It goes without saying that there are going to be spoilers galore here. Short of saying it was a fun movie and I enjoyed it a lot, it’s going to be difficult to really talk about the film without there being any spoilers.
So, it was a fun movie, and I did enjoy it a lot. This was the first film that I saw in a movie theater in over two years, and I couldn’t have picked a better film to go out and feel like a human being, albeit masked one, for an evening again.
It’s really no surprise though, considering how often chicken shit is spun into palatable, digestible chicken salad in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I started watching Hawkeye recently, and three episodes in, I have to say that it’s not the worst property ever turned into a show or movie.
Let’s be real here, it’s not uncommon knowledge that Hawkeye is one of the lamest Avengers in the history of the Avengers, and by himself among the lamest IPs of the Marvel universe. When it became apparent that just about everyone in the phase one of the MCU was going to get some degree of spotlight, one of the most common queries was probably, “even Hawkeye?”
And most likely in the spirit of equitability, we have a Hawkeye series, which is kind of ironic seeing as how the longform storytelling of a television series seems far preferable to a standalone film, and it’s hard to believe that of all the guys to get a prominent spotlight, Hawkeye would be among them.
But if there’s anyone who is aware of the stigma of the lameness that is Hawkeye, it’s the show itself, all the way from the writers, show runners and characters themselves. As a whole, everyone seems very aware that Hawkeye is lame, to where it’s so far been kind of a theme of the show itself, and by doing so, actually earns a little bit of credit and endearment from watchers like me just waiting for the show to even sniff jumping the shark or wrestling with DJ Tanner, to get ready to point the finger and say I told you so.
By doing such, the show seems to earn a little bit of bullet protection from harsher criticisms, and it doesn’t hurt that the show really isn’t that so much about Hawkeye as much as it’s about Clint Barton the man, and his former alter-ego in Ronin, as well as sharing the spotlight with Kate Bishop, who serves to be the personality sidekick that Barton need to not give into the lameness so often.
I’m only three episodes in, but it hasn’t been all that bad. The show moves at a steady pace and doesn’t feel too drug out, and regardless of what the title of the show is, all MCU television series are all concurrently working towards larger storylines, so it’s only a matter of time before some hard hints, or a cameo or appearance from another property crops up to make viewers react like they’re NBA players watching a dunk contest when it becomes apparent of what is in the works.
As I’ve said before (I think), in MCU we trust, because if this is any indication, those writers and show runners really know how to make even the lamest properties tolerable. The Netflix crew demonstrated it by making Iron Fist watchable, and now the Disney+ squad has made even Hawkeye tolerable. That, is pretty impressive, and makes me not feel pessimistic about the remainder of the series.
When I saw the clickbait headline on social media for this, I of course clicked it, but I already knew that this was going to turn into a brog post: Dr. Mario releases what ultimately becomes a zombie shark, off the coast of Spain
To horror fans, all one has to do is say the words “zombie shark,” and literally only one thing pops into their minds: Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 film, that very notoriously, contained a sequence, in which a zombie takes on, a shark.
Spoiler alert, as if anyone’s going to read this, drop what they’re doing and rush out to go find out how and where to watch Zombi 2, but the shark rips off the arm of the zombie and more or less “wins” in the sense that it swims away still living. However, the zombie definitely succeeds at ripping a chunk off of it to eat, but it’s fairly unclear that it landed any actual bites onto the shark, since sharks skin are pretty tough. But the zombie is all over the shark for some bit of time, so it is presumed that it probably had to have gotten some bites in before its arm is ripped off and the conflict is over.
Well, it only took 42 years but it looks like we’ve got our answer to that specific scene from that documentary. Clearly, the zombie got some bites in, or perhaps it’s by virtue of the shark ingesting some of that wack-ass green zombie blood, but it clearly got turned, was caught by Dr. Mario, presumably studied because it was a fucking zombie shark, and then released into the wild, where some other sharks whooped its ass, leaving it to actually, ultimately die, finally.
Really though, I’m not sure why it’s some sort of shocker that a shark that’s all mangled open is still searching for food. When they’re at full health, it’s all sharks do in the first place, I’m not sure why one being practically ripped open would behave any differently, than to seek out food before it eventually succumbed.
All the same, good on the internet for giving all us zombie fans reason to make the never-not entertaining reference to Fulci’s zombie vs. shark, because even to this day, there’s never been a more wildly insane fight sequence than this was.
I’m not sure how theFacebook algorithms got me so good, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that there was a site actually called Koreaboo and it wasn’t just a slang term that I used amongst my friends. And obviously a site with such a name would have an obvious bias, but there were some interesting articles that piqued my interest and served as a little bit of fuel for some words to be spit up.
Obviously, when something becomes white hot popular as Netflix’s Squid Game has been, there are all sorts of detractors that come out of the woodwork or go out of their way to go all contrarian on it; I’d be the first to admit that I’ve most definitely done that on all sorts of things that I was late to the party on, so I just decided to shun it instead of embrace it late.
Naturally, since Squid Game game to the world courtesy the entertainment kings of Asia in South Korea, this would draw the skepticism, ire and jealousy from those in other, lesser Asian countries.
China, in spite of their general fear of Korean media, and even going so far as to basically ban K-Pop, citing that Chinese men needed to be more masculine and not as seemingly as fluffy as K-Pop boy band stars, responds to Squid Game, by basically ripping the whole fucking show off in order to create a variety show.
I mean, this was about the least surprising thing in the world as China as a country gives absolutely no fucks when it comes to copyrights and intellectual properties, and counterfeits anything and everything at all, without any shame. It’s like that internet rule where if it’s ever existed, there’s porn of it on the internet, but if there’s anything that’s ever existed, it has most definitely been ripped off in China.
Titled literally “Squid’s Victory,” it will be something of a variety show or a game show, where people will play kids games for cash prizes. So unfortunately, there will be no people killing themselves for money, but as the above title card shows, there’s literally zero shame by the Chinese company of ripping off the title card of the Korean Squid Game. Little else is known yet of Squid’s Victory, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that whatever set the show will take place on will have all sorts of maze-like colorful doors and stairs that is a completely original idea.
And then we have the Japanese, who are of course jealous over the juggernaut that Squid Game, going as far as to proclaim it’s position on Netflix rankings had to be due to some sort of cheating manipulation, and then proclaiming that Japan had the OG lock on the death game genre, which they’re not entirely wrong with, seeing as how Battle Royale came out two decades prior.
The real salt emerges when pondering why Squid Game is so popular globally, while films like Battle Royale really only won over weebs and convention nerds, which is a pretty easy question to answer, because the quality of the writing, the acting, and simply the plot itself was just far superior when comparing the two stories. Firstly, live-action Japanese actors can’t act for shit, and as entertaining of a film Battle Royale was, the acting is pretty terrible save for Takeshi Kitano himself. Then the fleshed out plot of Squid Game, centralized around the despair people feel when they’re economically facing drowning in poverty is something that people can relate to a whole lot better than getting randomly selected in a government lottery to have to fight to their death without any choice. And of course, there’s the obvious medium, where just everyone can access Squid Game, and unless you purchased a VCD or a region-free DVD on eBay, there was no real way to watch Battle Royale.
Regardless, seeing the jealousy bubble up from entire countries over the success of Squid Game is very amusing to me, and now that Korea has set the bar so high, it’s going to be amusing to see what all these lesser countries do to try and get a piece of the yellow fever for Asian media that the rest of the world is starting to get, thanks to Korea.
You’re welcome, China, Japan and all you other 개새끼 countries.
I will always maintain that one of the better things I’ve ever incorporated to my brog, would be the On This Day plug-in that lets me narcissistically look back at the posts I made on the day in all prior years where I’ve posted. Presumably, fewer things are going to inspire words to write other than myself, and every now and then I’ll see an old post that will inspire me to write pretty immediately.
That being said, a year ago on this day, I wrote about how I’d earned a not-insignificant amount of money from noting but doing internet surveys, earning anywhere from 29¢ to $1.58 a survey, sometimes taking a minute, sometimes 20, but covering a vast gamut of topics, whether I had any business opining about them or not.
Sometimes I had idea of what the surveys were collating information about, but there were tons of times where I had absolutely no reason to be taking these surveys, but it was supposedly $1.58 for 8 minutes of survey, so sure I’m now an IT manager for a large enterprise company sharping opinions about cloud deployment and SaaS whatever. I treated it like LAIRE from Role Models, where I was role playing as things that I didn’t really have any substantial knowledge of.
Anyway, it’s been a year where I was humblebragging over $401. I’ve been continuing on doing what I was doing then, and since then, the above is what I’ve currently got in the PayPal account designated for this little endeavor: literally one thousand more dollars than I did a year ago, for doing rando internet surveys for pocket change at a time.
I should also point out that this was originally done to earn money to buy wrestling blets with, and this amount seen above is after I’ve purchased two blets for myself (NXT UK, NWA Television), as well as a pair of WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships for my two daughters. In all, I’ve made a fair amount more than what’s in this PayPal account, and I don’t see much reason to stop, as long as I’ve got the ability to earn something, when I’m doing nothing, which isn’t always, but I can make some here and there at least once a day.
Recently, I was spying on eBay one of my unicorn blets that happened to pop up: an original Figures Toy Co. Ring of Honor world championship blet, which is something that I’ve wanted for a little while now, but I didn’t want to spend $600 to meet the buy it now price the seller was asking. I floated a few low-ball offers to test the water, which were predictably auto-declined, but I was hoping to wait until the end of the selling window and maybe float in $500.
Unfortunately for me, there was someone who was willing to walk in the door and just pony up $600, and just like that the blet I wanted was gone. Who knows when the next time this specific blet shows up again.
The thing is though, I was mentally prepared to unload this $500, but thanks to anonymous money bags, I didn’t. But as far as I’m concerned, this $500 is truly disposable, and it’s almost like I want to do something reckless with it. Sure, I could be the bigger person and donate it or give it to someone who could really use it, but I never claimed to be a saint, and I kind of do feel like gambling it in some degree.
And since I’m not about to go to any casinos any time soon, my mind has been very curious about dabbling my toes into the marketplace, and seeing what investing is like, because I know dick from butt when it comes to it. I just know that I’ve always been fascinated with films like Boiler Room, the Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, and I see a very realistic chance to take a little bit of risk with some truly expendable money.
I asked around, and didn’t get much excitement or real fun-sounding options, but $500 isn’t necessarily too small to take a chance on. All the same, if I don’t find something intriguing enough soon, the feeling will fade, and I’ll just sit on it until the day my unicorn blet shows up again.
Anyway, what started out as blet money has grown into something a little more substantial, and with the potential to take the plunge with something a little more high stakes than internet surveys. All I know is that the time I’ve spent writing all this bullshit, I could’ve been making a $1.80 on what I like to call, over-max surveys, when for a short period, there’s suddenly a number of surveys that exceeds the usual maximum $1.58 threshold, and my eyes get big and excited at the thought of making a whole thirty more fucking cents.
Funny how things work out: segment of internet looking-for-things-to-get-mad-about-people decide to get mad over Awkwafina’s “blaccent,” citing cultural appropriation, racism, hypocrisy or all of the above; and declare a boycott to Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
I’ve actually never heard of the property Shang-Chi ever, until news of an actual Marvel film featuring Asian people began to emerge. I have zero clue to the property, whether it features mutants, or supers based on myth, magic or cosmic, or if Shang-Chi ever crossed paths with any X-property, the Avengers, or even had a run-in with Juggernaut since it seems like at some point, everyone has a run in with Juggernaut.
That being said, I kind of wasn’t really that interested in seeing it, because in spite of the equity that the Marvel Studio sand the MCU had built, it was beginning to feel a little bit like a checkbox situation where kind of like how Black Panther lit a fire under the black community, and based on how Crazy Rich Asians performed at the box office, Disney and Marvel decided to take a stab at tapping into the Asian community with a Marvel film, with an Asian-based story.
I wasn’t interested in seeing what I thought was going to be the affirmative action of the MCU, even if it had the legendary Tony Leung in it, making me wonder just how many times if at all, showed up in American film.
But as is often the case, when news like this hits, and I see people on the internet acting like buffoons, all it really serves is to make me want to defy them and see their stupid efforts fail, and therefore go see Shang-Chi. Not quite to the point where I want to risk my health and go out into a theater, but I definitely have some intention to watch this now, for sure.
I mean seriously, people getting upset over the way Awkwafina speaks? Because she occasionally uses a black affect when speaking, as if the terms wiggers and chiggers haven’t been a thing for the last 25 years, but is only taboo when a celebrity does it?
Would Eminem have a career at all, if he showed up in this generation? He’s white and therefore should not be rapping, because that might be considered cultural appropriation since apparently only black people are allowed to rap and speak in a certain manner.
Anyway, my favorite part of the article was when they cited that this isn’t the first time people had wanted to boycott Awkwafina:
It is worth noting that similar accusations of culture appropriate were lobbied against the Asian American actress when she voiced the dragon Raya in Raya and the Last Dragon, currently available on Disney+ and made 122.7 million USD at the Box Office
So the SJWs didn’t learn their lesson from Raya and they think they’ll fare much better with Shang-Chi? Yeah, I look forward to seeing just how much money Shang-Chi is going to bulldoze in when it drops, and see just how effective these so called boycotts are actually going to be.
Let’s not even discuss the thousands of people out in the world that aren’t Asian, but have some sort of Asian text tattooed onto themselves. I’d wager there’s a substantial overlap of non-Asians with Asian characters tattooed on themselves with those who are pretending to be outraged and claim they’re going to boycott.
It’s okay though. The internet doesn’t need to find out when these peoples’ friends talk about how decent of a film it might actually be, and whether it’s peer pressure, hypocrisy, or just being full of shit, they’ll still watch it anyway, all the same.
Let’s just get this out of the way: Black Widow is probably the worst film in the entire MCU. Down there with the various Hulk films, but at least still better than other non-MCU turds like Ghost Rider and all attempts at The Fantastic Four. But that’s not saying that much.
The point is, Black Widow was not that great of a film, and probably should not have been made. Its existence serves no benefit to the equity that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has built, and has in fact added unnecessary weight to the cash-printing spaceship the MCU franchise has been throughout the last decade, having produced and actually released such a turd.
Needless to say, before I proceed with this post, in the event that any of my zero readers have not been privy to the happenings of the MCU, I will put the rest of this behind the cut, because that’s just the kind of guy I am, act as if the whole world is reading, even if I know that nobody is.
Continue reading “Black Widow: Just because it could be made, doesn’t mean it should be made”
