#Might do a spider-verse and make him more comic-like than the world he’s in

[kathren-is-here]

Since y’all really liked my doodle posts of Bradford, here’s better drawings of him!

they’re for an Au comic I keep mentioning occasionally

bonus oc content under cut + spoilers?

Also more context on this Au: this takes place years after the final (ik I said this already but shshs), where he had plenty of time to think somewhere inside what’s left of his mind, then one day he got freed by the one and only Cassidy✨ Magica was experimenting with magic portals to other worlds and wanted to get another magica involved to steal Scrooges dime, but something messed up causing Cassidy to appear and the portal to explode, causing Bradford to be free from her

so Cassidy is now lost with some vulture in a whole different universe with nothing except the stuff he has on him, fun! Oh and here’s something from somewhere else:

‘Cassidy has no idea who this funky looking bird man is, and after being trapped basically forever and having time to mull things over, he would want some sort of a second chance after he lost a lot, even if it’s a stranger from another world, actually that’s his best case scenario.’

I’m still surprised I thought this Au up at all with my somewhat limited knowledge of the 2017 show in general, I did eventually go looking through wikis to make sure things were not too out of place or out of character lol

[freddy-and-friends-au]

The band’s all here! (WIP)

I still haven’t finished their new endoskeletons yet, but I think I have their suits mostly down!

Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the inbox!

EXTRA INFO AND SCREENSHOTS UNDER THE CUT!!!

At first glance, these are obviously inspired by the traditional Chuck E. Cheese x Rockafire Explosion suits, designing them more like sports mascot costumes and having very little of the endoskeleton showing at all times (say for Foxy, of course). This was not only for more realistic world-building, but also to optimize animation, as we now have less moving parts that are actually showing, and therefore, less to render.

You might be wondering “if you wanted a more realistic approach to the suits, why not take a more realistic approach to the masks, like a more ShowBiz Pizza style?” And to that I say: everyone does that.

Okay, that isn’t entirely the reason. I like the idea of basing the designs more off of the canon models than something that already exists, because I like the idea of FazEnt having their own style of making animatronics. The ShowBiz style isn’t the only way to do animatronic masks, and these masks are how FazEnt would go about making them. Even when FazEnt does use the trademark ShowBiz rubber-face masks on the Junior models, they don’t do it the same way that ShowBiz does it.

Something interesting I want to do with Freddy & Friends is to set narrative moments apart from the moments meant to be passed off as real footage. The designs shown above are for the latter, meanwhile the narrative will use more artistically stylized suits textured to more so resemble a comic book, sort of like Into The Spider-Verse (except instead of going for a generalized comic book feel, the Freddy & Friends style is gonna be more reminiscent of the Batman: Year One comic). The designs will be more reminiscent of how I draw them on paper, as opposed to being faithful to the canon.

Here’s some extra info as to how I came up with the designs, as well as some extra renders and concept art!:

Original concept art from September 30, 2020.

Freddy was a little obvious to design, probably because everyone seems to design him like this when making more cartoonish versions of him. A more defined tuxedo complete with a collar and cuffs with a red stripe around his hat. It just seemed like the right direction to go in.

Bonnie was initially intended to wear a vest, though I was holding out for something else so that he could be differentiated from the evil rabbit (the evil rabbit wears a vest). I asked my friends what I could change it to, and one of them said “Try a cardigan”. Honestly, that fits Bonnie’s personality so much better, both in terms of spirit and cartoon.

You might also notice that Bonnie was supposed to have buck teeth, as well as more squared off teeth. That was originally part of his V1 model, but when I tried applying that to the new models, literally any way I tried to arrange it made Bonnie look like so much like an insufferable asshole that I wanted to punch him in the face. Ultimately, I ended up ditching the buck teeth and just gave him his classic teeth.

Chica was a little hard to do something unique with at first. I initially wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with her, but when I modeled her V1, her little chef’s hat was a last minute addition to her design. I’m also thinking about changing her bib into an apron, per the toon designs that Henry posted a while back.

Foxy was probably the most fun to design. Obviously, his final model has a lot of details inspired by the FNAF movie, but when I was designing him 4 years ago, I really just wanted to go crazy with his design. I wanted him to have a beard, I wanted him to have a peg leg (I really liked the idea of animating him with a limp). Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll keep the peg leg, because it might be a little too hard for Henry to animate with the tech that he has.

As a cheeky little reference to the roots of the FNAF fandom, I wanted Foxy’s hook to resemble the hook seen on the Splinks Foxy model. ;)

Endo01 - Version 4 WIP

I’ve done a few different versions of the endoskeleton. What I’m trying to do for this new one is to assemble him modularly, allowing me to make each component a recognizable component (they’re also actually modeled after real components).

I’m not gonna go into detail about the functionality of this guy, because I eventually plan to make a Freddy & Friends Instructional VHS series centered around being a mechanic for FazEnt. However, what I will say is that these designs are intended to have plausible functionality, especially using the technology of the 1980’s (which is not restricted to pneumatic technology, because making an animatronic walk with pneumatic actuators while maintaining the traditional complexity of animatronic endoskeletons is simply impossible).

EXTRAS:

The original Version 1 designs

My failed attempt at giving Bonnie buck teeth (I wanna punch him so bad…)

Fixed Foxy

???

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

I feel like miraculous will just do the most bare bones use of the Multiverse with evil heroes and good villains, Miraculous is a Franchise in which the multiverse is a great idea

They’ll probably just make say “they’ve always been evil” without making a explanation of why Hawkmoth is good and the Duo are bad, imagine if they gave the Re-verse a cool backstory like “marinette parents died in a accident and she became the worlds youngest top criminal which discovered about the miraculous, she stole the Ladybug and cat miraculous but master fu misinformed her about which miraculous granted the wish and instead making her go after the two miraculous Master Fu knows nothing, the butterfly and Peacock miraculous, and so Ladybug rampages trough paris trying to get her hands on the miraculous and even discovering Adrien agreste is a sentimonster in her pursuit for the Peacock miraculous making him he’s pawn which will use the cat miraculous [see that play of words? Paw-Pawn?] and Gabriel agreste has to fight Ladybug and save not only the world and the miraculous but also he’s son” but I doubt they’ll do that

Heck with the obvious Spider-verse inspiration I would have wished they would have gone through actually interesting Universes

Post apocalyptic universe in which the akumatized villain are like zombies and only the miraculous users are inmune

A world in which Queen bee got her redemption arc

A world in which Marinette got the butterfly miraculous (a fan favorite)

A world in which Marinette had the bee miraculous and Chloe the ladybug (scarlet lady reference?!)

A world in which Adrien is a Healthy teen with a happy family and nothing went wrong and nothing of the super hero related events of the series happen

A world in which the kwamis are evil and the Duo has to fight the eldritch monsters trying to take over their body’s meanwhile they try to find who is the poor man being used has a puppet by Nooroo which is trying to free the other kwamis to end the world

Chat blanc universe

A super futuristic world in which magic is dying and the villain is the order of the miraculous trying to resurrect magic even if that comes to a high price so they can keep existing and have meaning on their lives since they wasted hundreds of decades of their lives guarding the miraculous which will soon stop existing

A world in which humans don’t exist and instead the characters are creative monster designs

A world in which Marinette was bitten by a radioactive ladybug and Adrien has a eldritch horror alien goo named plagg which gives him super powers (yes like venom and Spider-Man)

A world in which Lila/Chloe and Marinette Swap places

The world of the movie!!! (which is very different from the series world might I mind you)

And the world of the comics (although the only difference I can remember is the American heroes and yes before you ask this is the comics the infamous Ghetto blaster came from)

There’s so many options yet I know they’ll only do the Evil universe trope instead of actually using the potential the world of miraculous has for parallel universes

You'd think for a special that seeks out to explore the multiverse, they'd do more than just your generic dystopian mirror universe where all the characters aren't made evil are part of some resistance faction judging from the trailer. There may be a chance that we'll get glimpses of other universes, but there's still going to be more focus on the "Re-Verse".

The idea of a world with Ladybug and Cat Noir being villains could work if you decided to focus on the circumstances that causes them to snap and turn to a life of crime (sort of like Spider-Carnage's backstory from the finale of the 90s Spider-Man cartoon), but given how the show handles the morality of its characters, there's a good chance that this universe's version of Ladybug and Cat Noir will just be evil for the sake of being evil. Either that, or the writers pull a cop-out and make them completely different characters, like Chloe and Lila.

[shockyeahmiguelohara]

I wonder if Tempest might appear in the last Spider-verse movie? In that scene with Miles and the canon events (talking about how letting a person fated to die just die is messed up), there's a wash over the characters where each character's face (particularly Miles) is half green/turquoise and half pink (Honeybee's color scheme).

Honestly, I'm leaning on the side of "no".

Like most things that deal with Miguel's particular Spider-Man universe, almost nothing that isn't him (lately), a reference to (or literally) Lyla, and some variation of his classic costume is ever carried over into other media.

Nothing I've seen, even in the newer comics, deigns to even bring his brother, ex-girlfriend(s), or his parents into most of his current and then-current stories. And when they do, they kill them off real quick.

And I'd argue it's because comic books have become less about the day-to-day life of a superhero and more about structuring issues like blockbuster events.

I say this as someone who enjoyed Miguel's 2010s series with PAD, but it truly sucks that most of his universe is almost always left behind in favor being stuck in the past or another universe with whatever iteration of Peter Parker is running around. The explicit messaging is that he's the only thing worthwhile to reimagine and engage with for modern audiences. It's the same problem I have with Miles Morales' general lack of world outside of Peter Parker.

So, I feel like Tempest has less of a chance of appearing in the Spiderverse media than Xina and Gabri do. Again, I say this as someone who would love to see all of Miguel's world and relationships brought into his modern narratives.

Would it be cool? I dunno, maybe. I have an issue with how ATSV handled Miguel, so the idea of any his sweethearts appearing in future SV media just makes me concerned.

[webbedphantom]

Okay so I know I have a bunch of drafts but I really want to talk about my Ideas for Sae's Palace in my AU

To start off with, if you're familiar with the AU at all, you'd know that the MetaNav just straight up doesn't exist, so you might be wondering how I'd even do Sae's Palace? Like is it more about changing her heart through character interactions, kinda like how they do in-game but just making that the focus?

Yes and no.

They do actually go into her Palace, but to explain the how and why of it, there's some setup I need to do first.

See, the way this world works is that with every Persona user awakened by the Metaverse Serum (AF-15), the more the Metaverse begins to leak into the real world. And by the time of Sae's arc, there's now no less than 8 people awakened in this manner, meaning that the connection is now strong enough for something major to cross over, provided it got a little push.

The specifics of this I haven't exactly worked out yet, but someone (probably Akechi being driven mad by his symbiote) sets off a device that causes Palaces to erupt out of the ground, covering the surrounding area in a thick fog that turns people into mindless puppets for the shadows to control, forcing them to go out and bring more people into it. (If you've read my Other Verses doc, this is the scenario that inspired the Kingdom Come verse)

Naturally, this whole scenario isn't something the team was prepared to handle, and since it's affecting the entire city, they need to split up to take care of things, trying to save as many people as they can.

There's a lot that happens during this section, with each of the team members getting their own little missions fighting against one of the palaces (including a lot of original ones, as aside from Shido, Okumura, and Futaba, every other Palace Ruler is in prison and they sort of turn the place into a mishmash of all of their Palaces), either on their own or in small groups, before meeting back up to try and get things back to normal.

Now before we get into Sae proper, we need to do a bit more background to catch you up on her history in this world.

At the beginning of the year, Makoto and Sae's father was still alive, and was a police captain heading the team assigned to bring in the Spider-Man. But while he eventually realizes that they're on the same side, and even helps Aaron and the team against the Shadow Possessed victims, in the end he dies, getting stabbed through the chest by Jack-o'-lantern (As in someone possessed by a Jack-o'-lantern/Pyro Jack, though an evolved version of it that was strengthened by Yaldabaoth to make it more akin to the comic book supervillain of the same name. He's got a sort of Grim Reaper vibe to him, including a gigantic scythe blade on one of his arms) taking a blow that was meant for Aaron.

This naturally scars Makoto pretty badly, since she saw it happen. And while she didn't see the event herself, Sae was no different. She and her father had grown a bit distant over the years, but she still loved and respected him greatly, so losing him really tore her up inside.

Seeing this as an opportunity, Shido pulled some strings to make it seem as though it was Spider-Man who killed Captain Niijima. After all, no one really knew what happened that night, only that the Captain was last seen chasing after the vigilante, and while he didn't use it often, Aaron was known to carry a knife, even if it had a completely different blade from the actual murder weapon.

So Sae, believing in the lies of the falsified autopsy report, began to hunt down the Phantom Spider like her life depended on it.

Over the course of the next few months, Makoto would encounter the symbiote, which led to her lashing out at everyone around her as it took advantage of rage and grief. This would include her sister, and while the team would get her to come to her senses, it would lead to Sae finding out that she not only knew, but worked alongside the Spider. And while she would forgive her for what she did while wearing the suit, that revelation would cause her to disown her younger sister, forcing Makoto to stay with Futaba and Sojiro until she could get her bearings again.

NOW back to our present crisis, despite the growing rift between the two, Makoto still cares deeply for her sister, and immediately rushes to her workplace to make sure she's okay. Only to find a casino standing in the place of the courthouse.

Makoto manages to infiltrate the place, searching desperately for Sae, only to find her on a sort of show stage, being held captive by her Shadow. She tries to free her but ends up getting caught, and is forced to relinquish her symbiote to keep her sister from harm.

Aaron, having just wrapped up dealing with all of his old villains and the Shadows of the Palace Rulers trying to break out of prison, gets word (somehow, I'm not quite sure yet. Maybe Futaba??) that Makoto has been captured, and despite how exhausted he is, he immediately rushes over to try to save her.

Now I'm not quite sure how to work this in, but an idea I had that I thought would make for a neat scene was if Shadow Sae, for some reason, forced the two sisters to do a duet of Whims of Fate (inspired by this cover of the song). Not really sure why, maybe she's just toying with them or something, but I really like the concept.

As this is going on, Aaron begins tearing through the casino, fighting through hoards of shadows, chucking roulette tables across rooms, smashing through walls. He's getting tired but he can't afford to wait even a second, not while Makoto's in danger.

He breaks into the show room, and the second Sae sees him (the man who she believes killed her father), she snaps. Her shadow immediately transforms into Leviathan and begins to tear into the Spider. Makoto seeing this as a chance to escape, trying to use the fight as a distraction to get Sae to safety and get her suit back.

But Sae refuses to move, just staring at the battle before her in silence, almost frozen, but not due to trauma of seeing the Spider again. She's seen him before, several times. No, she's rather torn. Part of her wants him to see justice, to be brought in for his crime and unmasked. But another part of her, the part her shadow embodies, just wants him dead, wants him to suffer like she had to. So she just... watches.

Makoto isn't satisfied with that, though. She tries again and again to get through to her sister, to get her away from here or to convince her that Aaron didn't do it, but nothing seems to work. All the while Aaron is fighting for his life, and he's losing. He's too worn out, and can barely keep up with Leviathan's onslaught of attacks.

Eventually, Makoto figures out that the only way she'll be able to get through is by confessing everything, recounting how she was there when their Dad died, how she saw him get stabbed through the chest to save Aaron, how he fought so hard to keep them all safe, how they did everything they could to save him but it wasn't enough. It's painful for her, to relive one of the worst moments of her life, but she can't let her sister keep lashing out at the wrong man.

It takes Sae a while to process this, unsure if she entirely believes it. But in the end, she decides to act, helping Makoto get her symbiote back and working with her to take down her shadow and get them all out of here.

This would eventually lead to her getting her Persona, though it wouldn't happen right away. She needs to confirm the lies for herself, and come to terms with just how close her darker half came to killing someone, and how she was content to just watch it happen. But at some point, either towards the end or after the Palace situation is resolved, she would awaken to her power (One of the only natural awakenings in the AU, because yeah the connection to the Metaverse is now so strong that Personas can manifest in reality without the serum) as the Wraith.

She'd be a sort of mix between Wraith from the comics and Daredevil (both OG and Electra flavours), using her Persona to induce fear in her enemies, as well as hard hitting physical and gun skills, twin stun batons which she can ricochet off walls like Daredevil's billy clubs, and Wraith's wrapping... thingies for swinging around or tying people up.

I'm not entirely sure what her Persona would be though. I've seen some people either give her a Transformer like Makoto, or turn Leviathan into her Persona, and while I feel like that last one has some potential, I also think she should have something more... original I guess?

I don't know, kinda just spitballing at this point. Most of this stuff is very loose and definitely still needs some work, but I think the general idea is solid.

But anyways, that's my concept. Someday I want to flesh out the rest of this arc, like have an actual explanation for the Palace thing as well as a resolution to it, plus all the little side stories that take place with the rest of the team (I'd love for Futaba to come across the Palace of a shut-in who's going through something similar to what she does in canon, and for Haru to take on Sugimura. Maybe even have Ann and Ryuji come help Aaron at the prison so they can team up to take down Kamoshida, since they weren't actually a part of that fight in this universe).

There's a lot of potential here, honestly.

But that's enough of my ramblings. Thanks for reading!

[theha1r]

since it’s relevant rn here’s a few quick things abt steve’s spidey verse that feel kind of important to share -

spider-man, the character, does exist in his universe but - he’s not a big character like he is in ours/the real world & all. like - he’s only had a few comic runs & hasn’t had all the films & series & everything. think of him as one of those comic book characters that might have a really dedicated fanbase but is not generally well known by the public

& apart of that dedicated fanbase is, of course, the party (as in the st kids) & so when steve got bit by the spider, dustin was quick to inform him on all things spider-man & what to do with this ‘destiny’ he was given

on top of this, dustin is definitely the one who designed steve’s webshooters & makes the webs for him (bc sorry this spider-man is not a super genius, we still love him though)

he probably also helped design his suit, (which if you haven’t seen before this post & the extra info is a good basis for what that looks like). however i think robin is the one who actually sewed it/put it together for him. (she canonically has a jacket with a bunch of patches on it she presumably sewed on herself, so - we’re gonna say she’s somewhat good at sewing idk)

with those in mind, i think dustin & robin are the only two who have known steve is spider-man/about everything since the beginning. maybe other members of the party & friend group have figured it out or been told, idk i don’t have much hcs there. but i feel like max has definitely figured it out (ala michelle jones))

dustin is more steve’s ‘guy in the chair’ than robin, but they both kinda are -

idk i think that’s it for now but more will be added as i think of them

[praphit]

Across the Spider-Verse: MORE! MORE! MORE! MORE! MORE!

Is MORE always better? You might say in response to that question - "Of course it is! What a stupid STUPID question!" We all want more! - more food, more time, more clicks, more gossip, and most importantly, MORE MONEY. If your boss offers you a raise, you're not going to say "No". STUPID question!

On the other hand...

More food can sometimes be a problem.

More clicks and more money could make you arrogant.

  How about more kids?  - does that always work out?

  More drugs? More plastic surgery (I won’t disrespect someone by putting a pic/gif here, but y’all have people in mind :)?   

How about more Kim Kardashian's? There are so many.

Like The Black Eyed Peas once said "Whatchu gon do with all that junk? All that junk inside that trunk?" If you don't know, but still acquire said junk, then you might have a problem!

Marvel wanted more universes/dimensions... do they know what they're doing? Idk, but we're all kinda skeptical. DC wanted more than one Ezra Miller.

  What the hell were they thinking?? Idk.

But, you know who did MORE really well?? - SONY, with "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"

If you don't know, that was pretty much a story about SONY knocking on this kid's door (Miles Morales),

and saying we're going to turn you into Spider-Man. And the people cheered for a black Spider-Man! (Yes, he's Latino as well, but... we've claimed him. Tiger Wood's is ours. Barack Obama is ours. And so is Miles Morales :)

SONY said "MORE" - and we went into the Spider-Verse and found all kinds of Spider-People:

including Nic Cage, some Anime Spider-Girl, a white girl who kept winking and smiling at Miles (Gwen Stacy / Ghost-Spider), Peter, and a Pig. Miles wasn't getting all of the attention any more, so he had to level-up, save the day, and get rid of the extra spider-people. But, it WORKED! Great animation! Great story! It was exciting and funny! Some call it the best Spider-Man movie of all time...

until a lil bit ago when "Spider-Man: ACROSS the Spider-Verse" ( Part 1 ) came out.

SONY once again said "MORE!" And they cranked that "more meter" up as far as it could go.

We've still got Gwen, and she's still flirting with Miles.

Still got Peter  / Spider-Dad

But we've also got Pavitr Prabhakar / Indian Spider-Man

Spider-Punk 

Spider-Man 2099 (many people's favorite, from the comics)

A pregnant Spider-Woman

And so so so much more

And once again, Miles is trying to find a way to make them all go away... 

well, most of them :)

Same great animation! Great story! Amazing voice actors! Somehow the MORE, still isn't too much! I want even MORE! I would love more Spider-Story from all of these characters. But, this story is again Miles' , with some pleasant interruptions from Gwen's story. They're both just trying to live as spider-people, and still somehow be kids and relate to their families... while some force is always trying to kill them/destroy their universe. 

Same formula as the first movie, but if it ain't broke...

Got a few villains here, but you'll have to decide who's the most villainous:

One of the Spider-People is a villain... kinda, I guess. (though to be fair, they believe they're the hero of the story... granted so does Thanos, and Kang, and Ron DeSantis) All bout POV, I suppose.

Spot - 

- a goofy ass character who gets MORE scary the MORE power he attains.

Fate - a bit of a boogeyman for all of us

And I'd say Miles Morales. Only cuz he keeps screwing up., and keeps throwing tantrums. But, to be fair, again, he's only 15. How many 15 year olds would you trust to save the world? Maybe Greta Thunberg when she was 15, but that's it.

I don't have much of anything negative to say about this sequel. It gets a lil corny at times with some of the Spider-Writing, but it is what it is.

Whenever you have a story about timelines and fate, things get a lil muddy, BUT it doesn't here, because the pace of this film is so fast (in a good way) that you don't have time to dwell on all of that.

A lot of speeches about self-discovery though... I'll say that.

  This movie has a lot of heart, and for some it'll be too much. If you're dealing with some emotional stuff right now, or you have teenagers... or you are a teenager, some of this might hit too close to home. I don't remember having this many revelations that called for monologues when I was a teenager; seems unrealistic. I remember just kinda... doing things when I was a teen... there was no enlightenment. That kinda stuff doesn't come around until your mid to late 20's... MAYBE. That's if you were paying attention, which you probably weren't/won’t.

 Nah, most likely, you'll have those self-discovery moments, in therapy, in your 30's. Then, you're ready for speeches in your 40s & 50s.

So, you know, I respect the self-awareness. Perhaps this is the true power of the younger Spider-People in this film.

This movie is a true visual treat! I can't wait for it to stream, so I can pause and soak up each artistic frame that was treated with such care, style , and inspiration.

Grade: A

You're right! Stupid question! 

MORE is better! Well... at least when we're talking Spider-Man. I want more Spider-Stories! More Spider-People! More Spider-Video Games! More Spider-Promo! More Spider-heartstring-tugging! More Spectacular ART!

F*ck it! MORE of EVERYTHING!

More drugs! More money! More fake butts! MORE MORE MORE! May it never stop! Consequences be damned!

(sorry, that escalated quickly... oh well) 

MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[turboacek-blog]

MCU Spider-Man 4 guesses

Written Mar 3 2023:

Since it's somewhat confirmed to happened wanted to put some some guesses to what might happen with little to no information

Daily Bugle & Friends

I think even if it's another news company Peter will make his money that way

And there I think we will still get Betty Brant from his high school as maybe an entry-level employee or even an intern depending on the time after NWH

She'll give that first taste of Peter knows her but she doesn't know him making it consistent but still weird

Then as maybe an IT guy Ned works there too

As maybe he got connections because he used to date Betty which can be one of those things Ned still remembers as it wasn't entirely because of Peter

Idea from the Spectacular Spider-Man Ned was a reporter there and Betty was a receptionist so they could pull from that

This is where Peter and Ned become friends again in a they just always click no matter the history

MJ will probably get introduced to Peter through Ned once Peter becomes friends with him, like maybe invited to a college party

Don't know if they'll somehow get their memories back but could just open the door for more friend stuff

MJ is still the romantic part of the movie but it's more like a rekindling kind of love story or star-crossed lovers where despite the spell MJ wants to be with Peter for whatever reason

Villain

I have no idea who should be the villain, with no way home they did do Green Goblin, Doc Oc, Electro, Sandman, and Lizard

I'm partial to the ps4 game so I would pick Mister Negative

I think its someone that could be another mentor like figure for Peter they could have that hasn't been used in live action yet

Tombstone for a more street level threat works to

Plus more of a unique story and doesn't have the mentor dynamic since this Peter is now grown up

And there's also the Venom/Symbiote tease which would be fun but I feel it's too close to everything else Venom movies, PS5 game might have Venom etc

Cameos

Since Spider-Man just benefits from these appearances

I think the fan idea of Kate Bishop being somewhat included could happen as maybe she shoots an arrow to save him they talk for a bit then she's gone

Other characters like Ms Marvel don't fully work since Peter is older than her and not the same age like they are in comics a lot of the time but could be fun if they find a way to ignore the age difference

Shang Chi in the comics taught Spider-man martial arts so having some scene doing some martial arts with Shang Chi as a cameo scene would be cool

Edit: June 7, 2023

Other love interest

Just watched this video

And I now kind want Chat to be the “perfect” girl love interest for Peter before he goes back to MJ

Basically if Liz was someone that maybe was not a good fit for him but he liked and it didn’t work out

MJ also might not be the perfect fit but they liked each other so it worked out

Chat could be the girl that seemingly aligns with Peter on everything important but when it comes to love he can’t love her the same as MJ since they seem to really want to put them back together according to rumors and such

Ideally we wouldn’t get MJ to keep true to his decision at the end of NWH but it’s Zendaya lol

And I think instead of doing Gwen Stacy which seems to be the obvious new love interest as she’s becoming a bit overdone and I think keeping it more separate from Spider-verse and Amazing Spiderman is good

And I think Black Cat is a fun idea but I think that would depend more on the story as having a Catwoman like entity in Spider-Man stories are fun but MCU world I don’t know if it can really explain someone like her as easily plus I don’t think they would do it right tbh lol

[amazing-spiderling]

How aware do you Murderdock is of the multiverse?

Guess it's time for another ♥♡∞:｡.｡MURDERDOCK META POST｡.｡:∞♡♥

This sent me back to the comics, because I had a general memory of how things played out, but this is also a situation where the specific dialogue makes a difference. While I still think the words on the page leave something to reader interpretation, I'll give you my hot take.

The multiverse does factor into "Spider-Gwen" as a significant factor at several points, both during crossovers (like the Spider-Women event) and as a major plot point in its own self contained story. (By the time the series starts, Gwen had already gone through the entirety of events of the Spider-Verse event.) It would be easy to think that Matt doesn't know about the multiverse at all, but we have some indicators that this is not the case!

During the 6 Issue Miles Morales/Spider-Gwen crossover, the pair end up in Earth-65 trying to hunt down that world's Jefferson Davis, who is a low level crime boss. He is interfering with SILK's business, which might put him in the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" category, except for one thing...

Matt Murdock wants him out of the picture. Now, there's a few notable pieces of information in this interaction. First of all, Miles quickly recognizes Matt and his power set, Matt identifies himself as a threat, and explains why and how he wants the two heroes to deal with this problem for him. Now, not only do I think Matt remains unphased by the appearance of a previously unknown Spider-Man, but he uses the phrase "someone with your father's face" here, implying he knows that Davis is not Miles' real father, but someone who just looks like him. To me, that means that he understands, at least on a very basic level, that the multiverse is a thing, and different versions of people can and do exist in different universes. Why does he know this at this point? Unclear! But the best bet is that Cindy explained the fundamentals to him while they brokered their various deals, as she is well versed in the topic.

So that seems pretty conclusive evidence that he is aware of the multiverse, but the follow-up question that I have to ask is, what does he think about it? Well, how did you react the first time you learned about how vast the universe was? It sure made you feel some kind of way, didn't it?

To this end, let's examine a few other panels!

During Gwen's fight to defend Harry in Madripoor, she has to do quite a lot of running, and things get well out of hand more than once. At some point, she drops the bag containing her transporter bracelet, and Matt picks it up. Based on his wry smile, I think he has some idea of what it is.

At least at this point, he understands that it is some kind of transporter, and that he can use the technology to his advantage. Here, he uses it to "draw back the curtain" so to speak, to show Gwen that her father is in a coma, so she'll run off after him immediately, and drop the fight she's in the middle of.

Later, he uses it himself to make a quick exit after delivering Richie Rogers (the dirty cop who let Alexei into Captain Stacy's cell) in an attempt to bait her into a murderous rage. So he clearly understands how the device works and is capable of using it for himself.

Then? He keeps it, for ages. He still has it on him in a much later issue when he recovers a barely-breathing Rogers and even shows it off before delivering his backstory monologue. He admits the dinging noise perplexes him, and he can't make it stop. You'd think he'd throw it in a drawer or at least get Otomo to look at it and tell him if the screen is blinking "low battery", you know?

He is even wearing it in his penultimate confrontation with Gwen, and it's being just as annoying as ever. Gwen finally realizes that Murdock has had the device in his possession for ages now, and she seems to be rightfully concerned. But she doesn't recover it at this point.

(I didn't really need to include this page, but it's sick as hell. Look at it! The colors! The typeface in the background! The action!)

Gwen eventually returns from her multiversal self-confrontational romp to take down Matt once and for all, and find him in pretty bad shape. He's cut ties with the Hand and they've cut him to pieces in return. Though he's fended off wave after wave of ninjas on his own, he's clearly wounded, both from this altercation and the beating Gwen gave him earlier. And yet, he has the nerve to stand there like everything is going according to plan, peddling his usual lies. And I think that's really important to take note of.

Because immediately after, he shows Gwen the transporter, and says that at any moment he could have gone wherever he wanted and started a whole new life. This, of course, would have behooved him, as the Hand are currently after him with everything they have, his allies in the city are dwindling by the minute, and his grand performance is quickly coming to a close. He tells Gwen that he chose to stay for her benefit, though we know in his mind that this means he doesn't think he's finished his job of helping Gwen be corrupted by power.

And Gwen? Rightfully calls him out on his bullshit. As should we all.

Now, there's a lot to unpack here, and I think it goes back up to the interaction with Miles. Matt knows that the multiverse exists. And I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that he understands the bracelet is not just a teleporter, but can actually open up gates to other dimensions, like the ones Gwen has traveled to. When he talks about "going anywhere" I don't think he just means a quiet villa in Tuscany, because as he has said in the past, the Hand are everywhere, with a stranglehold on every culture. I don't think there's anywhere he could run that would be far enough, besides the fact that he, y'know, kind of stands out. (I mean, what's he going to do, dye his hair and pretend he can see and get a job as a line cook at a diner?)

No, I think it's far more compelling to imagine that he is telling Gwen he could have gone to any other world, but he chose to stay for her sake. Which is of course, an utter lie, and not just because Gwen wants nothing to do with him.

The real reason Matt hasn't gone anywhere? Is because he's heard about how these different universes can vary. If Cindy was indeed the one who explained the multiverse to him, then she likely mentioned how the other world's version of him was a perky, heroic, and naive little thing. Miles was shocked to find out that his dad was a criminal in this world, when he's a guiding light for him in his own. That's two for two on "other world's versions of people are good guys", so I think it's safe to imagine Matt having a "this is the bad place" moment after thinking about it for a while.

Why would that be particularly devastating for him? Well, just as Peter Parker's ethos revolves around, "With great power, there must also come great responsibility", Murderdock has more or less formed his life around the idea that "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". He believes that he was fated to become a corrupted and evil human being because he was given power and skill far beyond that of anyone else in the world. (Remember, Earth-65 is a "low super" world, so someone like Matt Murdock would be closer to the top of the food chain, even without ninja training and a willingness to kill.) So sure, he could go to a universe that proves this theory right, he might even meet a version of himself that is somehow worse, but what terrifies him to his core is the idea that he might meet a version of himself who is so much better.

So while Murderdock does believe that power is what caged him, that his fall from grace was an inevitability the moment those chemicals were splashed in his eyes, I think it's safe to say there is a tiny, screaming, crying voice at the core of him that lies awake at night wondering, "What if it wasn't?"

And that's why he stays right where he is.

[brawltogethernow]

@mirrorfalls​ submitted: Came across this while searching for James Bond’s scrambled-eggs recipe (long story). Your thoughts?

~~

But did you find James Bond’s scrambled eggs recipe?

In this article, Scocca laments his inability to find accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable to read with his young son, while also demonstrating a mysterious aversion to looking at DC and Marvel’s lines of comics for children, which is where the accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable for reading with young children are. He wants his elementary schooler to be able to safely have the run of all superhero media so he doesn’t have to touch the yucky baby books.

This is not an industry-wide crisis. This is just one dude who got paid to write an article where he accidentally exposed one of his personal hangups.

The child headed toward the trade paperbacks of Marvel and D.C. superhero titles on the side wall […] a few steps in front of me. […] Is he with you? a clerk asked me. I said he was. You know, the clerk said, we have a kids’ section. The clerk gestured backward, at a few shelves near the entrance. I said, Thanks, we know and tried throwing in a little shrug, as the kid kept going.

You can’t just turn a seven-year-old child loose in a comic-book store to look at the superhero comic books. […] My seven-year-old really wanted to see that last Avengers movie […] that is, he wished it were a movie he could see, but he understood that it was, instead, a movie designed to scare and sadden him—a movie actively hostile to people like him.

They have a children’s section. Because comics are a medium suitable for stories for everybody, and they are sold in comic book shops, which have sections, like bookstores. You can use this organization to find books that you know in advance are suitable for children. What goes in that category is determined by industry professionals. This area will be bigger the bigger the shop is. These comics are not lower quality that titles from the main lines. They are actually slightly better-written on average.

Your local comic book shop has considerately wrapped Empowered in a plastic bag, so your child will not be drawn in by a colorful superhero and accidentally read a graphic scene. If you think your kid might find a memoir about internment camps upsetting, it is your job to notice them picking up They Called Us Enemy and read the blurb on the back before you let them have it. This comic adults are meant to read is in a comic book shop because that is where comics are sold. Not every public place is supposed to be Disneyland.

Movies have ratings systems. If you do not want your child to watch a PG-13 movie, you will find that most superhero cartoons are for children. They are about the same characters. Some are quite good! I really enjoyed Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Your child may like Avengers Assemble. At least I think that’s right. I’m always mixing those titles around.

This is a deeply weird bias for Scocca to casually demonstrate, because he identifies in the article that real childishness is striving for empty maturity.

He compares an old comic,

[…]a 1966 Spider-Man comic in which Spider-Man meets, fights, and defeats the Rhino; participates in a running argument between John Jameson and J. Jonah Jameson about his heroism; buys a motorcycle; breaks up with his first girlfriend, Betty Brant; flirts with Gwen Stacy; and reluctantly agrees to let Aunt May take him to meet her friend Mrs. Watson’s niece, Mary Jane.

and a new comic,

[…]a 21st century comic book in which Thor, brooding in a Katrina-destroyed New Orleans, beats up Iron Man. He also yells at Iron Man a lot about some incomprehensibly convoluted set of grievances, including involuntary cloning, that he believes Iron Man perpetrated against him while he was dead(?), and then summons some other Norse god from the beyond somehow for reasons having something to do with real estate. I think. Where the 1966 comic is zippy and fun and complete, the whole contemporary one is muddled and lugubrious and seems to constitute a tiny piece of a seemingly endless plot arc—simultaneously apocalyptic and inert.

and concludes that the edgier comic is actually less mature. This is true. (This is not news about mediocre comics.)

It also has nothing to do with either comic being child-friendly, the article’s nominal thesis, except in the sense that ASM #41 (yes, I eyeballed that from that summary, yes I am just showing off now) is better written, making it more everyone-friendly. It also has practically more space dedicated to word balloons than art and is about a college student juggling girl problems and a part-time job with a tyrannical boss. But the immature one, as Scocca points out, is dour.

These are both teenagery issues, separated only by quality. It’s true that lots of new comics published by the big 2 are bad in the specific way Scocca describes here, taking themselves too seriously and hauled down by associated stories instead of buoyed by them. Some are not! Some titles from these companies’ main continuities are zippy, contained, and child friendly. Give your child The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Or if you like vintage comics so much better, why don’t you…buy some?

The books on the kid’s rack are good and fun and totally suitable for parents to read with their children without wanting to scoop their eyeballs out. Scocca cites the Batman ‘66 comics as the brightly colored, tightly written all ages solution to his problem about sharing superhero stories with his son. My local comic shop stores this title in the kid’s section. I am glad that Scocca’s does not, as he seems to have a peculiar aversion to looking for comics to read with his son there.

Scocca cites Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a superhero movie he could watch with his kids. (I was surprised when this line made it sound like he has several. I don’t want to assume the other one isn’t in this article because they’re a girl, but I very much am assuming that.) Great! Go to the kid’s section and look for Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. It’s a fun, zippy title directly inspired by ITSV where Miles, Gwen, and Peter superhero together. It’s much more tightly written than most of the various Spider-Verse comics, which are ambitiously messy ubercrossovers. You may not want to give those to children because they include murder and so on, but also you just have the choice between the two as an adult reader deciding how much continuity you want to deal with. Adventures is one of the only titles I would buy on sight before corona. The kid comic rack is a reliable place to take a break from How Comics Get Sometimes regardless of how old you are.

This article makes me feel quarrelsome. Maybe it’s that it doesn’t seem like exploration of a single idea so much as a loosely grouped bundle of things to kvetch about. Maybe it’s that the experience of getting into superheroes that Scocca describes experiencing, projects his seven-year-old son will experience, and from which he extrapolates a metaphorical microcosm of the history of the genre is completely alien to me.

Comic books [and] comic-book movies—are […] trapped in their imagined audience’s own awful passage from childhood to adolescence. A seven-year-old has a clean […] appreciation of superheroes. They like hero comics because the comics have heroes: bold, strong, vividly colored good guys to fight off the bad guys and make the world safe.

But seven-year-olds stop being seven. […] They become 13-year-olds, defensively trying to learn how to develop tastes about tastes.

The 13-year-old wants many things from comics, but the overarching one is that they want to prove that they’re not some seven-year-old baby anymore. They want gloomy heroes, miserable heroes, heroes who would make a seven-year-old feel bad. (Also boobs. They want boobs.)

Not because of the boobs line, although that does illicit an eyeroll that this gloomy thinkpiece is fretting over preserving the superhero experience of little boys who resemble the little boy the writer was while casually dismissing everyone else. I was one of those unlikable little seven-year-olds with a college reading level and the impression that maintaining it was the crux of my worth. I only read Books - distinguished media you could club someone with. I have a formative memory of pausing, enraptured, in front of a poster for Spider-Man 3, preparing to say that it looked pretty cool, and being beaten to the punch by my mother making a disparaging comment about how the movie was trash. It wasn’t out yet, but it was a superhero movie. That meant it was for loud, brainless children.

That was the total of my childhood experience with superheroes, excluding being the unwilling audience to incessant renditions of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that left me wondering why in god’s name Batman’s sidekick was named Robin. I certainly never visited a comic book shop. I got into TvTropes, which got me into webcomics, which got me following David Willis, who got me into Ask Chris at ComicsAlliance, which led to me rewarding myself for studying like a demon for the AP tests with three volumes of Waid’s Daredevil, pitched as a return to the character being colorful and swashbuckling. I was seven…teen.

This is of the same thread as Scocca’s point that immaturity is running from childish things. It leaves me baffled that he doesn’t follow that maturity is embracing them.

I will disclose here that while I think it was dumb I had to overcome my upbringing’s deeply embedded shame associated with enjoying arbitrarily defined lowbrow media and children being childish, I think it’s fine that I was allowed largely unchecked access to technically age-inappropriate content. In my limited experience, content small children are too young for is also content they’re too young to understand, so it kind of just bounces off of them, and what actually ends up terrorizing them is unpredictable collages of impressions that strike out at them from content deemed perfectly child-friendly. I would not forbid a seven-year-old I was in charge of from seeing an MCU movie unless I had a reason to believe that specific child would not take it well. These are emotionally low-stakes bubblegum films. It will probably be easier to socialize with other kids if they have seen them.

But then, when I picture being in charge of a hypothetical child, I usually imagine this being the case because they are related to me, and the pupal stage in my family strongly resembles Wednesday Addams. ALL children love death and violence, though, right?? This isn’t a joke point. I know it looks like a joke point.

The MCU thing seems especially weird in light of the article’s particular focus on Spider-Man, which is the kiddie line of the MCU, even if they refused to waver from their usual formula enough to get a lower rating. Though I am more inclined to describe it as “preying on the young” than “child-friendly”.

(MCU movies are increasingly dubious propaganda, but I would not judge them in front of a child who wanted to watch them for that reason, just in case this led to them partaking of them without me the second they were old enough to and then they grew up to run a blog about them while our relationship suffered because they didn’t feel like it was safe to talk to me about their interests…Mom.)

I tried to overcome the philosophy of letting anyone read anything while compiling this handful of mostly-newish superhero recs for the road that anyone can read. (Handily, I have been in spitting distance of being hired as a comic shop clerk enough to have thought about it before):

For actual children:

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man (the new one is reminiscent of ITSV, the old one is more like 616) any DC/Archie crossover, Archie’s Superteens The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (for bookish children who think they’re too good for comics and adults afraid of the kid’s section) Teen Titans Go (even if you hate the show) Superman Smashes the Klan

For teens:

Ms. Marvel Young Avengers (volume 2) Unbelievable Gwenpool Batman: Gotham Adventures Teen Titans Go (the tie-in comic based off the old show was also called this)

Here are a bunch of relevant C. S. Lewis quotes.

[tygerbug]

If any movie can actually get people back into theaters during the pandemic, it's Spider-Man: No Way Home. Tom Holland's sixth outing as Spider-Man is as big and bold as any Marvel team-up film. It's hard to say it's the best live-action Spider-Man film movie, but it's certainly the most Spider-Man movie. It's a tribute to almost twenty years of live-action Spider-Man movies so far.

The tragedy of Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield's runs as Spider-Man has always been that they stood in the shadow of Sam Raimi's films with Tobey Maguire, from 2002-2007. While it was apparent by the end that Raimi was having irreconcilable creative differences with Sony management, Raimi's films have stood the test of time, and every Spidey outing since has had to fix what wasn't broken. They either bore audiences by showing them something they've already seen, or try to do something different and miss out on a lot of the character's backstory that fans care about.

It's little surprise, then, that Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man made little impact in his two films, which were micromanaged to be what Sony executives wanted, rather than what audiences wanted. There were complaints that we were already seeing Uncle Ben die again.

Meanwhile Tom Holland's Spider-Man never had a chance to do what Tobey Maguire's did. He was introduced halfway through a third Captain America movie as a protege for Iron Man. We didn't see Uncle Ben die. Instead this Peter Parker became an Avenger, while attending a science and technology high school for gifted students.

In some ways, this Peter Parker has led a privileged life, with access to Tony Stark's technology and gadgets. It's a tribute to the good work done by director Jon Watts and actor Tom Holland that this still feels like Spider-Man, even with the radically different backstory that comes with befriending Tony Stark.

Watts also took pains to set up the world of this friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, including an entire rogue's gallery of very small-time, street-level crooks. That included Michael Keaton's Vulture, and takes on The Shocker, The Prowler and The Scorpion, none of whom return here. (Before the film I did see a trailer for Jared Leto as Morbius, where Michael Keaton's Vulture does cameo.)

No Way Home has much bigger plans in mind here. The point of establishing this Spider-Man's world was to tether him to his everyday life in New York, which makes him feel more like Spider-Man.

Instead, this movie explodes its world outward, bringing back characters from almost twenty years of Spider-Man films, and exploring in the process what exactly it means to be Spider-Man. The movie leaves us with the hope that the next Holland Spider-Man film might be smaller rather than bigger, but who knows. We do at least feel assured that Holland has truly become the Spider-Man of the comics, even if these movies took a roundabout way of getting there.

It's nice to see all these characters one more time. Even Rhys Ifan's Lizard and Thomas Haden Church's Sandman turn up, although almost entirely in CGI form, which means they don't really feel like part of the ensemble (and are buried pretty deep in the credits list).

Alfred Molina is predictably good as Otto Octavius AKA Dr. Octopus, but Willem Dafoe's Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, steals the show. He reminds you why he was the original Spider-Man movie villain, and the greatest of the bunch.

Jamie Foxx, as Max Dillon / Electro, seems to have taken this reprised role as a do-over. The weird, nerdy character he played in 2014 has a new attitude, and looks and acts a lot more like, well, Jamie Foxx. He's cooler, suave and funny, but unpleasant as well - every line feels somehow like a threat. It's not quite a masterclass but Foxx succeeds as establishing himself as one of Spider-Man's most memorable villains.

One line about a black Spider-Man addresses the elephant in the room - Miles Morales, a character whose animated film "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" already did the whole multiverse thing to great acclaim. Stan Lee realized over time that part of Spider-Man's appeal was that anyone could wear that mask. A popular Japanese Spider-Man TV series helped establish the super sentai genre, and was a big influence on what became the Power Rangers series.

"No Way Home" does what "Into the Spider-Verse" couldn't- It brings back characters from the previous films, as if tying up loose ends. It's an audacious and overly complicated idea which really shouldn't work, but in practice it leaves the film in very assured hands. If we didn't already know these characters some of these scenes would probably fall flat, but we do know these characters, and these are a bunch of very good actors taking a well-earned victory lap.

J.K Simmons returns as J. Jonah Jameson. He's a constant threat in the background here but also underused, and not as memorable or funny as he was in the Raimi films, since he never interacts properly with Parker. Maybe next time.

Raimi's Spider-Man 3 was widely criticized for having too many villains (Sony had requested that Venom be involved), and for trying to do too much, as if multiple movies were going on at once. This Spider-Man 3 goes several times farther, but I think we're at the point where audiences want more.

At this point, the Avengers movies are breaking new ground in how many of these movies and TV series you're expected to have seen. This movie is a victory lap for Sony's live-action Spider-Man movies, which are also tied into the Avengers series. Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a major part of the story this time, and let's not forget that Sony has also been doing movies with Spider-Man villains Venom, Carnage and the upcoming Morbius.

There's a trailer, played after the film, for Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, which fully expects you to have watched the Marvel TV series WandaVision and What If ...?

In the latter animated series, Tom Holland didn't actually return as Spider-Man, so I'm not sure if he's even watched it. But what you'll see here ties back to that series.

That's a lot to ask from viewers, but the continuity is part of the fun at this point, and always has been with the Avengers series of films and shows. The more characters and continuity they add, the larger the world feels, for better or worse, and the bigger these movies get.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is a big one. It delivers a lot for Spider-Man fans, and doesn't disappoint. If anything can get people back into theaters during a pandemic, it'll be that.

As I left the theater, one mother was saying she liked the film while her son was wailing that he hated it, because of what happened to Peter Parker and his friends.

Get used to it, kid. If there's one thing we know, it's that life is never easy for Spider-Man. But he tries to do the right thing anyway.

[bwprowl]

Me vs. The Mitchells vs. The Machines

The Mitchells vs. The Machines is a really cool movie. Seriously! It’s the Spider-Verse crew continuing to be at the top of their game, doing their damnedest to elevate and evolve 3D film animation in a way apart from the ongoing Disneyfied edge-sanding seen elsewhere. Several sequences, especially the final fight scene at the end, are absolutely jaw-dropping. A lot of the writing of the movie is also genuinely clever, with some cool tricks of weaving in Chekov’s Guns that you don’t even realize WERE Chekov’s Guns until they’re deployed, but then make perfect sense. And I also just have to say there’s something oddly heartening about a movie that does a lot to target Millenials in terms of nostalgia, but not so much via our shows and movies and music the way other project might go about, but specifically by tapping the internet meme culture of the early-00’s that’s so media-unique to that emergent generation. There’s some genuine heart visible in so many of the levels of how this thing was made that I can understand its touting as an instant classic and the waves of praise and popularity that have followed its release.

Unfortunately, I can’t so unilaterally praise this movie, mostly because I can NOT stop thinking about how poorly-implemented and mis-framed its central familial conflict is.

Oh yeah spoilers for this movie I guess

So I’ll need to detour at first and talk about A Goofy Movie, which isn’t much of an issue for me since I fucking love A Goofy Movie. And watching The Mitchells vs. The Machines my initial takeaway was a pleasant observation that someone had basically grafted A Goofy Movie to The World’s End, which could have made for an extremely fun time for me. A Goofy Movie, so it goes, centers on the conflict between a father and child trying to understand each other, spurred on by the father conscripting the child into an impromptu road-trip which the child initially resents but eventually leans into as a vehicle for understanding as the family members open up to each other and end with a greater appreciation for their familial bond as well as healthier, more open lines of communication. There are comical misunderstandings, dramatic misunderstandings, and escalating Wacky Adventures that keep the trip feeling suitably cinematic in scope. And as The Mitchells vs. The Machines continued on, I kept finding myself rounding back to that comparison and asking “Why am I not getting into this as much as I do A Goofy Movie?”

It turns out to be a point of motivation, actually. In A Goofy Movie, Goofy dragooning Max into the cross-country fishing trip is immediately borne out of his (however misinformed) desire to keep his son from going down a wrong, potentially delinquent or criminal path. Goofy has concerns about the lessened connection and communication with Max, sure, but that’s a symptom of his inability to communicate his actual worries about Max’s behavior to him, not the sum total of the problem he feels needs fixing. Goofy is under the impression there are genuine problems Max is going through, and while he’s got the actual particulars wrong, he’s not really that far off, since Max still IS the kind of kid to elaborately hijack a school function or make up extravagant lies to get attention from the girl he likes rather than just talking to her and asking her out like a normal human-dog-person. Goofy’s objective is firmly centered on helping Max for Max’s sake, and he’s only taking up a few weeks out of Max’s summer and causing him to miss a single party in order to do it.

I lay all that out so you can try to understand my headspace coming at critiquing The Mitchells vs. The Machines and negatively viewing its own take on a plot concept I ostensibly love by default. The problem, as said, is one of motivation. In The Mitchells, Rick’s dissatisfaction with his relationship with his daughter Katie is purely that: Dissatisfaction with their relationship. Katie herself is, by all accounts, doing spectacularly. She’s got a healthy relationship with friends and other family members, she’s gotten accepted into a prestigious film school, and her YouTube account seems to pull pretty keen numbers (With all the tech jokes in this movie it’s a wonder there’s never a riff on her shilling NordVPN or Raid Shadow Legends). The conflict between father and daughter is purely a case of them growing apart in her teen years demonstrably because Rick has no understanding of her current passions and makes no effort to do so, which leads to him having consistently questioned and doubted her ability to succeed in her field. The film frames the impromptu road-trip as his attempt to ‘fix’ the issues between them, but the only thing broken by the presentation of the story is Rick’s approach to parenting in the first place. He could easily have made Katie warm to him on the way out by replacing or paying for the laptop he broke and throwing her a subscription to her YouTube channel, but then the movie would be shorter and we wouldn’t be able to pretend the conflict was anything other than his own pursuit of self-centered actualization.

That’s the other issue, of course, the way The Mitchells vs. The Machines consistently rounds back to the point that Katie is somehow shouldering half the responsibility for the father/daughter communication breakdown. But as stated above, it really has hardly anything to do with her. Katie’s succeeding on her own terms, and the only outreach she would theoretically need to do to her dad would be to make HIM feel better, something he could do himself if he’d only actually pay attention to the cool videos she keeps trying to show him and not constantly deciding that HE knows that SHE will fail. It’s a fundamentally one-sided conflict from what we’re shown, and yet the other members of the Mitchell family continuously treat Katie like she needs to accommodate her father’s personal whims and not hurt his feelings despite the fact that he’s the one who went behind her back and canceled her flight, even forcing her to miss her first week of college (!) simply because he felt sorry for himself that they didn’t like the same things anymore. Again, Katie’s doing great, it’s Rick that decides to make his problem the entire family’s problem, and while I’m going to hesitate to refer to this behavior as out-and-out abusive, it is still absurdly selfish and pointedly poor parenting. 

The movie seems to nominally strive for balance in the conflict, not making it entirely Katie’s job to fix her dad’s hurt feelings, and indeed having a whole sequence where he realizes what a Big Jerk he’s been about not trying to understand or support her passions, and resolving to actually Make An Effort moving forward. The problem is that this is still framed as one half of the equation, as Katie supposedly gets to understand where her dad is coming from, which...makes her feel better about all the times he said she would fail and so she should rely on and appreciate him more? And the reason that’s a fundamental issue is annoying, because it means we have to talk about Rick’s Stupid Fucking Cabin.

Look, I hate doing this. I personally try very hard to keep in the mindset that stories are stories and things happen in them because they are stories. I am loathe to attempt picking apart the points of particular plot points, but the problem is that this Stupid Fucking Cabin is positioned as the heart of the humanity of the entire movie, yet it hinges on a sequence of decisions that no actual human being would ever come by. First off, do you have any idea how long it takes to BUILD a home like that, let alone as one guy apparently doing it himself? Rick spent the better part of his twenties building this big Fucking Stupid Cabin to fulfill his lifelong dream of ‘Living in the woods’, only for his wife to get pregnant once it was finished, leading to him just dropping like that? Was there no planning in this family? Was Katie an accident that Rick immediately was this endeared to? I mean, he totally seems like a pro-lifer. But then why do they need to sell the Stupid Fucking Cabin on account of a kid coming along? How were Rick and Linda planning on living out their lives there if not with resources that could support them as well as a kid or two? Rick could have just raised his kids in the woods in his Stupid Fucking Cabin and they would have stood a better chance at turning out like little duplicates of himself and his own interests like he clearly wanted. That’s to say nothing of this sequence of events being framed as a ‘failure’, despite that fact that Rick handily succeeded at what he set out to do, only to turn around and abandon the thing he succeeded at himself on seemingly the same sort of impulsive whim that leads to him dragging his whole family on a road trip because he doesn’t understand YouTube. There are motivating factors to these decisions he made that could inform the whole context of this supposedly tragic backstory, but we aren’t privy to anything resembling them, and the result is a plot point that seemingly only exists to make Katie (and the audience) feel bad for Rick in the third act of the movie.

The real answer is the ultimate assertion of this thing by the finale, that Katie should be ‘grateful’ to Rick for his ‘sacrifice’ of his dream that supposedly allowed her to be in the place she is now. Except Katie had no part in Rick’s bizarre impulsive choice to build a Stupid Fucking Cabin then sell it as soon as a kid popped out so he, I guess, could feel some sense of important familial contribution. That’s to say nothing of the point about parental figures who make grand, sweeping gestures nominally for the good of their kids, but are effectively and emotionally unavailable in the day-to-day engagements of their lives. Because unlike Goofy in A Goofy Movie, Rick isn’t actually doing what he’s doing for Katie’s sake. Her motivation for most of the movie is to move away from home and go to college, a completely normal-ass thing that children do. Any of Rick’s outreach or efforts to ‘fix’ relationships and situations are purely for the sake of his own hurt feelings, and the way Katie’s mother and brother consistently push her into going along with them only highlights the overt way this whole family’s problems are hung up on the insecurities of of this single stubborn jerk. But then, that’s my other major misgiving with The Mitchells vs. The Machines: Its expected exaltation of the default biological family as some hallowed unit for which it is a tragedy to fall into any degree of dysfunction. This is with pointed dismissal towards the idea of Found Family, seen as a distraction, an obstacle to Katie realizing who her TRUE people are, and coming around to a sense of fulfillment because she managed to massage her dad’s ego for long enough that he stopped being totally dismissive of the things that brought her joy. You see, Found Families are fun, but they aren’t REAL or SPECIAL because they already accept and appreciate you for who you are, unlike these people you’re biologically obligated to share living space with for 18+ years whom you have to forge bonds with through varying degrees of communication breakdowns and compromises in self-agency.

With all that in mind, it highlights some of the smaller issues in the movie’s setup as well. This is perhaps petty, but jeez was I annoyed with the film’s framing of The Mitchells as this ~craaaazy~ ~weeeeiiiird~ family which included such outlandish quirks as ‘Dad who doesn’t understand technology’ and ‘Young boy who really likes dinosaurs’. And the wishy-washy tone of the familial conflict is echoed in the ‘The Machines’ part of the plot, which mostly led to me sitting on edge throughout the whole film as I wondered how it was going to come down on the subject of those kids and their darn smartphones. It ultimately doesn’t go full anti-technology, which makes sense given how much of Katie’s character revolves around using the stuff, to say nothing of the predilections of the people who actually, uh, made this movie. But the most it can manage is a halfhearted “Maybe unregulated big tech bad?” which even then is undercut, mostly I assume because of the various big tech companies involved in producing and streaming this thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m overall glad it doesn’t go full "durr hburr technology is bad fire is scary and thomas edison was a witch", but a lack of any insight or ideas on that front means that the familial relationship element is the only conceptual element it really has to stand on, and I just spent over 1800 words breaking down why that fundamentally didn’t work!

It’s an aggravating situation, because lord did I want to love The Mitchells vs. The Machines. It’s gorgeous, it’s got some clever bits in the writing, and it can honestly sling a punchline like nobody’s business, there are some KILLER jokes in there. But it just became impossible all the way through the end for me to engage with the heart of the movie, its central connective conflict, on the terms it wanted me to. Now it’s admittedly possible that, perhaps like Rick Mitchell, that’s my problem. I’ve seen a lot of love for this movie from my peers, and it does make me question my own projections: I don’t want to get TOO personal on main, but I admit that it’s entirely possible that people who’ve enjoyed an actually functional fatherly relationship would better engage with the emotive connections this movie wants you to make. But even with that caveat, I was able to find my own way to resonate with the similar stakes of A Goofy Movie just thanks to the more effective way that one was framed, so if this one couldn’t hook me, maybe it was The Mitchells vs. The Machines’ fault after all.

[peacensafety]

This is everything about WandaVision up to Episode 5, with most of it concentrating on Episode 5. I have seen Episode 6 at this point, but I will respect the one week spoilers rule that is part of Nerd Culture.

:read more:

First of all, some basics about this series. This is an homage to different American sitcoms. Why American sitcoms when the main character is Sokovian? No one knows.

In the comic books, Wanda Maximoff is a mutant, not a science experiment like in the MCU. She and Pietro are the twin children of a Mutant named Magneto and a human named Magda (who is sometimes a Romini, and originally from Transia). Magneto is referred to as an Omega level mutant. Wanda is born with mutations, able to control Hex Powers, which is whatever the comic book writer needed to move the plot along. Sometimes her original powers have to do with probability, but like, 30 years ago, they started calling it chaos magic, and then she had extra reception to magical powers, and basically, it’s all very vague and ill-defined. She’s like the only one immune to Phoenix powers, and that’s a huge deal. She is not considered an Omega Level Mutant because she does not have completely mastery over her powers, not because she isn’t powerful enough. In the comic book series House of M, she is powerful enough to rewrite the entire universe, that was retconned in The Children’s Crusade, but then her powers are called Mutant Magic in A vs X and she’s got cosmic chaos magic. She’s supposed to serve The High Evolutionary at this point, which has made her more powerful. In the MCU, she was genetically altered by the Mind Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones. So when Wanda, AKA The Scarlet Witch, is in a story you can expect it to be about ridiculous amounts of power.

The assumption that you can make pretty quickly in the series is that Wanda Maximoff is in charge of this alternate reality, and quite possibly created it. Knowing what we know about Wanda, we assume it’s because she broke after the death of Vision and couldn’t deal with that death after the death of her parents (because of the Sokovian civil war) and Pietro, her twin brother, who was killed by Ultron. It’s stated pretty early on that Wanda could have defeated Thanos by herself (this is most likely true, one time in the comic books she decided to remove every mutant power in the known universe and she did for a couple of years. Is she more powerful than Jean Gray? Sit down with some nerds and listen to them argue, because that call will never be settled in a peaceful manner). Wanda has brought back Vision (who was killed by Thanos before he made his wish on the Stones, making him dead dead instead of mostly dead like half of the population of the universe) and in the MCU, this makes almost sense as her powers were given to her by the Mind Stone which brought Vision to life in the first place, with some interference from Tony Stark (Iron Man). In the first couple of episodes, they bring in Billy and Tommy (Speed and Wiccan) and the twins make themselves grow up pretty quickly.

Other characters that come in and play a part are Monica Rambeau (from the Marvel Comic Book Universe and the movie Captain Marvel, who is also the future Captain Marvel), Darcy Lewis (MCU character last seen hanging out with Thor), and Jimmy Woo (another MCU character, an FBI agent in charge of Scott Lang’s house arrest from Ant-Man and the Wasp).

Let’s also talk about some background about where Disney plans to go in the next 5 years. First of all, they have already acquired rights to do an X-Men series. If you have DisneyPlus (which you do unless you’re pirating this series), you know that the X-Men movies have mostly been added to the Marvel Channel rather quietly and unobtrusively. Also, there are rumors that all three movie Spidermen have signed on to the next Spider-Man movie (Toby McGuire, James Garfield, and Tom Holland). Also also, Disney has made a statement that Deadpool will be in the universe pretty soon. So we know that the endgame for Disney is a combination of all of the Marvel Comic book universe.

Things that I have noticed that are fun about this series: all of the commercials are nerd shout outs. The commercials all have something to do with time, with two being blatantly about clocks or innovation. The commercials for the most part have the same two actors in it (are they SWORD agents?). The first is a Stark toaster, which is weird, but okay, and it is the first time we see color (red, maybe an Iron Man shout out?) used in the series. The second is the Strucker watch, a blatant time reference, and Strucker if you recall from the movies is that dude who was experimenting on Wanda and Pietro when they were in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In the comic books he’s Wolfgang von Strucker, or Baron Strucker, a former Nazi officer and agent of Hydra, and he never ages, and he shows up to try and do a genocide in the books all the time. The third commercial is about taking a break? HydraSoak bath powder. We all get the willies anytime Hydra is mentioned, so relaxing with Hydra is something we don’t want to do. This is also the first time that I think maybe this isn’t all Wanda? Also, this isn’t time appropriate (and this might be an influence from my real world job, and not some intentional message from Marvel) but mixed-race kids on a commercial in the 70s? That would have never happened. Are things starting to unravel, because this would have been super weird at that time and Marvel has been strict about time appropriateness so far, even so far as including gender roles. The last commercial is Lagos, the paper towel commercial. Paper towels are about cleaning up, right? Because these folks in the commercial spill everything. Also, we see the first incident of gender roles not being respected in WandaVision, because we see a dude wipe up his own spill. Anyway, Lagos is that Nigerian city where Wanda killed a bunch of people, including the King of Wakanda, on accident in Captain America: Civil War.

So in episode 2, SWORD is teased with the little logo on the beekeeper’s outfit at the end of the episode when he comes out of the sewer. The group outside Westview is verified to be SWORD in episode 4. Let’s talk about them a bit. These dudes in the comic books were all about space and going into space and doing space things, but then Thanos does a snappy thing. After the snappy thing (and this series is set 5 years after the Snap) they start doing nanotech and AI. In the comics Maria Rambeau is in charge, and after she dies, dude named Tyler Hayward takes over. Watch Tyler Hayward. I personally do not think he is actually Tyler Hayward, and if someone is acting and looking like someone else, we know which villain has probably just inserted himself into the show (if you’ve been watching the interviews, Tom Hiddleston shows up as a call-in fan of the show and demands to know why he didn’t have a series because he’s been dead a couple of times and Vision is stealing his Schtick). I don’t know that for sure, it could be sloppy writing? Maybe they ran out of character archetypes?

At the end of episode 5, this is when the next five years of the MCU comes into play. Wanda is missing her twin, probably because of her sons, and the doorbell rings. Standing there is Pietro Maximoff. Now the crazy part of this is that he is the wrong Pietro Maximoff (the better one, not the one that has been in the MCU movies, the X-Man Quicksilver). He’s standing there and does the weird Uncle Jesse thing from Full House, (which, if you’re paying attention to the real world, Wanda Maximoff is played by the younger sister of the Olsen twins who played Michelle on Full House in the 80s), but Wanda recognizes that he is the wrong Pietro. Darcy, who is watching the broadcast from outside the Hex, states that Wanda has recast Pietro. But has she? This woman is incredibly powerful, why would she bring back the wrong Pietro? What if she is not in charge? Wanda is really freaked out by this, and that is when I realized I needed to write everything down.

Here are my lingering questions: We have all seen Into The Spiderverse a dozen or so times. Is this how Disney is going to handle the Multi-Verse? Is Pietro the wrong Pietro because of Miles Morales and his rag-tag group of Spidermen? Does this mean that Nicholas Cage is going to be in the MCU? Is Wanda as in charge as we think she is? Can we expect to see Magneto (Wanda’s and Pietro’s dad in the comics) show up to either support his children in the Hex or fight on the side of SWORD? Maybe Professor X will come and get Wanda, Pietro, Timmy, and Billy? Will we finally see if Jean Gray is more powerful than Scarlet Witch (she’s not). Is Hayward a problem of inconsistent writing or is he Loki? Is a multi-verse a way to address Chadwick Bosemen’s death for a proper replacement of Black Panther? Hurry up and watch Episode 6 so we can talk about this stuff!

[recentanimenews]

ESSAY: How Does My Hero Academia Fit Into Global Superhero Culture?

  In 1989, Batman became the first film to make over $40 million in its opening weekend. In 2002, Spider-Man became the first film to make over $100 million in its opening weekend. In 2007, Spider-Man 3 hit over $150 million. In 2012, The Avengers nabbed over $200 million. And in 2019, Avengers: Endgame got over $350 million. Despite the fact that there have been concerns over “superhero movie fatigue” for literal decades now, it’s a genre that shows no signs of slowing down. As its universes expand on streaming services like Disney+, it’s apparent the age of the cinematic hero might be an indefinitely lengthy one. 

  As Marvel Comics luminary Stan Lee once said: “The pleasure of reading a story and wondering what will come next for the hero is a pleasure that has lasted for centuries and, I think, will always be with us.” In that quote, it seems our destiny is almost sealed — we crave heroes and we crave their stories and we crave their sequels. 

  This is the environment in which My Hero Academia was born.

    My Hero Academia is, first and foremost, a superhero story. One could argue that most narratives of its ilk are superhero tales — anime like Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, and others are full of good guys shutting down malicious attempts at local or world domination — but My Hero Academia embraces the iconography, both thematic and physical, of the superhero in a way that many other stories don’t. In fact, it might be one of the purest explorations of that kind of universe ever in fiction. It’s a world where heroism is practically currency, where roughly 80 percent of the earth’s population is imbued with some kind of inherent genetic power. 

  Populating your superhero story with powerful people instead of going the typical cinematic route of having one or two supernatural characters with a supporting cast of everyday folk might have been subversive 20 years ago. But in the age of the Avengers, where multiple heroes cross in and out of each other's storylines and the narrative objective was to eventually wrangle them all in one mega-movie, My Hero Academia fits comfortably. That doesn’t render it as uninteresting, though. Instead, rather than build to the issues that will inevitably crop up in a world full of Supermen, these themes are inherent in the story.

    As such, most of the plotlines have to do with the idea of rampant heroism and the backlash that it would create. Plenty of superhero films address this (multiple Batman movies make the case that if there were no Batman there would be no Joker), but in My Hero Academia it is a constant struggle. Overhaul, wearing a variation of a 17th-century plague doctor mask, looks at these “Quirks” as if they’re a disease. Stain is against superheroes using their status for fame. Tomura Shigaraki wishes to destroy society as we know it, hating its values and its borderline divine treatment of figures like All-Might. These patterns are not just repeated in My Hero Academia, but inevitable. They are anime embodiments of that “superhero fatigue” article I shared above, except in this case they hurt and destroy in their attempts to find an alternative to the super status quo, rather than write essays in The New York Times.

  It’s certainly an enthralling formula, though: My Hero Academia continues to be a best seller and has won numerous awards. Its anime has been similarly well-received. Despite the fact that superhero films very rarely have the same box office prominence in Japan as they do in America, My Hero Academia has been able to make an impact. That might be because, at its core, My Hero Academia adapts the ethos found in a hero that many Japanese creators really do enjoy: Spider-Man.

    Kohei Horikoshi, My Hero Academia’s creator, loves Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films. Creator of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Hirohiko Araki gushed over his love of Spider-Man 2 to director Sam Raimi during an interview. Yusuke Murata, illustrator of One-Punch Man, has done some absolutely amazing work when it comes to posters for Peter Parker’s cinematic adventures. Hideo Kojima, a video game designer whose creations are absolutely inspired by anime, called Into The Spider-Verse a “great masterpiece” and was “moved” by Spider-Man 2. After it became the best-selling game to be developed in the West but funded by Sony since 1998, Japanese game developers voted Marvel’s Spider-Man as their 2018 game of the year. So why the embrace of this particular character? 

  Journalist Kuremasa Uno told the Japanese site Business+IT that it’s because Japanese youth are more accustomed to embracing younger heroes. Since so much of Spider-Man’s Hollywood journey deals with him experiencing problems as a teenager and young adult, he fits in among the protagonists of series like Gundam or Naruto. Hideo Kojima even told Famitsu that Spider-Man is “similar to Japanese heroes,” as he has “worries.” 

    The aspect of youth is particularly interesting, as it’s what often renders heroes like Spider-Man to be the most relatable of all of their peers and rivals. In the comic book world, age tends to warp characters, turning them into beacons of impossible standards rather than troubled everymen. We have little in common with the hulking, aging Batman snapping bones in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. We are enthralled with the story on a narrative level. Even the legendary curmudgeon of the comic book industry, the supremely talented Alan Moore, found The Dark Knight Returns fascinating because it gave a hero a chance to end, rather than cycle through an eternal series of escapades. If you know Moore’s stance on heroes, that’s high praise, but it’s hard to connect with him no matter how cool he looks taking down the Mutant Leader.

  In youth we find common ground. We all grow up, and for the most part, we all experience that mix of angst, desperation, and uncertainty that comes with finding yourself on a bullet train to adulthood. In my interview with Matt Alt, author of Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered The World, the writer/historian affirmed these feelings as especially true in anime: “It doesn’t look at adolescence as a lesser form of adulthood and it doesn’t condescend to the young people experiencing problems.” That is true of My Hero Academia, which treats Midoriya’s teenage problems as valid and worth concern, and is also true to Stan Lee’s affinity for Spider-Man: “He’s the one who’s most like me — nothing ever turns out 100 percent OK; he’s got a lot of problems and he does things wrong, and I can relate to that.”

    So perhaps it is in collecting a cast of characters that, like Spider-Man, are all dealing with youthful problems that Horikoshi found the fantastic formula for My Hero Academia. It’s a world with teachers and Pro Heroes, but there is no real equivalent of a Justice League, no impenetrable class of demi-gods to impart moral lessons on not just younger heroes but the world at large.

  Instead, much like in real-life youth, the characters of My Hero Academia and the class of 1A must discover those lessons for themselves. With that, the reasons for the aforementioned creators’ adoration of films like the Spider-Man trilogy and Into the Spider-Verse seemingly become more clear. Though these films feature a ... ummm ... supportive supporting cast, the integrity must come from the hero alone in the end, no matter how tough their obstacles become. You are born with Quirks, but how you choose to implement them for the good of mankind is up to you. Great power, great responsibility, etc.

    My Hero Academia and Spider-Man are not a 1:1 comparison as, again, the basics of its world and the attributes of its cast fit it more firmly with late-term Avengers films where dozens of heroes interact in a spectacle created by the sheer existence of their number. My Hero Academia rarely feels as lonely as Spider-Man tends to be. But in capturing the relatable qualities of adolescence and focusing on the “quirks” of what is essentially high school life, it does manage to hit some of the same high notes, notes that I imagine contributed greatly to its popularity.

  Does that mean All-Might is an Uncle Ben character, with his “Now it’s your turn” point to Midoriya serving a similar purpose to the “Great responsibility” speech? Eh, a little bit. But in relating it to the superhero genre that currently forms an entertainment monolith around the world, especially when it has to do with the character of Spider-Man, we start to unlock some of the reasons why My Hero Academia has been such a powerhouse series over the past few years. You can see just as much of Midoriya in Peter Parker as you can in guys like Naruto or Asta — characters that aren’t relatable simply because they’re young, but because we connect to their experiences of youth, experiences that are somehow both deeply specific and also beautifully universal.

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daniel Dockery

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 4/23/21: MORTAL KOMBAT, DEMON SLAYER, TOGETHER TOGETHER, STREET GANG, SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS

Ugh. Trying to maintain this column as a weekly entity during the final few weeks of the longest Oscar season ever has been really hard, and I’m not sure that will change once the Oscars are over either, because I look at the number of movies being released both theatrically and streaming over the next few weeks, and it makes my head hurt. Sorry for the kvetching, it just is what it is.

There are two big theatrical releases this weekend, Warner Bros’ MORTAL KOMBAT and DEMON SLAYER THE MOVIE: MUGEN TRAIN from FUNImation Entertainment, both which have already been released internationally. I also probably won’t be able to watch or review either before this column gets posted.

Mortal Kombat seems like the easiest sell being that it’s based on the popular Midway Games video game franchise introduced in the early ‘90s that led to a series of films, books, comics and you name it. It was a very popular fighting game that had over a dozen iterations including one in which MK characters fought against DC superheroes.

The very first Mortal Kombat movies opened in 1995, right amidst MK-mania, and it was directed by one Paul W.S. Anderson, his very first movie in a long line of video game-related movies, including a number of Resident Evil and the recent Monster Hunter. There are a lot of people who love those games, and yes, even people who love that and other movies, but to others, who may have been too old to get into the games when they came out, the whole thing about different fighters fighting each other just looks kind of studio. Even though I’m interested to see what producer James Wan brings to this reboot, I just don’t have much interest otherwise.

Unfortunately, and this is pretty daunting, Warner Bros. wasn’t sending out screeners to critics until Wednesday with a review embargo for Thursday night at 7pm, which is never a good sign, and yet, it continues Warner Bros. continuing the trend of being one of the only studios that screeners EVERY movie to film critics rather than just making them pay to see it on Thursday night or Friday. I hope to watch it and maybe add something Thursday night, time-permitting. Not sure you heard but the Oscars are Sunday.

As far as box office, Mortal Kombat opens on Friday but also premieres on HBO Max, and I’m not sure there will be as much urge to see MK on the largest screen possible, as there was with Godzilla vs. Kong. Because of that, I think the cap for this one over the three-day weekend is about $10 million but not much more and probably more frontloaded to Friday than we’ve seen in some time.

Mini-Review: As you can imagine from my statement above, I don’t hold the Mortal Kombat games or other iterations in any particular high esteem, so I’m basically jumping into this movie, directed by Simon McQuoid, just as a movie and not necessarily as a video game movie.

It starts off promising enough like a samurai movie with a flashback where we watch Hiroyuki Sanada’s hero sees his wife and son be killed by Joe Taslim’s character that will later become Sub-Zero. The general principle seems to be that there’s a world where people from other worlds fight each other to gain complete control. The hero is Lewis Tan’s MMA fighter Cole Young, presumably a popular character from the game? He is also soon attacked by Sub-Zero presumably because he’s marked with a dragon tattoo that deems him a champion of these fights, but he needs to find someone named Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) to help him get to the “Mortal Kombat.” At the same time, he meets the movie’s most entertaining character, Kane,

played by Australian actor Josh Lawson, mainly because he swears constantly and cracks wise -- he’s a bit like Wolverine, actually, and he’s actually the best part of the movie.

Otherwise, everyone and everything is always so deadly serious that everyone else we meet just doesn’t have much impact, because frankly, none of these names or characters mean jack shit to me. Sure, some of them sound vaguely familiar but I was more interested in the great Asian actors who turn up including Tadanobu Asano’s Lord Raiden, who is gonna claim Earth if its champions lose at Mortal Kombat. And Sub-Zero basically just shows up and tries to kill everyone.

As with far too many action movies, the action itself is great, the writing and acting not so much.

As it goes along, things become more epic and fantasy-driven but that also makes the dialogue seem even worse. Similarly, the fight choreography is pretty great, but the movie still leans way too heavily on visual FX to keep it more interesting for anyone not too interested in MMA… like myself. When all else fails, they can show off Sub-Zero’s cool ice powers every chance possible as well as the other’s powers, but some of them (like Lord Raiden) just made me think of this as a rip-off of the great Big Trouble in Little China.

The thing is I’m not a fan of the video game nor of MMA, so Mortal Kombat really doesn’t have much to offer me. The whole thing just seems very silly, just like almost everything from the ‘90s. (How’s THAT for a bad take?)

That said, I thought the final battle was great, and I enjoyed some of the gorier aspects of the fights, too, and it all leads to my favorite part, which is the three-way fight between Cole, Sub-Zero, and… actually I’m not sure if it’s a spoiler or not, but it’s a pretty cool fight that almost makes up for some of the dumber characters introduced earlier on. (LIke that guy with four arms. I know he’s a character in the games, but I didn’t even care enough to look up his name.)

It’s perfectly fine that they decided to go Rated R with the movie since most of the nostalgia for this movie and franchise will be towards older guys, but at times, the CG blood is so hinky it feels like the decision to go R-rated was made well after it was filmed.

Even though I went in with the lowest of expectations, I still found most of Mortal Kombat kinda trite and boring, maybe something I’d appreciate more as a teenager but not so much as a grown adult. But what do you expect for a movie based on a video game that’s just a bunch of “cool fights”?

Rating: 5.5/10

And yet, Demon Slayer could be the surprise breakout of the weekend, considering the theatrical success FUNimation has had with theatrical releases of the My Hero Academia movies into theaters in 2018 and 2020, and the hugely successful Dragon Ball Super: Brolly, which grossed $31 million domestically after a surprise $20.2 million in its first five days in roughly 1,200 movies. In fact, it made $7 million its opening Wednesday in January 2019, and FUNimation is hoping that Demon Slayer will have a similar success by opening it for a single day (Thursday) in IMAX theaters before Mortal Kombat takes over on Friday.

Demon Slayer has already grossed $383.7 million internationally compared to Mortal Kombat’s $10.7 million, and you cannot ignore the huge popularity that anime has seen over the past few decades. In fact, a bunch of screenings for Demon Slayer in NYC have already sold out, although you have to bear in mind that these are 25% capacity theaters. Even so, I still think this can make $4 to 5 million on Thursday and another $7 to 8 million over the weekend, depending on the number of theaters. Yes, it will be quite frontloaded, and I’m not sure what the cap is on theaters and how that will affect how it does over the weekend, but expect a big Thursday and a more moderate weekend but one that might give both Mortal Kombat and Godzilla vs. Kong a run for the top of the box office.

Also hitting theaters before streaming on Netflix (on April 30) is THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES, the new animated movie produced by Chris Miller and Philip Lord, following their Oscar win for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s a little weird to open a new animated movies, presumably in select theaters, when such a hugely anticipated animated movie like Demon Slayer is opening, but Netflix won’t

The movie itself is directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe, and it involves a family named the Mitchells, whose eldest daughter Katie (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) is leaving home for college, so her father (voiced by Danny McBride) decides that he’s going to drive her there and use it as the chance for a cross-country family trip. Meanwhile, it’s set up how the world becomes overrun with robots when a tech giant creates a new personal assistant.

I wasn’t sure whether I’d like this even though I’m generally a fan of all of Lord/Miller’s animated movies including both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies. It took me a little time to get into the family and the general premise. In some ways it reminded me of Edgar Wright’s The World’s End where it’s trying to merge these two disparate genres, but when they actually merge, it just doesn’t work as well as it may have seemed on paper. That worry is soon expunged, because Rianda finds ways to integrate the two ideas over time.

On the trip, the Mitchells run into their perfect family neighbors, the Poseys -- voiced by Krissy Teigen, John Legend and Charlyne Yi -- and you’d think they might be a bigger part of the movie then they actually are. I’m not sure I would have liked doing the family-vs.-family thing so soon after last year’s Croods movie, but I did love the dynamics of the Mitchells being a very relatable imperfect family with Danny McBride being particularly great voicing the family patriarch. It even has a really touching Pixar’s Up moment of Katie’s father watching old home movies of them together when she was younger.

In general, the filmmakers have assembled a pretty amazing voice cast that includes Conan O’Brien, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett. Actually the weirdest voice choice is Katie’s younger brother Aaron, voiced by Rianda himself, and it sounds like a strange older man trying to be a kid, so it doesn’t work as well as others.

What I genuinely liked about Mitchells vs. the Machines is that it doesn’t go out of its way to talk down to overly sensitive kiddies or skimp on the action while also including elements that parents will enjoy as well, and to me, that’s the ideal of a family film.

While some might feel that The Mitchells vs. the Machines is fairly standard animated fare, it ends up being a fun cross between National Lampoon’s Vacation (cleaned up for the kiddies) with Will Smith’s I, Robot, actually, and yet, it somehow does work. It’s a shame that it’s really not getting a theatrical release except to be awards-eligible.

Next, we have two really great movies I saw at Sundance this year and really enjoyed immensely…

So as I mentioned, I first saw Nikole Beckwith’s TOGETHER TOGETHER (Bleecker Street), starring Ed Helms and Patti Harrison, at Sundance, and it was one of my favorite movies there with Helms playing a middle-aged single guy named Matt, who hires the much-younger Anna (Harrison) to be his surrogate, because he wants a baby. It’s a tough relationship thrown together due to each of their respective necessities.

Part of what drives the movie is how different Matt and Anna are, him being quite inappropriate with his suggestions and requests but not really having a working knowledge of female anatomy, pregnancy, delivery etc, but being really eager to raise a child and having the money that Anna clearly does not.

While I was familiar with Helms from The Office, The Hangover, etc. I really didn’t know Patti Harrison at all. Apparently, she’s a stand-up comic who hasn’t done a ton of acting, comedic or otherwise. That’s pretty amazing when you watch this movie and see her dry sardonic wit playing well against Helms’ generally lovable doofus. What I also didn’t realize and frankly, I don’t really see this as something even worth mentioning, is that she’s a trans woman playing a clearly CIS part, and she kills it. I certainly wouldn’t have known nor did it really affect my enjoyment of the movie, yet it still seems like such a brave statement on the part of the director and Harrison herself. The thing is that Harrison isn't just a terrific actress in her own right, but she brings out aspects of Helms that I never thought I would ever possibly see. (If it isn't obvious, I'm not the biggest fan of Helms.)

The movie has a great sense of humor, as it gets the most out of this awkward duo and then throws so many great supporting actors into the cast around them that it’s almost impossible not to enjoy the laughs. There’s the testy Sonogram tech, played by Sufe Bradshaw from Veep, who tries to maintain her composure and bite her tongue, but you can tell she’s having none of it. Others who show up, including Tig Notero, Norah Dunn and Fred Melamed. Just when you least expect it, Anna Conkle from Pen15, shows up as one of those delivery gurus that make the two of them feel even more awkward.

What’s nice is that this never turns into the typical meet cute rom-com that some might be expecting, as Beckwith’s film is more about friendship and companionship and being there for another, and the lack of that romantic spark even as chemistry develops between them is what makes this film so enjoyably unique. Beckwith’s sense of humor combined with her dynamic duo stars makes Together Together the best comedy about pregnancy probably since Knocked Up.

Another great Sundance movie and actually one of my two favorite recent documentaries AND one of the best movies I’ve seen this year is… you know what? I haven’t done this for a while so this is this week’s “CHOSEN ONE”!! (Fanfare)

(Photo courtesy: Robert Fuhring/Courtesy Sesame Workshop)

Marilyn (Mad Hot Ballroom) Agrilo’s STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET (Screen Media/HBO Documentaries) is a fantastic doc about the long-running and popular PBS kids show that’s every bit as good as Morgan Neville’s Mr. Rogers doc, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Which was robbed of an Oscar nomination a few years back.

Let me make something clear on the day I’m writing this, April 21, 2021, that this is my favorite movie of the year, the only one I’ve already given a 10/10, and the end of the year might come around, and I have a feeling it will still be my #1.

You see, I was raised a Sesame Street kid. It’s not like I didn’t read or play outside or not get the attention of my parents or family, but there was so much of my happy, young life that I could attribute to my time watching Sesame Street, and when you watch Marily Agrilo’s amazing doc, it all comes rushing back. There is stuff in this movie that I haven’t seen in maybe 50 years but that I clearly remember laughing at, and there’s stuff that got into the mind of a young Ed that influenced my love of humor and music and just outright insanity. Sure, I loved The Muppet Show, too, but it was a different experience, so to watch a movie about the show with all sorts of stuff I had never seen or knew, that’s what makes Street Gang such a brilliant documentary, and easily one of the best we’ll see this year. Of that I have no doubt.

From the very origins of the show with Joan Cooney developing a show that will be entertaining and educational to the kids being plopped down in front of the TV in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so they can learn something, it’s just 1:46 of straight-up wonderment.

Besides getting to see a lot of the beloved actors/characters from the show and many of the surviving players like Carol Spinney aka Big Bird/Oscar, you can see how this show tried to create something that wasn’t just constantly advertising to young minds.

More than anything, the show is a love letter to the bromance between Jim Henson and Frank Oz, and you get to see so many of their bits and outtakes that make their Muppets like Burt and Ernie and Grover and, of course, Kermit, so beloved by kids that even cynical adults like myself would revert childhood just thinking about them. Then on top of that there’s the wonderful music and songs of Christopher Cerf and Joe Raposo and others, songs that would permeate the mainstream populace and be remembered for decades.

The movie is just a tribute to the joy of childhood and learning to love and sing and dance and just have fun and not worry about the world. I’m not sure if kids these days have anything like that.

It also gets quite sad, and I’m not embarrassed to say that in the sequence that covers the death of Mr. Hooper, I was outright bawling, and a few minutes later, when Jim Henson dies in 1990, I completely lost it. That’s how much this show meant to me and to so many people over the decades, and Brava to Ms. Agrilo for creating just the perfect document to everything that Sesame Street brought to so many people’s lives. This is easily the best documentary this year, and woe be to any Academy that doesn’t remember it at year’s end.

The other fantastic doc out this week, though I actually got to see it last year, is Lisa Rovner’s SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS (Metrograph Pictures), which will play at the Metrograph, both on demand and part of its Digital Live Screenings (available to join for just $5 a month!). This is an endlessly fascinating doc that looks at the women of electronic music and the early days of synthesizers and synthesis and some of the female pioneers. It’s narrated by Laurie Anderson, which couldn’t be the more perfect combination.

The movie covers the likes of Suzanne Cianni; Forbidden Planet composers Louis and Bebe Barron, who created the first all-electronic score for that movie; the amazing Wendy Carlos, who electronically scored one of my favorite movies of all time, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange; Delia Derbyshire, who was also the subject of Caroline Catz’s short, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes, which tragically, I missed when it premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in March. Derbyshire was also famous for creating the iconic theme to “Doctor Who” while working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the '60s. Others who appear in the movie, either via archival footage or more recent interviews are Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Spiegel, who I was less familiar with.

The point is that as someone who was a fantastic for electronic music and synthesizers from a very early age and for someone who feels he’s very familiar with all angles of music, I learned a lot from watching Rovner’s film, and I enjoyed it just as much a second time, because the footage assembled proves what amazing work these women were doing and rarely if ever getting the credit for what they brought to electronic music, something that still resonates with the kids today who love things like EDM.

An endlessly fascinating film with so much great music and footage, Sisters with Transistors can be watched exclusively through the Metrograph’s Live Screening series, so don’t miss it!

Hitting Shudder this week is Chris Baugh’s BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL (Shudder), which I didn’t get a chance to watch before writing this week’s column, but Shudder in general has been knocking it out of the park with the amazing horror movies it’s been releasing on a weekly basis. This one involves a quarelling father and son on a road who must survive the night when they awaken an ancient Irish vampire.

Also hitting theaters and streamers and digital this week:

THE MARIJUANA CONSPIRACY (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

MY WONDERFUL WANDA (Zeitgeist Films)

WET SEASON (Strand Releasing)

CRESTONE (Utopia)

VANQUISH (Lionsgate)

BLOODTHIRSTY (Brainstorm)

SASQUATCH (Hulu)

SHADOW AND BONE (Netflix)

And that wraps up this week. Next week? No idea… I know there’s stuff coming out but I probably won’t think about it until after THE OSCARS!!!! On Sunday.

[frankendykes-monster]

If you have the time, I remember you said Batman Brave and the Bold was better than the DCAU. Why do you think so exactly?

Warning for some rambling because I am sleepy.

Even though this is not how it is supposed to work, as I grow older, I progressively like less and less "adult" superhero media. I couldn't tell you when this process began, I just know I thought The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were hot shit when I was 16 and now I just have copies of them on my shelf out of obligation more than anything.

But more so I think my frame of reference with regards to superheroes is deftly inspired by Grant Morrison and David Mazucchelli's statements on the subject. Grant Morrison for just how much he can shamelessly embrace how endlessly fucking weird superheroes are and how that should be the default of the sub-genre. His quote "Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can fly...when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real." began to put the pieces in place for me. Mazucchelli's "once a depiction veers towards realism, each new detail releases a torrent of questions that exposes the absurdity at the heart of the genre. The more realistic superheroes become, the less believable they are. Its a delicate balance. But this mucb I know: superheroes are real when theyre drawn in ink." is the complementary statement. Seeing Batman be described as a "detective scientist ninja that dresses like Dracula and drives around in a rocket car" by Chris Sims is pretty much how I got to this moment now. Superheroes are completely and utterly ridiculous, you cant take them seriously in the way a lot of people do.

Superheroes functionally first dealt with the issue of realism after the Marvel boom of the 1960's. Stuff like the Fantastic Four being unable to stop Galactus no matter what they do or Spider-Man being put through the wringer permanently changed the game, and there's never been a definite answer to what direction these characters should go in the decades since then, so I typically regard the Silver Age over at DC to be the most "superhero-y" that superheroes have ever gotten (we'll get back to this).

What this all has to do with the DCAU specifically is that it goes too far for my tastes with regards to my personal tastes at this moment in time. It's gotten the critically acclaimed reputation it's gotten for taking itself seriously and yeah I'm no longer in the audience for it. I'm just not interested that much in superheroes in any capacity having to prove that "theyre not just for kids" because, first, superheroes are fictional characters for children, second, god I dont even fucking know anymore. This is more a problem with audiences in general and the cultural expectations of when you become an adult that you're no longer allowed to have fun so people can't take any of this shit seriously so in turn it forces itself to become serious. I remember someone explaining that the 1966 Batman series wasnt campy and silly, it just presented Batman in an honest way, and when people saw that Batman is by nature silly, they couldnt take Batman seriously, because a lot of people are just humorless and not much fun. Anyhow.

Yes I appreciate stories discussing the ethics of vigilantism and the addressing that innocent people would be caught in the crossfire, or when you get to Justice League Unlimited specifically with its 9/11 fallout stuff, but that's been the default for...a WHILE now. I'm very much sick of it. Seeing stuff like The Boys get super popular over on Amazon's streaming service or fuck it the plot of Avengers: Endgame being about how all these characters that children love and look up to fucked up and failed everyone is just rather depressing. This not even touching the fact that the most recent live-action incarnations of Batman and Superman are basically serial killers.

So while the DCAU doesnt usually ever go that far (except for Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker, which is so insanely fucking dark that its the story equivalent of a train just derailing after it accelerates to a virtually nonstop speed), its still a little much for me at this point in time. I dont rather like "superheroes existing in the real world", I like them existing in their own universe playing by their own rules. I'll get back to it and appreciate it more sometime in the future, just not the near future.

So anyhow, what does this have to do with The Brave and The Bold now? This show specifically aims to directly imitate and reify virtually every element of Silver Age comics, AND I LOVE IT. This is a show where you only see Batman unmasked/referred to as Bruce Wayne for ONE episode. It has no qualms about what it is, no conflict of identity, no growing pains trying to make itself relevant, it does what the fuck it pleases. Other than maybe Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, it's the piece of popular media surrounding the sub-genre that is so comfortable in its own skin that it's just endless joy to watch.

There's also the fact that even though Batman is in the title, and is the star, he doesn't really hog the spotlight. The Brave and The Bold, even though its structure is based on a comic series from the 1970's, takes advantage of the fact that since Batman is (was, I guess) the only thing making DC any money, they might as well use him as the springboard to attach every obscure character from every corner of this entire universe. I mean, where else would I or anybody else growing up across 2009 - 2011 would have learned about Blue Beetle, Plastic Man, Red Tornado, Wildcat, Kamandi, Deadman, OMAC, the JSA, 'Mazing Man, the Creature Commandos, the Metal Men, the Doom Patrol, Hawk and Dove, Booster Gold, the Outsiders, etc. You can point to the DCAU getting around to deep cuts like the Seven Soldiers of Victory, but for me personally, my intense love for the entire DC universe can be traced back to this show specifically.