Popular Antiquarian

We continue our deep dive into the Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, the Ireland adjacent fantasy series from Saban Entertainment, creators of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. This is episode 12 in which several extremely complicated and unnecessary plans are hatched and Rohan behaves even more like a spoiled toddler than usual.

It’s time for episode 11 of Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, Dragon’s Fury in which a former friend and ally turns on the kingdom of Kells and sets fire to about 30% of it. How will our heroes respond and how will your host manage to shoehorn in his psychology qualifications? Listen along to find out. 

The deep dive into Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog continues with episode 10, The War of the Little People. This episode is primed to please me because it shifts the focus onto Mider the dark elf, my absolute favourite character in the entire show. Have the script writers constructed a plot worthy of Ned Dennehy’s acting talents? Listen along to find out.

We continue our deep dive in the weirder corners of pop culture with Draganta, episode 9 of Saban Entertainment’s tokugatsu adjacent fantasy series Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. Having obtained magical weapons, magical armour, and an entire working dragon Rohan, Deidre, Ivar, and Angus must now find the legendary warrior Draganta, something that proves a lot easier than you might have expected. Al...

Our ongoing deep dive into the power rangers adjacent tokugatsu TV show Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog continues as we explore part two of The Taming of Pyre in which Rohan, Angus, Deidre, and Ivar must do battle with four evil sentinels, a fire-breathing dragon, and their ongoing short term memory problems. Having lost their weapons in the last episode how are they going to deal with the challenges...

Episode 7 of Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog is a two parter! Very exciting. Queen Maeve has assembled all four of Mider’s diabolical sentinels to attack the mystic knights while they’re busy trying to tame a dragon that definitely doesn’t want to be tamed. There’s also a twist at the end that I definitely didn’t see coming. Listen along to find out more.

Episode 6 sees the established formula very much in place as Angus has to claim his magical armour from a bored Irish character actor dressed like a fool while everyone else is distracted by a low effort monster summoned by the dastardly Queen Maeve who has other things to worry about, namely the low quality of the entertainers at her court.

It’s a double event here on Popular Antiquarian as HJDoom casts a jaundiced eye over episodes 4 and 5 of Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, Tash Hound of Temra and Ivar and the Sea Serpent. Deidre’s after her magical armour but the script writers are more concerned with how that’s going to affect Rohan. In episode 5 it’s Ivar’s time to shine and you’d better believe he’s going to somehow make it all ab...

Episode 3 of Mystic Knights sees our heroes quest for the first bit of magical armour that will allow them to tame Pyre, the dragon of Dare which is the namesake of this episode despite being in it for all of three minutes. Will Deidre tell the boys off, will Angus find some way of embarrassing himself, and will Rohan develop some kind of personality? Listen along to find out.

We’re back with episode 2 of the Saban Entertainment fantasy action series set in a TV executive’s idea of what ancient Ireland looks like. Having assembled the main cast they are now sent to the actual land of Tir Na Nog to do magical trails at the behest of a tiny king with a terrible beard. Can they manage to persuade him to help them before the castle of Kells is overrun by the forces of Temra...

It’s time for a new season of Popular Antiquarian and this time our main focus is going to be Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, the weird Irish themed Power Rangers knock off from 1998. In this first episode we’re meeting the main cast and trying to decide which one is the most irritating (it’s Angus). Join HJDoom for another deep dive into something that absolutely does not deserve the care and atten...

It’s comics time on Popular Antiquarian as my parlous state of mental health sends me scurrying into the comforting embrace of 1960s Batman, here represented by issue 350 of Detective Comics from April 1966. The Caped Crusader has allegedly met his match in the shape of the very stupid Monarch of Menace but what kind of quality does this retro comic represent? Listen along to find out. The Batman...

We’ve already covered Titanic 2 on the podcast and it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life so my expectations for Titanic 666 were rock bottom. Technically Titanic 2 2 being a sequel to Titanic 2 which is not itself actually a sequel to Titanic but if I think about it too long my head starts to hurt. Titanic 666 stars Jamie Bamber and Keesha Sharp and was directed by solid journey...

Apes. Monsters. We all know them. We all love them. We all admire them. Whether it’s King Kong, Godzilla or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man it’s fair to say that everyone enjoys seeing something very large do violence to a populated area. These are exactly the kind of special effects laden movies that you might expect The Asylum to struggle with so their mockbuster of Godzilla Vs Kong definitely con...

Who doesn’t love a very cheap movie based on a successful film adaptation of a wildly successful novel written by a man who writes with all the grace and flair of a malfunctioning toilet? That’s what we get with The Asylum’s The Da Vinci Treasure, a mockbuster of the 2006 adaptation of The Da Vinci Code. They may not have Tom Hanks or Paul Bettany but they do have C Thomas Howell and a depressingl...

Edge of Tomorrow is great. A really solid high concept scifi action movie anchored by Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt’s undeniable chemistry. Age of Tomorrow, The Asylum’s mockbuster of the same movie is a little different in that it’s not high concept, there’s very little action, and the leads have the kind of chemistry you would associate with rotting vegetable matter. I can usually find something la...

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was a somewhat unsuccessful film but that’s never been a barrier to The Asylum trying to cash in on someone else’s marketing budget. In this case they simply replaced the vampires with zombies and the budget with the contents of a child’s dressing up box. They do at least have noted character actor Bill Oberst Jr playing the lead but will that be enough to redeem thi...

It’s something of a double header this episode as I actually sat down and watched Morbius, the film that Dracula: The Original Living Vampire is mockbustering. Morbius, it may shock you to learn is not a good movie but there’s always the possibility that The Asylum will manage to turn out something even worse. Listen along to find out.

It’s possible there are worse film makers out there than Michael Bay and if there are they’ve almost certainly worked for The Asylum at some point. Transmorphers is their attempt to recreate the cinematic magic of Bay’s Transformers movie, an astonishing franchise that somehow manages to be much stupidity than the Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s. How well does it work? Listen along to find o...

When the villainous Loki is trying to cause Ragnarok there’s only one person you can turn to - Kevin Nash. In the unlikely event that Kevin Nash doesn’t make it then it’s going to fall to his son Baldir to deal with the menace. In the even more unlikely event that Baldir also dies horribly then I guess a young Thor’s going to have to step up to the plate to prevent a multiverse shattering apocalyp...

Once upon a time you couldn't move for gorillas in the movies and, thanks to the King Kong remake in 2005, the Asylum got on some of that sweet ape action. Ostensibly an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World this horribly cheap jungle adventure features Bruce Boxleitner as the token actor you've heard of. How bad does the giant ape look? Listen along to find out.

The sheer brass neck of making an unauthorised sequel to Titanic is in many ways the most impressive thing about this film. Is it possible to remake one of the greatest visual spectacles in modern cinema without access to vast quantities of money? Is it possible to do it without access to a boat? All these questions and more will be answered in this week’s episode.

If there’s one thing The Asylum loves it’s riffing on the work of James Cameron. Battle for Pandora, timed to coincide with the release of Avatar: The Way of Water in 2022 attempts to ride on the coattails of Cameron’s beautiful but boring science fiction epics. There’s no money for an actual epic so instead they follow a well-worn path in low budget science fiction. How well does it land? Listen...

In 2014 there was arguably only one film less hotly anticipated than the remake of Robocop and that was the mockbuster of the remake of Robocop. Android Cop, The Asylum’s foray into the world of Robocop rip offs, a remarkable fecund genre of movie. It’s got a stacked cast by the standards of Asylum movies since it features both Michael Jai White and Charles S Dutton in key roles. But will the midd...

The Star Wars franchise is one of the most beloved pieces of intellectual property in the world, despite Disney's best efforts to run it into the ground. Can the Asylum produce something worse than The Rise of Skywalker? Listen along to find out how space opera works when you can't afford either space or opera.