashbacks, it could have fitted into a bigger story. Sadly, I feel like they will make a sequel instead.

After the first three episodes, I was enjoying the storyline and the possible out comes it was creating; the Witches of Dathomir have had minor parts in previous Star Wars outings, so involving witches in with a parent trap style twins story line and some Jedi controversy, meant there was space for plenty of lightsabre battles, beautiful space and planet shots, with interesting droids and aliens.

For me, it just fizzled out with the addition of The Good Places Manny Jacintos masked Stranger (thanks for that spoiler IMDB); the devil on the shoulder, in a story already groaning with plenty of them. I was really hoping Margarita Levieva was the masked master, as she gets more of a storyline buildup to being put in that position, as the protective Mother Koril, the second in command of the coven and Aunty to the girls, who seems to know more about where they came from and what their potential place in the universe is. The more the story went, the more we find out about her.

Instead, we have a guy who says "I want a pupil, an Acolyte", like he wants a puppy to teach tricks. There's even an article on here they shot a more sensual ending with him. I get the story is called the Acolyte, so it's likely evil wins. But here it's more that good is just really confused; we're on an important mission, got side tracked and then just forget the original mission. Did they write the story and then someone say "can it be stretched out to cover more bases?"

This disjointed story flow and the usual cliche of not communicating basic information that brought it down for me.

Lee Jung-jae is great as the emotionally conflicted Master Sol, surrounded by more Jedis than we've seen on screen in one place for a while. Carrie-Anne Moss might as well have a black trench coat on, as the level headed Master Indara, and I'm sure if there'd been another series, we'd find out more about Yord (Charlie Barnett) and the Strangers relationship. Maybe they worked out together?

The more of the story you see, the less it makes sense, and you could, optimistically, say they could have led somewhere in the next series, but as it's been cancelled, they can't.

Before the film begins, you have the boy in the moon animation for Dreamworks. Shrek, Madagascar, How To Train Your Dragon, The Croods, etc, reminding you of the pedigree this studio has. KFP4 keeps the same animated wonder of the previous films, the thumping sound track (I've had the film version of Crazy Train on my commute soundtrack for weeks) but - possibly due to the strikes in Hollywood - lacked the heart the last films had with it's casting, leaving Po a lot more isolated than integrated.

He's now been the great Dragon Warrior for 16 years, yet they still have him asking why, and rather than developing him, they have him developing others. He can kick butt, he has the staff from KFP3 (as seen in the posters), yet what else has he taken from the other outings ?

The quest - cos there's always a quest - is a telegraphed setup for the final reveal, that gave me Zootopia vibes, not helped by Po's walking partner being a sneaky fox.

The main villain is a sorceress chameleon, capable of great change on the outside, but seemingly not so much on the inside, which never really gets unpacked. Is it all just for show? She can become whomever she wants, sound like them, yet isn't them. The first two films had villain motivation front and centre, this needs more walking to find.

We watched the action in 4DX. The extra meta was fun; you get tossed around in the fight and chase scenes, you get wet in the water scenes and the puffs of air as things fly past, yet compared to Elementals, it lacks the subtly in scenes; at times being a Panda to the face.

One big take away; my kids really want to see Shifus back story. Maybe a break from the Panda could get the world back in line.