Tag: comics

Avengers: Endgame and the obnoxious evolution of hype

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Disclaimer: I may or may not say things that might be interpreted as spoilers for the movie.  But then again considering the fact that I am still offline, it could be weeks or literal years before anyone other than myself sees this post.  Always good to maintain good brogging etiquette though.

So mythical fiancée and I went and saw Avengers: Endgame today.  It’s been two days since the formal release date of the film, but because Hollywood ticket sales data is weird and loves to fudge things to make profits sound way more impressive than they might actually be, it could be anywhere from three to four days since other people of the mostly public world has been watching it.

Typically, this is the type of film that I don’t exactly make such an effort to see so immediately after its release.  Frankly, I didn’t even see Avengers: Infinity War in theaters, and didn’t actually watch it until it started to be available for home releases.  But as a person who was raised heavily on comic books, and as someone who actually read the actual Infinity War/Gauntlet/Crusades comic book arcs, it was still something that I’d be interested in, and despite the fact that I’m not exactly a opening night/special screenings kind of seeker, I’ve still kept up pretty well with just about all of the films of the general Marvel Studios Phase 1 series.

However, because the world is so connected and locked into the internet these days, and damn near everyone is attached to social media in some way, shape or form, I felt somewhat of an urgency to watch Endgame on the earlier side of the spectrum, solely for the fact that I recognize that the citizens of the internet, be it through news and pop culture websites, or through social media itself, are completely incapable of not spoiling things, and waiting to watch anything runs the serious risk of having anything and everything spoiled for you, by people on the internet who just can’t shut the fuck up.

So, we went and watched Endgame.  2-4 days after its initial release.  And it was good.  A solid film that tied up just about every loose end that was unraveled throughout the last 11 years of Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Lots of comedic moments here, some very serious moments there, some slightly eye-rolly fan service moments occasionally, and a few nods to the actual comics, which nerds like me probably recognized.  As I said, it was a solid flick that was fairly enjoyable, and didn’t feel like the three hours that many bemoaned was going to be a test to all viewer’s constitutions.

But do I think it lived up to the hype that the internet artificially created over the last few months?  Absolutely not.

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Does Batista get his job back too?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

About as surprising as celebrities that pay to get their children into college: Disney reinstates fired and disgraced director James Gunn for Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3

I think the only real question marks that come remotely close to being something of surprises, was when this was going to occur.  Considering the firing, which if you need a refresher, revolved around the fact that James Gunn was smart enough to tweet jokes about pedophilia, rape and other inappropriate subject matter on Twitter like a decade ago, which naturally stays on the internet for eternity, was unearthed, and therefore Disney shitcanned him; even though he received a tremendous amount of support from the entire Guardians cast, namely Dave Bautista who threatened to walk away from the series as if he thought anyone thought he was completely indispensable.

Naturally, the firing was as stupid as American politics, because really, who hasn’t said stupid shit, much less stupid shit on the internet at some point in time?  It’s just the fact that James Gunn was in an elevated position societally that made him a target for the trolls that actually spend time looking for inflammatory things once said to bring to surface because that’s the kind of world we live in now which totally sucks.  But Disney being the gozillion dollar company it is, seemed to think they can’t afford to have someone who made a careless innocuously insensitive series of tweets when he was young and stupid, felt that they had to do it anyway.  Did everyone also conveniently forget that Walt hated Jews?

Anyway, I understand why Didney did it, but it doesn’t change the fact that I thought it was stupid.  Naturally though, stupider is the obvious news that Didney brought Gunn back, which kind of also sends mixed, but also negative messages out to the inquiring public: namely the fact that by bringing Gunn back kind of says that Didney condones insensitive jokes about pedophilia, rape, the Holocaust and 9/11.

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A Morbius film sounds pretty bottom of the barrel

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Just a few days ago, I saw Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.  It was fantastic.  I felt it captured a lot of what the series has been trying to convey over the last decade, that Spider-Man was more of an idea, and not so much exclusively Peter Parker, and that it’s entirely possible for absolutely anyone, regardless of race, gender or any other difference, to be, a Spider-Man (or woman).

Even more amazing was the fact that Into the Spiderverse was a creation under the Sony Pictures banner, with no affiliation whatsoever to the Marvel Cinematic Universe under the Disney overlords; because it was actually good; unlike the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man sequels, and although I have little interest in watching it, I heard Venom was a turd too.  Needless to say, it’s impressive that Sony actually created something of significant quality with the Spider-Man property, because they’ve demonstrated a surprising ineptitude with it previously.

Without question, into the Spiderverse is the crown jewel of Sony’s collection of Marvel films released, and if they’re smart, they really stick with the formula of creating quality animated films.

So with that said, I just found out that Sony is releasing a spinoff film, based on another Spider-Man villain: Morbius the Living Vampire.  Much like the Venom film, it doesn’t seem like there’s any real tie-in to any Spider-Man properties, and honestly, I have no idea what Sony thinks they’re doing by releasing stand-alone films about Spider-Man villains without actually tying them into any Spider-Man storylines.

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Happy trails, Stan Lee

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For all the years that I’d attended Dragon*Con, I always said that I needed to just bite the bullet and pay for a meet and greet with Stan Lee.  I’d shared elevators with him, and once was next to him while we, and a bunch of other onlookers watched as Marriott security tackled a drunk guy dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow as he was trying to elude them; he made a wisecrack about how he must’ve had too much rum, before walking off.

But I still wanted to get an actual good picture and a few seconds to meet one of the true godfathers of the comic book industry, a man that is unquestionably on the Rushmore of Comics.  And as a fan that favored Marvel over all others, there was really no greater name in the existence of comic books other than Stan Lee.

Over the last few years, as the passage of time aged Stan into his 90s, I proclaimed more often about the closing window of how I should do the meet and greet.  And then when Stan’s wife Joan passed in 2017, a little bit of urgency crept in.  Every nerd and/or comic fan on the planet knew that Stan Lee was not going to live forever, but considering he himself was in his 90s and that his wife had passed, that window was closing just a little bit more quickly than we’d all hoped.

Then there was the health scare not long afterward, and then the formal announcement that after the year, he would no longer be doing any more conventions or shows in general, and we all as fans definitively knew that the window was closing, and fast.  I knew immediately that Dragon*Con 2017 was my absolute last chance to try to meet the legend.

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Why do I feel like Venom is going to suck?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No seriously, that’s not meant to be a rhetorical question.  Aside from knowing that a Venom film was in the works and that it was going to star Tom Hardy, and seeing a single picture of what Venom was going to look like, I couldn’t help but have this feeling that Venom was on the fast track to becoming an automatic stinker.

Really, I’ve got no basis at all to really believe that this movie is going to be bad, but I just can’t help but assume that this movie is going to blow.  A little bit of cursory research about the film only justifies the belief, like finding out that it’s most certainly NOT a Marvel Studios film, but a Sony Pictures production, which we all know how good their last few things have turned out. 

Furthermore, as a result of Sony having already forfeited the rights to Spider-Man, really makes me wonder how a stand-alone Venom film could even come to fruition, considering the fact that the entire basis for the Venom character is basically Spider-Man’s dark side manifested through symbiosis.  Or, it’s the same Venom that was once bonded to both Tobey Maguire Spider-Man and then Topher Grace Venom, and they’re going to do away with Eddie Brock outright.  But either of those are still terrible ideas, and just feeds into the thought that Venom is doomed before it even comes out.

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Netflix’s greatest accomplishment

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

They made Iron Fist cool.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those nerds who automatically assume Iron Fist to be the worst show out of the Netflix Marvel Comics Universe solely because it’s about Iron Fist, one of the lamest heroes in the history of Marvel Comics.  Frankly, I thought season one wasn’t terrible, and I maintain my unpopular stance that it was stronger than either season of Jessica Jones. 

In the grand spectrum of the Netflix MCU, both are still at the bottom of the barrel in comparison to Daredevil, Luke Cage and the Punisher, but we all know that they all had to exist and be created in order for there to even be a The Defenders in the first place.  But if you ask me, Iron Fist stands above Jessica Jones, and it’s not really that much of a contest.

But I just finished season 2 of Iron Fist, and my general reaction isn’t one of relief that I ground through it and that I’m up-to-date on Netflix MCU programming (like I did after Jessica Jones S2), but one of a general satisfaction, and reason to be optimistic that the series could continue in a positive direction in the upcoming season(s) that I genuinely hope come to existence someday.

Frankly, unending kudos go to Netflix, the writers and the showrunners for taking such a weak property and molding and shaping a halfway decent program out of it.  It was undoubtedly better than the first season, and the performances from the crew were all pretty decent in their capacities.  I can’t say that I really followed the comics at all, but from what I understand the season has been a somewhat fair portrayal of source materials while seeming fresh enough to adapt to live performances.

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Cloak & Dagger is obviously Marvel’s C-squad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to pretend like I’ve ever read any of the comics, but given the track record of decent television shows, I looked forward to Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, and figured I could figure out what was going on from just the show with no prior familiarity of them from comic books.

However, there were some red flags for me that I kind of knew of going into the show, and although I did make it through the first season, I have to say that I’m not really that impressed as a whole, and if I had to rank the show it is a definitive last place behind most all other Marvel television shows out there.

For starters, the show aired on the Freeform network.  I didn’t even know that that network even still existed; I knew it did at one point, because there must’ve been one show that I saw while channel surfing in the past when I used to have cable television, but for the most part, it’s a no-name cable channel, and it should have been some sort of indication of the quality of the programming, even if it did have the Marvel name printed in front of it.

Going blind into this show worked against me in this instance, because I lacked any “Oh! That’s so-and-so” moments that tended to keep me engaged and interested in just about any other Marvel property show previously seen.  That being said, the first two episodes of the show were a complete slog, and I was wholly uninterested in the characters and plot. 

I stopped watching after the first two episodes, citing a poor mood to be watching new television, and told myself to give it one more episode before giving it the Legion treatment AKA walking away before feeling like I’m wasting my time.  The third episode was on the verge of making me throw in the towel, but then the plot started to get interesting in the final eight minutes of the episode, which saved it from abandonment, and then the fourth episode finally started to get somewhere and kept it watchable.  But with a ten-episode season, it literally takes 40% of the season for it to become watchable.

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