PAX Australia & Melbourne Day 1 – Explore-It

TL;DR – We dip our toes into what Melbourne has to offer.

Disclosure – I paid for all products featured or mentioned here.

The Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre

PAX Australia & Melbourne Day 1

When you work in the games and pop culture space, you hear of the joy that is PAX, but I have never experienced it myself. I had set my sights on visiting it back in 2020, but you know what happened in 2021. But there was hope that 2022 was the year for me. So I booked my tickets back in March and hoped that the world would hold itself together till then and it kind of did. So in today’s and the next couple of Explore-It’s, we will take a look at our time down past the daylight savings divide to a city that has an entirely different seagull-to-pigeon ratio than I have ever seen.

Dune Messiah

However, before you can explore Melbourne, you need to get there, and since we still do not have any high-speed rail in Australia, it is time to board a plane. Given the time stuck waiting, I thought I would catch up on some reading, and when in doubt, it is Dune time.

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TV Review – gen:LOCK – The Pilot

TL;DR The Pilot combines a great story, with fascinating animation, and a voice cast that is here for it, so much fun to watch.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

gen:LOCK – The Pilot. Image Credit: Rooster Teeth.

Review

A while back there was some mention of Michael B. Jordan staring in an animated mecha series from Rooster Teeth, and you have to believe that this immediately caught my attention. This of course was added to when we got the little hints as to what the series is going to be about and the sheer bonkers voice cast that was coming on board. Well, today we get to see the final product, and well it does not disappoint.

So to set the scene, in 2068 the world is a very different place with a totalitarian government The Union rising up and slowly taking over the world with their nano-tech. There are very few governments left to stop them and all attempts to find a diplomatic resolution have failed. As The Polity trains for the coming war, Julian Chase (Michael B. Jordan) and Miranda Worth (Dakota Fanning) take some time away from The Anvil, their base of operations, to visit Chase’ mum Roberta (Shari Belafonte) in Brooklyn, New York. However, they are not visiting in person but through VR Holograms. After the prerequisite embarrassing stories about Chase’s childhood, the pair leaves just as The Union start their main attack on New York. The team race to defend the city but sometimes the only option left is a sacrifice. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Movie Review – Ralph Breaks the Internet (Wreck-It Ralph 2)

TL;DR – A solid family film,with some great moments, but I am not sure it will have the same impact as the first film.     

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid and post-credit scene

Ralph Breaks the Internet. Image Credit: Disney.

Review

Creating films about the internet is something we are seeing more of as filmmakers try to incorporate this major part of our lives into the cinematic landscape. However, because the Internet is something that is both instantly familiar but also completely abstract, it actually is a difficult task to pull off as long as you don’t mind adding a crane shot into a cable. In the last year or so we have had the bad with The Emoji Film, and the amazing with Searching (see review), and today we have another entry into the genre with Ralph Breaks the Internet, which while not amazing, is still a fun ride.  

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