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Hub’s Kitchen Episode 4: Why the DC Extended Universe Failed (DCEU Retrospective)

DISCLAIMER: This is a continuation of the previous installment of Hub’s Kitchen. Please read that episode before reading this one. Or not, it’s your choice. Also, spoilers for: Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, and Justice League.

What’s up guys, my name’s Hub, and welcome to another installment of Hub’s Kitchen. Episode, installment, same difference, this isn’t an academic essay now. In the last episode, I talked about some cinematic universes and what problems they faced or are going to face. At the end, I said I was saving one particular cinematic universe for this episode, and that it needed its own episode dedicated to it. Well, I’m gonna talk about that universe today. Prepare yourselves, as I dive into the horror that is known as: The DC Extended Universe.

If there’s one cinematic universe that can rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of popularity and success besides Star Wars, it’d be DC’s cinematic universe. The Marvel/DC rivalry has been going on since the 1960’s, when a good chunk of Marvel’s heroes were introduced during the Silver Age of comic books. Throughout the past 5+ decades, both have had their major successes and major blunders. DC has always had the advantage in the animation side of things compared to Marvel, but that doesn’t mean Marvel hasn’t had good shows. The Spectacular Spider-Man and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes series are some of my favorite animated shows of all time. I prefer Marvel because of the heroes and how more human they are compared to DC’s catalog, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like DC. My first exposure to superheroes was the Justice League animated series from the widely beloved DC Animated Universe, and I’ve been a superhero fan since. In a perfect world, the Marvel/DC rivalry on film would be a monumental and huge war, both sides unleashing their various heroes onto the screen for audiences to love, and giving more fans more room for debate in the long-fabled who’s better debate: Marvel or DC? Instead, it’s more like Marvel is curb stomping DC into the fucking dirt. I feel a brief history lesson is necessary to really bring this whole thing into context.

HOW THIS ALL FELL INTO PLACE

Several years ago, from the 70’s to the 90’s, DC had the upper hand on film, especially with classics like Superman: The Movie, and Tim Burton’s Batman ‘89. Meanwhile, Marvel struggled to get anything onto the screen, with failures like the 1989 Punisher, the 1990 Captain America, and the cancelled, but only viewable through bootleg 1994 Fantastic Four movie. Then, Marvel went bankrupt in 1996, and to keep them afloat, they sold all the movie rights to all their characters to various movie studios. Sony got Spider-Man, FOX got the X-Men and Fantastic Four, etc. During this period, Superman already fell from grace with the 1987 bomb Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, and Batman would soon follow with 1997’s Batman and Robin, one of the most infamous comic book movies of all time. The genre would see a new beginning with 1998’s Blade. In 2000, FOX launched their first X-Men movie, and in 2002, Spider-Man came out, which is the movie that I believe is what started the comic book movie boom that’s still going on, and would be the template that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would follow. DC, meanwhile, rebooted Batman with 2005’s Batman Begins, which would later follow up with 2008’s The Dark Knight, which is often considered to be the greatest comic book movie of all time. Unfortunately, not everything was working out for both Marvel and DC. Superman Returns, the first Superman movie since Quest For Peace, while a modest hit, wasn’t the hit Warner Bros were expecting it to be, and today, Superman Returns isn’t looked at very fondly. While FOX successfully launched the X-Men onto the world of film, the Fantastic Four wouldn’t get the same level of success with both the 2005 film and it’s 2007 sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer. Sony was also in a pickle with 2007’s Spider-Man 3, which disappointed audiences. Pile that on with Hulk, Daredevil, and Ghost Rider, and Marvel was having some pretty notable failures in their catalog. However, while Universal, FOX, and Sony failed with the aforementioned films, something huge was coming from Marvel Studios when Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk released in 2008. The first Iron Man had the famous end credits sequence with Nick Fury telling Tony Stark that he was a “part of a bigger universe,” and in The Incredible Hulk, we see Tony Stark in a scene of the movie, leading fans to believe that something was coming. 2010 and 2011 marked the releases of Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, and in 2012, the culmination of all 5 movies released: The Avengers. The Avengers was a massive success, being that it was the first movie to make over $200 million in its opening weekend in the United States. The movies from Iron Man to The Avengers would later be known as Phase 1 of the MCU. Knowing where Marvel Studios is today, it’s amazing how huge they’ve become, making Marvel into a global phenomenon, at least in the realm of movies. This left Warner Bros pressured to make a cinematic universe of their own DC superheroes and get a Justice League movie out as soon as possible. However, this wasn’t actually the first time WB tried to set up a DC cinematic universe.

GREEN LANTERN

In 2011, Green Lantern was released in theaters. On the surface level, Green Lantern was following the footsteps of the first Iron Man: Taking a B-list character and making a movie that would set up the foundation of what would later be a cinematic universe. However, that didn’t work out for Warner Bros. Green Lantern was released to mediocre to terrible reviews, and was a flop at the box office, grossing $219 million on a $200 million dollar budget. Thus, all plans for sequels to Green Lantern were cancelled. The movie is often considered to be one of the worst comic book movies of all time, and was subject of a joke in Deadpool, with “Please don’t make the super suit green, or animated!” Good thing Ryan Reynolds got his big break with that movie. In 2013, WB released Man of Steel in theaters. Man of Steel was directed by Zack Snyder, who directed 300 and the live action adaptation of Watchmen in 2009. The head writer was David Goyer, who wrote for the Dark Knight trilogy, and one of the producers was Christopher Nolan, the director of the Dark Knight trilogy. *In Bubsy voice* How could any of this possibly go wrong?

MAN OF STEEL

It could go wrong, but not horribly wrong. Instead of releasing to rave reviews, and making over a billion dollars at the box office, Man of Steel released to mixed reviews, and in WB’s eyes, underperformed at $668 million dollars. To this day, Man of Steel is one of the most divisive comic book movies of all time, with some seeing it as a great reinvention of Superman, and others seeing it as a betrayal at who Superman is. Not exactly the foundation you want to build your cinematic universe on, huh? As for me, I side with the more negative reactions to Man of Steel, but not as much as I did back in 2013. With the benefit of hindsight, I see Man of Steel as a movie that could have been great, but it wasn't. The issue with Man of Steel, and the thing that kills the movie for me, is that they changed Superman to accommodate the world the DC Extended Universe built up, rather than have Superman be the character he’s always been. I’d be fine with a less experienced, more doubtful Superman, if after this movie, he slowly, but gradually becomes the Superman people expect. We’ll talk about that in a bit, but it didn’t help that the movie spent so much time telling us that Superman will be great, instead of just showing us. Given what we see, Supes destroying shit in Smallville and Metropolis, I don’t think he’s going to be great at all. It also didn’t help that the movie was slow as shit. I can take slow-paced stuff, but you need to really have me engrossed in order to deal with it, ‘cause a slow-pace can kill something for me. I could go on further, but we need to move this along. Overall, I think Man of Steel is mediocre, but not terrible. So, given how this movie underperformed, what do you think Warner Bros’ would do for the future? Hit the Batman Emergency button, of course! Because Batman did wonders for Warner Bros with the Dark Knight trilogy, they decided to put Batman in the follow-up to Man of Steel. But they couldn’t stop at just putting a Batman and Superman conflict into this movie. They also needed to add Wonder Woman, ‘cause the DC Trinity needs to be on screen now that The Avengers got their movie. That still wasn’t enough, however. Let’s take elements of The Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman storylines and adapt them. Okay, this could still work. Hold on! We need to let the audience know that Justice League is coming, so let’s put in Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg into a scene that literally advertises their films and the Justice League movie. Now we need to double down on the dark and gritty tone people were divided with on Man of Steel, and let’s try to be even more profound and deep, unlike that stupid kiddy Marvel crap that’s successful for some reason. This is for the intellectually elite, motherfuckers! This movie will be a masterpiece! It’ll mop the floor with that stupid Marvel movie, Captain America: Civil War! People will love our movie, right?!

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Haha, ha, WB executives are fucking hilarious. Batman v Superman, which I’m just going to refer to as BvS from now on for simplicity’s sake, released to negative reviews and was even more divisive than Man of Steel with audiences and fans. WB wanted this movie to make $1.1 billion, which is what Captain America: Civil War would end up making. Instead, despite a strong opening weekend, BvS had the second largest opening weekend drop off, with 2003’s Hulk still retaining that record. BvS would only end up making $872 million at the box office, which WB labeled as another underperformer. In my humble opinion, BvS is the worst comic book movie I’ve ever seen, and is a good contender for the worst of its genre. “But Hub,” I hear some of you say, “Wasn’t Age of Ultron accused of the same issues BvS had? Why did that film still end up being successful?” A few reasons. Age of Ultron, despite it not receiving rave reviews like the first Avengers movie did, still received fairly positive reviews and word of mouth, and still made $1.4 billion at the box office, which is less than the $1.5 billion the first Avengers made. That’s diminishing returns, but not by a lot. Second, while I’ll agree that AoU isn’t one of Marvel Studios’ best films, as it suffered from studio interference, I can at least say that the movie wasn’t broken at the seams. It got derailed a few times (Hi, Thor pond scene and Hulk X Black Widow relationship), but it the characters still felt like themselves, there were some legitimately great moments (Vision and Ultron in the woods is a good example), and wasn’t trying to be profound and deep. It tried to tell a more grand story than the first Avengers, but it was never pretentious, even if the movie bit off more than it could chew. AoU had to do a lot, too much in fact, and the movie came out as a mess, but not a terrible mess, or even irredeemable one. It’s honestly a miracle that AoU ended up as good as it was, given the circumstances. Heavily flawed, but I can admire what it set out to do. Had to get that unnecessary, but also necessary “Marvel isn’t perfect” thing so I don’t get accused of being a Marvel or Disney shill. Christ.

Back onto the actual subject, BvS is a fucking trainwreck on every possible level if you ask me. Okay, maybe not so much the music, but even then, Wonder Woman’s theme is the only song that I can remember. Then again, I don’t pay attention to music when I watch movies, as I listen to those on my own time. The story was so badly told, and the stand out moments were so horrible, I’m shocked that this movie was approved with the script that it was given. This is one of the few times I think of my theater experience when watching a movie. Man of Steel’s theater experience made me sick with the shitty shaky-cam, but this movie made me angry while watching it, and I never get angry when watching movies, so you have to be really bad in order to make me angry when watching. Two moments in particular, the infamous Martha scene and Superman’s death made me want to walk out on the movie. I’ve never wanted to walk out of a movie before, so that was a first for me. I think the biggest sin BvS makes that isn’t destroying famous comic book stories and having some of the worst versions of Batman AND Superman, is that not only is BvS slow to the point of boring, with very little of actual importance happening, but the movie tries to be so profound in its messages and imagery, like this is some fucking college arthouse film. A lot of people say the worst thing a movie can be is be boring. I respectfully disagree. For me, the worst thing a movie can be is be boring and trying to act like it’s so smart with its themes. The whole god amongst humans thing has been done to death, quite literally in the case of this movie, and the way it’s presented and written, comes off as overly pretentious. I can’t wait for someone to tell me that this movie is for the intellectually elite, while also saying that I need a high IQ in order to understand this movie. It’s why I prefer a movie to be rushed and have little actual meaning, than a movie that’s slow paced and try to be profound. This applies to bad movies only, of course.

There’s two cuts that exist for BvS: The one that was released in theaters, and the 3 hour, rated R extended cut, dubbed the “Ultimate Cut.” Yes, because the first movie about Batman and FUCKING Superman TOTALLY needed a rated R cut. I’ve watched the Ultimate cut, or more like I was forced to watch it because my brother made me sit with him and watch it. There’s a reason why I never trust the man with movies. But, how is the Ultimate cut? Well… it’s better… *sigh* Okay, it’s more complete this time around. It doesn’t feel like a huge chunk was cut out for no reason, and there’s more context surrounding the events of the movie, but does that actually fix the movie? Judging by my statement, no, no it doesn’t. Many of the problems that were in the theatrical cut are still present in this version: Batman and Superman hate each other for their own reasons but do the things they say they hate about the other, making them hypocrites, Lex Luthor’s plan makes no sense and is overly convoluted, Lois Lane is still useless, the action is still poor overall, Wonder Woman is still an afterthought, the title fight that the movie has its entire purpose riding on is still lackluster at best, the Martha scene is still stupid, and the movie essentially destroyed all hopes of a great Superman story by wasting the Death of Superman storyline. What else can I say? I fucking hate this movie, the end. Holy shit, that was a long section. How’s about something shorter?

SUICIDE SQUAD

This is gonna be a very short segment compared to the BvS one, but that’s because in a shocking twist, I haven’t actually sat down and watched Suicide Squad. I’ll still talk about how the movie ended up the way it did and how it was received, but I can’t actually comment on the movie itself. I’m also putting Suicide Squad’s history here because the BvS segment is long enough. Anyway, after BvS underperformed, Warner Bros panicked and decided to make a course correction with Suicide Squad. People liked the trailers, which made the movie appear to be DC’s answer to Guardians of the Galaxy. In fact, the people who made the trailers ended up editing the movie. Yes, really. The concept of the movie sounded awesome. A ragtag group of villains forced to do good things or they die is a really interesting concept and if executed well, could be seen as a new form of comic book movie. The anti-Avengers, you could say. However, that wasn’t meant to be. Suicide Squad was received about as well as BvS was, with some saying it was even worse than BvS. Seeing as how I haven’t seen the movie, I can’t comment on it, but given what I’ve heard, it sounds like a shitty version of Guardians of the Galaxy, both of them, and the sequel wasn’t out when Suicide Squad came out. At the very least, the movie was said to have been more profitable than BvS, even though it made $746 million at the box office on a $175 million budget. So, 3 misfires so far, and the best received one divided audiences and critics. The DCEU was in serious trouble, and there needed to be a miracle in order to save this franchise. Well, unbeknownst to Warner Bros, their savior, to a degree anyway, would come from an underestimated superhero, or should I say, superheroine!

WONDER WOMAN

Remember when I said that Wonder Woman was an afterthought in BvS? Well, she was, but she had a movie coming out. I find it funny that we live in a world where the Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Deadpool, the Suicide Squad, and Doctor Strange got their own movies before Wonder Woman, the third member of the DC Trinity. The world is weird. Diana’s movie came out, and it blew away expectations. Not that they were high to begin with, but let’s not be so cynical here. Wonder Woman released to great reviews and audiences loved it. The movie made over $412 million dollars at the U.S. box office, more than any of the Marvel Studios films at the same box office, and outperformed Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man for the highest grossing superhero origin movie, and Spidey held the record for 15 years. The movie would end up making $821 million dollars at the global box office, making it the second highest grossing movie in the DCEU, with BvS being the highest grossing, but unlike BvS, Wonder Woman didn’t underperform and was a huge hit. So, what did I think of Wonder Woman? Well, gotta give credit where credit is due, but the DCEU has an installment where I can confidently call good. Diana herself was better characterized than she was in BvS. My favorite scene in the movie is when she and Steve Trevor are about to go to No Man’s Land, but before they embark on the train ride there, Diana gets ice cream from an ice cream vendor, and tells the ice cream man that he’s wonderful. This is something that this franchise has been sorely lacking: Little touches. The movie also used the dark and gritty motif of the DCEU correctly. This is because the movie was set during World War 1, which was a shitty time, and we had Themyscira, a bright and colorful place to contrast with the shitty London and battlefields. The first two acts, minus the underwhelming action that relied too much on slow motion for my tastes, were well handled and even great. Despite what I said about the action, that No Man’s Land sequence was awesome. However, and this hurts me to say this, the third act happens. Ooooh, the third act. If there was one movie that was so close to greatness, only to have the ending nearly ruin it, it’s this movie. I know I’m going to be labeled sexist for not saying Wonder Woman is a great movie, but please, bare with me. So, throughout the movie, Diana wants to kill Ares, the god of war. The legend of Ares states that he’s the reason why mankind goes to war with each other. However, Diana kills General Stryker (I’m calling him that because it’s the same actor from X-Men 2), and she believed him to be Ares. I mean, to be fair, he was huffing up some magic powder or something, so I can believe that. After killing General Stryker, Diana sees that the humans are still preparing their assault. Diana is horrified to see this, and she asks Steve Trevor why the humans are still at war now that she killed Ares. Shortly after this, the real Ares comes and then the movie goes into the usual third act climax. Now, I don’t have a problem with third act climaxes. So, why do I have an issue with it here? Ares was mentioned being alive early in the movie, so what’s the big deal? I think it has to do with how the movie was written. The way the movie played out, it seemed like Diana realizing that humans are, in her words, “so much more,” than what they seem. This could have explained why she gave up the Wonder Woman mantle and stayed in the human world for a century. Not having a third act climax in order to develop a character, with the message that humans are much more, even at their worst, would have been amazing. Instead, the movie throws all of that away for a final fight with Ares and Steve Trevor sacrificing himself. It felt tacked on and cheapened the movie. It came off as rewarding Diana for being naive, which is something I hated about the movie. Her entire character arc was rendered meaningless because of that last act. There’s also some questions after the fight that are never answered. Now that Ares is dead, does that mean World War 2 and the Cold War never happened in this universe? If killing Ares ended all conflict in humanity, why is the world so grim when Man of Steel begins? This act single handedly derailed the movie. What could have been a potential masterpiece only ends up being decent in my opinion. I won’t go as far as to say the third act ruined the movie, but it does end up hurting the movie by quite a bit if you ask me. I should reiterate that Wonder Woman is overall, a solid movie, but the third act really holds it back. Now, let’s get to the fifth and final movie in this, I guess you could call it, DCEU Retrospective, the big JL.

JUSTICE LEAGUE

Fun fact: Did you know that there was going to be a Justice League movie long before The Avengers? The movie was called Justice League: Mortal, and was going to release sometime around 2007/2008, if not later than that. However, I guess WB decided “Naaah, we got our golden boyo Christopher Nolan here doing Batman movies for us. The audience will be confused if two live action Batmen were on screen.” Not giving the audience enough credit, I see? I mean, I’m not sure what happened, but I’m pretty sure you can look up a video Justice League: Mortal.

Justice League faced tons of behind the scenes problems. There were talks of Ben Affleck (aka, DCEU Bats) directing which never went through, the movie being completely reworked just mere weeks before shooting began because of BvS’s terrible reception, Joss Whedon (the guy who wrote and directed the first two Avengers movies) taking over as director and reworking the movie after Zack Snyder tragically lost his daughter from suicide, etc, etc, etc. Now, I’m not saying a movie that has behind the scenes problems is doomed to failure. After all, A New Hope had several behind the scenes problems, with George Lucas even writing the film off before it premiered, and look at how well that movie ended up turning out. Although I was livid after BvS and missed Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman gave me some hope that Justice League wouldn’t be that bad. Well… I was sort of right on that.

Let me get one thing straight: Justice League is a terrible movie. The story reeks of “Been there, done that, seen it before, seen it better, and will see it better in the future.” The characters were flat at best, and irritating at worst (looking at you, second-rate MCU Spider-Man aka Flash), and the villain is one of the worst I’ve ever seen (seriously, Steppenwolf is a fucking mid-boss, so why is he the big bad of 4 years?). To top it off, the film is a tonal and visual mess, and what I mean by the latter is that Joss Whedon’s Avengers-esc style clashes heavily with Zack Snyder’s supposed deep and dark vision. Justice League comes off as, to quote one of my favorite YouTube channels, Midnight’s Edge “A Frankensteinian abomination.” That being said, at least the film didn’t try to shove philosophical messages down my throat or try so fucking hard to be deep and meaningful, so JL’s already better than Man of Steel and BvS in that regard. I also liked that we finally got a Superman that actually felt like Superman should instead of what MoS and BvS tried to make him be. I left Justice League feeling… indifferent, I guess? I didn’t like it, but I didn’t hate it either. All I know is that I should have been feeling a lot more positive about this movie than I actually did. The Justice League animated series from the DC Animated Universe was my introduction to superheroes, and I still think holds up wonderfully today. I may have not been a fan of how Season 1 handled Superman in regards to the villains of that show, but I still think it’s a fantastic show. It’s a fucking shame that Warner Bros essentially failed to make a movie worthy of the name: Justice League. To make Justice League look even of a failure, we’re gonna have to talk about box office again.

Wanna know how much Justice League costed to make, including reshoots? $300 million. Justice League is the second most expensive movie ever made, with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides being the most expensive. Want to know how much money it made, or has made so far? $655 million. Yes, only that much. On its opening weekend in America, it made $93 million. It couldn’t even make $100 million! It took the movie a fucking month to make the same amount The Avengers made in its opening weekend. If that’s not a “Get fucked, DC,” I don’t know what is. So, now that I spent this entire time going over each DCEU movie in detail (sorry that this has been so long to begin with), it’s now time to answer the question: Why did the DC Extended Universe fail?

WHY THE DCEU FAILED

If you ask me, the main reason the DC Extended Universe failed was because Warner Bros didn’t have a set plan or a person with a vision to keep the universe in tact. The reason Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been consistently successful is because of one man, and that man is Kevin Feige. Originally being a producer for the early X-Men and Spider-Man movies, along with other Marvel films, he was the brainchild behind the MCU, and has been an executive producer for each movie in the MCU so far. When a movie doesn’t measure up to the rest, which was the case with Thor: The Dark World, the MCU didn’t go into a panic and have the next few movies affected by Thor 2’s failings. Instead, the franchise carried on, and all the problems of The Dark World were addressed and mostly solved with Thor: Ragnorok. DC, meanwhile, doesn’t have a Kevin Feige. Warner Bros made the choice to make the DCEU director-driven, rather than producer-driven. The problem with making a mega-franchise with multiple franchises inside is that you need to have them be producer-driven to have a consistent vision. I know that a common complaint with the MCU is that it tends to revolve around a single formula, often referred to as the “Marvel Formula,” but a consistent vision needs to be in check to keep things in line. Having director-driven movies is good, but can lead to a clash of visions. Maybe I should do a Hub’s Kitchen episode on that. Hmm… Because of BvS’s failings, Suicide Squad and Justice League had to be radically altered during shooting and post-production, rather than before shooting and during pre-production, which was the case of Thor: Ragnorok going in a different direction than the previous Thor films.

I also feel that not sticking to what made the characters so beloved is another reason the DCEU failed. I’ve always been one to say that accuracy doesn’t make a movie good, but even so, I still believe that the main point of the character should be completely in tact. Marvel Studios has done a great job at this, even when they had to slightly rework characters like Spider-Man for example. Despite him having a tech suit made by Tony Stark, Peter still made his original suit, his web shooters, webbing, is still a smart kid, and relatable. Meanwhile, the DCEU decided “Hey, you know Superman? Yeah, let’s make him a complete brooding asshole and have him kill people for no reason other than its cool.” Or “Hey, you know Batman? Yeah, he’s a killer now and then suddenly he’s a third-rate Tony Stark wannabe.” Even better “Hey, you know Flash? Barry Allen Flash? We’re gonna make him Wally West and make him incredibly annoying, because COMEDY!” Thankfully, Wonder Woman got off pretty well. I know nerds like me are the only people who read comic books, but as far as an adaptation is concerned, we want the core basics of the characters to be intact. The DCEU didn’t do that, and a lot of fans jumped ship. Audiences were also alienated, mainly because for Man of Steel and BvS, the heroes weren’t acting like heroes, or people for that matter. I think that covers that whole dilemma, and now, it’s time to wrap everything up.

CONCLUSION

I’m sorry that this episode was as long as it was. I just feel that I needed to go in-depth as to why I felt the way I did and why the DCEU failed. I love superheroes. I’d go as far as to say superhero stories are my favorite kind of stories. I grew up with superheroes, okay, mostly Spider-Man, but still. So I hope you all can understand why I hated the DCEU as much as I did, and why it ultimately failed. I feel like whenever people generalize others who love the MCU and hate the DCEU as them saying “Marvel can do no wrong,” are missing the point. It’s not that we believe Marvel can do no wrong. It’s that we want good representations of the heroes we read and love, so maybe the average Joe can understand why we love these funny books so much. Whatever issues the MCU has can (mostly) be forgiven because the good stuff outweighs the bad. The DCEU, however, has only one good movie to its name and a few droppings of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre DC universe.

Wow, I got really emotional there. I’m sorry for that. It just annoys me when people generalize stuff. I don’t know what the next topic of Hub’s Kitchen will be on, but I can tell you all this: It’s gonna be a hell of a lot shorter than this, that’s for sure. My name’s Hub, and thank you for reading. *Checks Google Drive word count* Over 5,000 words. What the fu-

[hubskitchen]

Hub’s Kitchen Entry 1: Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review: Move on from the past and learn from failure

Man oh man, this is going to be a fun movie to talk about. If this were a voiced review, the sarcasm would be huge. Anyway, hi guys, the name’s Hub Pie, but you can just call me Hub, and welcome to the first entry of Hub’s Kitchen, a blog where I talk about all kinds of stuff. If you’ve read my introduction post, you would know that my first real post will be on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the most recent movie in the Star Wars franchise, and Disney’s third Star Wars film that they put out. I should get this out of the way now, but there will be MAJOR SPOILERS for this movie, The Force Awakens, and Rogue One. I think The Last Jedi is a movie that you can’t really talk about without getting into spoiler territory. Talking about this movie without spoilers wouldn’t do this film justice.

I’ll just say right off the bat that I liked this movie, like a lot. I’d say this is my favorite Star Wars movie Disney’s put out, with The Force Awakens being the middle child and Rogue One being my least favorite. Rogue One wasn’t bad, but that’s only because the third act of the movie saved the entire movie for me. Yeah, that end sequence with Vader killing the Rebels was awesome, but that does not single-handedly save a movie. Rogue One was brought down by an incredibly slow pace, and outside of K2-SO and Donnie Yen’s character, I didn’t like any of the characters in the movie, not even Jyn Erso, who’s easily the most boring Star Wars protagonist in my opinion. The Force Awakens was pretty good. I didn’t mind that the movie took a lot of inspiration from A New Hope other than the Starkiller Base, because the characters were really likable and the movie actually felt like Star Wars, unlike the prequels. I’ll talk about those movies in a different Hub’s Kitchen entry. The Last Jedi is an odd film if you ask me. As an overall package, I’d say The Force Awakens is superior to TLJ, and at its worst, this movie reaches Rogue One levels: Not bad, but nothing that good either. At its best however, this movie is excellent. So now that I’ve said my overall general opinion of The Last Jedi and my thoughts on Disney’s previous Star Wars films, let’s dive deeper into this movie.

The Last Jedi is about failure. Every character’s arc in this movie connects to this theme. A good example of this is Finn and Rose Tico’s subplot, which has been heavily criticized amongst the detractors on this movie. I have mixed feelings on this subplot. On one hand it does connect to the theme of the movie, as Finn and Rose fail to destroy the First Order’s tracking device, the crucial element that prevents the Resistance from escaping the First Order. On the other hand, this subplot feels like a drag compared to the rest of the movie and the subplot is always cut back to when I was getting more invested in the other better parts of the movie. I guess I should talk about Rose now. She’s okay. I won’t be getting into the whole race thing about Kelly Marie Tran because I don’t care about that kind of stuff. When we first see her, we know that she’s a maintenance worker for the Resistance and because of that necklace she has, we learn that her sister was killed when Poe decided to destroy the First Order’s Dreadnought ship (more on Poe in a bit). My issue with Rose is that she doesn’t really have any sort of development throughout the story. I was reminded of Mace Windu with Rose, and that is not a good thing in my opinion. Rose is still pretty likable though, so it didn’t ruin the character for me. The other problem I have with Rose is the forced romance with Finn after he was going to sacrifice himself to stop the First Order’s battering ram cannon. It just showed up out of nowhere and wasn’t really hinted or implied throughout the movie. Speaking of Finn, he easily had the worst treatment out of the new characters from Force Awakens in my opinion. Not only is he treated to the worst subplot of the movie, but Finn felt stoic this time around to me, whereas he felt more like a fleshed out character from the last movie. Maybe that’s just me, though. Finn’s still cool, but he didn’t really get a whole lot to do in this movie. I honestly would have preferred if he weren’t in the movie, at least not much, but eh, whatever. So yeah, not the best part of the movie, I can tell you that. Though, seeing a casino in Star Wars was pretty cool, I guess. I mean, it’s still kinda weird to see a casino in Star Wars, though it’s not as weird as the Ewoks defeating the Empire in Return of the Jedi if you ask me.

Next up is Poe Dameron, General Leia and the Resistance. Like Finn, I don’t like Poe as much as I did in Force Awakens, and that has to do with his arc of the movie. So at the beginning of the movie, Poe leads the Resistance to take down a First Order Dreadnought, but despite General Leia telling Poe to fall back, he says “fuck that,” and ends up destroying the Dreadnought, but at the cost of the entire bombing unit of the Resistance being destroyed. This is Poe’s failure: His recklessness got the entire bombing unit destroyed. I know he was trying to take down a big First Order ship, but at what cost? It’s a net negative than a net positive and Poe gets demoted because of that. Recklessness doesn’t always win the battle. Then the First Order catch up to the Resistance after they went into hyperspace thanks to their tracking device. In the midst of this, we see Kylo Ren again (and I’ll talk about him when I talk about Rey and Luke), but he hesitates to shoot his mother down (again, more on that later). A couple of TIE Fighters don’t get the memo and blast Leia’s portion of the ship and we think she’s dead, but Leia ends up using the Force to bring herself back to the ship, but she needs to recover. This scene has been one of the most controversial moments on the film, and like the Finn and Rose subplot, I have mixed feelings on it. It is really silly and is a little hard to take seriously, but in the original trilogy, particularly with The Empire Strikes Back, we know that Leia is Force-sensitive. How else would they have found Luke hanging from that pole after his fight with Vader? So it makes some amount of sense that Leia would be able to do this. Who knows? During the period of time between the original trilogy and now, she could have been more attuned with the Force, only not in a Jedi kind of way. Given Carrie Fisher’s death from last year, I feel like the movie was in a tight spot with her. Giving Leia a death so quick in the movie might have been disrespectful to Carrie Fisher, but on the other hand, that “Leia Poppins” scene as people are calling it is a bit odd. Carrie Fisher was great in this movie, in fact, all the cast was great in this movie, especially Mark Hamill, but we’ll get to him later. Rest in peace, Carrie Fisher.

Back onto the Resistance subplot, once Leia is in recovery, we get Vice Admiral Holdo in command (the woman with the purple hair). Not much of this subplot is really explored until later when Poe sees Holdo’s plan to evacuate the Resistance into small pods as cowardly so he starts a mutiny which ends with Leia coming in and stunning him. Then Vice Admiral Holdo decides to buy the Resistance time by ramming the ship into the First Order battlefleet which gives us the most gorgeous moment of the movie. That shot was amazing. Though, if we want to talk about Leia having a good send-off, I think that would have been. Imagine Leia ramming the ship into the First Order battlefleet. Would have circumvented the “Leia Poppins” thing.

Finally, let’s talk about the BIG subplot of this movie: Rey, Kylo Ren, and Luke. This is easily the “make it or break it” section of the movie, and for me, it made the Last Jedi. Let’s start with Luke. The theme of failure symbolizes Luke as a character. 30 years after that happy ending of Return of the Jedi, and here he is, a broken man after seeing darkness in Kylo Ren, to which Luke thought of killing him, but hesitates and ends up losing all his students in the process. Luke brings up that the Jedi are failures, which is an interesting point. In the prequels, the Jedi deemed Anakin Skywalker as the “chosen one,” but that resulted to him turning to the Dark Side and Order 66, which killed the majority of the Jedi, leaving Obi-Wan and Yoda left. By the time of the original trilogy, the Jedi were romanticized and thought of as legends. Then we get to the sequel trilogy and Luke is deemed a legend, and he decided to pass the Jedi teachings down to future generations. Luke wasn’t really a Jedi Master in the way the prequels contextualized them. The prequels defined a Jedi Master as having really excellent Lightsaber skills and being stoic, not falling into extreme feelings. Keep in mind that I haven’t seen the Clone Wars TV series so I don’t know if this is expanded upon in that show. I’m only going off the movies, and the prequels and the original trilogy’s definition of a Jedi differed greatly. Putting all the movies into context and given what we know, Luke was never a Jedi Master. He had a good understanding of the Force, but never did all the amazing stuff the Jedi in the prequels did. And given that one mistake he made cost him the death of his students, I’d be a broken man too. Though I did love the callback that R2 made with Leia’s original message to Obi-Wan. That was great.

The way the movie portrays Rey and Kylo Ren as characters is interesting. Throughout the movie, Rey and Kylo talk by using the Force, though we later find out that this was a plan from Snoke (more on him in a bit). We see that these two are conflicted about their sides and both try to convert the other. There’s a bit of darkness in Rey, so Kylo tries to convert her to the dark, and vice versa. Hell, we see early in the movie that Kylo does not shoot Leia, his mother, down. He hesitates, symbolizing the conflict within him. Rey meanwhile wants someone to show her her place in the world, given how part of her huge character flaw is not letting go of her past with her parents. That’s why she was attached to Han in TFA and why she’s attached to Luke in this movie. Now, we have to talk about those things about the movie now: The big stuff.

So, The Force Awakens left a lot of questions for the audience when the movie ended, starting with: How will Luke react to seeing his father’s old lightsaber again when Rey gives it to him? The Last Jedi says: Luke chucks it over his shoulder. A lot of people saw this as a cheap gag, and with the way it was shot, yeah, it kinda was, but it makes sense given what Luke has been through. To him, that lightsaber means nothing because of what he went through. While to us, the audience, it’s a huge deal because it was Anakin’s lightsaber in the prequels, Luke’s lightsaber in The Empire Strikes Back, and that was somehow in The Force Awakens, to Luke, it’s nothing more than a tool, a reminder of a past he wants to forget about.

What about Snoke? He was built up to be the new big bad guy for this new trilogy, the new Palpatine, if you will. What happens in The Last Jedi: Kylo proceeds to “Darth Maul” him. What I mean by that is that just when Snoke was going to be really interesting, he gets killed off. I hear Darth Maul is in the Clone Wars TV show, but I’m talking about movies exclusively here. Personally, I felt that the movie knew that Snoke was a lame character, and decided to kill him off. I’m a little disappointed that Snoke didn’t have the same level of presence Palpatine did in the original trilogy and even the prequel trilogy. I didn’t really care about his backstory being fleshed out that much, because that’s not really important. It’s why the Palpatine’s backstory was never mentioned in the original trilogy. All we needed to know was that he seduced Anakin to the Dark Side of the Force and became Darth Vader from that. The prequels built upon this backstory, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.

Rey’s lineage? She was the daughter of junk dealers on Jakku, who traded her away for drinking money. This is something that I love. A lot of people were hoping for Rey to be Luke’s daughter or Obi-Wan’s daughter or something, but nope. I love this because not only does it not pointlessly make Rey a part of the bigger Skywalker conflict by making her a family member, but it also states that greatness can come from anywhere (which is also signified in the last scene of the movie). It just felt fresh to me. If Rey were were part of a great Jedi lineage, I would have been pissed, personally.

I know I said The Last Jedi was about failure, but it’s also about letting go of the past. This is symbolized with Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren. Luke’s past events haunt him, and at one point, he decided to burn the tree that had the ancient Jedi, but not before ghost puppet Yoda did it for him. Yoda basically tells Luke to let the past go, which I think is a good message, especially to a man who’s as broken as Luke is in this movie. Rey has to eventually accept her lineage and move on from that. Both Luke and Rey come to accept their fates in this movie. Kylo Ren, however, doesn’t, and what’s funny is that he’s telling Rey to “bury the past,” yet he’s obsessed with wanting to get revenge on Luke and kill him. We see this on the entire scene on Crait. Kylo furiously tells the First Order to fire on Luke. Doesn’t work (along with Luke’s badass shoulder rub). He rushes to Luke with his lightsaber, but sees that Luke is using the Force to project himself on Crait. “See you around, kid,” was a badass line from Luke. So was his death. Oh yeah, it’s time to talk about Luke’s death.

Luke’s death was really well handled in my opinion. A lot of people criticized that he didn’t make his way to Crait, but early on in the movie, we see his old X-Wing in the water. It’s likely that it’s out of power and won’t work. So we see Luke project himself using the Force. I don’t know if the Force can allow people to do this, then again, Force lightning exists, so I guess it makes sense. Because Luke puts so much energy into this technique, he ends up dying as a result. He looks to the distance where he sees two suns, very much like he did in A New Hope, and accepts his fate. As Rey says “He didn’t die with anger or sadness, but acceptance.” Besides, he gave the Resistance time to escape and had a heartfelt goodbye with Leia, which was a great scene. He even gave her the dice from the Millenium Falcon, sort of. So yeah, really good moment in my opinion.

Now we have an awkward spot where there’s other things to talk about the movie that don’t have a major role sooooooo…

Captain Phasma: Man, what a disappointment. She’s essentially Boba Fett all over again. If she is confirmed for Episode 9, I hope she gets a good fucking send off.

Porgs: Eh, they were cute but that’s about it. Yeah, it’s obvious the Porgs were made to sell toys but so were the Ewoks. To give credit to the Porgs, they weren’t huge players like the Ewoks were.

The Codebreaker: He was an oddball character. Benicio Del Toro was good in the role, but he wasn’t too memorable.

Vulptexs: These things (the crystal wolves) were awesome. I definitely want a plush of that. What? I like plushies. Sue me.

This is where I’d give my final thoughts, but I want to talk about how the audience reactions to this movie have gone down. The Last Jedi, while a hit with critics and general audiences going off of the A score from Cinemascore, with Star Wars fans, it’s more divisive. I’ve taken the time to watch some YouTube videos about The Last Jedi, both positive and negative reviews (which the majority are negative) and went to the Star Wars subreddit, and I have to say: I’m not surprised by the behavior that some of these fans have displayed. I mean, disagreeing with people is one thing, but making accusations and hating others for their viewpoints is pretty fucking dumb, even if I find some of them to be ridiculous. It’s just a movie guys, and no, I’m not saying that as a way to undermine your anger. I’m saying that because a movie is only a movie. It’s not something super serious like education or your financial state. I’m not saying you can’t be mad at this movie, but think about how much energy you can give it. You can be angry for so long before you come off as obnoxious. Whether you liked The Last Jedi or not, just let other people be. They’re not right or wrong for what they think. Trust me, you’ll be a lot happier.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a complicated film. It has a lot of deep themes and is a pretty challenging movie on a thematic perspective. It’s also incredibly bold by taking the Star Wars franchise in a new direction, a direction that it should be taking if you ask me. It’s not flawless, however. Finn and Rose’s subplot drags down the pacing, there are some comedy bits I didn’t mention that didn’t land, and as an overall package, The Last Jedi is inconsistent, ranging from being amazing to being just okay. Like I said, I liked the movie, and consider it to be my favorite Star Wars movie that Disney has released so far. I know I’m going to get some shit from people, especially diehard Star Wars fans, and hey, that’s cool, whatever gets me more attention. I’m just being honest, something that I take very seriously. I don’t give ratings to things because I think that’s pointless. Just know that I think The Last Jedi is a good movie despite its faults. Anyway, my name is Hub Pie, and thank you for reading.

[hubskitchen]

Hub’s Kitchen Episode 2: 2018 Plans

I should mention that this wasn’t the original plan for Hub’s Kitchen Episode 2. With school coming up on Monday, along with the video I had planned being pretty big, I’m gonna hold off on the original plan for Episode 2. That being said, I will still work on what I had planned along with the future Hub’s Kitchen Episodes. For the record, I’m 19. I may not sound like I’m 19, but I am, trust me.

[hubskitchen]

UPDATE ON HUB’S KITCHEN ENTRY 2

Hey guys! Just so everyone (all 2 of you) know, the second Hub’s Kitchen installment will come out on Friday. Here’s a hint to what it is: I Force myself to come up with better ideas for a narrative than the writing team for a game can! 

[hubskitchen]

100th POST: Future Plans for Hub’s Kitchen

Yo guys, what’s up?! I’m about to reach my 100th post milestone. I know it’s a small feat, but seeing as how this is a new blog, it’s best to celebrate the little stuff. So, for this occasion, I’m gonna share my future plans for what I’m gonna talk about on Hub’s Kitchen. I just wanna say real quick that I’m loving the support I’m getting. It means a lot to me, even if I don’t even have 10 followers, lol. 

Sonic the Hedgehog: If you haven’t noticed, I reblog a lot of Sonic stuff. That’s because I love the Sonic series. I know saying that I love Sonic unironically is like saying that I like abuse and have a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome to some people, but fuck them, I love this series, faults and all. I’ve been wanting to talk about Sonic for a while now. With the new IDW comic series coming soon, I think that’ll be the best time to start talking about Sonic on Hub’s Kitchen. However, that won’t happen until April, ‘cause that’s when the IDW book starts. Enjoy the reblogs of Sonic stuff in the meantime.

Video Games: I also love video games. I’m gonna start talking a lot about games too on Hub’s Kitchen. The first game I’ll probably talk about is Dragon Ball FighterZ (yes, that’s how the game is spelled). I’ve been looking forward to this game ever since it was announced, and I like Dragon Ball and fighting games. Sign me up!

Movies: I may not be the most hardcore movie watcher out there, but that doesn’t mean I won’t talk about movies. I’ll do mini-reviews of movies like Coco and such. Comic book movies, however, they’re gonna be handled differently. I’ll see the movie when it comes out, make a short first impressions post, then when the movie comes out on DVD, I’ll review the movie more in-depth. Why am I doing this? Because I want to say a lot about comic book movies seeing as how it’s my favorite genre of film. Yes, really. I won’t judge you if you don’t judge me.

Follower Requests: This will probably happen if and when I get more followers, but I want my followers to recommend me stuff to play, read, watch, etc. I feel like it’ll be my way of giving back to you guys. I’ve always believed in giving back to the people who gave you your standing in life (or in this case, blog-life, I guess), so yeah, that’ll be fun.

I have a couple of other ideas, but those are the main ones I want to get out of the way. This is Hub, and thank you for reading!

[hubskitchen]

Hub’s Kitchen Episode 3: The Cinematic Universe Conundrum

Hey guys! Sorry for what happened with the second episode of Hub’s Kitchen. I bit off a little more than I could handle for a second episode, but don’t worry, that episode will be coming, just not now. Anyway, onto today’s topic.

The Cinematic Universe. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 5 to 6 years or have somehow managed to avoid social media, or really any media of any kind, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with the concept of the cinematic universe, also referred to as the shared universe. If you were expecting this video to be about the problems with the cinematic universe, you’d be disappointed because that’s not what I’m going to talk about. Instead, I’m going to explain why outside of Marvel, the cinematic universe has only been doing more harm than good to Hollywood. Just as a reminder, I would love to see more cinematic universes, just not done in the way most haven’t, except Marvel of course. Oh yeah, I should get the big boy out of the way first.

MARVEL (MCU)

Love them or hate them, Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a Juggernaut (heh) in the entertainment world. I say love them or hate them because while there’s a lot of people who love the MCU, myself included, there’s a group of people that don’t. While the MCU does have its fair share of flaws, most of these of which you’ve heard before: the movies feeling the same, weak villains, soundtracks not being amazing with a few exceptions, etc, I feel like it’s made up by the movies themselves. As movies, most of the MCU movies are pretty good in their own right, their characters are great, the action is pretty cool, and I’m left wanting to see more from this franchise. However, what makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe so successful is Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios and the man behind the idea of a cinematic universe. You see, the MCU has something that most of these cinematic universes don’t have, and that’s a plan. The cinematic universe isn’t something that you can just do, you have to have a plan, as in, a long term plan, like, at least a decade long plan. Not only do you have to have a plan, you also have to have backup plans. What if people don’t like this movie, or we’re given a new opportunity? Gotta have plans for those. A good example is with Captain America: Civil War. There were two versions of the script made: One with Spider-Man, and one without him. Y’see, after The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was declared a box office disappointment (I’ll get to that), Sony was scrambling for a plan for what to do after that movie. Marvel came in and suggested Sony to allow them to make future Spider-Man movies for Sony and to include him in the MCU. I know it sounds like really basic stuff to make backup scripts in case new things happen, but you’d be surprised how dumb people at Hollywood can be at times. Not to mention, there’s an overarching storyline for the franchise and each character has an arc. They change throughout their time in the franchise, and we get to see a bigger plot unfold, all coming to a head in Avengers: Infinity War, the 19th film in the MCU and the culmination of 10 years colliding together. Geez, the MCU is 10 years old… time flies. Now that Disney bought FOX, Marvel will soon be able to use the properties FOX had, like Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Deadpool. The MCU isn’t showing any signs of stopping any time soon, and I can’t be any more grateful for that.

So now that I explained why Marvel is so successful with their cinematic universe, let’s go over some other franchises that have attempted or are planning a cinematic universe and see what issues they had or are having. Starting with…

STAR WARS

Ah yes, Star Wars. The franchise with the biggest and scariest fandom out there. There seems to be ideas for a cinematic universe of some kind, especially now with Rian Johnson’s trilogy coming, but I feel like there needs to be a set plan for this to work. From what I understand, Lucasfilm doesn’t have a set plan for the Sequel trilogy, which explains the decisions made with The Last Jedi. I know the Originals didn’t have a concrete set plan either, but if you’re going to make a sequel trilogy to one of the most beloved movie trilogies of all time, you should have a plan for it. However, I feel like the cinematic universe still shows up more in the spin-off film, Rogue One. The movie is set just before Episode 4, with the ending literally being minutes before Episode 4 actually begins. I like to call Rogue One “a over 2 hour explanation as to why the Death Star has a weak spot for Luke to blow up,” because that’s what it is at the end of the day. I know the Death Star having an obvious weak spot is one of the biggest critiques of Episode 4, but I’ve always brushed it off as one of those movie contrivances to get the plot going. With Rogue One having the explanation that it was a deliberate weak spot just kinda makes it more complicated than it needs to be. I also think having Rogue One be a prequel to Episode 4 limits how much can be done with it. I know the Prequel trilogy has this problem too, but I feel like it’s a little worse with Rogue One. None of the characters in Rogue One show up in A New Hope, so what do we do? We kill them all! To give Rogue One credit, it doesn’t fuck up so many things like the Prequel trilogy did, but making a movie to justify a plot hole in Episode 4 is a little on the odd side. There’s also Han Solo’s movie, which is sounding more and more like it’s going to be a shit show with Disney writing off the film as a flop before it even comes out. The biggest disappointment in regards to the spin-offs is that there’s a lot of opportunities to expand the Star Wars universe, to go beyond the Skywalker family. Instead, we’re just getting movies set before other movies, and that’s just disappointing. How many people were asking for a Han Solo movie taking place before the Original trilogy? Imagine if Solo’s purpose is to justify why Han didn’t shoot first in the special editions of Episode 4. I’d be really pissed if that was the case.

SONY

The reason I list Sony instead of a particular franchise is because Sony has been trying their game at a cinematic universe for a while now, and that’s sabotaged two of their attempts. Sony’s first attempt at a cinematic universe was The Amazing Spider-Man 2 back in 2014. Despite it being a sequel to 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, TASM2 felt less like a sequel to that movie and more like a setup for an entire universe. To be fair, Iron Man 2 also had this problem of it being a setup for a universe rather than a straightforward sequel to the first Iron Man, but the benefit of hindsight has helped Iron Man 2 a bit. With TASM2, that’s never going to be the case. The film got mixed reviews from critics and audiences, and the film made $709 million dollars at the box office. While that’s a lot of money, Sony was hoping TASM2 would make a billion dollars. And well, we know what happened after that.

Sony didn’t give up right there, oh hohoho no. They decided to throw their hand into the cinematic universe pie a second time, but with what? GhostBusters. Yes, GhostBusters. I’m not shittalking GhostBusters, but GB doesn’t sound like a franchise that could work in a cinematic universe format. In 2016, the GhostBusters remake came out, and with it, came a myriad of controversy. From the first trailer being the most disliked trailer of all time, to the marketing for the movie turning into a spinfest of “Men are basement dwelling losers, lol,” this movie was plagued with toxicity. The movie, while doing decently with critics, audiences hated it, and the film underperformed. The sequels and other plans have been cancelled. You’d think Sony would cut their losses with this cinematic universe stuff and continue on their way, but nope! They have to go for that third strike, you’re out scenario. So, what’s Sony gonna use for their third attempt at a cinematic universe? Sp… Spider-Man? Wait, what?!

I need to explain this next part. You know how Marvel can use Spider-Man in the MCU? Well, they can use him, but they didn’t buy him. Marvel and Sony are sharing the character, or as I like to refer to it as: child custody. All the box office profit Spider-Man: Homecoming made, that goes to Sony, while Marvel gets the merchandise money, which SpaceBalls taught me is where the real money is made. By that, Sony still has the rights to Spider-Man, but at that comes a cost: Sony can still make Spider-Man movies. And they have two coming this year: Venom and Into the Spider-Verse. I’m really apprehensive about these two, especially Venom. Now, I love Venom. He’s one of my favorite Spider-Man characters, not just villains, and while casting Tom Hardy is a great casting decision, having an R-rated comic book movie to cash in on the success of Deadpool and Logan along with it not having Spider-Man as an origin piece is a stupid idea. Though, the producer dodged a question about Spider-Man being in the movie or not. Goddamn it Sony, I swear if you shoehorn Spider-Man into this movie that doesn’t involve Venom’s origin, I will hate you forever. Sony Pictures at least. I’ll still be a supporter of PlayStation. When’s Insomniac’s Spider-Man supposed to come out. The fuck was I talking about? Oh yeah.

The second movie, Into The Spider-Verse, is more of what I want from Sony. An animated movie that isn’t about Peter Parker’s Spider-Man (or the MCU one specifically), but about another Spider-Man. Shame it’s about Miles Morales, the most boring Spider-Man ever. No, it’s not because he’s black. Christ, I don’t know why I always have to say that. I say I want more animated movies like this to bring some more variety into the comic book movie landscape. It’s kinda like Deadpool or Logan, movies that did things outside the box. Hell, you can make movies about different versions of Peter Parker if you really wanted to. How awesome would a Spider-Man Noir movie be? Have it be in black and white, starring an older Peter Parker, set in the 1930’s/40’s. Now THAT is a Sony Spider-Man movie I’d pay to see. If it were up to me, I’d just let Marvel Studios make the Spider-Man movies while Sony would explore opportunities to make new franchises so Spider-Man isn’t the only thing they have, but this is Sony Pictures we’re talking about here. They aren’t the brightest bulb in the box.

DARK UNIVERSE

People like to say that Marvel created the cinematic universe, but they didn’t. The first cinematic universe, even if it was in a primitive form, was the Universal monster movies of the 1930’s and 40’s. The first crossover was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man from 1943. This would continue with House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. However, the continuity was really loose, with retcons happening with each movie. I suggest going to Cinemassacre and checking out the 2011 edition of Monster Madness to get a better idea of what I mean by that. Last year, Universal decided to enter the cinematic universe fray with The Mummy. I was pretty excited for it at first, but then we got the director, Alex Kurtzman, who was responsible for writing the screenplay to some of the Transformers movies, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. You uh… you sure you couldn’t get a better person for this job, Universal? Oh wait, you’re still pushing your Despicable Me shit. Never mind. I should also mention that this was Kurtzman’s directorial debut. A shitty writer becoming a director. I don’t see how this could backfire in any way. Universal labeled their universe the Dark Universe… oooooooh, spooky, except it isn’t spooky, it’s just dumb. So, how was The Mummy? What did you think given the details I shared?

The Mummy was a disaster from beginning to end. I’d like to call it a Tom Cruise vehicle, but at least those are entertaining. You know how Iron Man 2 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 get criticized for spending more time building a universe rather than telling a good story? At least those films weren’t the first of their franchises! Yes, that’s right: The Mummy, the first movie in this Dark Universe spends more time building a universe than telling a good story. Fucking hell. The movie was destroyed by critics and audiences and the movie underperformed. There was going to be a second movie, Bride of Frankenstein, but that got shitcanned and the Dark Universe died. Well, so much for that franchise. Well, I can say this much: No matter how many times you kill the Universal monsters, they will come back in due time.

TRANSFORMERS

What else can be said about the movieverse Transformers franchise? Seriously, what else can be said about them? Well, I can say that I think Dark of the Moon, the third movie, is the worst movie in the series, and I refuse to sit through Age of Extinction and The Last Knight. Well, before The Last Knight came out, it was revealed that FOURTEEN Transformers movies were in development. Well, given how The Last Knight made less than the first movie’s box office gross ($605M in 2017 vs $709 in 2007), I’d say you should scrap nearly all of them. I say nearly all of them because that BumbleBee spinoff is supposed to come out this year. Who… who asked for this? It’s the same problem I have with Solo. Well, if there’s a positive to BumbleBee’s movie, Michael Bay isn’t directing it. So, maybe it’ll be grea- oh who the fuck am I fooling, this is going to be fucking terrible, I know it. Well, at least Paramount isn’t making a movie about a franchise I hold close to m- *Sees that they’re making a Sonic the Hedgehog movie that was originally with Sony* … Motherfucker…

And that’s all the time I have for today. “Wait Hub, you handsome fellow,” you might be saying, “Isn’t there another franchise that’s notorious for attempting a cinematic universe and failing horribly at it?” Yes, yes there is. That franchise is going to have its own episode of Hub’s Kitchen dedicated to it, and trust me, I have a LOT to say on this franchise. Oh yes... But that’s for next time! My name’s Hub Pie, and thank you for reading!