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Star Wars: A Mostly Canon Timeline
9/24/22: Added "Andor."
3/13/22: Added "Obi-Wan Kenobi."
12/31/21: Added "Book of Boba Fett," among others.
8/19/21: Added "Bad Batch."
Rocky Movies from Best to Worst, as Voted by IMDB Users
Top Indiana Jones Movies, TV Shows and Video Games, as Voted by IMDB Users
05/14/15: Made list.
Scooby-Doo, as voted by IMDB Users
Oct. 19, 2020: Added "Return to Zombie Island," "Happy Halloween," and "SCOOB!"
Updated Aug. 18, 2019: Added "...and Guess Who?"
Now that IMDB no longer offers ratings on its character pages (as far as I can tell), it's worthwhile to have a list that shows how different productions with the same character rank against each other. I'm mainly focusing on TV series, movies, and specials, but I may throw in a few notable video games as well.
I had tried this once before, but there was a weirdly pro-Scrappy contingent that skewed the ratings on the TV shows. Now, many of the ratings seem more sensible. But even when they aren't, I stress that this is the opinion of the fans on this site, which sometimes coincide with mine and sometimes don't.
Due to the large number of "Scooby" projects, this list will likely be in progress for a long time.
Indiana Jones as Ranked by IMDB Voters
5/14/15: With Indy 5 on the horizon, I thought it would be a good time to do a streamlined list of how IMDB voters ranked the previous installments. This is a simpler list than the one I made before, focusing only on official films and TV, as opposed to all the video games, fan films, etc. that I included last time.
Reviews
A-Haunting We Will Go (1966)
A boring retread
This was made during the final days of Warner Bros. animated shorts, when DePatie-Freleng was the producing entity. Most of the shorts during this time were formulaic stories featuring Daffy Duck fighting Speedy Gonzalez in some way.
Despite having a limited budget and a strict formula, one might think that the injection of a character not typically seen into the mix, such as Witch Hazel, might liven things up a bit. But one would be wrong.
Much of the cartoon is literally re-traced or re-used animation cells from 1956's "Broom-Stick Bunny." Daffy's nephew is in the exact same outfit, and doing the exact same movements as Bugs, from that cartoon. Much of the witch's frantic running around is from that cartoon. When she sits at the table with Daffy, she says the exact same things that she does when Bugs was sitting there.
As if all that weren't bad enough, the filmmakers also copy exactly a crazy Daffy Duck design from 1953's "Duck Amuck." The design was hilarious and brilliant in the first cartoon. It falls completely flat here.
There's very little plot here; the whole thing just meanders. Daffy's nephew runs through some of the same shtick that Sylvester the Cat's son would go through. (Other than Sylvester, why is it that every other male cartoon character of the period had some nephew that looked and sounded exactly like him?)
Since Witch Hazel didn't appear in that many cartoons to begin with, this cartoon is an interesting footnote in animation history, but not much more.
Doctor Who: Listen (2014)
Worth listening to, and watching over and over
What a wonderfully creepy episode that had several jaw-dropping surprises.
I knew that the episode was designed to be scary, but I wasn't sure Moffat could pull it off; now we're *expecting* to be scared instead of being caught off guard, and the Silence (Silents?) weren't nearly as terrifying as Moffat hoped they were. But that silent figure on the bed, the undefined lump under the covers...oooh. Chills. Wonderfully done.
I love the fact that we never know whether or not there were even any monsters this time. Everything had two possible explanations. That made it all the creepier. But it's not just creepiness for its own sake (which would have been fine, too). It was a rich character piece. The Doctor is now so used to saving the world every week that if nothing is going on, he might just start inventing problems to solve.
This story required no prosthetics or effects for aliens, but in no way did it feel like just a "filler" episode. Instead, it's one of the best stories in several years.
When the figure in the astronaut suit unmasked, I thought that it was either going to be the Doctor or it was going to be the monster. I wasn't expecting Mr. Pink to be there, and the fact that it was a descendant was another good twist. And the figure in the bed turning out to be the young Doctor -- that was a real corker!
It seems like it should have been one revelation too many to find out that the Doctor returned to that barn when he was going to set off the bomb (as seen in "Day of the Monster"), but it wasn't. It makes absolute sense that if the Doctor thinks he's going to commit the most heinous crime in the galaxy that he would want to return to a place where he felt safe--or, alternatively, to return to confront old fears.
As for Capaldi: I've understood why the Doctor has been written and performed the way he has this season. Moffat seems to be trying to address long-term fans' complaints about the show: that the Doctor shouldn't be romantically involved with his Companions, that he should be more mysterious and unpredictable, that he should be more of an older mentor figure, and that he should be more cantankerous (this version seems to lean heavily on William Hartnell, Jon Pertwee and even the controversial Colin Baker). I wasn't bothered by any of the modern portrayals of the character, but a lot of fans were; this version of the character seems designed to address those issues.
Since the Doctor is now less sympathetic and knowable, the character that the audience now relates to is the Companion, and that's just as it used to be. This shift in the character dynamic has worked wonders for Clara, who previously was the dullest of all the modern Companions. I like her a great deal more this year.
Ironically, though, all of the aspects being put back into the Doctor--his grouchiness, his unknowableness--have meant that I hadn't really grown to like this Doctor yet. But then came this episode, and now I love the guy. His fears, his past, and especially the scene where Clara hugged him and he half-jokingly said not to (but let her do it anyway)...just terrific stuff.
The first three episodes were all solid (or four, depending on how you count the 2-hour premiere), but I wasn't really engaged with them. But with this one, Season 8 finally hits its stride. I'm now really excited for next week!