Author: Josh Shaver

One day Josh was just brought into existence and hes been crushing it ever since. Josh has a vast knowledge of all things Gaming, pop culture, and Entertainment. His expertise are in Horror, Wrestling, Comic Books, and the 80's. He probably knows where the beef is and has several Skeletor action figures.

Categories
Pop Culture

Shell-uloid! A ranking of TMNT movies and tv projects

Greetings! It is I, Josh “Thunder” Shaver, making my return to the printed page. Recently, I watched the new TMNT Mutant Mayhem film and actually loved it. I know a lot of purists out there are mad that things were changed, but when the multiverse is cannon, anything is possible. In fact, there is no actual TMNT cannon, as it changes with every iteration. Sometimes Splinter was previously a man, sometimes he was that man’s pet. In the original comics, April was a living drawing. For this ranking, I’m just looking at the movies, live action and animated, and the TV series too. Here they are in order from my least favorite to my most preferred version of the brothers. Let’s kick it off with the one movie I hate the most and a reminder that these are my own personal opinions.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)– I have so much disdain for this movie, I don’t think I will ever have anything nice to say about it. The boys don’t just look bad, they’re fugly. The story is slow paced and retcons everything to be aliens. I know my whole soapbox is there is no real canon but … Read More

Categories
Entertainment

Excessive Sequels: Terminator

It started as a R-rated horror movie and wound up as a PG-13 joke for several films, only to try to redeem itself as an R rated throwback to better days. What am I talking about? Terminator! In part three of my ever-continuing series about how too much of a good thing can get progressively worse, I will give my brutally honest rating of each Terminator movie. Not appearing here is the tv series as that fits into a different article series, also I never finished it and just now remembered it existed. In case you missed the other two articles (Friday the 13th and Leprechaun) I give two rankings based on a great analogy that I won’t repeat because I wrote it in an article about a much better franchise. Pepper mills are negative rankings and cheese graters are positive rankings, both scores out of a possible one to five with five cheese graters being the best and five pepper mills being the worst. Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times and now that everyone knows the rules, we begin our journey into the wild ride that is the Terminator Franchise.

The first two films … Read More

Categories
Entertainment Pop Culture

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Disney+ does it again!

When Disney bought the Star Wars franchise, I was skeptical. Further down the road as I Left my local movie theater on the opening night of The Rise of Skywalker, I had to start reminding myself that I liked Star Wars. I had such a bad experience, it helped me quit smoking cigarettes. Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not one of those #notmystarwars people, it just didn’t have the same magic that I’m used to with a Star Wars movie. I had thought that maybe it was just me getting older and more cynical. Then, about 2 weeks later I binged Season 1 of The Mandalorian, and that ended up scratching the exact itch I had. Moving forward, I had trust in Disney once again and decided that after 3 mediocre film attempts (not you Rogue One, I loved you) that a second chance would be granted. Heck, even Donald Glover made Solo somewhat watchable.

So now we get to now. I’ve seen all of Mando, and Cheered at Boba Fett, multiple times but I still wasn’t completely sure about going back to the prequel era for the Disney + Obi-Wan Kenobi Series.  Even Hayden was coming out … Read More

Categories
Gaming

WB’s MultiVerses: Thoughts and Comments

When WB announced a universe-merging, Smash Bros-Esque fighting game that would bring together characters from many different franchises I was hooked immediately. This concept had been borrowed from Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros before but never from such a vast catalog of characters such as that of the Warner Brothers banner. So far the game seems the be leaning on its DC and Cartoon Network properties, WB owns a lot of different characters and I hope a lot of them make an appearance. My faith was rewarded a little when Arya Stark was added to the roster, and she is a very non-kid-friendly character. Yes, Im nostalgic for the cartoony selection that makes up most of the roster, but I already own Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, and that’s all the cartoon character smash-em-up action I need plus, they have the Ninja Turtles.

-picture-Before I get into the gameplay or features of this game I want to talk about the roster a bit. Right off the bat, we have an unbalanced amount of DC characters and I hope that changes. Every other property has one or two characters to represent, but DC has the main trinity of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. This … Read More

Categories
Gaming

Evil Dead: The Game – A Groovy Review

Okay, so I’ve had Evil Dead: The Game for a week now and I’m ready to speak my piece on it. I could just tell you I love it and we roll credits, but that’s no fun for any of us, is it? Do you know what is fun though? Teaming up with 3 others to fight the Evil Dead or go it alone as the titular Kandarian demons and swallow the souls of anyone that shall oppose you. I’ll give some pros and cons of both, but a major spoiler, I LOVE this game. However, I fully feel that you should be able to make your own opinion, so I will try to be as unslanted as possible.

If you read “Something Old, Something New: Part 2, Slasher Edition”, you already know that I love the Evil Dead franchise and anything that furthers the property. If you haven’t, shame on you. Now, this game does not push the story any forward as the show ends with Ash waking up in the far future and this game features playable versions of characters that died on screen. What it does do is capture the essence of Evil Dead oh so well. … Read More

Categories
Entertainment

The Last Ronin: A Story Worth the Wait

Who all loves the Ninja Turtles? I sure do, as I can assume is the same for most other dudes (nongender specific usage here) in their mid to late 30s. for us 80’s babies, the Turtle-mania is strong. We have two men to thank for all of that, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The story started on a drunken night in 1983 between two friends. Yes, the original Ninja Turtle drawing was just a gag but the empire that it grew into is no laughing matter. Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and my personal favorite, Raphael were the 4 terrapin heroes that rocked the airwaves, toy aisles, and even the rest of the store for most of my youth and have come back strongly in my adulthood. It’s a piece of nostalgia pie that I can’t get enough of. I find myself blowing my entire nonbills and expenses part of my paycheck on TMNT themes items such as NECA figures, high-end drip, and pieces of my childhood that I thought were lost forever and I do it happily.

It’s funny to think that the entire overnight dynasty was thrown away by both of its creators over a girl… A ninja turtle girl … Read More

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Entertainment

Something Old, Something New… Part 2

Welcome back to a little series I like to call Something Old, Something new. I honestly didn’t know where to go next with this series, because it requires a lot of research. I originally wanted to cover Roseanne/The Conners, Full House/Fuller House, and Twin Peaks, but I’ve only seen one of those comebacks in its entirety and I need to do more research on the matter. I’ll get to those next time, but for now, I needed something I’ve seen and as the resident Horror Fanatic it just kind of came to me. Welcome to Something Old, Something New Part 2: the Slasher Edition. Here is my patented non-spoiler review of  Ash vs Evil Dead, Chucky, and Scream: The Series.

In the first installment of this series of articles,  I referenced how great ‘Chucky’ is. To be honest, I was kind of worried about how this series would do as a television series, but I’ll be upfront, it’s better than Bride and Seed of Chucky.  I’d say it’s better than the reboot Child’s Play movie but the best part of that movie was when it finally ended. Actually, I kind of liked the last act of that monstrosity… the first … Read More

Categories
Gaming

Unpopular Opinion: Why I’m not playing Elden Ring.

A wise man once said, “If everyone is Han Solo, No one is Han solo.” This is in reference to why Junior Brown doesn’t like Firefly. While he’s wrong for that, The statement did stick with me and I feel like It can and should be applied elsewhere. Also, he’s a fictional character so I shouldn’t let it hurt me as much as it does. I freaking love Firefly.  So as unpopular as my opinion on some games is, I just can’t help but have no interest in the most recent gaming and streaming sensation, Elden Ring. The idea for this article came from a random encounter with an old friend earlier this week. He used to stream a lot but hasn’t done so recently and we talked about how I’ve been going twice a week for our channel here on the Domain (twitch.tv/thedomaingpce if you aren’t already following us there) and how everybody keeps suggesting I play Elden Ring. It’s almost annoying how much I get asked to play this game. I have zero disrespect for it or its community of players, I even have a great deal of respect for the speedrunners out there. However, it’s just not … Read More

Categories
Entertainment

Excessive Sequels: Leprechaun

Welcome back to part 2 in this exciting series where I talk about the phenomenon that I shall dub “sequel-itis”. To recap the rating system, I take a comprehensive look at an entire film franchise and give two separate ratings pepper mills and cheese graters. If you missed the last article about Friday the 13th, I’ll clarify, cheese graters are to represent the highs and pepper mills are the lows. The analogy I used was going to a restaurant and yeah, fresh cracked pepper is nice but too much is a bad thing. However, I think we all make the person grating the cheese fear for their fingers. Apologies to those lactose intolerant readers, my heart goes out to each and every one of you. Currently I am only covering horror franchises but could look at others in the future. for now though, Leprechaun!

This series really isn’t your conventional horror franchise, as in the killer isn’t fueled by vengeance, some flesh eating creature, or criminally insane. In fact, most of the time hes just a dick. Okay, some times its about his gold, but that only seems to be the cause when the writers remember that. Actually, that’s how … Read More

Categories
Entertainment

Excessive Sequels: The Friday the 13th Franchise

Have you ever been at a restaurant where someone comes around with a pepper mill and asks if you would like some? For the sake of my point, you say yes, they grind some pepper, you thank them and they move on. Now, how about the Italian places that have the Parmesan cheese and they tell you to say when and you give them your impression of Vincent D’Onofrio in the First Men in Black movie as you keep saying “more” until they finally walk away because your plate is now mostly Cheese? Okay, now that that concept and apply it to sequels. Most commonly this is a trope of the horror genre, which is what this article is about, but I think we all pictured Vin Diesel just now. However, that’s not the genre I’m talking about, and writing about them would mean I would have to watch them, and I’m not about that life.  For now, though, I’m talking about horror movies that kept coming back, way after they were dead.  The rating for this series goes on a scale of 1 to 5, twice, the Lower the Peppermill count, the better to rate the lows, and the … Read More