What Happened After the End of Flight of the Navigator?

Posted on May 17, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

I know I already talked about Flight of the Navigator last week, but there’s just so much more to say about it. After all, it has one of the best science fiction premises I’ve ever seen put to film. What would a kid do if he came back to Earth after traveling at the speed of light for several years, and everyone he knew had aged? It’s a brilliant setup, and it brings up all kinds of interesting questions. Especially about what would happen after the movie ends.

Like The Black Hole, Flight of the Navigator is a rare gem of a film that leaves far too many loose threads for me not to think about them all. It ends in a hurry before it can really resolve a lot of the issues it created. So I’d like to correct that oversight by offering satisfying answers to its questions. Continue reading →

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Flight of the Navigator Predicted Modern Discourse in a Few Lines

Posted on May 10, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Flight of the Navigator is a good movie that inadvertently predicted the contradictory depths of the way some people speak these days. There seems to be a lot of confusion on topics that have never really been up for debate. Rather than stating outright what I’m referring to, I’ll just let two characters from Flight of the Navigator do it for me.

Continue reading →

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A Significant Change in My Personal Life

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Normally I don’t talk about my day job. It’s ironic that the work I do publicly tends to be something I try to keep private. I’ve worked at the same company for a little more than 12 years. That stability has been wonderful. I was grateful to get this job back in March 2010. I talked about the funny way my interview for it went in my article “I Hated Avatar, But Here’s Why I’m Going to Watch Avatar 2.”

The reason I don’t like to talk about my job is because I don’t want to come across as bragging. But something happened on April 14, 2022 that deeply affected me and my coworkers. And I’d like talk about it. Continue reading →

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My Improved Version of ‘Uninvited’ from City of Angels

Posted on April 26, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

My wife and I recently went to our local library to look for good movies to watch, and I saw City of Angels there. I never actually watched the whole thing when it first came out, but I heard good things about it. So we borrowed and watched it. It features several famous songs, including “Uninvited” by Alanis Morissette.

That song has a hauntingly beautiful melody. But we couldn’t help being disappointed by its lyrics. They’re all about unrequited love. Such a disappointment when it seems like the song should be so much more meaningful. In addition, the lyrics don’t match the cadence of the music. So the singer has to misemphasize every other word to make them all fit. And there’s no consistent rhyming scheme.

Basically, it’s a mess when you look at it too closely. And I thought it would be fun to fix it. Right after we finished the movie, my wife challenged me to come up with better lyrics. So I did.

Continue reading →
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How to Write the Best Possible WordPress Blog Post

Posted on April 19, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

I’ve been blogging since 2007. It was several years later in 2011 that I started the Deja Reviewer website. You can search online and probably find a lot of my old writings on real estate, search engine optimization, inventory management, and many other subjects before I got around to analyzing movies in new and unique ways. In all that time, I’ve learned quite a few things that I’d like to share with my fellow writers.

If you have a WordPress blog, you will likely benefit quite a bit from what I’m about to share. Over the course of putting together thousands of blog posts, I’ve figured out how to get perfect SEO scores on them every single time. It’s almost a formula at this point. That doesn’t stop me from having fun in my writing. It’s just good to know the rules before you decide whether or not you want to break them.

Continue reading →
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Battle of the Message Movies: Turning Red vs. Teen Wolf

Posted on April 12, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

It’s funny. When I first heard about Turning Red a few weeks ago, I thought it was going to be one of Pixar’s lesser films. Like Brave or Soul. Little did I know that it would turn out to be basically a remake of the 1985 Michael J. Fox vehicle, Teen Wolf.

Just so we’re clear, we’re talking about a red panda movie imitating a Fox wolf movie. If that’s too many animals to keep track of, I recommend jumping ship immediately. Because this is going to be a beast of an article. But I hope you’ll join me as we compare these two films’ messages. Continue reading →

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Let’s Explore the Symmetry of Escape from New York

Posted on April 5, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

This is getting scary. In the Tron Cinematic Chiasmus, I noted that it wasn’t my idea to analyze that movie. But once I did, I couldn’t deny it worked perfectly as a chiasmus. I have to give all the credit to a longtime reader of mine named Jordan. He suggested I take a look at it. In addition to Tron, he also gave me two more films to look at when he first contacted me. The second one was Escape from New York. And guess what. It’s a chiasmus, too! That means that the first half mirrors the second half.

I promise I’m not trying to force something that’s not there. But when I looked at Escape from New York objectively, I found that its two halves form a beautifully symmetrical structure. So Jordan is now batting a perfect two for two! That’s really impressive, and I’m starting to wonder if he might be trying to upstage me by showing off how awesome he is. Just kidding. Some people are just naturally gifted, and I love that he has shared some of his talent for spotting symmetrical films with me.

Let’s go ahead and see how Escape from New York follows an incredibly elegant story structure. Continue reading →

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Is My Good Opinion, Once Lost, Lost Forever?

Posted on March 29, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Something has been on my mind this week concerning food. Perhaps it’s a luxury to even have this problem, but I still wonder if it’s either a virtue or a vice. And I think, even though it’s about food, it hints at a larger issue with my character. Continue reading →

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Get with the Program! Tron Is a Symmetrical Film

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Cinematic Chiasmus is no longer my sole domain. I’ve had help from my wonderful readers to complete my Spider-Man chiasmus and to see the chiasmus of Alien and Alien3. In those cases, I had abandoned my Spider-Man chiasmus, and I had already unveiled the symmetry of Aliens. So they were more about completing what I had started.

However, this time I have something wholly original. Out of the blue, I recently got a fantastic email from a reader named Jordan who’s been with me since 2011! He suggested I look at three films to see if they might have a chiastic story structure. The easiest one for me to look at first was Tron.

I had a good feeling about Tron, and it was surprisingly easy to discover the chiasmus in it. Sometimes I struggle to figure out the turning point. But this one came naturally. So let’s go to the laser bay and get an inside look at the symmetrical story structure of Tron. Continue reading →

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Do Rotten Sequels Spoil Great Previous Films?

Posted on March 15, 2022 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

I recently rewatched 2006’s Casino Royale. I hadn’t seen it in many years, and I really liked returning to it. It feels so simple and quaint in some ways. And yet something was nagging at my mind the whole time I watched it. That movie is a brilliant achievement in the James Bond franchise, restoring it to its former greatness. But I don’t really enjoy most of the Daniel Craig Bond films. The series has kind of gone all over the place in its tone over the past decade.

Watching Casino Royale, I asked myself, “Do rotten sequels spoil great previous films?” After all, I know that what I’m watching will eventually lead to misery down the line, even though it’s an enjoyable ride at the moment. So what’s the point of starting down that road?

As I see it, there are three ways to deal with sequels that could ruin their previous films:

  • Ignore them
  • Accept them and look for their good qualities
  • Consider them as nothing more than fanfiction

There are merits to each of these approaches. Continue reading →

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