A Christmas Carol 2019 Miniseries Review

British TV fans we are just a few days until December 25th and that means that every TV channel is either full of repeats or full of special episodes from our favourite TV shows. Well in order to kind of buck that trend the BBC together with American Network FX are releasing a new version of A Christmas Carol and while here in the UK the special will be broadcast from December 22nd to the 24th in America it was aired I believe as one full film one full nearly THREE HOUR film and so here is my review of "A Christmas Carol 2019" enjoy.

Now I don't really feel that I need to well you what the plot of this series since the book is so well known and so is the story. I will say tho that I don't really like how they handled this story yes it is dark as hell and more closer in tone to the original book but they add so much un-needed subplots and expand roles that don't need expanding. I honestly feel that the story should have been kept simple and not complicate things with un-needed subplots.

Starring in this miniseries is Guy Pearce as Ebenezer Scrooge , Andy Serkis as Ghost of Christmas Past , Stephen Graham as Jacob Marley , Charlotte Riley as Lottie/Ghost of Christmas Present , Joe Alwyn as Bob Cratchit , Vinette Robinson as Mary Cratchit , Jason Flemyng as Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come , Kayvan Novak as Ali Baba , Lenny Rush as Tiny Tim and Johnny Harris as Franklin Scrooge.

One of the things that this miniseries got praise for was the performance of Guy Pearce as Ebenezer Scrooge and it's not hard to see why since he is so good in this. The rest of cast also really do deliver a solid performance and given who's involved with the miniseries is that really something that is shocking because there are alot of great actors in this miniseries and all of them are truly great solid actors.

For some reason in America this is I believe being aired as one film which to me makes no sense at all since FX could have got more viewers by airing it daily. It also would have made it more watchable since no one likes watching a three hour programme in one sitting and so by doing so they are not only getting rid of any viewers they could have had they are also making whoever watches it struggle because it's three freaking hours long.

This is a co-production between the BBC and American network FX which I believe is now owned by Disney. For some reason tho even the BBC  are co-producing and possibly co-funding it it's the Americans who got to air the miniseries first which to me isn't a good thing because this is an English classic so we should get to air the special first or even at the same time as them not days later it's just baffling to me if i'm being honest and yes this does count as a British thing since it was produced here in the UK and was filmed here and has an English cast.

As anyone will tell you a big part of A Christmas Carol are the three spirits and they are rightfully treated with alot of respect and given alot of screen time in this miniseries. Altho for some reason Christmas Past is given the most screen time appearing in most of the first , all of the second and alot of the third parts I get that Andy Serkis is a big name but the other two are just as important to the story and they should have been given more screen time.

Now I said before that someone get's an expanded role in this miniseries and while I won't spoil who that someone is I do feel that it overall wasn't something that was needed. Giving that someone an expanded role overall adds nothing to the story and they honestly would have been better of keeping the small role for that someone that they've always had increasing their role just pretty much feels like filler which is something I can also say about the first episode which just felt like filler to me it was their for padding and very little else.

Whichever way you look at it this would have been a difficult book to adapt into three hour long episodes since the book it self is I believe very short. Even so it's not impossible but this miniseries while it does stick more to the tone of the book it isn't a faithful adaptation of the book with many scenes and whole characters cut out for no reason and this is really evident in the first episode which like I said feels like filler with very little of what's going on actually playing a part in the overall story.

If they wanted to add things then great do that but have them play a part in the story don't just have them be there because you have time to fill. Heck maybe even during the Christmas Past segment they could have seen what Scrooge's home life was like and see how that effected him as an adult we could have spent time delving into the psychology of the character thus helping understand more why he is the way he is and that would then make it more satisfying when he does change for the better at the end of the story.

Another change that this miniseries made was the fact that they made Scrooge really evil and I know that sounds weird to say but in all the other versions of the story he was always a nasty person but never full on evil. Here tho he's evil fully he mentally abuses a married woman just for kicks and reduces the quality of timber used in a mine that he owns knowing full well it could and in this case does cost the lives of several employees. This is something that just isn't needed because now it's harder to cheer for him when he does start to become good and I have to wonder why did they choose to make him so evil when how he's been presented in the past worked best.

Overall while this miniseries isn't bad it's also not that good either I don't claim to have read the book indeed those statements i've made before are educated cases based of what people have said and what comments i've seen. I do feel tho that even the most die hard fans of this book will either really like this version for being closer to the tone of the book or will really hate for all the things it takes out and so for me this miniseries this VERY long miniseries gets a 7 out of 10 from me.

  

A Breakdown Of Some Of The Effects In Superman 1978 AKA Superman: The Movie

Comic book fans you all know me my all time favourite comic book has always been and will always be the 1978 film Superman. Since i've talked about this film alot I thought that i'd come up with a new idea well it's kind of new since I was inspired to do this post from the Youtube channel Corridor Crew who I highly recommend checking out but they did a version of what i'm doing on the original Star Wars trilogy and since that was to big for me undertake right now i'm looking at a movie with less effects.

Now the film does make use of pretty much effect available at the time of filming a key example of such a scene if the scene where Superman helps a train across some broken tracks. The train footage is from what I what I can tell sped up stock footage but what is interesting is the tracks behind Superman were actually a matte painting so they built some of the tracks and then while filming was going on they would leave a gap in the set so that the paining could take over at the same time the person doing the painting would have to leave a gap for the film set.

During the sequence where Superman has to save Lois from a falling helicopter at the end of the sequence there's at least three effects all going on at the same time. With one half of the building being done using optical effects (don't ask me what that is I don't know) , the top half of the building again being a mette painting and the helicopter itself being a miniature and all three are blended together to make it look they are all in the same shot.

Now let's travel back to Clark's youth because if you recall in the movie there's a scene where he runs faster then a train. Well while the train might have been real (I have no idea if the train was an effect or not) the crew had the challenge of making Clark run faster so what they did is hook the actor up to a moving crane and like you would for some car chases these days they pulled him along and filmed him running.

Now for the shot where Superman saves a crashing Air Force One the wing of the plane was a giant miniature so it was still small but compared to the other effects used in the film it was large and it had to fit Christopher Reeve. This honestly does look like a mette painting because that's the effect that was used alot when Superman was flying so it only makes sense that it was used here and so to here it was a miniature was quite shocking to me.

What is even more shocking is that the Air Force One seen in the film was built to look like the real one and they even had the plans for the real Air Force One as well. So if you really think about it Superman saved the presidents life which is just something for you all to chew on since his actions nearly get the president killed just one film later but it's not that film were talking about it's the first one.

Now this might seem obvious to some and it is in retrospect but it's still an impressive effect and i'm going to talk about it. During the final when a bus gets caught up in the earth quake on the Gold Gate Bridge that entire part bus included is a miniature in fact the only real actors in that whole sequence are the insert shots of the children on the bus and Superman himself even the cars on the bridge were miniatures but less detailed ones.

The other major miniature in the film is the construction of The Fortress Of Solitude which again does seem like an obvious choice but I feel that the effect is so seamless that you don't realise your watching an effect. Speaking of the fortress Marlon Brando was superimposed into any of the scenes he was needed for and was filmed in a black room wearing a black turtle neck since only his face was going to be seen.

The scene with perhaps the most effects in it is the helicopter sequence with pretty much every effect in the film being used in this one sequence. There are matte paintings , live actors optical effects , rare projection , optical effects and wire work all in one sequence. So you have Margot Kidder acting in a set it switches to rare projection when she falls out and then when Clark gets changed into Superman that's an optical effect and to complete the effect of that sequence when he saves her that's a mixture of blue screen and wire work.

So there we go guys that is a breakdown of some of the effects featured in the very first Superman film. Naturally I couldn't cover every single effects scene because there's a lot of effects in every single scene and that would mean i'd be here all day writing the effects and just to get the ones featured in this post I had to to spend about thirty to forty minuets looking at various articles and watching videos on Youtube and so if you want more please don't let me know it takes alot of work for just one of these posts to get down.

My Possible SPOILER Thoughts On Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Holiday Comic Special Issue One

Doctor Who fans it's been a long time since i've made a post talking about the show and even longer since I last made a post about comics. Well now i;m scratching both of those itches by giving you my thoughts on the first issue of The Thirteenth Doctor Holiday Special and why they chose to make this a multi-part story is beyond me since they could have made a longer comic boom but any here we go with my thoughts on the first issue of this special.

The plot seems to be that The Doctor , Ryan , Graham and Yaz have lost their memories and even more odd is the fact that there's record of where they went stored in the TARDIS and so the whole crew have to figure out why there memories were wiped in the first place and for what reason. I'm not going to lie I thought that this was a one off special but nope it's going to last at least two issues and so I can't really get into to much detail about the plot but I do like where the story seems to be heading thus far.

The special is being drawn by Roberta Ingranata who hasn't really worked on anything having only drawn for two other comic books outside of this book. From what I can tell her art is pretty good all of the characters look like their live action counterparts which is always a good sign and there are times where the art work looks down right stunning heck all you have to do is look at the bottom half of the above picture for proof of that.

Out of this whole issue there was only one mistake that I noticed and honestly i'm not quite sure who's to blame since it's a pretty obvious mistake and that this for some reason The Doctor refers to Gramham as Ryan. Now for those that don't know there's no way you can confuse the two since Ryan looks to be in his twenties and Graham looks like he's in his sixties and Ryan is African American so there's really no excuse for this mistake what so ever and to make sure I was right in thinking that this was indeed a mistake I read the next part just to see if The Doctor confused the two on the purpose but nope there was no such scene.

The writer for this special is Thirteenth Doctor Comics writer Jody Houser and if you've read any of the previous Thirteenth Doctor comic books then you know what to expect from this issue. The writing is honestly really strong at least in this issue it is gut of course only time will tell if the writing remains this good for the rest of this I guess miniseries but I do wish that more effort was given into creating memorable side characters tho since so far that's the only weak point in terms of writing.

Now what is something I found to be interesting is that we find out that the TARDIS stores memories of everywhere the crew has been. That right there is such a cool idea and it's something that I don;t think has been talked about in the actual show yet and I can't see why because by adding in that idea it now also means that when something is taken from those memory banks it's a huge deal like it is here.

As is per the course tho at this point the character of Yaz so far isn't given that much time heck I think in the whole first issue she barely has a paragraph. As any Doctor Who fan will tell you this is something that is also an issue with the last series of the show since alot of the time went to Ryan and Graham it got to the point where the comic actually gave you more details about her character in one of the front pages then the show it's based on did and so i'm hoping that she gets more time in the next issue and in the next series altho given the track record i'm not counting on it.

POSSIBLE SPOILER STARTS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So yeah Santa is in this or at least someone who's dressed up like him and I have to admit when I first saw him I was a little bit disappointed that he didn't look like Nick Frost. However tho as we soon find out he's not the real Santa so Nick Frost Santa is still out there being awesome in every way possible but I will admit having Santa in this issue would have been great since it would have tied in with the whole holiday theme that they have going on.

SPOILER ENDS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even tho Jodie didn't get an epic speech in her first series she actually gets one in her first comic book special. It's a speech about how believing in things even impossible things isn't a bad thing and it was something that I honestly really did like and in my opinion while this speech doesn't cement her as The Doctor it tells me that this version of The Doctor is willing to believe in anything and just like Alice from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland it's possible that this Doctor will try and believe in six impossible things before breakfast.

Overall this wasn't a bad first issue but I don't really get why this has to be split up into god knows how many issues when it doesn't really have that much story for it. If anything this should have been a single story and nothing more but hey it gives us something else to talk about while we wait for New Years Day to comes around and yes I will be reviewing the second issue which will also double as my review for this adventure as well and with that in mind and with the second issue due out soon i'm not going to give this issue a ranking since it's the start of the story.

Xena: Warrior Princess "Sins Of The Past" Review

Ladies and gents you've seen my review so many pilots to TV shows in the last but now i'm going back in time to ancient Greece. You might have guessed this by the poster and by the title i'm reviewing the first every episode of Xena: Warrior Princess and i'm doing it because honestly nobody is talking about this show and I want to remind people that it happened and so here is my review of the first every episode of Xena: Warrior Princess called Sins Of The Past.

The plot of the episode is Xena is travelling home to make up for things that she's done in her past and she's followed by a young person who wants to be trained by her called Gabrielle. I will admit there is more going on in this episode then my summery will lead you to believe but I had to find away to summarise the plot and that's what I came up with. The story it self is your basic pilot episode with the two leads meeting each other very early on in the episode and that's really all I have to say about the story.

Starring in the episode is Lucy Lawless as Xena , Renée O'Connor as Gabrielle , Jay Laga'aia as Draco , Darien Takle as Cyrene , Stephen Hall as Hector , Linda Jones as Hecuba , Willa O'Neill as Lila , Geoff Snell as Herodotus , Anton Bentley as Perdicas , David Perrett as Gar , Patrick Wilson as Cyclops , Wally Green as Old Man , Roydon Muir as Kastor , Huntly Eliott as First Citizen and Winston Harris as Boy.

The acting in this episode in all honesty isn't that bad which for a show this campy and at times this goofy is really something to truly to behold. I don't think I need to say who's the best performer in this because anyone who's a fan of the show knows that Lucy Lawless kills it as the character and the same thing is true for this episode altho coming in at a close second is Jay Laga'aia who is just so wonderfully over the top and so fun to watch.

Wow I forgot how bad the effects in this episode truly are I do have to give them some leeway as this show was made in the mid nineties. Even so they still look pretty bad I give them credit for not using any CGI in this episode instead there just sticking one actor against either a green or blue screen and then adding them into the scene later but they could have done a slightly better job of im proving the effects but tho they wouldn't have had much technology available at the time tho which is the key thing here.

Not that many people know this but Xena is actually a spin off of the then popular Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with the character of Xena appearing in some of the shows episodes. As you can no doubt gather she became so popular that she had to receive her own show and like with any good spin off there are plenty of crossover episodes and there's even a crossover movie Hercules and Xena – The Animated Movie: The Battle for Mount Olympus.

As with the previous show this episode and the show is pretty campy and that's something your either going to love or hate. I personally really love it since it adds to the entertainment value in my opinion but on the flip side of that if your looking for a serious action drama then your not going to find it here because due to how campy it is you will be laughing at it alot and that is something that I can see putting people off watching the show.

Now something which I guess makes sense but you have to have seen Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Since they don't go into detail about Xena's backstory in this episode which yeah I guess that makes sense given she's a character from another show but at the same time it is something that's needed to get newer viewers up to speed but the episode does provide a cliff notes version of her backstory in the show's opening but that doesn't tell us why we should care about her or want to see her succeed in her journey.

I'd say the thing that this show is most famous for is it's action which given that this is an action show does indeed make sense. The action in this episode is honestly really freaking fun and is perhaps the best part of the whole episode. In my opinion the action seen in this episode while not large in scale was rich with story as it serves as the end of the story for the episode and so it's basically any third act battle you'd see in a modern day superhero movie.

Overall this is a great first episode for the show but it doesn't set up Xena nor does it set up any plot lines for future episodes. That being said this is still a fun episode to see the chemistry between the cast really does shine through even in this first episode if only the effects could have been tho. Like I said there are some fun action scenes which for me make this episode worth watching and so this episode gets a 6 out of 10 from me and yes I do give rankings to classic episodes it's only newer ones that don't get it and Doctor Who episodes get rankings as well.

  

The Little Mermaid Live! AKA The Wonderful World of Disney Presents The Little Mermaid Live! Review

Disney fans this review has been long in the making and when I say long I mean i've waited since November 6th to watch this special as I don't live in America. Well i've finally seen it and I have alot of thoughts about it and please note this is also my first review of a play of any kind so this is new ground for me and so here is my review of The Little Mermaid Live! aka The Wonderful World of Disney Presents The Little Mermaid Live!.

Do I even need to describe what the plot of The Little Mermaid Live! is it's the exact same plot as the movie. I will give you my thoughts on the plot tho which are honestly it's not a bad story and it is one that does lend it self well enough to a live show and trust me i'll get more into that live element soon enough the issue is where as the film took the time to develop the relationship between the Ariel and Eric this special just feels like it's on fast forward and so there relationship doesn't feel believable and because of the special being on fast forward alot of key plot points just don't have the same effect as they did in the film.

Doing the singing for this special (this will make sense later in the review) is Auliʻi Cravalho as Ariel , Graham Phillips as Prince Eric , Queen Latifah as Ursula , Shaggy as Sebastian , John Stamos as Chef Louis , Amber Riley as Emcee , Dominique Kelley as Grimsby and Bagel as Max. The special does include a special introduction by the original and to date only voice of Ariel Jodi Benson which was honestly really cool to see.

Now the reason why I said singing instead of acting is because the special features footage from the animated film with all of the acting being done by the stars of the animated film and they only went live to do the musical numbers which is something I will be touching on again. As for what I thought of the I guess singing cast they were alright almost everyone in this live cast can hold a tune with perhaps the most surprising singer for me being Auliʻi Cravalho who if she wanted to could have a singing career she's that good.

Now going into this special I thought that either John Stamos or Shaggy would be the actor having the most fun. Boy was I wrong because the actor having the most fun is clearly Queen Latifah who is so clearly having a blast in this special she's honestly so much fun playing this character it honestly made me excited to see her next performance because I knew that she was going to be entertaining as all hell.

This special got a lot of mixed reviews ranging from negative to just OK and to be honest I can see where those people because the the freaking poster and the title is a lie. Since they have pre-recorded segments in this special which means it's not live at all so the title and the poster is a freaking lie and trust me i'm going to be getting more into this thing as the review goes on because I have a lot to say about it.

For some really strange reason they chose to have the vast majority of this live special be the animated movie. That there for means that the whole thing is a freaking lie because when you here the name The Little Mermaid Live you expect the whole of The Little Mermaid to be performed live not just the songs and it's a shame as well because the actors they did get are honestly really good actors.

It would be like if it was announced that there doing a live special based on James Cameron's Avatar and then all of it is just the movie except for a few scenes. You'd feel cheated right well that's how and apparently many others felt as well even more so when they have pre-recorded segments for a few songs and what's worse is they actually could have done the whole thing live if they wanted to because they actually have done a Little Mermaid musical so people know that they can do it.

Now to the specials credit it does get alot more things right then it does wrong but that makes it hurt all the more when it does something wrong. I will admit that I did like the live sets they looked just like the animated movie it was uncanny and the same thing goes for the costumes yes they weren't as detailed or as high a quality as they would in a feature film but for a live special the costumes looked really good.

Also being really good was the choreography which was done by Nick Florez and RJ Durell and i;m guessing that they didn't have alot of time since alot of the songs aren't that long. However given the time that they do have they craft something that is truly magical like in the "Part of Your World" segment they have Auliʻi Cravalho sore through the air effortlessly I honestly hope that these two are given more work in the future and more time to actually show of what they can really do.

Is there any point in my saying who wrote the songs because there just using the songs from the movie and the musical. Yeah i'm not kidding "Her Voice" and "If Only" were songs added to the musical so we know that the producers of this have at least payed attention to the musical and so again I have to wonder why didn't they make this thing fully live. As for the songs themselves these versions aren't sung that bad altho John Stamos can't sing and that's all I can really say about the songs because of the fact they are the same songs from the movie.

Overall this is a special that is a mixed bag for me since while there are some talented singers and the sets are indeed impressive. There's also some pretty bad singers and the whole idea of doing this thing half animated as well as what they did to Flounder in the live segments are more then enough to put anyone of re-watching this special myself included and so the special gets a 5 out of 10 from me and yeah you can find this now on Disney+ for some reason.

Iron Man: Rise of Technovore Dub Review

Marvel and Anime fans yesterday I reviewed one of the Marvel anime films and well it only made sense that today I review the first anime film made by the company. I'll admit that I was kind of dreading this film since I did see it when it first came out and I remember it being pretty bad and pretty boring and so then boys and girls here is my review of the first Marvel anime film Iron Man: Rise of Technovore.

The plot of the movie is someone is looking to replace the human race with some form of new technology and so it's up a revenge filled Tony Stark to put a stop to it before it's far to late. In terms of what I thought about the story it's actually better then Avengers Confidential since it's actually something that couldn't be done in an episode of the Iron Man anime but at the same time it was still a fairly bad story.

Starring in the movie is Daryl From The Walking Dead as The Punisher/Frank Castle , Matthew Mercer as Iron Man/Tony Stark , Eric Bauza as Ezekiel Stane and Technovore , Kate Higgins as Pepper Potts , James C. Mathis as War Machine/Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes , Kari Wahlgren as Maria Hill , Clare Grant as Black Widow / Natasha Romanoff , Troy Baker as Hawkeye/Clint Barton and J.A.R.V.I.S. , Tara Platt as Sasha Hammer , JB Blanc as Obadiah Stane and John Eric Bentley as Nick Fury.

I just had to make a Walking Dead reference because I knew that if I didn't i'd get spammed with comments saying that Norman Reedus is in The Walking Dead and yes I know he was also in Blade 2 before you all say anything. I have to say that the cast for this film was far better then the cast in Avengers Confidential altho I still cannot buy John Eric Bentley as Nick Fury he just doesn't sound like Fury to me but performance wise everyone was really solid.

As with the previous film the animation was handled by let's be honest anime giants Madhouse and if you've seen my review of Avengers Confidential then you'll know just a handful of the stuff that they've worked on and I just found out they worked on Highschool Of The Dead which is cool. As for the animation in this film I personally didn't think it was as good as the animation in Avengers Confidential but it was passable at best which for Madhouse isn't a good thing.

Unlike the last film, which had alot of shots where Natasha's b**bs where clearly the focus that actually isn't the case here. Don't get me wrong she still wears outfits that show them off but there never the focus of the shot infact half the time you can't even see them which honestly works better since it allows you to focus more on the film rather then a characters chest and it's something that Avengers Confidential could have learned from.

To me if both films swapped their stories around then both would have been better of for it because the plot of this movie feels more like a Black Widow plot and the plot of the Avengers anime feels alot more like an Iron Man plot. I know that sounds weird but I honestly feel that the plot used for this movie would have suited Natasha and Punisher more then the plot that they had in the Avengers movie.

I know i'm mentioning the Avengers anime alot but the team up of Black Widow and Punisher really did work for that film. However here they have Tony team up with him and it just doesn't work there's no chemistry between the characters there at all even tho the team up is only for a few scenes but it's enough to know that this team just don't really work together and aren't as fun to see on screen.

Let us take a second to talk about Tony Stark he's always been a character that when push comes to shove will always do the right thing. So I have to wonder why Nick Fury is stopping him from going after a killer which not only fits in with his character somewhat but given that he's just seen his friend get killed is clearly not thinking straight so it would have helped the situation even more if Nick had left Tony alone because he would have come back to him in the end because he always does the right thing.

I don't know what it is with these Marvel anime films and really bad villains we've had two anime films and they've both had weak villains. the villain in this film Ezekiel Stane is really weak we don't find out why he's villain he has no motivation for being a villain he's only a bad guy because the plot demands that he be one and that's in and that's not good enough for any kind of medium be it anime or whatever a villain needs motive and reason as to why they are the villain and when you don't give us any of those then the villain comes of looking weaker and less interesting then your main hero when they should be just as interesting as the hero.

This movie is boring as all hell I don't know how in the hell you make an Iron Man movie boring but this movie found away. Alot of the boredom comes from the fact that the villain just isn't that fun to watch but also because in terms of actual story there's not that much there which is why it would have made a better Black Widow story since then you could have a mystery angle to lean into to but without that you end with a thinly drawn plot and an uninteresting villain which honestly made the film feel like a chore to sit through alot of the time.

Since this is an action movie that does mean that we have to talk about the action that's seen within the film itself. Which quite like alot of things in this movie isn't that good don't get me wrong the action can indeed be fun at times but I honestly got the impression that it was missing that extra something that I can't quite put my finger on maybe it would have been better if we saw more heroes take part in the action scenes instead of just two or three and Tony's introduction scene would have been better if there was a rock song playing over it or even a rock instrumental but that's just what I think.

Overall I honestly prefer Avengers Confidential to this film since it takes alot of the things that this film does but does them better. I would however fully understand if people preferred this film but from what I could gather not alot of fans nor critics like this movie and it's very easy to see why and what I think is a very rare thing but this film actually doesn't have a critics score on Rotten Tomatoes but it does have an audience score of 34% and it's not hard to see why and so this film gets a 5 out of 10 from me.

My First Impressions Of The Harley Quinn Animated Series

DC fans it's been a long freaking time since i've talked about a new show from the company and well this is a show that i've been waiting to see. I cannot even tell you when I started getting excited because it feels like a long time ago that the show was even announced but as of yesterday the first episode of the new Harley Quinn animated series finally dropped and boy do I have some thoughts about it so here they are my first impressions of Harley Quinn.

The plot of the episode is after Joker lets Harley spend a year in Arkham Asylum Harley has finally had enough and decides to dump him but things don't go that smoothly. As to be expected from a half hour show the episode is pretty light in terms of plot but it does a good job of setting up the status quo for the show as well as setting up the relationship between Harley and Ivy but at the same time I would have liked a little bit more story.

Starring in this episode and in the rest of the series is former Big Bang Theory star and executive producer Kaley Cuoco as Dr. Harleen Quinzel / Harley Quinn , Lake Bell as Dr. Pamela Isley / Poison Ivy , Alan Tudyk as Joker , Diedrich Bader as Bruce Wayne / Batman , Jim Rash as Edward Nigma / Riddler , Ron Funches as Nanaue / King Shark , Chris Meloni as Commissioner James Gordon and J. B. Smoove as Frank the Plant.

I'll admit when I first saw the trailer I wasn't fully sold on Kaley as Harley and after this first episode i'm still not all I could hear whenever she spoke was Penny from The Big Bang Theory but i'm sure that will go away with time. From what I could gather just of this first episode the acting seems to be pretty good it was decent at least in this episode with their being plenty of room for improvement which given who else is in this show is bound to happen.

Now this is more of an educated guess since the over production company listed is owned by star and Kaley Cuoco but the animation for the series I assume is being done by Ehsugadee Productionsm. I've never heard of them and so I can't really say what they've worked on but I can say that based of this first episode the animation is really good and is very clean and polished it almost looks like it could fit in with the world of the newer DC animated movies as well.

Now if you for some reason thought that was going to be a kids cartoon or something that you can show your younger relatives because it has Batman in it. Then think again because this is an R rated show and it really does earn it's R rating with a bunch of swearing just in the opening few minuets as well there being a lot and I really mean this alot of blood and gore and just for good measure there's some social commentary thrown in for good measure so yeah DO NOT show this to your younger relatives.

I really like what there doing with Jim Gordon in this series they basically made him a p****d off drunk dude. Which was something that I felt was really funny every scene he's in he's slurring his words and basically acting like he's drunk and those scenes honestly got a huge laugh out of me because of how radically different it was to how we are used to seeing the character but only time will tell if he's still a good cop or if he's just there for that one joke.

Now it wouldn't be a review of anything to do with Harley Quinn if we didn't talk about the girl herself. To me this show seems to making her a mixture of both the original animated series in that she's still a villain but also the newer comics in that she's no longer with Joker and that she wearing something a little shorter shall we say and that's a mixture which really shouldn't work since Harley was only a villain because of the Joker and yet it oddly works for this show and for this episode and I don't want them to make Harley a hero in this show keep her as the villain.

I'm honestly not that sure what to make of the costume that they give Harley on the one hand it makes her more sexy but on the other hand I don't really feel that I suits the character. I get why they had her get rid of her old outfit because Joker gave her that outfit and so with her getting rid of it it means she's getting rid of him from her life but they could have gave her something that matched her insanity in my opinion and not something that makes her look that sexy.

Now this is an action comedy and that does mean that we have to talk about both of those aspects so let's start with the action. The action scenes in this episode were so fun to see on screen and this is where the show earns in R rating because they are violent as all hell i'm not even kidding either you see bones break and I loved it because of that fact since it helps it stand out from all of the other action comedy shows out there both animated and not.

Now that we've talked about the action part of the show we now have to talk about the comedy aspect of this action comedy. This show was far funnier then what I thought it was going to be I honestly feel that this show is worth watching just for the comedy alone since alot of the jokes had me laughing out loud and that's a very rare thing for me so it's really telling that the jokes in this episode really do work.

Honestly one thing I wasn't expecting was the fact that they touch on the abusive relationship between Joker and Harley. It's not just something that they bring up once and never mention again they actually make it the main focus of the episode and you see Harley fall into the same traps that someone who's just escaped an abusive relationship fall into like she goes back to the Joker because he knows exactly what to say and I hope that the show touches on the mental side of the relationship as well as that's not something that's covered that often.

Overall this is a really fun episode and it looks like it's going to be a really fun episode but I will say that if your an SJW type then this show isn't for you. I really hope that the show is as good as this first episode was and you can bet that i'm going to be watching this series every week and that means that there will be a review as soon as the first series ends and because I don't like to give out ratings for first episodes i'll just say watch the episode.