All posts by Matt Dykes

Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
Deep Space Nine, Documentaries, Star Trek

What We Left Behind

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A LOOK AT THE NEW DEEP SPACE NINE DOCUMENTARY!

Before I jump into the review of the documentary let me preface this thing with a little note about my interest in the subject. I LOVE Star Trek, and Deep Space Nine is my favorite of the series. I even announced this before asking a question at the Deep Space Nine 25th Anniversary talk at Destination Star Trek in Birmingham. It had rich story arcs and character development that just doesn’t exist in any other iteration of the franchise. Recurring characters have way more character development than any of the series regulars from any of the other Star Trek series. But enough about that – let’s jump into the review. I’m going to try to keep this a spoiler-free review, because there are moments in the documentary that need to be seen for the first time spoiler-free.

I was lucky enough to attend the world premiere of What We Left Behind in Birmingham at the NEC on October 20th 2018. Seeing this documentary in a packed auditorium with an audience that included many of the participants of the documentary was truly an amazing experience. The first opening of the documentary really throws you into some of the amazing restorative work they did for the documentary. As awe inspiring as it was seeing a space battle sequence fully restored in glorious HD, it was also slightly bittersweet because I immediately started thinking about how all the HD footage in the documentary will probably end up being the only HD footage of Deep Space Nine that will be released. Anyway, I digress, that may happen a few times so I apologise in advance.

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Action Films

Yippie Kay Yay: 30 Years of Die Hard

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A look back at the iconic action film and the landscape that it changed.

 

Let’s take a jump back in time, the year is 1988 and a little known actor, whose biggest role to date was in a comedic television series, the most unlikeliest of action heroes, was about to become just that. That actor’s name was Bruce Willis. The name of the film; Die Hard. To truly understand what makes Die Hard such an iconic film you need to think about the landscape of American action movies at the time of its release.

 

The biggest action films of the 1980s were vehicles for either Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone about muscle bound heroes who don’t feel any real pain and gun down swarms of disposable baddies without even blinking. Die Hard changed that because it’s main character wasn’t a body builder, he wasn’t a Special Forces trained badass with unlimited bullets and the ability to be shot, stabbed and blown up and then brush themselves off as if they had just walked through a cloud of dust. John McClane was just a New York cop trying to reconcile with his estranged wife on Christmas Eve. This was not an action hero, this was just an ordinary blue collar guy, someone you could share a drink with at a bar. The list of actors who were offered the role of John McClane is extensive, both Schwarzenegger and Stallone turned down the role, amongst many others, by far the strangest was Frank Sinatra who the studio had a contractual obligation to offer the role to. To think we could have ended up with an action film that had a 72 year old Frank Sinatra in the role.

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