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05 Dec

Warrior: The Historical Inspiration for Dylan Leary

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This article contains Warrior spoilers. Although the Bruce Lee-inspired Cinemax series Warrior is fiction, it is loosely based on historical events of San Francisco in the 1870s. Just as Nellie Davenport (Miranda Raison) is based upon on a remarkable San Franciscan heroine, Donaldina Cameron, the Season 2 Finale drops a bomb for one of the show’s central characters. At the end of the episode when Dylan Leary (Dean Jagger) declares “I’m Dylan Leary and I’m here on behalf of the Workingmen’s Party of California,” it’s a major tell. The Workingmen’s Party of California was an actual organization during the period when…
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05 Dec

Will Warrior Season 3 Happen?

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Is this the end of Warrior? It certainly seems that way as far as Cinemax is concerned. It’s a shame because the Bruce Lee inspired martial arts series continued to pick up steam throughout its second season.  Like with any period fantasy, the first season of Warrior was devoted to quite a lot of world building. The cast was diverse, but somewhat stereotyped. The Chinese were all Kung Fu gangsters, prostitutes, or coolies. The Irish were drunkards or corrupt cops.  But Season 2 solidified the world of Warrior, the characters were able to deepen and grow. The drama and the…
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05 Dec

Warrior Season 2 Episode 10 Review: Man on the Wall

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 10 After the brutal depiction of San Francisco’s Riot of 1877 in the previous episode, the Warrior Season 2 finale feels more like an epilogue. There’s lots of ruminating over drinks, a few cliffhangers to tease Season 3, and one long awaited fight. Since Cinemax abandoned its original programming, this may be the final episode of Warrior unless some other network picks it up. Hopefully, Warrior finds new life somewhere else because Season 2 leaves us hanging and wanting more.  This episode begins with the morning after the Riot. As Chinatown residents recover…
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28 Nov

Warrior: The Real History of the Race Riot that Shook San Francisco

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This article contains Warrior spoilers. In “Enter the Dragon,” the ninth episode of Season 2, Warrior rips a page out from history with its depiction of San Francisco Riot of 1877. On July 23, two nights of racial violence tore through Chinatown, killing four and destroying over $100,000 worth of Chinese-owned property. In Warrior there’s a much higher body count, but the show is “historical fiction” and never set out to be entirely accurate. According to Warrior’s head writer Jonathan Tropper, “What’s important to us are the themes and the characters of the truths of the racism and the difficulty…
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28 Nov

Warrior Season 2 Episode 9 Review: Enter the Dragon

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 9 Enter the Dragon was Bruce Lee’s most significant film and is regarded as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time. It was the first major Hollywood and Hong Kong co-production, and it also became one of the most profitable films of all time. Tragically, Lee didn’t live to see its success. He died a month prior to the premiere of Enter the Dragon. For Warrior to evoke Lee’s masterpiece, this episode better be good. The significance of the title isn’t lost on Warrior’s head writer Jonathan Tropper. “My favorite…
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21 Nov

Warrior Season 2 Episode 8 Review: All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 8 Review This episode’s cold open has Hong (Chen Tang) telling a story to Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) and Young Jun (Jason Tobin) as they are eating. It’s a tale of a killer who uses violin strings as a weapon to explain why Hong uses his signature whip chain. Ah Sahm and Young Jun tease him by constantly interrupting his story and as the camera pulls back, we discover that they are casually eating over a pile of dead Fung Hai men. With their leader Zing (Dustin Nguyen) in jail, the Fung Hai…
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14 Nov

Warrior Season 2 Episode 7 Review: If you Wait by the River Long Enough…

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 7 This episode picks up right where the last one left off – Young Jun (Jason Tobin), Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), and Hong (Chen Tang) return from their successful mission to face Father Jun’s (Perry Young) wrath. The Jun father-son relationship has been trying since the beginning, and it comes to a head when Father Jun blackballs his son from the Hop Wei with a ritual to ‘burn’ him out. Hop Wei members show their loyalty with branded forearms, so Father Jun burns out Young Jun’s brand with what appears to be the…
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07 Nov

Warrior Season 2 Episode 6 Review: To a Man with a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 6 heads for the Mexican border for a No Holds Barred tournament that has been teased all season long. Apart from Ah Toy’s (Olivia Cheng) trips to Nellie’s (Miranda Raison) Sonoma winery in the previous episode, Warrior seldom leaves San Francisco except for one notable exception – Season 1 Episode 5: “The Blood and the Sh*t.” That was an outlier tale where Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) and Young Jun (Jason Tobin) were transporting a coffin and got trapped by bandits in a desert saloon with several bystanders. With undertones of The Seven Samurai,…
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04 Nov

How Xena: Warrior Princess used Greek Myth

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First of all, sorry if this bursts anyone’s bubble, but sadly Xena: Warrior Princess is not a ‘real’ character from Greek myth. Whereas Hercules and Iolaus from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys are both important characters from Greek mythology, the three most important characters in Xena: Warrior Princess – Xena, Gabrielle, and Callisto – are all original characters with entirely original stories. Xena does have things in common with some characters from Greek myth. Most obviously, the Amazons (who appear in the series and adopt Gabrielle as their princess, but Xena is not one of them) are a ‘real’ Greek myth…
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31 Oct

Warrior Season 2 Episode 5 Review: Not for a Drink, a F*ck, or a G*damn Prayer

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 5 The episode opens with Li Yong (Joe Taslim) doing some shirtless Kung Fu but the scene is too short to determine what style he is doing. Perhaps it’s something just made up for Warrior. Taslim’s background is in in Judo, not Kung Fu, but that doesn’t matter. He looks great doing whatever he’s doing and it’s a promising opening for this episode. The previous two episodes lacked enough Kung Fu to satisfy dedicated Bruce Lee fans. Fortunately, this episode makes up for that and then some. It’s the strongest episode…
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24 Oct

Warrior Season 2 Episode 4 Review: If You Don’t See Blood, You Didn’t Come to Play

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 4 The title of this episode comes from Sophie’s (Celine Buckens) date. Spencer (Russell Crous) comes from the upper class and he’s trying to court Sophie in an upper-class way, but she’s is having none of that. She brings him to the Banshee to slam some drinks, and coyly asks him about his athleticism. Spencer says he plays rugby and Sophie feigns being impressed by the roughness of the sport, egging him to say, “If you don’t see blood, you didn’t come to play.” Then she takes him to the back-alley…
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20 Oct

Warrior, Snake Eyes, and What’s Next for Andrew Koji

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His first major role in a feature film Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins was on the horizon, as well as the 2nd season of the Bruce Lee inspired Warrior where plays the lead. But then, Cinemax announced that they were no longer commissioning original shows to make way for the new streaming platform, HBO Max. The fate of Warrior remains unknown. And soon after that the pandemic hit, postponing Snake Eyes until 2021. But then in September, Andrew got some great news. He was cast alongside Brad Pitt in a new David Leitch film called Bullet Train. Cinemax released Warrior…
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17 Oct

Warrior Season 2 Episode 3 Review: Not How We Do Business

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 3 “Not How We Do Business” sums up the latest episode of Warrior in two ways. First, it’s a line that Zing (Dustin Nguyen) lays on O’Hara (Kieran Biew) when he finally breaks away from being a debt collector for the Fung Hai. “Not how we do business” also works on a meta level, this episode only has one Kung Fu fight. That’s weak for a Bruce Lee inspired show. There are two other fight scenes, but they’re scrappy brawls the likes of which can be found in any action drama. Bruce Lee…
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10 Oct

Warrior: The Historical Inspiration for Nellie Davenport

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This article contains Warrior spoilers. In “The Chinese Connection,” the second episode of Season 2 of Warrior, a new character named Nellie Davenport (Miranda Raison) enters the show. She’s a wealthy widow committed to ending the exploitation of Chinese women by leading police raids on brothels and offering alternatives to Warrior’s favorite brothel madam, Ah Toy. “We introduced the character of Nellie Davenport,” reveals Warrior showrunner Jonathan Tropper, “She was based on an actual person.” Tropper is quick to point out that Warrior is not a docudrama. He sees it as more like a martial arts fable or graphic novel…
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10 Oct

Warrior Season 2 Episode 2 Review: The Chinese Connection

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 2 When Warrior was first announced, Bruce Lee fans were worried that this was going to be just another Bruceploitation. After all, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Bruceploitation flicks. Bruce Lee is the most impersonated icon on the planet. No one needed to see another weak caricature of the Little Dragon, even if it was on Cinemax. However, Warrior isn’t Bruceploitation at all. The creator and writer of the show, Jonathan Tropper, credits Bruce’s daughter, Shannon Lee for making sure that Warrior didn’t go “overboard with the Bruce Lee stuff.” Instead…
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03 Oct

Warrior Season 2 Episode 1 Review: Learn to Endure, or Hire a Bodyguard

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This Warrior review contains spoilers. Warrior Season 2 Episode 1 Now that the Warrior world is established, the season 2 premiere concerns itself with more character development and the interweaving of story arcs. The action, however,  is even more promising as the season premiere opens with (what else?) a fight scene.  When we rejoin Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), he’s getting beaten and bloodied again, locked in combat in a new no-holds-barred arena, the Barbary Coast Fight Pit, and flashing back to his brutal defeat by at the hands of Li Yong (Joe Taslim) last season. It’s a decent fight scene that shows…
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26 Sep

Warrior Season 2: What to Expect From the Return of the Martial Arts Drama

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When Warrior premiered in April of last year, Cinemax knew they had a hit right away. Helmed by Fast & Furious director Justin Lin and Banshee co-creator Jonathan Tropper, Warrior was renewed for a second season after just three episodes. “Warrior comes from the pitch Bruce Lee brought to Warner Brothers,” Tropper says, the writer of the show. “It was an eight page treatment Bruce Lee had written that Shannon [Lee] held onto, and that was where the initial ideas for this show come from.”  The show exists largely through the efforts of Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter and the…
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13 Jul

How Warrior Nuns Misses An Opportunity For Better Queer Representation

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When I first saw Warrior Nun pop up in my “coming soon” feed on Netflix, I was intrigued. The synopsis was interesting, the cover art looked cool, and the teaser trailer was fun. I added it to my list and asked to be reminded because it looked so very good, and so very gay. These days, it’s fashionable for shows to include characters from various marginalized communities. When meaningfully represented, this diversity can not only give visibility to marginalized people who are used to seeing their very real identities reflected in popular media, it gives everyone a lesser-known story and/or…
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12 Jul

Warrior Nun Season 2: What to Expect

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This Warrior Nun feature contains spoilers. Much of Warrior Nun season one is the prologue of a story that just begins to unfold in the finale. The diabolical cliffhanger leaves us with a brand new set of questions. With the revelation that the angel Adriel is both alive (and not an angel), the Order of the Cruciform Sword will have to reckon with its past and decide its future. According to Warrior Nun showrunner Simon Barry, the show is prepared to address that future. As he told Den of Geek:  “We’ve thrown a lot of ideas around about where the…
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08 Jul

How Warrior Nun Takes Its Viewers to Church

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The following contains spoilers for Warrior Nun. We’ve seen nuns kill a gospel medley, but not a bad guy. Fighting demons and assorted baddies isn’t exactly new, but doing it in a full habit is something we haven’t seen on television before. Buffy and the Winchesters take two different approaches to fighting evil, but Warrior Nun answers the question of what happens when we weaponize women of the faith. Warrior Nun Areala, the manga-style comic book source material on which Warrior Nun is based, follows Warrior Nun Sister Shannon Masters and her friends in The Order of the Cruciform Sword…
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DVD Guide reviews current dvd releases of movies and TV shows. The reviews of these dvd releases are my thoughts and understandings of the movie, dvd releases or TV show and not be taken as fact.

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