#clark gregg is the best human

[the-clarkettes]

[jinxquickfoot]

So I've finally finished Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and not only did I enjoy the last three seasons way more than I thought I would, but I was not prepared for how delightfully unhinged the show became. Some of my favourite plot points included:

The female protagonist has a long-lost sister with superpowers who becomes the key to the entire crew returning to their original timeline through the Quantum Realm. Said long-lost sister is not introduced or even hinted at until the last five episodes of the entire show.

Half of one season takes place in a dystopian 2091 where the young twenty-something scientist couple not only meet their grandson who is the same age as them but said grandson returns to the present, becomes a series regular, and calls them "Nana" and "Bobo" in some Once Upon A Time worthy family tree shenanigans. Oh he also gets stuck in the 80s and claims he wrote Don't You (Forget About Me)

Phil Coulson dies in Season 5 because in order to stop an evil AI -turned-human-turned evil because she got dumped by a small Scottish man he has to become Ghostrider. The entire season builds up to this in a way that makes it feel very much like the actor is stepping away from the show and retiring the character, only for them to cast Clarke Gregg as an evil deity from another dimension in Season 6 and as a Life Model Decoy that may as well just be Phil Coulson in Season 7

Patton Oswalt plays multiple identical characters who all work for SHIELD. This is never fully explained.

“Mata Hari Calamari”

The final season is a decade-hopping gimmick with matching genre episodes that beat WandaVision to the punch

One character is a robot anthropologist who just wants to be best friends with the same small Scottish man. He has canonically been trained to perform in alien brothels and eventually becomes a bartender in the Crazy Canoe in 1955. He is one of the absolute best parts of the show.

One plot line follows said same Scottish Man and robot anthropologist as they get stranded in outer space with their only way home being to gamble in an alien casino while their friends attempt to rescue them but accidentally take LSD instead

"I found that bluffing was much easier if you kill someone and take their skin."

Area 51 is canonically a SHIELD base

[marvel-ousmondays]

The Avengers (Avengers Assemble)

So it took me a week to finish watching The Avengers.

It wasn't the movie's fault. It's a great film, especially if you are into the action-packed, fighting scenes. The dynamic between characters is great, and it has one of (if not my absolute) favorite quotes of the series.

But it is 2 hours and 23 minutes long and I had a weird week in terms of work, plus I wasn't actually feeling like watching a bunch of fight scenes. So it took a hot minute. Also, I had just finished season 2 of Loki not that long ago and going back to really bad Loki was a bit hard. He has few if any redeemable qualities in this one.

I'm not going to attempt a standard review given my less than standard watching procedure. I'm just going to call out things I liked.

Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow will forever be flipping incredible. In the Battle of New York where she's jumping on the flying Chitari and such- epic. But also her clear care for Barton and her emotional manipulation of both the criminals at the beginning and Loki later on- chef's kiss. I'm so glad she's the one to close the portal.

(Quick side note/small spoiler- there's a fan theory going around that her "feelings" for Banner in Ultron are all fake, just a method of control. I call bullshit. She is clearly fascinated by him throughout this film. If anyone's feelings are fake, it'd be Banner's, but Mark Ruffalo is too genuine for us to ever know.)

Erik Selvig and Barton both under Loki's control and then when they come out of it did incredible jobs. I particularly like the writing of Selvig under Loki's control- the science fascination unbridled, versus any actual desire for power. I think this hits the Tesseract's power and Loki's manipulation abilities dead on- they don't project what Loki would assume others would want onto them- they magnify the worst parts of anyone's desires and abilities. Barton is a master strategist and Selvig wants to understand every aspect of the cosmos. Generally these are traits they've put to good use. But under Loki, they're manipulated into awful acts.

Samuel L. Jackson's line "I recognize the council has made a decision, but as it is a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it" could be emblazoned on my tombstone and I'd be happy. The delivery was pitch perfect and always makes me laugh, while also being deadly serious.

Coulson- Clark Gregg's best role by far and the small amount of fanboying here just humanized his normally very stoic disposition so well. So glad they did opt to bring him back and in style.

I'm a huge Mark Ruffalo fan, both as an actor and just as a human being. It was incredibly difficult to come in after Edward Norton to fill this role but he nailed it. The moment when he tells about how he tried to commit suicide and the Hulk spat the bullet back out breaks my heart every time. There's obviously a lot of parable here about learning how to channel your anger. I personally think anger has gotten a bad rap, especially among women and activists. Righteous anger, as Starfire might say (yes, I know, I'm daring to mix DC and Marvel again, fight me later), is a powerful motivator. Anger can fuel us to change that which needs changing, but it has to be directed. Hulk shows that well enough. But I also appreciate the slow realization by Banner throughout the film that the Hulk is less crazed, destructive monster and more protector. We're not *there* just yet by the end- there's still some concern, but he's beginning that process of acceptance and understanding.

Captain America is mostly well written here, particularly in demonstrating he doesn't just follow the U.S. or orders blindly any more. He still sees himself as a soldier, but when Tony and Bruce alert him to the smell of fish in the air, he goes looking for answers. This is key character development for him as there was a time where he would have considered himself more bound to higher-ranking officials. However, I would wager Marvel regrets the one "God" comment they made in there as it doesn't really fit him overall.

Stark and Thor perform well, I just don't have a lot of commentary for either. Their rivalry is solid, though the idea that Thor would leave his brother unattended, even in remote mountains, seems unlikely.

I will also argue for more women sooner but that ship has sailed. I had forgotten about Thanos in the post- credits scene, so that was a good addition.

Note for me

Directed by: Joss Whedon

[mineofilms]

Choke (The Novel vs The Film)

So, after a few years of wondering, I finally listened to the audiobook of Chuck Palahniuk's "Choke," a literary mashup of a man’s torment by his dysfunctional relationship with his mother that transcended him to dysfunctional relationships with women in general.

—Mild Spoilers to Both the Novel and Film—

Meet Victor Mancini, the poster child for dysfunctional adulthood. He's a sex addict who works at a colonial-era theme park, pretending to “choke” on his food to con good Samaritans into saving him so he can pay for his mother’s expensive medical and mental healthcare bills. The dude is like the superhero of self-destructive behavior. His life is a masterclass in how not to adult, “what would Jesus NOT do,” and he's proud of it. Victor's mother, Ida, is in a nursing home, battling dementia and revealing some shocking family secrets. As Victor grapples with his mother's deteriorating mind, the story unveils some mind-bending truths that you'll either love or hate.

Victor's support group for sex addicts is where all the fun and games really begin. Picture a room full of people with more quirks than a circus sideshow but look every bit of living in a real circus. As Victor navigates this motley crew of misfits, you'll find yourself questioning what it means to be "normal," what normal may be, and whether any of us really fit that mold or not. "Choke" challenges societal norms and questions what it means to be human in a world where our quirks and flaws are laid bare for all to see. It's dark, it's funny, and it's bound to leave you with more questions than answers. Chuck Palahniuk's "Choke" is a provocative, twisted, and unapologetically raw exploration of the human condition. It's a journey through the absurdity of life, where Victor Mancini's self-destructive sexcapades serve as a mirror reflecting our own flaws and quirks.

The 2008 film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's "Choke," directed by Clark Gregg; best known for portraying Agent Phil Coulson from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Iron Man/Avengers films) and starring Sam Rockwell, follows the general plot and themes of the novel. There are instances where it follows very closely to the book. However, some of the characters like Denny and their arcs are much different in the film over the novel. These secondary characters are major points in the book where they are dummied down or paraphrased in the film, if mentioned at all. There are a number subplots that are not explored in the film or are heavily abbreviated. The inner monologs, while used in the film, are not nearly as dominant as they are in the book. The inner monologs in the book are the center point of the story. They are used heavily in the “FIGHT CLUB” film adaption and a center-point to the plot of the film. In��“Choke” they are used to a much lesser degree. “Choke” the novel; is told as inner thoughts over the film that tries to bring a three-act structure to what would be random inner thoughts of scenes played out in a person’s life. The book has no story structure like a movie where there is a beginning, middle and end. The book is much more random how it tells the story. The Ending of the film is completely different than the novel. The movie takes a more straightforward dark-humor, love-story approach and provides a more optimistic and conclusive “happily-ever after” ending for Victor and Paige. In the book it is much more uncertain and dark about their future as she was a mental patient and not a doctor as she claimed.

In the book she claims to be a time traveler from the year 2556 and needs to get pregnant to bring the unborn child to the future. However in the film, she was a med student like Victor that ended up having a nervous breakdown when she got her first B in school. She self-checked into the hospital and her plot is completely different from that of the book. The revelation about Victor's true identity and Ida's manipulating Victor his entire life from since he was a small boy is heavily downplayed in the movie. It is in there, but it isn’t as important as it is in the book. In the book it is clear she is nuts about a lot of things, but it is never centered upon as to what is actually wrong with her. Her having mental issues isn’t really important outside that she has mental problems. The specifics of those mental problems are not very important to Victor’s journey in the confines of the story. Merely that they are there and have affected him as he grew up.

The movie is solid. It’s more understandable as a story. The book really hashes out how FK’d up Victor really is. That, most of his problems are dummied down in the movie over the film or have more dark humor tone to them. The book is much darker than the film, but the film is a great dark satire of the source material from the novel. It’s a good watch, but if you want to know the ins and outs of the characters; the novel serves this better…

Is it a Good Watch Though?

I thought so... I saw it once when it came out in 2008 and once 11/3/2023. Both watches were good. Now that I read the book though I think the movie is less as far as telling its story but it’s still good. It’s still very much worth a watch. Just the movie is more a dark-humored twisted love story where the book is more a commentary about the subject of love of a man that has serious mommy issues and is trying to gain some closure as his mother is dying.

I guess you can say the story, in general, is a coming of age tale, but told from a very FK’d up person, in a really messed up situation…

Choke (The Novel vs The Film) by David-Angelo Mineo 11/9/2023 1,000 Words

[dogstarblues]

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

The Blackthorn & Grim books by Juliet Marillier (choosing kindness even when it seems like people who do monstrous things dont deserve it, prison abolition, community-building, healing)

The Sevenwaters books by (women!! who are all strong in their own ways! who measure their days in kindnesses) Juliet Marillier

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (one of my fav books just beautifully written)

The Cemetaries of Amalo books (spin-off of The Goblin Emperor) by Katherine Addison

Ring Shout! by P. Djeli Clark (mc chooses kindness in an unconventional way at the penultimate moment as a Hunter of Monsters and chooses kindness every time with the people she cares for and protects)

Chalice by Robin McKinley (mc doing her goddamned best to steward the land and connect with the people)

Penric & Desdemona books by Lois McMaster Bujold

Something Human by A.J. Demas

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

The Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire

Monk & Robot Series by Becky Chambers

according to my interjecting roommate: Russian Folklore

if youre into webcomics:

50 Tea Recipes for the Duchess (this character builds community through her passion for tea)

The Villainess's Stationary Shop (just leaving wealth and status behind to fulfill her dreams of making alchemical snacks and enspelled treats and stationary for children 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺)

Not Sew Wicked Stepmom (every time she tries to protect her step daughter Blanche from dieting culture and reassures Blanche that children have the right to eat im!!!!!!!! and the kindness to other women!!!!! helping her husband work through his trauma!!!!!! designing clothes for children!!! i adore this one)

My Farm by the Palace (theres nothing good bread, good bakery items, and cutlets cant fix)

Castle Swimmer (🥺 these kids)

Suitor Armor (lovely art style love the story)

Poetry (if you consider The Speaker a character):

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

All of It Singing by Linda Gregg

The Book of Medicines by Linda Hogan

Homie by Danez Smith (extremely explicitly abt love for queer community and friend-love)

Is, Is Not by Tess Gallagher

The Lunatic by Charles Simic

Here: Poems for the Planet

most of what Vladimir Mayakovsky has written on communism and love which is most of what Vladimir Mayakovsky has written

anything by Rumi

Choosing Kindness Book Recs

I’m been thinking about stories and the types of things I like to read.  I usually think in terms of genre, I love fantasy and space opera and very specific types of romance to name a few.  But one type of story I really gravitate to isn’t tied to genre at all (though most of my examples are fantasy).  I love stories about genuinly good people doing their best to make the world a better place.  Now that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy stories about anti-heroes, rogues or very flawed characters, I do.  But there is a very unique flavor to these stories despite wildly different settings so thought I’d make a list of these types of stories.  Characters who, when given a choice, choose kindness.  I’ll add more as I think of them but please feel free to add on to this list with your own recs.

The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane  Book 1: So You Want to Be A Wizard 

All the Heralds of Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey  Book 1: Arrows of the Queen

The Order of the Air by Melissa Scott and Jo Graham  Book 1: Lost Things

Stealing Fire by Jo Graham (I don’t know if this trait carries over to the rest of the Numinous World books, I only just started reading the series, but Lydias is such a great character.  There are so many moments were he could be selfish or cruel and the world he lives in would excuse or even encourage it but he chooses kindness instead.)

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #474

Top Ten Characters Who Came Back from the Dead

I am stunned – stunned! – that I’ve not done this one before. I mean, come on! It’s right there.

So there’s obviously a thematic resonance going on here. This weekend – the weekend you’re meant to be reading this – is famous where I come from because of a story where someone came back from the dead. Unlike other holidays – Christmas, Halloween, the release of a Star War – I’ve actually been a little slow off the mark in making lists that celebrate Easter. I’ve done eggs and bunnies, but incredibly I’ve never done resurrections, which really is the day’s whole deal. I mean, if you get down to brass tacks, it’s kinda the big selling point of the entire religion really. I hesitate to say “USP” because, well, it’s been done elsewhere, but it’s still supposed to be one of the big Christian takeaways (there’s definitely a chain of Christian takeaways in the States, isn’t there?).

Anyway, resurrection. It’s actually more common than you might think. Certainly in terms of comics there are probably more characters who’ve “died and come back” than have never “died” at all. But! And this is where I get pernickety. Most characters who “die” don’t actually die. Take Batman for instance: he’s shot in the face by Darkseid, and then Superman ups and finds his charred corpse, but – shocker! – he’s not actually dead, he was just sent back in time, where he Quantum Leaps his way back to the present day, accumulating enough Omega Energy with each leap that by the time he reaches the present day he’s blow a hole in reality. Or something, I’ve not read that story for quite a few years. Anyway: he wasn’t dead. Neither was Sherlock Holmes, or for that matter Dirty Den. Generally speaking, if someone dies in a story and then reappears, they’re not dead. Not really.

So this list here is supposed to be people who actually died. Now, even here, it’s debatable; I mean, is E.T. dead, or does his body just go into some kind of hibernation? If Optimus Prime’s brainwaves survive, does he ever really die? Is a clone someone coming back to life or not? It’s all a bit wishy-washy really, which kind of makes sense when you’re talking about resurrection. And let’s not get onto the chief resurrector, the Doctor; do they die every time they regenerate? Or is the regeneration itself a way of staving off death? When David Tennant turned into Matt Smith, did the Tennant-Doctor die? “I don’t want to go,” and all that; there’s always a subtle (or not-so-subtle) change in personality. Does that count? Well, for the purposes of this list, I’ve kinda decided it doesn’t. But it’s an interesting discussion to have, if you’re a big old nerd like me.

So yeah: people who have died – properly, I suppose – and then come back to life. That’s the list. No fakery, to mistaken identity, no alternate universe shenanigans; they were dead but they got better (no Chev Chelios either; sorry, Stath stans). No zombies either! Or vampires! They’re not undead; they were dead, and now they’re alive again. That’s the rule. Also I’ve seriously tried to limit comic book characters. And I’m sure there are some big omissions (like, I know there’s one from Game of Thrones that’s not on here, but that’s because I’ve not seen that far into the show yet; I know, I know). But I reckon these are the best at being back.

Optimus Prime (Transformers franchise, from about 1987): OP is the OG when it comes to coming back to life. Dying and then stopping being dead is pretty much his thing. Technically the first time he came back from the dead was in the original animation; famously being offed by Megatron in The Transformers: The Movie (1986), he came back to life a year later. Subsequent media have frequently killed him and brought him back, even in the live-action movies, but I want to talk about the comics. Because the original Marvel run killed off Optimus at a similar time as the cartoon; he’s blown up in slightly contrived circumstances, but his brain is saved on a floppy disk. Two years later he has his body rebuilt and his brain restored and he’s off to the races once more. Then in 1991, when facing down planet-eating mega-bastard Unicron, he sacrifices himself again, but this time his personality has begun to merge with that of his ostensibly-human companion Hi-Q. Hi-Q/Prime is converted/rebuilt into a new body, and he wins the war. So there you go: even in this one sliver of continued continuity – not including off-shoots or spin-offs, let alone other iterations of the overall franchise – Optimus Prime died and came back to life twice. Beat that, Easter.

E.T. (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982): not much to say here that we don’t already know from the Book of Spielberg. E.T., doddery little alien magic-man, grows sicker and sicker as he’s stuck on Earth, until in a thrillingly-edited set-piece he seems to expire, human doctors unable to help him. “I know you’re gone,” says best bud Elliot, “because I don’t know what to feel.” But then! His heart glows! His colour returns! And he positively yells, “E.T. phone hooooooome!” – and Elliot’s euphoric laugh is just devastating. The whole sequence – what is it, ten minutes? Fifteen? – is masterful in every way, from the technical to the performative to the emotional. Bloody magic is what it is.

Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 1954): Gandalf the Grey famously leads the Fellowship of the Ring across the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, where he faces off against a Balrog. After a bit of “you shall not pass” and all that, they both fall from the bridge, battling each other on the way down, before both perishing at the bottom. Gandalf, though, is not really Gandalf, but Olórin, one of the Maiar – basically a kind of angel, I guess. He is returned to Earth by the powers-that-be to complete his mission, and is promoted to Gandalf the White, supplanting the corrupt wizard Saruman. This new iteration of Gandalf is a bit more serious and steadfast, although he does retain his fascination with hobbits. Regardless, he gets a terrific death scene and a triumphant resurrection, and how it ties into Tolkien’s wider mythology is interesting.

Superman (DC Comics, 1993): comic book characters die and come back all the time; it’s pretty much a staple of the medium. I guess Jean Grey/Phoenix is probably the most famous, but they’ve all done at some point (even if, like in my Batman example earlier, sometimes they don’t actually die). Anyway, Superman died, very famously, after getting into a tremendous barney with genetically-engineered super-git Doomsday (as famously, and atrociously, depicted in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice). The whole “Death of Superman” arc is interesting and entertaining as an example of mid-nineties big-panel EXTREME storytelling: as the issues tick down to the fateful scrap in Metropolis, the number of panels-per-page is reduced until the final issue is basically just full of splash pages. It’s a terrific, exhilarating rumble, really selling the heft of the confrontation. Interestingly, the comic spends a lot of time afterwards dealing with life without Superman, as a raft of imitators/wannabe successors emerge from the woodwork; these include the best-ever Superboy, Conner Kent, and Steel, who’s basically Superman meets Iron Man. Eventually, of course, Superman comes back, his body essentially having been sent to a Kryptonian day spa to recuperate; he emerges clad in black and with a mullet, so death obviously has some lasting repercussions. Overall, it’s a whopping arc with long-term consequences, and whilst it’s easy to make Christ parallels when discussing Superman, this story doesn’t really hew that way (unlike the Snyder-verse which really goes all-in on that plot point, much to the films’ detriment). One of the better aspects is how, even in death, Superman is an inspiration, which in itself has a long trail; leading, eventually, to Batman’s famous withering diss, “the last time you inspired someone was when you where dead.” Anyway, I’ve gone on about this far too long.

Spock (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, 1984): let’s start by acknowledging just how great Spock’s death is in Wrath of Khan. As a plot point within the film, as a piece of staging and performance, and as a landmark moment in this franchise, it was seminal; a death for the ages (as an aside, it’s crazy to think Star Trek as a whole was only sixteen years old when Spock died; the MCU was eleven when Tony Stark clicked the bucket). Anyway, they built an entire film around how to bring him back, and Spock as we know him is absent for much of it; a presence looming over everything as he rapidly ages, going through his Vulcan super-puberty and everything. It’s actually a rather sombre film as Kirk’s son is killed and the Enterprise blows up; bringing back Spock comes with a very real cost. Trek III is not one of the top-tier films – in the loose trilogy that comprises Khan, Spock, and The Voyage Home it’s certainly the weakest – but it’s still pretty good, often underrated. And, of course, it brings back Spock, which is nice.

Agent Coulson (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., 2013): Coulson’s death in Avengers comes as a huge shock, one of the fan-favourite characters being brutally offed in surprising fashion. In a film chock full of super-people, it’s the ordinary guy who buys it tragically. However, did any of us really think he was dead-dead? And so barely a year later he pops back up in the TV series Agents of SHIELD. However, his reincarnation became a recurring plot point; his references to spending time in Tahiti (“It’s a magical place”) becoming increasingly sinister as we come to understand even he doesn’t know how he’s back up and running. The eventual truth – Nick Fury using painful and transformative alien tech to basically bring Coulson back to life – may be a bit underwhelming, but it gave Clark Gregg a lot of meat to chew on dramatically speaking, and it underscored a lot of his character development going forward (especially when he, yes, died again, and then sort-of came back, twice).

Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001): full disclosure: I never watched Buffy religiously. I think I just missed it at the start and it was only when all my friends were talking about how great it was that I started tuning in more regularly. Weirdly, I think the most I watched it was around the time Buffy died and came back. It’s fascinating, really, and full credit to the show for the way they explored it; in a series full of magic, the afterlife, and the undead, bringing a character back to life isn’t too shocking. Willow, Buffy’s witchy mate, resurrects her with magic; but in an excellent twist, it turns out that she was in Heaven, and is super pissed off to be pulled out of paradise and stuck back on Earth, leading to her feeling depressed and alienated all season. That’s a great hook for bringing a character back, and leads to some meaty stuff for Sarah Michelle Geller to do.

Agent Smith (The Matrix Reloaded, 2003): do you ever feel that The Matrix has slipped from popular culture a little bit? Twenty years ago it was ascendent, rivalling Lord of the Rings for the title of “the new Star Wars”. Everyone was copying it. but now hardly anyone talks about it. probably because it hasn’t had a multimedia shelf-life comprising dozens of games and spin-off shows. Maybe the new film will change that. But I digress; Hugo Weaving is tremendous as Agent Smith in the first film, and is exploded at the end (spoilers) by Keanu Reeves’ Neo. Unsurprisingly – especially as he’s, well, just bits of code – he’s back in the sequel. However, he’s now been corrupted; he becomes, basically, a virus, self-replicating and threatening not just our heroes but the Matrix itself. This builds across two films, as Neo has to fight dozens of Smiths in the famous “Burly Brawl”, before the final conflict in The Matrix Revolutions when it seems everyone in the program has been Smithed. It offers Weaving a lot of scenery to chew on and makes for some great set-piece battles, even if the films themselves are a little disappointing.

Olaf (Frozen II, 2019): let’s not beat around the bush here – Olaf carks it in Frozen II. Okay, maybe Elsa dies; maybe Anna dies in the first film. They’re frozen, right, but I feel like it’s “magic ice” and there’s something going on there. Do they come back to life or were they ever really dead? Anyway, Elsa is effectively “gone” but we get a protracted death scene for the comic relief talking snowman. He literally fades away, slowly dying in Anna’s arms, and melts into a flurry of snow that blows away. People talk about Bambi’s mum all the time, but mark my words; “Olaf’s death” is going to be cited as a major traumatic incident for twenty-year-olds in 2030. His resurrection, truth be told, is slightly less great, Elsa just straight-up bringing him back to life, reminding us that “water has memory” to let us know that it’s the same Olaf and he remembers everything (including, presumably, dying? That’s creepy). And that, to be honest, is where I draw the line; sentient wind and rock monsters I can handle, but we all know homeopathy is bollocks.

Emperor Palpatine (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, 2019): look, I hate this. But let’s deal with it anyway, because I have a funny feeling it’s going to lead to some quite interesting stories being told in spin-off Star Wars fiction. I personally feel quite strongly that Palpatine should have stayed dead. And maybe he did? We are led to believe that the Palpatine we see in Rise is a clone; there are jars of stilted Snokes floating in the background. He’s all knackered and broken, eyes blackened and fingers dropping off; clearly he’s not well. So is he really the same character at all? Is his Sith essence somehow fed into this new body, the way Prime’s mind is downloaded from a floppy disk (“run prime.exe”)? Let’s say it counts, let’s say he’s the same slimy Palps we know and love. He is, at least, a sinister presence, and like I say, the whys and wherefores of how he came to be back is quite interesting. There’s a fascinating story to be told about the rise of Snoke and the seduction of Ben Solo – a more interesting story than anything told in The Rise of Skywalker, for starters. Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian seems to be researching cloning and seeks to extract midichlorians from a Force-sensitive being; are we to conclude that this in service of making a new body for the Emperor? All this – stuff hinted at but not explored in the film itself – is, like I say, interesting if not outright fascinating. And I agree, there is a certain degree of circularity in bringing back the series’ Big Bad for the final instalment. But I still feel, hand on heart, that it undoes a lot of the victory of Return of the Jedi (as did The Force Awakens, if I’m honest), as well as throwing away all the development of Rey and Kylo in The Last Jedi. So: Palpatine is cool, his presence and backstory in Rise of Skywalker is suitably creepy and interesting, but on the whole it’s crap and they shouldn’t have brought him back. The end.

Ten people who definitely died and definitely un-died! What could be more Easter-y? Honourable mention goes to the episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer changes history and ends up not being a hologram, only to accidentally blow himself up in the final seconds.

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Reflecting on Agents of SHIELD

So here we are at the end of 7 years. I have had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the show. There are times when I really haven’t liked the show and there are times when I have loved the show. Unlike many fans in the fandom, I don’t think its a perfect show. It has had more than a few missteps along the way. But it deserves credit on the things it has done right.

I remember the excitement when I hopped on board for season 1. Just coming off Avengers, this was supposed to be the tv spinoff where a whole world of exciting things were supposed to happen, interlinked with the movies. Turns out, it was a huge mistake to market the show like that. Thinking about it know, the potential challenges of that working out were obvious. Movies are written far before tv episodes are so doing that type of synchronization would be extremely difficult even if there weren’t tensions between the tv and movie divisions. In any case, season 1 was a clear case of a show treading water. The first 2/3 of the season was truly dull, barring a few good ones likes F.Z.Z.T. It wasn’t till T.R.A.C.K.S that the show started to find its footing with any sort of quality. The cast also seemed to be getting a handle on things. Clark Gregg smoothly transitioned without a problem as a lead but initially Ward was too blank a slate to really connect to, Skye was really annoying, FitzSimmons were just a bickering couple, and May was just the deadpan badass stereotype. But slowly the actors started to get a handle on things. The first sign of Elizabeth’s talent could be seen in F.Z.Z.T. Ming Na and Brett Dalton started to find more tinges of humanity in their characterizations. Iain really started to open out towards the end of the season and delivered what is still one of the most powerful scenes of the show in his confession to Simmons under water. I will be honest and say that Chloe wasn’t very good initially. It was partly the character and partly that the others seemed significantly better at the dramatic beats. The big Hydra twist gave Brett Dalton a huge boost as a performer. Its as if his handcuffs were taken off and he was suddenly freed and he became the most interesting character on the show for me. The Hydra plot of season 1 may still be the best story arc the show did, rivaled only by the Framework arc. I still don’t know which I rank higher, but that arc was the height of fulfillment that we got from the premise as originally pitched to the fans where the show synchronized with the movie story very well. And it was really the last time it happened. While most of season 1 was unfortunately handicapped, the final arc ended the season on a high which left me with great anticipation for what was next.

As we started second season, the thing that immediately struck me was that the show had completely changed. What again struck me was how Iain and Brett had really become the MVP’s of the show for me. Iain was heartwrenchingly brilliant in the first half of season 2. Again, one of the scenes of the show for me is when Fitz finds Ward in the basement. Brett and especially Iain just acted the hell out of that scene. The story arc of SHIELD vs Hydra was always one of the strong points of the show. That’s where the strength of season 2 lies. They played on the toxic Ward/Skye dynamic really well in those interactions in the basement. Brett really found the perfect balance of creepiness and sincerity in those scenes. In the midst of it all, we got some new additions in Bobbi, Hunter, Mack, and Kyle Machlachlan as Skye’s father and the transformation from Skye to Daisy happened. Honestly, Kyle was the highlight of the new additions in the season. He was there throughout and was kind of the emotional heartbeat of Skye/Daisy’s story in season 2. I wasn’t a huge fan of Mack in season 2. He had this passive aggressiveness towards anyone who wasn’t Fitz. I liked his dynamic with Fitz. Definitely the FitzSimmons stuff was hard to watch with it being so heartbreaking. Little did we know how much more there was to come. Bobbi and Hunter I was largely indifferent to. Bobbi was a badass and Adrianne Palicki is gorgeous but I never got overly invested in her. Hunter was hilarious at times and sometimes annoying. I liked how he was with Fitz. I felt Iain brought out the best in everyone this season. I wasn’t a huge fan of the second half of the season. I think the whole SHIELD vs Real SHIELD arc was pretty dumb and even the Inhumans story could have been better executed. Also, they took a wrong turn with Ward by the end of season 2. They had real potential with Ward being a wild card character who could be on hero’s side or villain’s side depending what benefits him, but instead they made him pure villain by season end.

Season 3 started off ok. Again, Iain was heartwrenching in the season premiere and Elizabeth turned up in full form in her solo outing. I honestly did not care about the whole Will drama. It felt very soap operaish for them to use this to create a love triangle which actually goes nowhere. Again, I felt they didn’t do enough with Ward even though Brett Dalton gave it is all. Certainly it was the most straight up villainous version of the character. Powers Boothe came in and did a great job with all his gravitas as a Hydra leader. It was in season 3 I started feeling Chloe Bennet started stepping up to the plate. In all fairness, one of my issues with some of the initial seasons were that it was so heavily Skye/Daisy dependent and everyone else felt more interesting to follow than her. This season allowed Ming Na and Clark Gregg to show some shades of regret and anger respectively. I was annoyed when they killed Ward because of wasted potential but Brett stepped up to the plate with an excellent turn as Hive. Bobbi and Hunter’s goodbye was sad though, as I said, I never got a personal attachment to those characters. One of the big misfires unfortunately was Lincoln. I have seen Luke Mitchell be compelling in other roles but Lincoln just did not work. Not as a character independently and not as a love interest for Daisy because they shared no chemistry. In a way, his death at the end felt like the writers dumping him and just admitting they didn’t know how to make the character work. We also got introduced to Yo Yo who would last the remainder of the show. It was kind of an uneven season but overall enjoyable. Didn’t reach the heights of the best parts of season 1 and 2 but maybe more consistent overall. I was really sad to say goodbye to Brett Dalton who was my second favorite cast member after Iain at this point.

Season 4 probably stands as the overall best season in terms of quality. Splitting the season into three pods really helped with the pacing with an increased amount of story. It was also the first season since season 1 where SHIELD existed as a functioning public agency and not just a bunch of agents working in secret. Robbie Reyes was incredibly badass as Ghost Rider. His pod was probably the weakest of the season but his presence overshadowed all the regular SHIELD cast members. The villain story was kind of weak but the backstory with Robbie, his thankfully platonic dynamic with Daisy, and the story of the developing technology of AIDA was fascinating. The LMD arc was better because AIDA and Radcliffe became serious legitimate and realistic threats. The acting also was top notch. The finale of this arc, Self-Control, is one of the show’s top episodes where Chloe Bennet was amazing as was Elizabeth and Iain was genuinely frightening as the LMD in the few minutes he had. But Framework just killed it. Brett Dalton coming back was wonderful. I really wished they had found a way to bring back this version to the real world. Iain delivered a seriously terrifying performance as the Doctor. Elizabeth, Chloe, Clark, Henry, Ming Na, John Hannah, and Natalia were all great. But the season’s MVP was Mallory Jansen, who played multiple iterations of the character throughout the season. My one issue with season 4 was I felt that she was built up in the finale a lot but then got taken out too easily. But overall, great season.

Season 5 is where the show kind of lost my interest. I am genuinely not a fan of the season and don’t have much to say about it. I felt it became outlandish and silly, while simultaneously becoming overly grim and morose which just didn’t work tonally for me. The acting continued to be top notch across the board. Iain continued to be a highlight all season with his breakdown episode being one of the most painful to watch. FitzSimmons wedding was lovely and kind of a welcome relief in a very dark season. Clark Gregg, Ming Na, and Chloe Bennet were excellent towards the end when playing out Coulson’s deteriorating health. Natalia also got to have some meaty story for really the first time on the show. But the budget constraints were clearly showing with the entire season being played out in the same grey halls and honestly I just never felt invested in the story. I knew the world wouldn’t end and it just became unendingly morose. Enoch was kind of the highlight in terms of humor in the season. Deke was introduced and I felt the same way as I felt about hunter. He was fun at tmes and other times annoying. The grandson revelation was kind of cool but I feel they have never done all that much with that connection. Maybe if the entire season was half a season’s plot, it would have been more palatable.

Season 6 was a minor improvement though still not great. The villains were again the big downfall of the season. I felt the show showed an inability to let go of Clark. Sarge was really not compelling and not a character that utilized his Clark Gregg’s best traits, which is his easy every man type nature. I could care less about the Shriek and Izel. We got to see May as a badass several times, which was nice but it was the space advanture that I enjoyed more. Whether it was Daisy and Simmons getting high on space mushrooms, or Enoch and Fitz being BFF’s in space, it was the show getting back to having some humor. Certainly a shorter season helped with regards to pacing. But it was still a rather unremarkable season which ended on a promising note.

Season 7 has been the best season since season 4. I feel that the first half the season was awesome. Rediscovering the fun, natural lighting, and better character interplay. Not having Fitz around was a bummer since Iain’s my fav cast member but we got the delightful surprise of Enver joining the cast as Sousa who I absolutely loved on Agent Carter. He has helped fill the void for me. Certainly has brought more than his share of humor and heart to the show. Again, the season’s weakness has been its villains. The chronicoms were initially good physical threats and certainly what they did to Mack’s parents was horrifying, but when Nathaniel Malick took over, the season has kind of stuttered for me. He just doesn’t cut it as a villain, especially for the final season. Chronicoms also don’t really cut it beyond the physical threat. The new additions of Kora and young Garrett are too last minute for me to feel any sort of threat from them. Certainly the time loop episode was amazing and the developing relationship between Daisy and Sousa has completely taken me by surprise. Its a mixture of good writing, good acting, and natural chemistry that this pairing has been something I root for, even though I loved PeggySous. But the show inexplicably got stuck in the 80′ and I really felt they should have gone through the periods to catch up to present day. Certainly the Jiaying story helped with some character reconcilliation for Daisy but I think there could have been more interesting stories had they progressed to more modern times. In any case, that leads to the finale. Hopefully the show ends on a good note. I don’t think it will be everything I want it to be because there are too many things on my wishlist, like a Ward return, which are unlikely to happen. But I hope for that its largely emotionally satisfying. Its been a good, if uneven ride. I would say its probably my second favorite Marvel show after Daredevil, but its longevity shows that it has developed a loyal core of fans. I may not get as emotional as a lot of the core fans, but it will feel weird that there will be no more Agents of SHIELD. It is the end of an era with it being the last of its brand of Marvel shows with all future marvel shows being direct movie spinoffs. I don’t anticipate we will see these characters in this form again, but who knows? Maybe someday?

Edit: My thoughts on finale

Overall, it was.... fine. I don’t know what I was expecting. I liked how the characters ended up but the whole thing felt oddly safe and a little emotionally hollow. They should have been a little braver and genuinely killed a couple of characters. Like I said earlier, there were a lot of things on my wishlist that didn’t happen, but I had kind of reconciled to that. The action was really good, but my apathy for the villains led to me being less interested in the whole story and the whole “empathy being the savior” was a little goofy for my taste. Regardless, far from the worst finale around but also not the greatest but reasonably enjoyable. Kind of like the show in a way, which makes it fitting. 

[sippinhoneylemon]

20+ tv shows to watch during quarantine.

hey guys! so i know everyone’s been super bored. i’ve been occupied by binging on tv shows for the past couple weeks and i’ve compiled a little bit of a list to recommend to you and a synopsis of each tv show along with any actors/actresses you might be familiar with additionally, ill have listed ways to watch these shows. enjoy ;)

1. Marvel’s Inhumans - (Disney+, iTunes, ABC app/site)

This is about a colonization of inhumans (people with powers) who live on a city, named Attilan, on the moon. When the king’s brother betrays him and forms a coup against him, the royal family is forced to leave Attilan and flee to Earth. Down on Earth, they make friends and within all of that, they learn to see the flaws of themselves and their city. They also have to find each other and find a way to regain their throne and save the people of Attilan before the city collapses. (1 season, 8 episodes)

Actors you may know: 

Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones)

Henry Ian Cusick (Lost, The 100)

2. Marvel’s Agents of Shield - (Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play)

This is about a group of SHIELD agents who continuously fight to save the world from Hydra, inhumans, aliens, and themselves. They are left to fight the battles the Avengers are too busy to fight. Each season ranges from them fighting Hydra to traveling throughout space and time to save each other and the world. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Clark Gregg (Iron Man, Iron Man II, The Avengers, Captain Marvel)

Ming-Na Wen (Mulan, Mulan II)

Adrianne Palicki (GI Joe, John Wick)

Dove Cameron (Liv & Maddie, Descendants)

Luke Mitchell (H20 Just Add Water, The Tomorrow People)

Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter, Captain America: The First Avenger)

3. Spinning Out - (Netflix)

This is about a girl who was performing during sectionals when she attempted to jump and hit her head on the ice, almost sending her to her death. Ever since then, she has been afraid to attempt any jumps while skating and she has given up on her ice skating career. When a new opportunity arrises and she gets the chance to skate, she has to choose between her ego and partner skating. This show is about how she has to overcome her emotions and bipolar disorder enable to reach her dream of skating in the olympics. (1 season, 10 episodes)

Actors you may know:

Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner)

Willow Shields (The Hunger Games)

January Jones (X-Men: First Class)

Kaitlyn Leeb (Christmas With a View, Christmas With a Prince)

4. Teen Wolf - (iTunes, Fandango, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime)

This is about a guy who gets bitten and turned into a werewolf one night and has to learn to protect his friends from all the dangers of their town. His best friend is human and his girlfriend is a werewolf hunter. Despite all of that, he has learn to deal with werewolves that are after him and supernatural beings to protect his friends and family. (6 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner, American Assassin, The Intern)

Tyler Posey (Truth or Dare)

Cody Christian (Pretty Little Liars, All American)

Tyler Hoechlin (Supergirl)

Shelley Hennig (The Secret Circle, Unfriended)

Colton Haynes (Arrow, San Andreas)

Daniel Sharman (Medici, Fear the Walking Dead, Immortals)

5. The Vampire Diaries - (Netflix, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Fandango, Youtube)

This is about a girl who encounters two vampire brothers who have just moved into town. Her best friend is a witch and together with the rest of their friends, they have to face the evils that are coming after them, the town, and their families. (8 seasons)

Actors you may know

Nina Dobrev (Degrassi, Flatliners)

Ian Somerhalder (V Wars, Lost)

Paul Wesley (Fallen, Tell me a Story)

Candice King (After We Collided)

6. The Originals - (Netflix, iTunes, Fandango, Amazon Prime, Youtube, Vudu, Google Play)

This is about the original vampires and how they’ve managed to survive for over a thousand years by putting their family above all. They are constantly targeted by their past and when a miracle child comes into play, they risk everything to protect her, even their family. (5 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Phoebe Tonkin (H20 Just Add Water, The Secret Circle)

Claire Holt (H20 Just Add Water, Pretty Little Liars, 47 Meters Down)

Summer Fontana (Dark Phoenix)

Danielle Campbell (Starstruck, Tell Me a Story)

Maisie Richardson-Sellers (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow)

Daniel Sharman (Teen Wolf, Immortals, Fear the Walking Dead, Medici)

Torrance Coombs (Reign)

7. Legacies - (Netflix, iTunes, CW app/site)

This is about the miracle child in The Originals and the school she has grown up in all her life. When monsters start attacking the school, she has to make calls that a teenager should never have to make to save the school. She has to also protect her friends as she is haunted by her past and her family. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Matthew Davis (The Vampire Diaries, Legally Blonde)

Thomas Doherty (Descendants)

Chris Wood (The Vampire Diaries, Supergirl)

Leo Howard (Kickin’ It)

8. DC’s Titans - (iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime, Vudu)

This is about a girl with dark and dangerous powers and how the team of Titans try and keep her safe while discovering more about her powers and where she comes from. They struggle to keep the world safe along with all their friends too. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Brenton Thwaites (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Gods of Egypt)

Ryan Potter (Lab Rats: Elite Force, Big Hero 6)

Iain Glen (Game of Thrones)

9. Grey’s Anatomy - (Netflix, Hulu, ABC app/site, Youtube, Google Play, iTunes, Amazon Prime, Vudu)

This is about surgeons in a hospital and the drama of their lives from facing unique patients each day. They also face tragic incidents within the show and struggle to stay friends with each other. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Basically everyone

10. The Secret Circle - (Amazon Prime)

This is about a girl who moves into a new town and discovers her powers as a witch. She also discovers the truth about her family and the reason why her mother was murdered. (1 season, 22 episodes)

Actors you may know:

Britt Robertson (The Longest Ride, The Space Between Us, Tomorrowland, I Still Believe)

Phoebe Tonkin (H20 Just Add Water, The Originals)

Shelley Hennig (Teen Wolf, Unfriended)

Chris Zylka (10 Things I Hate About You)

11. Charmed (2005) - (Netflix, iTunes, Youtube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play)

This is about a group of sisters and how they discover their powers. Monsters and demons constantly try and attack their family because they want their powers for themselves so they must constantly defend themselves and their friends. (8 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Holly Marie Combs (Pretty Little Liars)

Alyssa Milano (Insatiable)

Brian Krause (Blue Lagoon, Return to the Blue Lagoon)

Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory)

12. V Wars - (Netflix)

This is about a doctor who discovers a new virus that quickly infects everyone, including his best friend. He also discovers that the people with this virus are called bloods because they have to feed on blood to survive. He has to choose and try and prevent a war between humanity and the bloods. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Ian Somerhalder (The Vampire Diaries)

Nikki Reed (Twilight Saga)

13. The Shannara Chronicles - (Netflix, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime)

This is about a post dystopian fantasy world, taking place in present day San Francisco. A demon is trying to destroy their world so a group of people must go and save Shannara before it is destroyed. (2 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Austin Butler (The Carrie Diaries, Switched At Birth)

Poppy Drayton (The Little Mermaid)

Malese Jow (The Flash, The Vampire Diaries)

Vanessa Morgan (Riverdale, My Babysitter’s A Vampire)

Brooke Williams (Agents of SHIELD)

John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Indiana Jones Films)

14. The Witcher - (Netflix)

This is about a rare witcher who’s purpose is to destroy evil beings. He has an unknown past with a princess which is hinted throughout the film and he has to work to save the princess from her kingdom which is being overthrown. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Henry Cavil (Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, Justice League)

15. Outlander - (STARZ app/site, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Youtube, Google Play, Roku, Sling)

This is about a woman who is on her honeymoon in the Scottish highlands with her husband when she gets magically transported back in time during the 1700′s. She must work to go back to her time period even when she’s falling for someone who doesn’t belong in her time period. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Sam Heughan (The Spy Who Dumped Me)

16. Once Upon A Time - (Netflix, Fandango, iTunes, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Youtube, Google Play)

This is about a woman who is approached by a child she left years ago. He leads her to a town where fairytale characters exist but are under a spell which caused them to forget who they were and why they were there.  (7 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Rebecca Mader (Lost)

Jamie Dornan (Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy)

Sebastian Stan (Avengers Series)

17. Beauty and the Beast - (Netflix, iTunes)

This is about a woman who is a cop and was saved when she was younger by a “beast”. She discovers the man behind this beast and how he was experimented on in the military, causing him to turn into a “beast.” Together, they must face the dangers of his strength and his past. (4 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Kristin Kreuk (Smallville, Street Fighter)

Jay Ryan (IT Chapter II)

Rachel Skarsten (Reign, Birds of Prey, Batwoman)

18. The Haunting of Hill House - (Netflix)

This is about siblings who work their way through grief after their mother killed herself in their family home. They must work past their grief and discover the truth about the house and why it made her kill herself. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Victoria Pedretti (You)

Elizabeth Reaser (Twilight Saga, Ouiji: Origin of Evil)

Michiel Huisman (Age of Adaline, Game of Thrones, The Guernsey Literary and the Potato Peel Pie Society)

19. The 100 - (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube, Google Play, Vudu, iTunes)

This is about a post apocalyptic Earth and how a crew of people managed to survive the poison on Earth almost a century ago. They decide to take the risk and come down from space to encounter a group of people who have been living on earth all this time. (ongoing)

Actors you may know:

Eliza Taylor (Christmas Inheritance)

Alycia Debnam-Carey (Fear the Walking Dead)

Henry Ian Cusick (Marvel’s Inhumans, Lost)

Isaiah Washington (Grey’s Anatomy)

20. Travelers - (Netflix)

This is about a group of people in a futuristic, apocalyptic Earth who are able to send their consciousness back in time to a person who is moments from death. This group goes back in time with the hopes of trying to save Earth before it is destroyed. (3 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Kind of unlikely

21. Quantico - (Netflix, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Fandango, Google Play, Youtube)

This is about a woman who volunteers for the FBI academy in Quantico but finds dark secrets about her teammates as they get pick out and booted from the academy one by one. (3 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Blair Underwood (LA Law)

Priyanka Chopra (married to Nick Jonas)

Karolina Wydraw (Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD)

22. Reign - (Netflix, CW app/site, Fandango, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Microsoft Movies and TV, Vudu)

This is about Mary Queen of Scots as she explores France and it’s secrets that lie within the kingdom’s walls. She has to get married to Francis, son of Catherine de Medici and struggles to balance her feelings, friends, and the darkness all together. (4 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Adelaide Kane (Teen Wolf, The Purge)

Torrance Coombs (The Originals)

Anna Popplewell (Chronicles of Narnia Series)

23. Marvel’s Runaways - (Disney+, Hulu, Vudu, iTunes, Google Play)

This is about a group of childhood friends who come together and accidentally find their parents murdering a young girl. Some discover they are mutants and they team up to try and stop their parents. (3 seasons)

Actors you may know:

Greg Sulkin (A Cinderella Story: Christmas Wish, Avalon High, Wizards of Waverly Place)

Annie Wersching (The Vampire Diaries)

Olivia Holt (Kickin’ it, Girl Meets Monster, Cloak and Dagger)

Julian McMahon (Charmed)

[agl03]

In the Season 6 premiere, we see Fitz in a weird place. Do you think FitzSimmons have become different people, in the year that’s passed?

HENSTRIDGE: Yes and no. In a way, they’ve both become less human this year because they’ve both had as such a singular drive to find each other, that they have sacrificed other parts of their humanity, to be able to do that. So, I don’t know if that’s them becoming different people, or they’ll have to re-learn to have empathy a bit more again, once they finally get what they want. They both just have one goal and don’t really care what it takes to get that, which is really fun to play. [Dark Jemma] is the best. I wish I could be her more.

What can you say about the dynamic between Sarge and May?

WEN: Our writers come up with these amazing but crazy scenarios and, as actors, it keeps the challenge and the freshness alive. So, for me, to see him transform into Sarge, it’s a very different guy, and that’s so fun. Otherwise, you’re constantly playing the same thing, or the same relationships, or the same conflicts. This is a completely different conflict.

GREGG: He seems bemused that these people who seem to be the prime hunters of he and his team are so freaked out by him. He’s curious ‘cause he’s been to many worlds and nobody’s ever recognized him before. But it doesn’t ripple much because he is fanatically devoted to the reason he came here, which seems to be pretty dark.

As much as you trust the writers, was there ever a time where you wondered whether this was a direction you should go?

GREGG: Officially, no. They’ve earned the right to go where they’re gonna go. On this show, it’s their character, and they’re kind enough to involve me and make sure things sit well with me. And sometimes they don’t. I was thrown by the pitch for what we were gonna try to do in Season 6. It wasn’t clear where it was gonna end up. Based on the nature of how this show goes, it’s evolving on the fly. There are goal posts. There’s a sketch. What I think is amazing about it is that it evolves as we go, based on what’s working. Usually, the audience is even part of it, but not this time. Except for the first episode that I directed, none of us had seen any of Season 6 until a couple of days ago, and we wrapped it five months ago. Usually, we have that sounding board of the audience and seeing it and figuring out what’s working, but we really didn’t have that. So, it’s a big trust exercise, which is not always my forte, but I feel like what we’ve accomplished, and the writers and cast and crew have accomplished together, is very, very rare. I don’t think any season has been weaker than the one before it. I feel like it’s continually evolved, and they’ve gone into different corners of the Marvel Universe that weren’t being used, or used enough, and made a hell of a great thing out of it. I loved Gabe Luna’s Ghost Rider, and I loved the framework, and I loved the LMD Wars, and the future. I just go where they take me now.

Are there romantic possibilities for Daisy? Do you think she’s in the right headspace for that, at this point?

BENNET: I don’t know. I hope so. I think she’s getting there. At the end of Season 3, there was so much loss that she was like, “I can’t be around anybody.” You really see her mature through her reactions to trauma, throughout the whole series. This season, I wanted to make sure that the love interest wasn’t a reaction to anything. In Season 6, I think we’re getting to that place, but as the captain of the FitzSimmons ship, she’s focused on them. Also, the’’re in space, so there aren’t a lot of choices. We all know what Deke wants. We know Deke wants it.

[thecomicsnexus]

ADVENTURES OF THE OUTSIDERS #33-36 MAY - AUGUST 1986 BY MIKE W. BARR, ALAN DAVIS, PAUL NEARY AND ADRIENNE ROY

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC DATABASE)

The Outsiders come to the aid of Markovia, but are captured by the Masters of Disaster.

Looker must battle the Masters of Disaster alone while Baron Bedlam reveals the identity of his newest ally--a clone of Adolf Hitler.

The Outsiders must face the Masters of Disaster, Baron Bedlam, and a secret Nazi super-weapon, as Madame Ovary attempts to restore the memories of the Adolf Hitler clone.

The Outsiders, on a stipend from the Markovian government, leave Gotham to set up shop in Los Angeles, and Looker joins them after realizing she must separate from her husband.

REVIEW

The Looker situation is quite complicated. In truth, neither of the two can be blamed for what’s happening.

I wasn’t expecting the Masters of Disaster so soon. But I really wish this was their last confrontation with the Outsiders. And are they involved with anyone in the world?

Cloning Hitler. This plot has nothing to add to the story. If you take this one out, there are no consequences. The one thing he helped do, was opening that secret passage in the castle... but... come on, it’s not like it was a gate to another dimension. Bedlam already knew where it was. And in the end, that gun is destroyed in one panel.

This one is funny. I created a character named “Madame Ovary” more than ten years ago. I never imagined that someone would have used that name... in such a serious comic-book. And it doesn’t make that much sense in this situation.

Now, the moment that really ruined the whole story for me:

This is just poor taste. Let’s go panel by panel of this apparent black room (no backgrounds). Bedlam’s uniform has two swastikas, and the Nazi weapon also has two. Just in case you didn’t realize we are talking about Nazis.

Then, the idea that a young girl would bring Hitler back to life, and they will know he is completely back after he kills the poor Jewish girl... who are these characters? They are not anti-Semitic themselves... so why do they enjoy this senseless cruelty? And what is the point of bringing Hitler back anyway? It’s clearly not helping with the communists.

Now, this is the moment I was fearing. Hitler sees the videos of the Holocaust, realizes he was responsible and then kills himself. That’s improbable. And to be fair to this character, I don’t think Hitler would have killed the girl himself. It would have been nice to think that perhaps he wasn’t really Hitler, but just a fresh clone with a conscience. But as I said, this plot has nothing to do with this story. I mean... it’s nice to see Hitler kill himself again... but this is a story that would fit best in a horror anthology.

And now we are redeeming Hitler. Also, this is the second time Brion kills Bedlam (and I know he comes back after this, so there’s another chance to kill him again).

The different reactions from these characters are good. Looker in particular looks sad because her own marriage is in trouble. Halo is overreacting considering that she barely knows the happy couple, but hey, she is not even human.

Now, what does this mean? Everyone knows Clark Kent is Superman but Lois? This is still technically pre-crisis (it was published just before Man of Steel, but the timeline is all screwy, as the end of this volume leads to beginning of the next one, and that one happens a year before (1985). In any case, I understand this is a meta-joke, but it’s really not helping this story. There were many other attempts from Mike W. Barr to make fun of these characters in previous issues (Batman in particular). It’s strange because he is one of the many Batman writers. Then again, people do not remember his Batman fondly.

As I said before, no one is at fault. Gregg should accept his wife, after all, he married the person and not how she looks like (even if she looks beautiful). At the same time, it doesn’t seem like Emily is the same person inside. She admits that she has a problem that in real life would be similar to the people that go through plastic surgery over and over because they need to look perfect (to the point of disfigurement). I think this is an interesting topic that really fits a medium of oversexualized beautiful characters. And to be fair with Emily, even if she managed to go back as she was before, it would make her miserable again, always thinking she is not the ideal wife. But she really needs is therapy, but when you are remade beautiful and super powered... well... what can you do?

I am not entirely happy with Alan Davis art in these issues. Paul Neary is now inking, but the comic looks incomplete at times. It’s just not consistent enough.

I give the story a score of 4

[guyveranimefan87-blog]

"Captain Marvel" review -  Not terrible, but not marvelous either.

As we all know, the latest MCU movie "Captain Marvel" had finally reached our cinemas, and thus after months of drama surrounding it, with one group hailing it as the best thing Marvel ever did, and other claiming it would be a movie that would destroy the whole franchise... before anyone had a chance to see it... we can finally see how is it.

And well...

In my opinion it's a solid Marvel movie, not bad or anything, but nothing special either, something around the level of "Captain America - The First Avenger", or first "Thor".

It has it's moments, but compared to previous MCU movies like "Doctor Strange" or "Black Panther" it lacks something that would make it special and unique.

I mean, with "Doctor Strange" we had our first introduction to magical side of MCU, plus trippy visuals connected with the Mirror World, and "Black Panther" had introduced us to the whole new culture and unique visual style of Wakanda, so they had something going for them even in their weaker moments.

And I don't think "Captain Marvel" has something like that.

I mean, 90's references are cool and I got a few chuckles out of them, but if I wanted to remind myself of those dumb and glorious times, when I was younger, slimmer and less cynical I could go on Tumblr...

Oh, yeah I am already here.

And people who don't remember those times would probably be as baffled by seeing pager and dial-up modems, as they were be seeing alien cities and spaceships...

But let's start at the beginning, that is with the plot.

Our heroine is Vers, a member of an elite military unit known as Starforce serving the interstellar Kree Empire, but despite her unquestionable power and fighting skills, her commander and mentor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) has doubts about her performance, since she has a tendency to let her emotions guide her, something that Kree warrior shouldn't do.

Yeah, this cyborg guy from “Guardians of The Galaxy” is there too...

Vers emotional problems are connected with the fact that she lacks memories from before she joined the unit, and is tormented by recurring nightmares where she sees chaotic and fragmented pieces of her past.

Still, as I mentioned before, she is still a powerful and confident warrior, so despite Yon-Rogg's doubts, she takes part in a mission to extract a deep-cover Kree agent from one of the border planets controlled by an ancient enemy of her people, a shapeshifting race of Skrulls.

Mission ends badly, as it turns out that the agent was already compromised by Skrulls and Vers is captured during a resulting ambush by a Skrull commander, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), who used some kind of memory probe to access her buried memories... that turn out to be about her previous life, but not on one of Kree planets, but rather on a primitive, backwater planet C-53, also known as Earth.

Apparently Skrulls are looking for a scientist known as doctor Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening), that Vers somehow used to know, and who according to her memories developed some kind of new faster-than-light engine.

Vers manages to escape captivity using her ability to generate energy blasts from her hands, as well as her hand-to-hand skills, but the escape pod she steals from Skrulls gets damaged, causing her to crash-land on Earth, to be precise in one of Los Angeles Blockbuster Video stores.

Does anyone remember Blockbuster Video anymore? Sorry, getting back on the topic...

Her less-than-stealthy arrival alerts the local authorities, including a pair of S.H.I.E.L.D agents, Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Mothafu#kin Jackson), who are a bit skeptical when a woman "dressed like for Lazer Tag" tells them she is an alien soldier who hunts other aliens, who are shapeshifters, but they are attacked by one of Talos's troops, confirming that her story is true.

And thus Vers and Fury would have to join forces to stop Skrulls and find the truth about our heroine, from her fragmented memories...

Before the movie I was curious and to be honest rather worried about how screenwriters would tackle the backstory of Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel, since in the comics it was rebooted so many times, that I doubt that even people writing her remember about everything, with numerous costume, identity and power changes, not to even mention new personality traits with each new writer...

But they did managed to jump this hurdle, by creating a completely new origin story from the ground up, that while using certain elements from her comic book counterparts, gives us something relatively simple, and accessible to causal moviegoers and hardcore nerds alike.

And let's be honest, since Carol is not exactly the most popular character ever, despite numerous attempts at making her relevant in the last few years, so I don't think there would be any purist fans outraged by the changes made for the movie.

I mean, whole cast of "Guardians of The Galaxy" had undergone massive changes, and everybody was OK with that, heck some of those changes were even retconned into comics, so probably here it would also work that way.

As for the plot itself, it really did reminded me of first "Thor".

I mean, we have a superhero from an advanced race, that is dumped on Earth without having any idea of how the place works, but finds a hypercompetent human sidekick, and together they stand against Big Bad only for The Hero to unlock their True Power in the third act.

Yeah... Seems kinda familiar, eh?

It's not necessarily bad or anything, but it's really a shame that some things hadn't been expanded upon a bit, like Kree culture, relationship between Carol a.k.a Vers and Yon-Rogg, etc.

I mean "Black Panther" managed to fit whole three act formula into the plot, while also show the viewers quite a lot about Wakanda, so why not here?

Movie also drags a bit in the middle, as save for two action scenes, most of the story-arc is comprised of our heroine and Fury driving from place to place looking for answers, talking a bit and so on, which is not really adrenaline-filled superhero cinema...

It hadn't reached the point when I got really bored, mainly due to good chemistry Larson and Jackson have together, but I did though that MCU movies managed to overcome their pacing problems after Phase One, so it wasn't a pleasant surprise seeing that they had taken two steps back here.

Another controversy about the movie way before it's release was our lead, Brie Larson, not only because of doubts about her acting prowess, but also quite a few ill-thought things she said be it in interviews, or through Twitter, but the latter is not really important here, so let's focus on the former.

After watching trailers and promo clips quite a few people were doubting Larson's ability to carry the movie, and accusing her acting of being "stiff" and "emotionless" and they were partially right, though I am not sure all the blame can be put on actress herself.

Vers/Carol does seem rather stiff and emotionless through most of the movie, but it looks more like a conscious decision of director's part, as I mentioned Kree pride themselves on controlling their emotions, which is fine, but severely limited Larson in the role, as it's hard to say anything about her character's personality.

I mean, there are a few scenes when she does show that she can act, usually during her scenes with Nick Fury, cause as I mentioned before, they have a nice chemistry together, flashbacks from before she was trained as a Kree warrior, but still comes out a bit bland through most of the runtime.

It becomes even more jarring during the scene when Vars meets her old friend Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), who is rather shocked to see her, torn between happiness and confusion, giving a strong, emotional performance... while Larson keeps the same facial expression through most of it.

As I mentioned before, it's not the actress's fault, but it does harm the movie on some level.

Samuel L. Jackson however absolutely nails it as younger, less cynical Fury.

Now, we got used to gruff, no-nonsense and properly paranoid commander of S.H.I.E.L.D but here we get Nick who sees a being with superpowers for the first time in his life, and is appropriately shocked / awed by the fact that aliens exist, which gives Mr. Jackson an opportunity to have a bit of a fun with the character.

I mean, I had never expected to see Fury going "oh so cute" about a cat, or freaking out about seeing an alien, but it's lot of fun watching him do it, and judging from his actor, a lot fun to play it, which is rather infectious.  

Also, this cat is awesome.

Sadly, yet again movie’s villain remains one of it’s weak points.

I mean, damn, I really though that after "Black Panther" and "Infinity War" we got over the so-called "Marvel Curse" and villains who are not Loki wouldn't suck anymore. And yet, here we are, back to square one...

Now, don't get me wrong, Ben Mendelsohn does what he can to sell Skrulls leader, and even managed to have some fun with his portrayal.

For example being rather laid-back and even funny in his true form, and a bit stern and stiff in his preferred human form, as well as giving each of them a different accent, but as they say, You cannot get water out of a stone.

He got very little to work with in terms of motivations, background or even personality of his character, making Talos quite flat, despite the actor's best efforts.

If I had to compare it to other Marvel villains, he would be right there with Malekith the Accursed from "Thor - The Dark World", as both movies had absolutely wasted a great actor due to not giving him anything he can use, nor any freedom to flesh the character out, which is a damned shame.

I mean, they tried with a bit of a twist near the end, but You can see it coming from miles away, so it's not really a surprise, and nor does it help our villain in the slightest.

What else...

... Oh yeah, I had evaded this particular elephant in the room for long enough.

Before the movie premiered many people, myself included, were afraid that it would delve too much into politics, since both the cast and Marvel PR people were putting a lot of emphasis on the feminist message of "Captain Marvel", throwing the phrase "First Female Marvel Hero" etc.

Thus I had expected a sexist, and politics heavy crap like "Ghostbusters 2016", but really for all the bluster of Marvel execs, and journalists focusing of this, the whole "feminist" part of the movie turned out to be nearly nonexistent.

I mean, sure we get a scene with male soldiers telling Carol she is "too weak" to be a pilot, or a guy who obnoxiously tries to pick her up, but it's not like the movie spends extended periods of time on it, or goes to extreme length to show all men as idiots, manbabies and chauvinists, as "Ghostbusters" did, so really there was no point to the whole sh#tstorm about it in the first place.

And really, "Wonder Woman" was really a lot more about "Girl Power" than this movie, so I don't think that people who expected it to be about "powerful femininity" and stuff would be totally satisfied with it...

Other than that, we get good special effects (Especially the ones used to de-age Jackson and Gregg), few nice fight scenes, especially in the third act, overall good acting despite problem mentioned above, and a few obligatory callbacks to other MCU movies...

And that's basically it.

It's a competently done movie that nevertheless lacks the bang it supposed to have, and I think that in a few weeks most people would forget about it, like they probably did with "Doctor Strange" and "Ant-Man & The Wasp", because they would be busy talking about "Endgame".

It would still make a ton of money, as all MCU movies do, even if it clearly show that their formula got a bit stale at this point, and even without making a lasting impression it was a well-made popcorn flick.

Still, it shows that Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel does have a potential as a movie character, despite all weird stuff Marvel did with her comic book counterpart, but it wasn't the time when this potential had the chance to be fully utilized. So, better luck next time, Carol?

[ljones41]

"CAPTAIN MARVEL" (2019) Review

"CAPTAIN MARVEL" (2019) Review For several years, many movie fans, critics and feminists have criticized Disney Studios and Marvel Films for failing to green light a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film that starred a person of color or simply a woman. And for years, producer Kevin Feige have assured these critics that the studio was planning such a film for the franchise. Ironically, it took the plans of a comic book film from another studio for Feige to fulfill his promise. 

Sometime in 2014 or 2015, Warner Brothers Studios announced it plans for a solo film featuring one of D.C. Comics' more famous characters, Wonder Woman. The character had first appeared in the 2016 movie, "BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE" before moving on to a solo film. This decision by Warner Brothers and the success of the Wonder Woman film eventually led Feige to push forward his plans for a film about the Marvel Comics character, Black Panther aka King T'Challa of Wakanda. The character first appeared in the 2016 movie, "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR", followed by a solo movie released in early 2018. Following the success of "BLACK PANTHER", Feige immediately set in motions for the MCU's first film with a female lead - "CAPTAIN MARVEL". The comic book origin of Captain Marvel is decidedly complex and a bit controversial. The first Captain Marvel was a Kree military officer named Mar-Vell, who becomes an ally of Earth. The second Captain Marvel was Monica Rambeau, an African-American police officer from New Orleans. She eventually became another costume heroine named Spectrum. Four more characters served the role as Captain Marvel - all of them aliens - before an Air Force officer named Carol Danvers became the sixth and most recent character to fill the role. Feige and Disney Studios had selected Danvers to be the first cinematic Captain Marvel. Directed and co-written by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, "CAPTAIN MARVEL" begins in the Kree Empire's capital planet of Hala in 1995, where a member of the Empire's Starforce, Vers, suffer from amnesia and recurring nightmares involving an older woman. Both her mentor and commander, Yon-Rogg; and the empire's ruler, an artificial intelligence named Supreme Intelligence her mentor and commander, trains her to control her abilities while the Supreme Intelligence, the artificial intelligence that rules the Kree, urges her to keep her emotions in check. During a Starforce mission to rescue an undercover operative from the Skrulls, a shape-shifting race that are engaged in a war against the Kree, Vers is captured. The Skrulls' commander, Talos, probes Vers's memories and discover that the individual they are looking for might be on Earth. Vers escapes and crash-lands in Los Angeles, where she meets S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Nick Fury and Phil Coulson. Vers recovers a crystal containing her extracted memories, which leads her and Fury to an Air Force base. There, they learn that the mysterious woman that Vers had been dreaming of and for whom the Skrulls are searching is a Doctor Wendy Lawson, a woman who was working on a S.H.I.E.L.D. project known as Project Pegasus (one of the Infinity Stones - the Tesseract). They also discover that Vers is actually a Human Air Force officer named Carol Danvers, who was also working on Project Pegasus . . . and who was reported dead six years earlier in 1989. Vers (or Danvers) and Fury set out to keep the Space Stone out of the Skrulls' hands and to learn more about her past and how she had ended up with the Kree. Many critics and fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) were doubtful that "CAPTAIN MARVEL" would prove to be a hit. After all, the movie's lead was a woman and the actress portraying her, Brie Larson, had a reputation for left-wing politics. Nevertheless, these doubting Thomases were proven wrong. "CAPTAIN MARVEL" went on to earn over one billion dollars at the box office. Did the movie deserve this kind of success? Hmmm . . . that is a good question. "CAPTAIN MARVEL" did not strike me as one of the best MCU movies I have seen. I could say that it is your typical comic book hero origin story. Somewhat. "CAPTAIN MARVEL" had the unusual distinction of starting midway into Carol Danvers' tale. In fact, screenwriters, which include directors Anna Fleck and Ryan Fleck; along with "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY" co-writer Nicole Perlman; made the unusual choice of wrapping Carol's past and the circumstances of her amnesia in a cloud of mystery. Movie audiences were first given the peep into Carol's past during Talos' probe of her memories. Between the Project Pegasus file and Carol's reunion with her former best friend, former Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau, the mystery was finally cleared. A part of me admired the screenwriters' attempt to utilize this different narrative device to convey Carol's past. At least four other MCU films have utilized the flashback device (limited or otherwise) for their narratives. But "CAPTAIN MARVEL" is the only MCU movie in which the protagonist's past is written as a mystery. Another twist that the screenwriters had revealed concerned the identities of the film's antagonists - the Skrulls and their leader Talos. All I can say is that their goal turned out to be something of a surprise. "CAPTAIN MARVEL" featured some well done action sequences. I thought Boden and Fleck provided solid direction for most of the film's action scenes. I enjoyed such scenes like the Starforce's rescue attempt of their spy from the Skrulls, Carol and Fury's escape from the Air Force base and the Skrulls, and the film's final action sequence involving Carol, Fury, Maria Rambeau, the Starforce team and the Skrulls. But if I had to choose my favorite action sequence, it would be the Los Angeles chase sequence in which Carol encounters Fury, Coulson and other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, while chasing the Skrulls. My head tells me that I should be more impressed by the final action sequence. But I simply found myself more impressed by that chase sequence in the movie's first half. What can I say about the performances in the movie? They were pretty solid. I seem to use that word a lot in describing my feelings about "CAPTAIN MARVEL". Well . . . I thought Brie Larson's performance as Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel was more than solid. She seemed to take control of the character rather easily. And I thought she did a great job in combining certain aspects of Carol's personality - her ruthlessness, dry humor and flashes of insecurity. Although he had a brief appearance in the 2018 movie, "THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR", Samuel L. Jackson returned in full force as former S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury for the first time in nearly four years. Only in this film, he is a mere agent. Jackson's performance in this film proved to be a lot more humorous than in his previous MCU appearances. I also noticed that he and Larson, who had first appeared together in the 2017 movie, "KONG: SKULL ISLAND", managed to create a very strong screen chemistry. Another memorable performance came from Ben Mendelsohn, who portrayed the Skulls' leader, Talos. Thanks to Mendelsohn's skillful performance, Talos proved to be one of the most subtle and manipulative antagonists in the MCU franchise. Other performances that caught my eye came from Lashana Lynch, who portrayed Carol's oldest friends and former Air Force pilot, Maria Rambeau. Does that name sound familiar? It should. In the movie, Maria is the mother of Monica Rambeau, the first woman Captain Marvel . . . at least in the comics. Lynch gave a subtle and skillful performance that portrayed Maria as a pragmatic and reserve woman with a dry sense of humor. Jude Law was convincingly intense as Carol's Starforce commander and mentor, Yon-Rogg, who was unfailingly devoted to the Kree Empire and who also happened to be searching for the missing Carol. "CAPTAIN MARVEL" also featured competent performances from the likes of Clark Gregg as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson, Gemma Chan as Starforce sniper Minn-Erva, Vik Sahay as Hero Torfan and Annette Bening, who portrayed Kree scientist Mar-Vell aka Dr. Wendy Lawson and provided the voice for the Kree Supreme Intelligence A.I. Akira and Azari Akbar portrayed the young and feisty Monica Rambeau at ages eleven and five respectively. Also, Djimon Hounsou and Lee Pace (both who had been in 2014's "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY") reprised their roles as Korath the Pursuer and Ronan the Accuser. Only in this film, Korath was a member of Starforce and Ronan had yet to become a homicidal political extremist. Do not get me wrong. I enjoyed "CAPTAIN MARVEL". And I do plan to purchase a DVD copy as soon as possible. But . . . it is not perfect. And it is not one of my favorite MCU films. One, I wish this movie had not been set in the past. I do not think that Andy Nicholson's production designs, along with Lauri Gaffin's set decorations and the art direction team had convincingly recaptured the late 1980s and the mid 1990s. Honestly, I have seen other movies and television shows that did a better job. I understand that Carol Danvers was an Air Force officer before she became Vers and later Captain Marvel. But I found the movie's pro-military atmosphere a bit jarring and uncomfortable. I do not understand why Disney Studios thought it was necessary to allow the U.S. Air Force to have so much influence on the film. I understand that the filmmakers had hired Kenneth Mitchell to portray Carol's father, Joseph Danvers. Why did they even bother? Mitchell was wasted in this film. He was for at least a second or two in a montage featuring Carol's memories. And he had one or two lines. What a waste of a good actor! And if I must be brutally honest, I found the movie's pacing rather uneven . . . especially in the firs thirty minutes and in the last half hour. And as much as I enjoyed some of the action sequences, my enjoyment was limited by the film's confusing editing, which has become typical of the MCU. Despite being a woman - and a progressive one at that - I found that entire moment with Captain Marvel kicking ass to the tune of Gwen Stefani's 1995 song, "Just a Girl" rather cringe worthy. The MCU has proven lately that when it comes to promoting feminine empowerment, the franchise can be rather shallow and subtle as a sledge hammer. My biggest problems with "CAPTAIN MARVEL" proved to be its inconsistent writing - a trait that has become a hallmark of the MCU in the past several years. On "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." Phil Coulson had informed his team that Nick Fury had recruited him into the agency, while he was in college. That should have occurred at least 10 years before this film's setting. Yet, Clark Gregg had portrayed Coulson as if the latter was a newbie agent. And to be brutally honest, Gregg's presence in the movie proved to be rather limited. Unfortunately. Speaking of S.H.I.E.L.D., why did Fury, Coulson and other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents appear at that Radio Shack store after a security guard had reported her presence? Why? Before Fury's discovery of the Skrulls' presence, S.H.I.E.L.D. was more focused on unusual scientific projects. There is also the matter of the Tesseract aka the Space Stone. Apparently, the Infinity stone, which was discovered and lost by HYDRA leader Johann Schmidt in 1942 and 1945 respectively, was discovered by S.S.R. scientist and future S.H.I.E.L.D. founder Howard Stark in 1945. S.H.I.E.L.D. kept that stone for over 40 years until it became part of a joint S.H.I.E.L.D./Air Force operation in the late 1980s called Project Pegasus. Seriously? Why would such a secretive agency like S.H.I.E.L.D. even share knowledge of the Tesseract with the U.S. Air Force, let alone allow a non-S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist (Dr. Lawson) and two junior test pilots (Carol and Maria) be the main participants in this project? Movie audiences also discover how Nick Fury had lost his eye. I want to state how his eye was lost, but I am too disgusted to do so. Okay . . . Dr. Lawson aka Mar-Vell's space cat (or whatever the hell it is) named Goose had scratched out his left eye. That is correct. Fury's speech about trust issues in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" originated with a space cat that scratched out his eye, because he got too friendly with it. Jesus Christ! Talk about taking an important character moment for Fury in one film and transforming it into a joke in another, five years later. In doing so, both Boden and Fleck came dangerously close to neutering his character. They, along with Kevin Feige, actually managed to accomplish this with the Monica Rambeau character. They took Marvel Comics' first female Captain Marvel and transformed her into a child, who happened to be the daughter of Carol Danvers' best friend. I found this both frustrating and disturbing. Earlier, I had complained about the movie's 1989-1995 setting. I have a few questions in regard to portraying Captain Marvel's origin during this setting. If Captain Marvel had been around since 1995, why did Nick Fury wait so long to summon her? He did not summon her until the chaos surrounding Thanos' Snap in "THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR" began to manifest . . . twenty-three years later, as shown in one of the film's post-credit scenes. If Captain Marvel had been saving the universe during those past twenty-three years, where was she when Ronan the Accuser had threatened to destroy Xandar in "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY"? Where was she when Ego had threatened the universe in "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 2"? Where was she when the Dark Elves had attacked both Asgard and Earth in order to get their hands on the Aether (or Reality Stone) in "THOR: THE DARK WORLD"? Where was she when Loki and the Chitauri attempted to invade Earth in "THE AVENGERS"? Where was she when Ultron threatened the Earth in "THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON"? Where was she during all of these major galactic crisis? The more I think about this, the more I realize that Carol's origin story should have been set after the recent MCU film, "THE AVENGERS: ENDGAME". Despite my complaints about "CAPTAIN MARVEL", I did enjoy it. The movie had enough virtues for me to do so, especially an entertaining adventure set in both outer space and on Earth. I also thought the screenwriters, which included directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck had created an engaging and interesting mystery that surrounded the protagonist's past and origin of her abilities."CAPTAIN MARVEL" also featured some impressive action sequences and first-rate performances from a cast led by Brie Larson. I do look forward to seeing this movie again.

[delayedcritique]

CAPTAIN MARVEL REVIEW

BY COLLIN DE LADE

Captain Marvel has finally hit the big screen for her first live-action outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s been plenty of hype surrounding the hidden superhero Nick Fury paged at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War” and everyone needs to know what’s up with Carol Danvers before the big “End Game”. There’s been controversy surrounding the flick and plenty of downvotes and hate from people who haven’t even seen the film yet. Having actually watched the movie, how did the 21st entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe turn out?

Taking place back in 1995, Brie Larson stars as Carol Danvers, an intergalactic Kree soldier lost of the memory of her past human life. After an ambush mission gone wrong against the shapeshifting Skrulls, Carol crash lands on Earth on the hunt for the remaining Skrulls that got away. With the help of a young Nick Fury, reprised by Samuel L. Jackson, Carol will not only stop the Skrulls from taking over Earth but also learn about her past life along the way.

The MCU has had an amazing track record with each of their movies gaining critical and audience praise. The marketing campaign for “Captain Marvel” was leading towards Marvel’s first misstep after their 10-year win streak. None of the trailers shown anything interesting with its action and story, while Brie Larson appeared very monotone and uninterested in the role. As a massive fan of the MCU, this was the first time where I wasn’t looking forward to their latest movie throughout their run. While “Captain Marvel” has its flaws and is far from one of the best entries to come out, it does match the consistent quality of all of the MCU’s previous origin movies. Think of “Captain Marvel” as closer to “Doctor Strange” rather than a grand epic like “Avengers: Infinity War”.

Let’s start off with the biggest strength of the film; Brie Larson as Carol Danvers. The emotionless, uninterested performance shown in the trailers was thankfully inaccurate. Larson brings so much personality to this role while balancing the strong female hero and her charming relatable human side. Marvel has always cast their characters perfectly and Carol Danvers is no exception. Just as Robert Downey Jr. is the definitive Tony Stark and Chris Evans is the perfect Steve Rogers, Brie Larson embodies everything that Carol Danvers stands for.

Not only is Larson great on her own, but the buddy-cop dynamic she shares with Samuel L. Jackson is beyond entertaining. So much comradery and wit are flowing during the scenes of Carol and Fury interacting with each other. Their interactions with each other are definitely the highlights of the film; as there is genuine humor, natural respect towards each other, and their own personal character arcs that make them even deeper of characters.  

I was also very impressed with how the combination of Jackson’s performance and the amazing CGI brought a young Nick Fury to life. Jackson has a huge category of film from the 90s to compare his appearance to and his performance and look felt straight out of the decade. While other actors also receive the de-aged treatment, like Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson, the effect fails to look as effective as it does with Jackson.

As for the highly anticipated shapeshifting antagonists, the Skrull start off very strong and memorable. The concept of these villain being able to disguise themselves in plain sight is very interesting and leads to an exciting chase sequence early on in the film. As effective and unique as the Skrulls were thanks to a terrific lead performance from Ben Mendelsohn, the direction these characters turn will leave fans unsatisfied with the results. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the evolution of the Skrulls, I ended up accepting their storyline for what was offered rather than what could have been.

The biggest problem with “Captain Marvel” comes down to its weak opening prior to Carol crash landing on Earth. With the first appearance of Carol Danvers in the MCU, many people are coming into the film knowing little to nothing about the character. The opening to this movie should need to be informative, engaging, and exciting to get audiences motivated to follow Carol on her adventure. Potential new fans of “Captain Marvel” are treated to an extended opening consisting of an out-of-context training fight with little substance on the two characters and a dull stealth sequence of a group of soldiers that leave as little of an impact as the Warriors Three from the original “Thor”. Luckily the movie started to get interesting shortly after, but this is a very poor introduction to a character that could have easily been reduced to a short prologue.

“Captain Marvel” is a fairly enjoyable superhero flick with its share of problems that bring it down. As impressive as the main cast and the storyline was to follow, there was also the weak supporting cast and the mishandled opening. There are a couple fun surprises that leads into a strong climax that leaves the audience more excited for Carol’s next adventure than the one just finished. The harsh reviews for the film are over exaggerated, as this is definitely a modest quality win for Marvel. With the same level of quality as “Doctor Strange”, “Captain Marvel” is a fairly good origin story that possibly leads to something even greater.

8.25/10

*Images Courtesy of Marvel Entertainment*

[ryanmeft]

Captain Marvel Movie Review

*This review contains heavy spoilers* The tagline of the latest Marvel solo outing, “Higher. Further. Faster,” implies some kind of quantum leap in superhero movies, as does the very feminist-focused marketing surrounding it. This is mostly hype; the actual movie delivered by directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden is firmly a product of the Marvel/Disney studio machine, breaking very little new ground and offering no serious change to the formula. The question is whether that harms the movie. It does not. It’s an enjoyable sci-fi action flick that will please everyone and offend no one. That is both its strength and its weakness.

Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) is a member of an ill-defined alien race called the Kree; some are blue and some are entirely human-looking. Their enemy, the shape-shifting Skrull, are more consistent; their heads look kind of like pickles with faces. They are determined to infiltrate the Kree homeworld, and are opposed by crack commando teams like the one Danvers is on. It is led by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), the no-nonsense military man who rescued Carol when she showed up six years ago with no memory. After being captured and escaping from a passing Skrull ship, Danvers crash-lands in a Blockbuster and meets a young Nick Fury (a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson), whose help she enlists against a Skrull invasion of earth. To do that, she needs to find a secret technology that was being developed by a scientist named Lawson (Annette Bening).

All is not as it seems, and the movie has a few twists that are definitely spoiler-territory. Initially, we think S.H.I.E.L.D. (translation: it does not matter) has been subverted by Talos, a Skrull leader whose human disguise is Ben Mendelsohn. As things progress, we learn that the Kree are actually the greedy imperials, determined to wipe out the Skrull for not bowing to their rule. This could be the plot fodder for something on the scale of a Star Wars trilogy, but at least for now it serves mostly as background to Danvers’ story. The main benefit of this war for those of us who are comic book apostates (or never-believers) is the addition of three of our most excellent actors to the Marvel franchise. Law has one of those faces where, even if you don’t trust him, you believe him. He turns out to be the film’s central antagonist, yet even then, I was fully convinced he believes in what he is doing; he comes across not as bloodthirsty but as a soldier doing a job for his homeland. Like many soldiers, he seems to regard the ethical questions around that job as being above his pay grade. Mendelsohn is someone every person in the theatre should know but does not, as he lacks either the perfect looks or comedy bonafides needed to make him a household name. He spends most of the movie in a suit, but unlike the crimes against cinema that befell Ciaran Hinds in Justice League or Oscar Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse, even behind a green pickle mask his talents help his character immensely. Perhaps no newcomer has more fun with their role, though, than Annette Bening. She’s pretty straight-forward while playing Danvers’s actual mentor, but there’s a scene where she gets to be the embodiment of a scheming A.I., which is drawing the image from Danvers’s own head, that is the best single exchange in the film.

The center of this particular story is what amounts to a buddy movie starring Larson and Jackson. It’s set in 1995, before the Fury character took a full-time job saying cryptic things in badly-lit rooms, and Jackson has been de-aged to match this. To my everlasting surprise, it works. Jackson does not look like his modern self with a bad coat of CG paint. I’m notably opposed to resurrecting dead actors with the ghoulish black magic of computers, as was done to poor Peter Cushing in the unworthy spin off Rogue One. Computers as a fountain of youth is a more agreeable use. He’s also a more relaxed and less serious version of the character, cracking actual jokes instead of spooky pronouncements and taking an immediate liking to a cat named Goose who, you might have quickly deduced, is not an actual cat. Larson fits her role well, which is good, because we’ll probably be seeing that role quite often over the next few years. She’s always been capable of striking a note somewhere between power and pain, seen to stupendous effect in her Oscar-winning role in Room. This talent seems to be why she was chosen, for Captain Marvel is a bit of a mercy. Many “strong female characters” are just male movie archetypes with the gender swapped. CM feels mostly like her own person, even if she never does escape or transcend the shallow demands of the genre. An ace fighter pilot in her lost human life, she is strong enough to casually kick alien butt and thoughtful enough to come up with non-butt-kicking solutions. If you ever see any films not made by Disney, she won’t be too surprising. It is only fair, however, to judge her by the standards she is set against, and she successfully fills a role the MCU has had trouble with in the past. Other fine actors get walk-on roles, including Clark Gregg, Djimon Hounsou, Gemma Chan and Lee Pace, though it is sisters Akira and Azari Akbar who, playing the daughter of Danvers’s best friend (Lashanna Lynch) at different ages, get the real power moments, a clear call-out to the little girls in the audience.

Yet for everything it does right, the film will not go down as one of Marvel’s most memorable (at least, if you are an adult). It follows the pattern exactly: the hero has doubts, the hero discovers who they really are, the hero saves the world in a bang-up finale. That finale is typical, and ends up enjoyable mostly because it knows when to stop. In some MCU films, particularly Avengers: Age of Ultron and Black Panther, the wow finish drags on and on and on, until all but the most patient or comatose of the audience are tapping their armrests impatiently. Here, there’s no excess; the last fight does what it needs to do and lets us get on to dinner. The entire film, in fact, feels quick and easily digestable, perhaps as a mercy; after all, next month’s Avengers entry is almost certain to be a bit too complex for its own good. Boden, Fleck and fellow writers Geneva Robinson-Dworet, Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve have chosen expediency over flash, conciseness over complexity. While Boden and Fleck’s unique directorial style (for the love of cinema, please run right out and find a copy of their last film, Mississippi Grind) is entirely devoured by the hungry maw of Marvel’s marketing monstrosity, this is still a fun, if non-essential, little tights caper whose cultural cachet is greater than the thing itself.

Verdict: Recommended  

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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[filmviewerme]

Captain Marvel: My review

Just a quick acknowledgement of the Stan Lee tribute, it was amazing, and I don’t think they could have done it better. 

NOW:

*spoilers*

Captain Marvel is easily the most “ok” film we’ve seen from the MCU yet. It’s not terrible or even bad, it’s just not that good either. I suppose you could say I’m whelmed. 

I went into this film actually quiet excited for it, unlike a lot of other people I quiet liked the trailers and was expecting a decent film. What ended up happening was I came out feeling the way everyone else seemed to have felt about the trailers. Weird, right?

I’d say the biggest problem is the fact that Carol, or Vers? (I don’t know, there’s no difference.) Has no character development at all, the most she actually gets is the re-gaining of her memories. And her biggest character traits being mostly “witty” remarks and a smirk. We don’t even know who Carol/Vers is, except she was a pilot before she was taken by the Kree. And Brie Larson didn’t save the writing/directing either, when watching her it was like when you’d ask an amateur to act like a superhero, walking around with a puffed up chest and an over dramatic “righteousness” face. (I hope you get what I mean. FYI: I actually like Brie Larson, she seems like a decent human being) 

As well as this, none of Carols former relationships seem to exist, except through flashbacks in which we barely get a glimpse of what is her best friend, and the person she admires most (Apparently anyway). 

Luckily, we have Sam L. Jackson who is always great as fury, and Ben Mendelson who are both great as supporting roles. With some cameos by Ronan, Caulson, and Korath (Lee Pace, Clark Gregg and Dijimon Honsou). 

And once again we have a lackluster villain, when it seemed they had finally cracked the problem. Though at first you may think the villains are good, this is quickly proven false when it turns out the “villains” are actually the good guys. And the “good guys” are actually the villains. 

There were a few moments I liked, like when Carol did regain her memories, but just because it was a cool moment (I hear you Nirvana) rather than emotionally impactful. And the fact the powers she shows look pretty cool. But other than that it was very “meh”. Kind of how I view “Ant-man and the wasp”, “Black Panther” and “Doctor Strange”. I don’t hate them, I just don’t want to see them more than 3 times and won’t give them much thought. 

In the end though it’s up to you what you think. and some people seem to be loving it so please give it a chance and decide for yourself. Though I will say this: THATS HOW FURY LOST HIS EYE??? REALLY??

Thanks for reading my worthless opinion, peace.  

[eloquenceassassinated]

Super Late Captain Marvel Review!

By the time you read this, Carol Danvers will probably be out of theaters, but I had to share my thoughts anyway in case anyone was still on the fence about getting the Redbox or catching it on Netflix. With all the drama surrounding the movie, is Captain Marvel really worth the watch?

No spoiler review:

It’s a good movie! As an origin story, Captain Marvel excels at getting even a casual like me up to speed with the space politics and a plot with its fair share of big twists. I watched the film at a drive-in, so some of the scenes were a bit too dark to see what was going on, but the final battle is a gorgeous and entertaining blast of color and explosions. See GIF above. People have already raved about the 90s aesthetic, and I have to say that it really does add that charm of a simpler time. Classic songs will get you bouncing in your seat, humor hits the notes it has to, and the plot was twisty enough to keep my inner analyst happy for days.

I’ve heard some reviews saying that Brie Larson only phoned in her role as Carol Danvers. While it’s true that there were some points I could tell were supposed to be “dramatic” or “impactful” and Brie kinda killed it with a flat delivery, for the most part, I feel like her acting was solid. I felt for Carol, and I empathized with her struggles and cheered with her exhilaration when she finally succeeded at the end. She carried the theme of self-discovery well enough to get even me, the skeptic, to connect with her character by the end.

Now for the elephant in the room. What about the feminist message? I’m pleased to report that it’s not the center focus. Rather, the message of the movie is about discovering who you are, getting back up even when you fall, and the strength of human beings, something that we can all relate to. That’s not to say that the “Carol is a girl and girls are strong” moments aren’t a little heavy-handed when they appear, but they usually go as soon as they come. Most of the moments of Carol being demeaned for being a girl are relegated to flashbacks that serve as backstory, like Batman’s parents dying. They’re integral to her character, sure, but her aim is not to “tear down the patriarchy and show those evil men what for”—actually, she has some great team-ups with wonderful male characters around her—her aim is to do the right thing, no matter who tries to stand in her way.

Long story short, Captain Marvel is a good movie. Most powerful superhero—eh? But she blows stuff up good, and you’ll connect with her, and that’s what makes her punching a spaceship really worth it. It’s yet to be seen whether you’ll miss any crucial lore in Avengers: Endgame if you miss Captain Marvel, but I suspect you'd lose out on the opportunity to connect with Carol as a person before she faces off with the giant alien space prune.

Now. Ready for spoilers? Hit the button.

THEY DIDN’T KILL THE GOOD ALIEN DAD!! Okay, sorry, just had to get that off my chest. I was really afraid they would kill Talos in front of his daughter and I was so prepared to be angry. But he lived and was wearing a grey hoodie and eating dinner with his family by the end of the movie and that makes me happy. Talos lives, you guys! It’s all good.

It was wonderful to see Coulson and Fury looking young and spry in the earlier days of S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson’s little pompadour! He had hair! Whatever they did to make Clark Gregg and Samuel L. Jackson look younger was seamless, and I forgot to question how they did it until after the movie. The friendship that Fury and Carol develop through the movie was also delightful. They too, like Steve and Nat in CA:TWS (cough best movie) have a funny and sweet conversation in a car that sells this unlikely friendship.

Fantastic set design. The Blockbuster made me feel like I was back in my childhood. I’m still trying to parse out what happened to the Tessaract exactly, but that’s okay. I loved the twist that the Kree chose Carol’s new name based off of the surviving fragment of her dog tag. I like that Captain Marvel’s colors were chosen by Monica, and that the name itself is a tribute to the scientist who died trying to right the wrongs of her people. 

Plenty of fans have compared Carol’s backstory to both Steve Rogers’ and Bucky Barnes’, and for good reason. Like Steve, she clawed tooth and nail to get into the military and was belittled every step of the way. Like Bucky, she was brainwashed and forced to fight for the wrong side (just, arguably, with less body horror involved). I have another parallel: a girl bromance, between Carol and Maria! That’s a first, and a delightful one at that. Is Carol as high a fav of mine as Steve and Bucky, then? Hm....nah. But what can I say, I’m biased.

Speaking of which, Maria’s role needs a mention all of its own. While Brie’s performance was passable if occasionally lacking, and the big names like Jackson and Gregg of course pulled their weight, the character of Maria Rambeau is the only one that I felt was a real, breathing person every second she was on screen. Lashana Lynch knocked it out of the park bringing every minute emotion of this character to life, simultaneously a mother and a pilot and an overwhelmed and grieving person just seeing her best friend come back from the dead. Her performance was one I didn’t expect to fall in love with, but I did, and I just feel like Lashana deserves more praise for it.

And of course, the real story behind how Fury lost his eye really makes me chuckle. Hey, he didn’t lie when he said the last time he trusted someone, he lost an eye.

So, did I like Captain Marvel? Yes. Is it worth all the drama? Not really. Do you forget about that when Carol is whooping and hollering and punching spaceships like tin cans? Yes, yes you do. Like I said, she blows stuff up good, and I look forward to seeing her in Avengers: Endgame.

That’s it. Peace out!