There are several interesting choices this week. The Last Witch Hunter is an action fantasy about an immortal witch hunter and his reincarnated most powerful opponent, battling it out in modern times to determine if the human race gets to survive or not. While not genre, Steve Jobs is a look at one of the people who completely changed how the world works (and plays) during and after the computer revolution, and will probably be the best film coming out this week. There is a lot of controversy about the live action Jem and the Holograms since the original Anime was at its core about women’s empowerment, with the heroine owning the record company the band played for and using the super-science of her AI computer Synergy to project holograms from her earrings. Those holograms protected her secret identity, generated illusions that baffled and confused the evil doers she was constantly fighting, and also created special effects for the band. It appears that in the new live action version Jem is not the owner of the company, not the possessor of a secret identity fighting the bad guys, not in possession of proprietary advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic and makes her powerful. Instead she seems to be a wanna-be rock star who leveraged a YouTube account into a ticket to being exploited by a record company, which is not even close to the original story line. Or is she? The trailer seems to have changed since it first came out, I am wondering if the production company may have realized their mistake when the public outcry started over the changes they introduced. Not hopeful, but wondering.
