Spartacus: Gods of the Arena

Gods of the Arena is a prequel miniseries to last year's Spartacus: Blood and Sand that only exists because star Andy Whitfield was diagnosed with cancer and unable to play the part in season two. Based on that sentence you might think that it was doomed to be terrible, but I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. It had all the qualities that the regular series had found in its second half with none of the horrible growing pains from the first, and managed to tell an interesting swords-and-sandals tale while also filling in some unasked for yet still intriguing details about the lives of many of the show's characters years before they met its titular character. Maybe it didn't strictly need to exist, since they ended up having to recast Spartacus despite taking the year hiatus, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fun.

Five years before Spartacus showed up, the arena was ruled by another man named Gannicus. Batiatus still controlled the gladiators, but was watched by his overbearing father, and still trying to prove himself in the arena, long before he had political ambitions. Lucretia was less of a party girl, Doctore wasn't Doctore yet, and Ashur and Crixus were just untested recruits. Watching everybody slowly turn into the people they would be later is fairly compelling, and a lot of times the real explanation for something is more surprising than you might guess. It all fits together a bit too cleanly to feel like a truly organic story, but there's nothing wrong with tightly plotted action and intrigue. Also, there's lots of extremely bloody and stylish fight scenes and needlessly explicit nudity, which is just as fun to watch as it was before.

Not every little plot thread is as interesting as the others. A few characters feel a bit wasted, and a few things we probably didn't really need to know. But the writers and crew have honed the show's formula to a well oiled machine by this point, which actually makes me almost disappointed that that formula's probably going to be gone by the time the show comes back considering what has happened. Still, I'm definitely looking forward to what comes next. That's something I honestly wouldn't have guessed when the show started a year ago.

Also, here are my recaps for all the episodes of the show:
Past Transgressions
Missio
Paterfamilias
Beneath the Mask
Reckoning
The Bitter End

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

One of the biggest surprises this year was watching this show slow transform from a laughably trashy and shallow mess in the pilot into a genuinely likable and decent drama by the season finale. It's still a bit excessive in the more adult elements, and takes probably a bit too much inspiration from 300 and Rome, but in the end I couldn't help but enjoy it for the most part. These 13 episodes cover the period in Spartacus' life when he was captured and made into a skilled gladiator, right up until his escape and the beginning of the revolt. For the most part it focuses on the arena and the villa of his owner, as things waver between livable and untenable for Spartacus and his fellow slaves. There are triumphs and failures, although it becomes clear as it goes on that it's only a matter of time before things go really bad. This comes to a head in the last episode, which is one of the best payoffs for a season long story arc I've honestly ever seen in a show.

Some stylistic stuff still bothers me about it though. The violence is pretty absurd in places. Sometimes it's fine if a bit too heavily focused on showing the brutality of the events in loving, slowed down detail, but there are bits where the computer blood is just terrible looking and all over the place and breaks the scene's credibility. It makes it feel really cheap. The constant sex is also probably a bit over the top, it's not that I minded seeing naked women but it often veered into near-softcore porn territory. And the dialogue sometimes tried too hard to sound smart and fancy, with characters referring to themselves in the third person and really just talking unnaturally. Just because it's a show about the old days doesn't mean people can never talk like people. These are all quibbles though in a show that's part guilty pleasure and part actually quality drama when it tries to be. This is the part where I'd normally say I'm looking forward to the next season, although unfortunately the actor who plays Spartacus was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and production has been delayed. They seem to be developing a short prequel series to keep momentum going during his recovery, although I can't say how interesting that would be. It could be good if it means more time for John Hannah and Lucy Lawless, two actors who have never been that famous but have always done solid work and were pretty good in this show as the owners of Spartacus and his fellow slaves. They got a significant amount of focus considering their temporary position within the overall story of Spartacus' life, and that stuff tended to be more stimulating than a bunch of nearly naked men swinging swords at each other. We'll see, I guess.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

I'm not going to pretend I didn't like the first two Mummy movies. They were dumb in places, but had some all right humor and undead-destroying action, with the first being a pretty competent tribute to those old movie serials as far as I know. The third film is just too little too late, though. The writer/director of the first two is gone, moved on to the uh... greener pastures of G.I. Joe. Rachel Weisz is gone, replaced by Maria Bello, who's not bad, but not as good. The classic Egyptian theme is gone, replaced with a Chinese setting instead, which isn't a terrible idea but doesn't get executed perfectly. It's cool that Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh are in it, but in the end they don't do much. They have a couple brief scenes showing of their talents, but Yeoh is gone for most of the film and Li is replaced by an incomplete, Computer-enhanced version with magic elemental powers. Because he's Asian, you see.

There's some not-that-funny jokes and not-that-exciting effect-laden action sequences as both sides race to Shangri-La, where a magic artifact will blah blah blah. There's some crappy looking yetis, some clumsy romance developed between the O'Connell's annoying son who hasn't improved with age and a change in actor and a 2,000 year old teenage ninja, and a big final epic battle where two mummified armies clash to little consequence. I feel like I'm being harsh on the movie, because it wasn't actively boring or hate-worthy. It just rarely if ever succeeds at what the first two films did right, and I just don't like the shift in setting. If the second movie was somewhere else, maybe Arabian or something, then it would be fine for each one to have a different villain and be a globe-hopping Mummy-killing franchise. But it was a direct sequel, with the exact same bad guy, and the new setting and villain along with it coming out seven years later just makes it feel like the black sheep of the series, which it ultimately is.