#Marvel learn to film a fucking fight scene challenge

[timeandspacelord]

I'm just gonna say it, cos someone has to:

The first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was... bad. It was just bad. The writing was bad, the cinematography was godawful, and I was way too distracted by those things to even focus on the acting (although I'm willing to bet it was actually very good bc Marvel does hire incredible actors)

#it felt like the star wars sequel trilogy and the first chapter of a book that the author uses to just exposition-dump all over everything #it was disjointed and uninteresting and barely any of what happened seemed relevant #I think they were trying to introduce every single plot thread in the same episode and they did it so poorly #also they did a shit job introducing new characters #the entire first scene was pointless and also totally bullshit because that's not even a little bit how skydiving works?? it was so bad????? #Bucky's therapy session felt too drawn out although that might have more to do with the truly stupid camera angles they used for it #and sweet jesus the camera work holy shit #Marvel learn to film a fucking fight scene challenge #but also no one wants closeups on someone's cheek while they're talking and for fuck's sake you're allowed to use a goddamn tripod to film #I cannot believe this is what made it to the final cut of the very first episode of this highly anticipated presumably high budget show #like what the actual hell

[jotunlokisuggestion]

I’m gonna illustrate to you the Thanos-problem not so quickly.

The studio went to Kenneth Branagh in 2010 and told them they want a villain as good as Magneto for their Avengers film.

And almost 10 years later the MCU wanted to write an interesting, political villain called Thanos for Infinity War/Endgame.

Now, when Kenneth Branagh got the (really annoying) custom-order for a good villain, he didn’t look at the villain the studio liked and copied him. Instead he had the brains to write Loki as a character. With his own personality traits, qualities, quirks, a unique backstory that appeals to Branagh’s strength as a writer, whose origin story can be used and re-used in future films and plots, who has unique and adaptable strengths and weaknesses and who is played by an actor who is really good at playing roles like that.

Meanwhile Thanos is just...going through the Killmonger/Loki/Magneto motions of: political villain: ✅ tragic backstory:  ✅ destruction: ✅ big baddie speech ✅ --- but there is no heart to any of that, no sense of detail, no moment for him to shine no personality.

And you know (I really tried to stop myself from adding this) in the 90s we had this flood of dark, gritty anti-heroes with their giant guns and ten thousand pouches. And some of them like Cable were really good while later characters became pale imitations of Cable (think of that famous video of Liefeld inventing a character and he just draws Cable number 8948320 and his backstory is that he’s a cyborg) and all those rehashes of the Killing Joke. And in the end they all lost track of what made these characters good in the first place.

And in the late 2000s and early 2010s we had this wave of young, hip, funny for the lulzs supervillains who just had quirks and no reasons and personality and in the end, basically nothing of substance remains of any of them - an epidemic starting with Heath Ledger’s Joker but were later replaced with young men in suits who were also kinda pop-culturally - ironically Leto’s Joker hopped onto that bandwagon like 9 years late with a starbucks 

And I understand why in the last few years, political villains have entered mass-production, but a villain like that doesn’t work unless your writing challenges their ideas. Okay lemme give you another example: Since the (in)famous Far Cry 3 with its very 2012 villain quirky-crazy-Joker-y villain Vaas we now had Far Cry 4 playing in the land of a slightly quirky fashionable young man dictator and Far Cry 5 and New Dawn with an evil Christian cult right in the US. 

The transition from early 2010s to late 2010s is obvious but - these are video games and by the time we fight the final boss, we have automatically actually spent a lot of time in their respective worlds. We know why these are horrible people. We are challenging their methods and ideas already when we encounter them. In the MCU, we see Killmonger actually rule over Wakanda and we know while his ideas are good. his methods aren’t - while at the same he challenges Wakanda and forces T’Challa to accept that his father was not perfect. Each time we see Loki rule over Asgard, imperialism is challenged - in the first time when he actually attacks Jötunheim (thus executing exactly the things he had been taught his entire life) and by not intervening in the colonies in Ragnarök.  But, you are going to say, Thanos ideas are challenged! We see that people are sad that he killed half the universe! - and I mean yeah, but I didn’t need to watch the movie to know that people would be sad. Instead, everything happens exactly as you expect it would. All these previous examples were interesting because we wouldn’t know what the villains would do and how it would affect the population. Also the final notion - that the universe would eventually be better of if half the universe was destroyed, remains unshaken and unaddressed.

And honestly, their attempt to make Thanos likeable or understandable might be the huge problem of the film. Thanos as a morbid, unlikable killer who’s in love with death works because we don’t need to relate to him for that. We don’t need a connection. Many good villains are absolutely detestable. You can do a lot not by making them seem sympathetic (which is almost impossible with villains like Thanos anyway) but you can make them interesting to the audience-

let’s talk about villains who are absolute giant assholes but I like them:

Yeah him <3 You remember the first season of Hannibal? As members of the audience, we know who Hannibal is before we even start watching. Hannibal Lecter is one of the most famous villains there are. In the movies, he’s arrested in Red Dragon right in the first scene - there is never any doubt about who he is. But in the show, he’s yet an active serial killer and working with the police. The police that solves his murders. The police who doesn’t know that he’s the killer. The killer whose name literally rhymes with cannibal and who makes cannibalism puns. There were hundreds of memes about how fucking frustrating it was that the police always just walked right past him.

That was the thing: We, the audience, knew something the characters didn’t. Like in a horror film when we know the killer is hiding behind the door and the main character doesn’t. You want to fucking scream at the screen in frustration. Okay what does that have to do with Thanos? Imagine all those glimpses and we saw of him in previous movies would have presented him in a likeable light. Imagine if his disciples were actually seen gaining people’s trust or if people in GotG would actually casually mention “oh Thanos will fix this, I heard he has a brilliant plan” or he tried to convince them that there was a huge famine coming. It would have been so frustrating to see people trust him because obviously everyone who reads the comics would know that Thanos is bad news and if we saw people actually trust him? maybe actually give him Infinity Stones to fix the universe because he’s the only one who can use them? Fucking rude.

Reveals :)

I guess I don’t have to tell tumblr who the first guy is but a quick rehash: In season finale of Sherlock, a guy who appears in one scene as the girlfriend of a colleague of Sherlock turns out to be Moriarty. 

And guess what? It absolutely doesn’t matter one single fucking bit that Moriarty is the lab guy. And the big reveal doesn’t matter because we’re not given any of the clues. He might as well have been the mailman. Now, the Man In Black from Westworld however? That was a huge reveal. (Major spoilers if you haven’t watched it but I’m keeping it vague). We saw the Man In Black commit the worst crimes imaginable throughout the first season of the show, he killed hundreds of people without remorse. And in his defence, we thought that he thought it was all a robot theme park. Except? We find out that he’s actually the older version of one of the main-characters who absolutely saw robots as people once and evn protected them and loved one. This was both a horrifying reveal, an origin story and it made his crime even worse. That’s good villain-writing.

What does that have to do with Thanos? - Technique. Just how the reveal was written has a huge impact. Imagine if there had been no mention of Thanos at all until Infinity War - and the characters were actually forced to figure out who brought Loki to Earth, who supported Ronan, who attacked Asgard. Maybe you catch some glimpses of his disciples and maybe you get to hear the name of one of them at the very end or Loki even whispers “Thanos” in Thor’s ear before he dies and he as to figure out what that means. Make us work to get there. 

Relevance!

Now, they wanted a political villain, right? AHS Cult gave as a political villain who is absolutely detestable every step of the way. But the reason he was scary and interesting is because...it was relevant af. Every word he said, every political opinion he expressed, the way he staged attacks on him by migrant workers and spread fear in his community - that rings very close to home right now. I  can get why someone would say you can’t do the same in a Marvel film, but Sci-Fi has always been a projection screen for political subjects for decades now. Star Trek has been doing it since the 1960s and if they had actually committed to making Thanos allude to actual political slogans of today, he would have been way more relevant.

Dynamics (aka how to make someone likeable without condoning their actions)

On my main, I made a post once about Loki and Magneto and how having, forming and developing relationships helps to flesh out a character. In short: We learn to understand them. We see them grow. We see (ideally) how they learn from encounters and how it shapes them. Now we are entering the realm of likeable again with Azula, because what made her a brilliant villain was not her brilliance or her abilities (they made her a great opponent though) but her motivations. The more we see her family, the more we learn that she, too, is a victim of a dysfunctional family. She allows a whole new perspective on the royal family. That scene where she tells Ozai that he ‘can’t treat her like Zuko’? - those were ten fucking books written in one line. Her descent into paranoia basically rewrote every scene of her in the past and is also a reminder that she’s 15 and yes, of course, she’s a victim. She’s a child fighting in a war.

How many meaningful relationships does Thanos have? He’s quite fond of Gamora I guess? Less fond of Nebula? There was an embarrassing attempt to create a connection between him Tony. Now, remember that in the comics, Thanos is someone driven by love. He loves death - that’s the relationship that drives him. It’s important that there is a face to everything. Show me Thanos family, show me his homeworld. Show me his previous desperate attempts to save the people he loved and how he was held back and driven to more and more desperate measures. Show me how he finally gives in and wants to destroy everything.

“show don’t tell”

I’m going to argue for a Thanos solo movie now :)      (kinda) 

Okay I feel kinda compelled to put David in this when I’m already posting this on my rp blog but also a) I love him and b) shut up. short summary: David was created an android that is programmed to serve humans. He grows to resent them more and more, especially because many of them are petty and abusive towards him until in the second film, he just wants them dead.  Now in his first scenes of Prometheus, we see him alone on the ship while the human crew is in cryosleep. We see him eat, play basketball, ride a bicycle, watch people’s dreams. He also watches Lawrence of Arabia while dying his hair to look like him and quotes the above sentence several times just before the rest of the crew wakes up. 

It’s a tiny sequence in the film but we learn various things about David: He’s vain, he does things he - as a robot - doesn’t have to do, he identifies strongly with a man torn between two cultures, he has a lot of fun when he’s alone, he habitually spies on people, he is feeling pain in some capacity and he associates it with humans. We learn all of that in those few tiny moments.

compare all of what we learnt in this short sequence to what we know about Thanos. After seeing him in...I think three films by now? And having people talk about him in even more? With literally every character I listed now (excluding Moriarty bc he’s a negative example) we know what drove them to do what they did. We know their pain. We know them.  Even if the things they are cruel because here it comes:

They are a Story.

And Thanos is a plot device.

or to quote fellow tumblr user hackedmotionsensors:  I’ve never liked Thanos because hes like a video game villain. Like he’s the annoying equivalent of finding the final boss in a FF game and its just a giant head or something stupid.

[weiszklee]

Confession: I’m a total sucker for opulent, over the top, well choreographed, emotionally overcharged fight scenes, I salivate just thinking of Wuxia films like Hero, I get completely engrossed every time I watch Kill Bill, I watched many Marvel films and am genuinely pumped that they keep churning them out. 

I understand if you have to unfollow me now. 

(For real though, most critiques of for example Marvel films seem kinda hollow and superficial because people don’t seem to get the actual reasons they’re so well received, nothing you can say will change the surgical precision operating a wrecking ball with which they tease an emotional reaction out of everyone who’s even remotely open for that kind of thing. I’m not saying the criticisms aren’t valid, most are, but they also seem to come from a point of refusal to actually engage with them. Which is fine, like, they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you don’t get what’s fascinating about them, you aren’t really in a position to formulate a coherent position.) 

(Also y’all need to learn some actual media critique, calling superhero films all the same isn’t really saying anything, they are not interchangeable, they reflect a very specific time and stage of development and can be a great way of understanding the culture that produces and celebrates them, but for that you need to actually engage with their themes and conflicts, superficial as they may seem. Movies don’t get popular without challenging the audience in some way or another, “same old” gets boring really fast, believe it or not. Fucking tvtropes has deeper analysis than your average marvel hater on here.) 

#mine #putting my college education to good use by arguing about art on the internet

[daphenomenal-1]

Avengers Endgame vs Game of Thrones: How to Pay-Off Storytelling

Well, Game of Thrones is over. And as per usual, nobody is happy with how this story ended. Even the die-hard fans admit that this season was the worst season by a country mile for a myriad of reasons. Along with Game of Thrones, another franchise met its end in Avengers: Endgame. And judging by the response and how much money it made, people really like Endgame. So, as Thrones’ last episode aired, I thought it would be cool to analyze some of the arcs from both Endgame and Game of Thrones (and their biggest moment in each) and begin to piece together how to do a big pay-off for long term storytelling. (WARNING: SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME)

Iron Man/Captain America vs Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen

I decided to lump these four into one category because, despite the response from people on social media, these pairs are the main heroes of their respective shows. Jon and Daenerys are the main heroes of Game of Thrones, while Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were the focal points of the MCU. And these characters had their stories wrap up in their respective final outings. However, only one of them was met with praise, while the other was met with scorn. Why?

In Game of Thrones, the show had basically set up for 7 seasons that Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, First of her Name - blah, blah, blah, you get the picture - was going to be the one to sit on the Iron Throne and rule over Westeros. And the showrunners, up until this point, did a decent job both setting up that and also alluding to her becoming the Mad Queen. However, due to the speed of this season, the pay off failed because there wasn’t really any build to her snap in episode 5, and her subsequent actions didn’t make her look any better. Nobody would want to support a person who would willing burn innocent people who are in her path. And her death, while feeling like it wasn’t earned, was really the only way this show was going to end. Jon, on the other hand, the guy who was supposed to be the most virtuous living person, who didn’t care about thrones and only cared about fighting the dead and defeating the Night King, came off as a bit of a ass that didn’t care about anyone except for himself and really nobody else. And his banishment to the North to be with the Wildlings was just not the ending that really paid off the character of the orphan Targaryen. Now, let’s look at Avengers: Endgame.

Tony Stark and Captain America have been set up to both give up and gain something towards the end of their respective runs. The giving up of one life and the gaining of a new one. And the reason that Endgame was so fulfilling in its pay off is because it called back to its roots from The Avengers. That argument between Tony and Cap from The Avengers served as the pay off for these two iconic heroes. Captain America - that one kid from Brooklyn that was only special thanks to the Super Soldier Serum - ended up being the only other one worthy to hold Mjolnir, the hammer of Thor. And at the end, he got to go back and have a life with the love of his life. And Tony Stark - the man who survived in a cave and built himself out, the man that wasn’t a hero and wasn’t pegged to make the sacrifice play to save other - ended up giving his life to save the universe. That’s why this worked and Thrones didn’t: the Russo brothers gave Tony and Steve the endings that these characters deserved. 

Thor vs Jamie Lannister

Both of these characters have one thing in common. A common theme: redemption. Redemption for their failings and an attempt to make things right. However, only one of them really fulfills that redemption arc. Thor, after the events of Avengers: Infinity War, is in a state of disarray. He couldn’t stop Thanos from wiping out half the universe, but now with one more chance to turn back what happened, he failed again. In his rage, he kills the Mad Titan. He goes through a state of depression, gaining a lot of weight and drinking his pain away. But in one of the most empowering scenes in Endgame, while conversing with Lady Frigga, Thor once again was able to call upon his trusty hammer. He was still worthy, even after failing over and over again. His redemption arc has reached its peak. 

Jamie’s story just...just fucking sucked. Jamie, someone who was so loyal to Cersei Lannister, opted to leave her and go to the North to face off against the dead. His story was setting up for what was going to be a good ending for his character: Jamie becoming the Queenslayer and kill Cersei Lannister. But no, he goes back to her and dies with her in his arms. He gets buried with Cersei, just like everyone didn’t want. It seemed like the character regressed so far back that it was nowhere near salvageable. 

Thanos vs Cersei Lannister

Every hero has his or her villain. Someone for the heroes to overcome, despite the challenge they present. The MCU’s version of this character get is the Mad Titan Thanos. And with Thrones, it’s the Queen Bitch of Westeros - Cersei Lannister. Their degrees of villainy are comparable in that these are villains that were both consistent in their intentions and are fairly consistent in ther convictions. I think there’s not much for me to complain about Cersei Lannister and Thanos.

Throughout the entire span of Game of Thrones, if there is one way to describe Cersei Lannister, it is this: she was a bad bitch. Like she was a real one. However, this show didn’t really give her the shine that she deserves. Yeah, she ordered the execution of Missandei. But there was still some untapped potential with how to take her character and how much of a good villain Cersei was. She was just evil. I don’t like that Cersei died in the arms of Jamie and was buried with him. I would have liked to see her get paid what she owed, but she was still a solid villain in her own right. 

Same with Thanos. I know people call him a “Mary Sue”, in that he’s overpowered for the sake of the plot and wins because plot reasons. But Mary Sue characters don’t get killed 15 minutes into their next appearance. What made Thanos interesting in Infinity War was that he was so indoctrinated by his conviction adn saw it through. For the first time in the MCU, the villain won. In Endgame, 2014 Thanos saw that he won. That his goal was complete and that his destiny is also to die after he balances the universe. But what makes him different here is that there is a level of pettiness to Thanos in Endgame that raises the stakes just a bit higher. Yes, future him balanced the universe. But those that survived - i.e.: the Avengers - became ungrateful. They did not see the good that his universal level balancing act did for this planet, so instead he will destroy this universe with the Infinity Stone collected from throughout the years and then restart the universe. And despite having victory in his grasp, he still falls to the Avengers. 

The Battle of Winterfell vs Avengers Assemble

To wrap this up, I could go on and on about other characters, but it is only right that I compare the two big battles of these franchises: the Long Night and the Battle on the Avengers Compound.

I remember watching the Battle at Winterfell and immediately, something felt off. Something wasn’t right. The battle started and it was barely lit, the action sequences were very shaky, so I could barely see the fighting. Even the cool moments like Lady Lyanna Mormont slaying the giant with her dying breath felt less impactful than her “King in the North” speech from season 6. The battle just felt lackluster. The end didn’t feel deserved and the White Walkers - what was being built up to be the biggest threat that the show has ever faced - ended up being nothing more than just another zombie horde like in The Walking Dead. And don’t get me started on the Night King.

The Battle on the Avengers Compound, on the other hand, had so much going on. There was the beginning, where the heroes are scattered as Hawkeye is trying to run away with the gauntlet. There was Thor, Captain America and Iron Man going toe-to-toe with Thanos. There was Captain America wielding Mjolnir and beating Thanos’s ass with it. All of it was culminating in a moment that can never be forgotten. When after standing in front of Thanos’s army, every single hero that was dusted in Infinity War came back and stood alongside Captain America. And then, after 22 movies and 11 years, Captain America - with the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe behind him - finally said one of the most iconic battle cries in comic book history:

That is how you pay-off long term storytelling. That is how you give your fans that have been following your franchise for over a decade pay off. Moments like this. Any genre franchise from here on out should learn from what the MCU did. And the battle was a visual marvel. It was lit in the best way, you could see the action, it was crisp, every hero got some form of spotlight throughout the entire battle and the way it ends feels right and perfectly encapsulates what this saga was about, or rather who this saga was about. At the end of the day, though, it needs to be said that this moment has been said to be one of the best fight scenes in movie history. 

Conclusion

This post was really long. Probably the longest post I’ve made and I probably did leave some things out about certain characters. Was this written because I really wanted to talk about Avengers Endgame again? Yes. Will people actually look at this? Probably not. Ultimately though, the moral of this is that Avengers Endgame did in 3 hours what Game of Thrones couldn’t do in 1 season. And it says a lot when a film that features a giant purple alien with 27 chins and heroes ranging from an old steroid ridden soldier from the 40s to an actual talking, gun-wielding raccoon told a more satisfying story than one of the most sound and cohesive shows on TV today. This year feels like the year of passing the torch for entertainment: the original 6 Avengers pass their torch to the new heroes, and Game of Thrones passed the torch for other shows to capture audiences like they did. However, one did it really well and the other didn’t.

Two great franchises. Two great sagas. And only one worked. That’s a damn shame.

(Also feel free to add anything I didn’t say, because there is a lot)

#avengers endgame spoilers #endgame spoilers #game of thrones #got season 8 #avengers endgame

[comicsbeat]

§ Nice Art: Francesco Francavilla gave us the Thing vs Thing team-up we’ve all dreamed of on Twitter.

§ Nice art supplemental! Takashi Miike has made a movie based on the manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and it looks insane!

This is the guy who was somehow able to make us laugh at a scene depicting a hitman slicing off his own tongue in Ichi the Killer, after all. The JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure manga by Hirohiko Araki debuted in 1987 and chronicles the adventures of the Joestar family across several generations as they use their unusual powers to tackle a variety of supernatural threats. With around 100 million copies in print, it’s the bestelling horror manga of all time and also one of the bestselling manga series overall. Judging from the trailer, Miike’s adaptation will feature highly stylized visuals and colors, so we should be in for an incredible cinematic experience when Toho and Warner Bros. co-distribute the film in Japan on 4 August 2017. It stars Jun Kunimura, Nana Komatsu, Mackenyu, and Takayuki Yamada.

Bestselling horror manga? Whoa. Here’s the teaser trailer:

And the character posters! So manga!

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  § Alison Bechdel has drawn a few new Dykes to Watch Out For comic strips, and it might be about a certain orange toned president.

§ Tom Spurgeon interviewed Ron Wimberly about Prince of Cats and the rest:

It’s such a shit show, the human brain. We think the way we remember things, that’s how it truly happened. Photoshop has been great because we’re now even more aware how fake everything is. [laughter] It’s just perception. Now that it doesn’t require someone that’s great at gouging, or working on something with a knife, now that a teenager can put Hillary Clinton’s face on Snoop Dogg’s body, we know everything’s fake. Karen Green asked me something. She had read the book. When I’m thinking of names, I always give myself a game or a problem to solve to come up with answers. So the tape at the beginning, at first they were listening to the Stooges or something. Then I was like, “No that contextually doesn’t make any sense.” What would they be listening to? How is this tape a microcosm of the entire world? What if Milton, a contemporary of Shakespeare: he had written this poem about Shakespeare when he died. So Rammellzee and Milton, I mashed them together, and that’s what in the tape in the tape deck. But I totally forget about that! I had come up with a name pulled from one of the prior authors of a Romeo & Juliet. Karen, being the genius she is, is like, “Oh, that’s such a great thing you put in there. I can’t believe you did that.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah. Thanks.” [laughter] I totally forgot I had done that!

§ Someone PLEASE MUZZLE FINN JONES. The Iron Fist star just keeps digging a deeper and deeper grave with every interview where he attempts to explain why Iron Fist reviews are so awful and people don’t like the whitewashing. First it was “it’s for the fans” then he blamed Trump. Here’s his take in Vulture below. A couple of things: Jones is British and they have a slightly different approach to racial issues than we do in the US. No excuse, but probably why he keeps blabbing. Second, he’s an actor. A young actor. And not everyone can be Cole Sprouse. So please, someone…teach him how to listen and acknowledge. It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

There’s so much outrage in the internet these days, right? Why don’t people just — look, the issue is that people are judging before they’ve even seen the show. And that’s problematic. C’mon. Don’t get angry and start a mob when you don’t even — you haven’t even seen the show! You don’t even know what we’re doing with it. It’s unjust. It’s unfair. Whatever issues they have may be true of the comic books; it was written in the ’70s. It was a very different time to where we’re at now. Very, very different. I get it. There needs to be more diversity in film and television, in all fucking aspects of life. There needs to be more diversity, period. Unfortunately, this show was picked, for whatever reason. I don’t fully understand, really, but what I say is, Watch the show. Watch the show, then make your opinions.

  § Paste magazine has the picks for comics on sale tomorrow and it’s a good week!

§ Vanity Fair chatted with 96-year-old Al Jaffee who is still cartooning and still amazing.

§ Image is holding a Homecoming Dance at Rose City Comic Con again. Details below:

Back by popular demand, Image Comics is pleased to host a very special formal Fall Homecoming dance for the comics community during the Rose City Comic Con festivities. The dance will be held on Saturday, September 9th from 8:30 p.m. – 12:30 a.m. at The Evergreen. This event will be 21+ only. IDs will be checked at the door.

Tickets to the Image Comics Fall Homecoming Dance are on sale now.

Image Comics’ Fall Homecoming will be in the style and spirit of a traditional high school dance and all comics fans and industry members are encouraged to come mix, mingle, and dance the night away.

Image Comics Fall Homecoming ticket tiers: $20: Entry ticket $45: Add-on pack, including an Image t-shirt, variant cover comic, commemorative pint glass, and enamel pin $79: VIP pack—ticket to the party, add-on pack items, and access to special VIP area at the venue (limited quantity, only 100 VIP tickets available)

§ Britt Hayes reviewed Atomic Blonde, the new comic book movie and liked it:

In one of the most striking cinematic introductions in recent memory, we meet Theron’s Lorraine Broughton, covered in bruises and soaking in an ice bath. She sits on the edge of the tub and plunks ice cubes from her bath into a glass, filling it with Stoli and gulping it down without the slightest wince. If you’ve been waiting for a female 007, she’s here — and she might be even cooler than Bond with all his ridiculous gadgets.

§ But Valerie Complex of Nerd of Color saw a preview for Ghost in the Shell and it was Worse Than We Thought:

On February 28, I saw a 15-minute sneak peek of the Hollywood adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. From the announcement of the project, this has always been a bad idea. But the announcement of the cast and story has made things much worse. Most noticeably, Hollywood adaptations of Japanese anime have yet to be successful. Either their stories veer too far from the source material, the director isn’t a good fit or the casting makes no sense. You would think Hollywood would learn, yet here we are, on the precipice of another anime-adapted flop.

§ Good news for Valiant! The Russo Brothers (Civil War) have signed on to make a Quantum and Woody TV show .

The team behind “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Captain America: Civil War” will develop “Quantum and Woody,” about the world’s worst super-duo, with Valiant Entertainment. Anthony and Joe Russo will be executive producers alongside Mike Larocca and Valiant’s Dinesh Shamdasani.

§ Another graphic novel is coming to the screen! Days of the Bagnold Summer was a hilarious and sad graphic novel about a 15 year old heavy metal music fan forced to spend the summer with him mum. Created by Joff Winterhart, it was shortlisted for the prestigious COsta Award in the UK, and now it’s going to be a movie, directed by Simon Bird, a well known Brit comic known for The Inbetweeners. Some good comic fodder there.

§ Vox runs down why people are so upset about Marvel, Magneto, and Nazis, explained:

For people who aren’t comic book readers or casual fans, the vocal fight over the origins of fictional characters can seem confusing, or even trivial, considering real life white supremacists have become fixtures in the current national political conversation, and bad fiction happens all the time. But the fight goes beyond the comic book history of Captain America and Magneto and deeper into the significance of art’s connection to morality. It’s an embodiment of how powerful fandom can be, and the ever-challenging question of who owns art: the artists creating it or the fans purchasing it.

I know Marvel got locked into this storyline long ago, thinking that the old good guy turns bad switcheroo was a comics book staple, but those days are over now.

§ Also over maybe, line wide events? This article at CBR suggests so.

We’ve come to expect that every year the seeds for an event will be planted to culminate in a crossover that summer. Now, it seems like the only thing that makes these stories different from one another are the principle cast members. It doesn’t help that Marvel touts each crossover as a universe-altering incident that will have repercussions for years to come. How can this be true if the following year’s incident will change the status quo that had been established just a year prior?

§ Finally, this photo from the set of Logan got punked on the internet and now Snopes had to explain that, no it isn’t a photo of a man who got mugged on his way to buy comics for his daughter. Fake news. It’s everywhere.

Kibbles ‘n’ Bits 3/15/17: Please muzzle Finn Jones § Nice Art: Francesco Francavilla gave us the Thing vs Thing team-up we've all dreamed of…

#Al Jaffee #Alison Bechdel #atomic blonde #days of the bagnold summer #Finn Jones #Francesco Francavilla #Ghost in the Shell #jojos bizarre adventure #Logan #Quantum and Woody #ronald wimberly #takashi miike

[captainignatiuspigheart]

Midweek Confusion

OK, so this next week thing has slightly got away from me. As ever, by this point in a new week my recollection of the seven days past is blurring… Since my Google calendar stopped syncing with Facebook, even that once reliable tracker of things I expressed zero interest in has faded in its utility. Alas, I’ll have to go by memory; apologies in advance. 

  Alright, I’m genuinely stumped for the first couple of days, as far as the evenings go. I went back to the doctor’s – as I’ve been doing with frightful regularity since last July when we accidentally discovered that I have horrifically high blood pressure. My general understanding based on video games is that a high score is good, but apparently this does not follow in medicine. In order to prevent me from spontaneously stroking out (apparently a genuine risk even at my sprightly forty-one years) I’m being loaded up with various ACE and calcium channel blockers, but to counterbalance their potential for good, the ACE blockers offered a chance of trashing my kidneys, prompting fortnightly blood tests to make sure they hadn’t dissolved and begun circulating. They aren’t! Huzzah. But the ramipril didn’t do much on its own, other than not kill my organs, so now I’ve also got amlodipine (I may or may not verify these spellings… ) to work its mysterious way through the calcium channels. It’s all really quite interesting, to me at least since this is my frail puff-paste meat sack I live in. No more blood tests, and at a much higher dose is bringing my blood pressure down into merely prehypertension range, instead of the top end of stage 2 hypertension (down from my max of 180/109 to 140/90). Win. Plus, I’m now taking a proper Smarties assortment of pills, so that’s nice. Looks like it has a genetic cause, since I’m really quite healthy with my daily cycling and swimming routine, and my cholesterol is fine. In your face three kilos of Quality Streets and another three of cheese in December. Drugs for life – which is cool since I’ve been on asthma meds since an unknowably young age.

  For those uninterested in such health wranglings, tough: your body will begin to fail shortly, as I push these pins into this charming mannequin with a crude rendering of your features. But that can’t be all I did last week, right? Indeed, no. 

  Building: Lego

I have advanced a little with my pretty golden gates. I’ve expanded upwards, in adding mostly extra gold pieces. That’s a minor challenge because, as an inveterate hoarder, I feel like I should use them very sparingly and not deplete my stores. This is idiotic. The whole reason I’ve got the damn things is to use them! And that they look very pretty and they live in a box, and that makes me happy… As you can see I also greebled the fuck out of the walls, and gone way too far. I’ll find pics next week, but I’ve dismantled them in an attempt to make plainer walls which won’t detract so much from the magnificent pearlescent gold. 

    Watching: October Faction

We finished up watching the second-latest comic book adaptation to slide onto Netflix’s new releases bar (before Locke & Key, which unfortunately looks exactly the same but in Miss Peregrine’s Miserable House of Whatever instead – I’m sure it’s somehow different, and we’re bound to watch it eventually). Best described as Grimm crossed with Mean Girls, October Faction follows a family of monster hunters as they, um, hunt monsters and learn DARK secrets. Pretty chipper performances and casting made this a lot of fun, despite the incredibly predictable plot (not all monsters are monsters, your monster-killing organisation is surprisingly not all that chill). The high school stuff with a pair of twins trying to fit into the new town their parents have dragged them to works well, at least until they discover their own powers and the rest of the story unfurls. Very sexuality positive stuff too, which is always satisfying. Look, it’s not amazing, and the ending is a bit unsatisfying, but it’s a fun watch while you’re eating tea. I guess that’s a recommendation… 

    Watching: Birds of Prey, or the Film with a Whimsical Title about a Murderer (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

I know, I know. It’s a DC movie, why do we even try to enjoy them any more. This is about Harley Quinn, Joker’s recent ex (I mean, literally at the start of this film} and how everyone hates her and wants to kill her, because she is, as I think they say, “just awful”. In the process of people trying to kill her she makes some friends, including a fairly amusing child pickpocket and somewhere in here there’s a story about a massive diamond with encrypted passwords carved in it. There’s several different people’s back stories in here, and they all weave together quite ineptly, constantly tripping the film up. We meet Huntress, who has no character other than being a crossbow wielding lady sad that she saw her parents get murdered (it’s OK, they were mobsters – there’s no reason why you should care at all) by another gang of mobsters, under the instruction of Ewan McGregor, who plays some twat who wears a mask for the final action scenes. I should mention that this might be a career worst performance for McGregor, even counting the Star Wars prequels. Fuck knows what his character is supposed to be. And that’s the tone really, none of the characters have any consistency or make sense (except possibly the pickpocket girl). We veer from snarky comic stuff with Harley, to McGregor’s minion slicing off people’s faces. Everything happens fast, or in pointless time-skipping. Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s Black Canary is pretty cool, except that her having superpowers seems totally irrelevant until she knocks some folks down in the finale. Rosie Perez’ Renee Montoya is described as speaking in cop cliches, and that’s what they give her in lieu of a character. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn gets to do some genuinely splendid action scenes, and it’s the fighting throughout that makes this mess of a film endurable. Lots of people seem excited by the glitter and beanbag gun scene on entering the police station, but it’s the fight as they leave which is truly splendid. Oh, Arkham looks good – suitably grim and filled with ridiculous architecture and funfairs. I’d rank this as the third best DC movie (of the recent crop, barring Wonderwoman none of their films are even as enjoyable as Batman Forever), after Wonderwoman and Shazam (smoky grey CGI baddies are so Green Lantern) but some steps ahead of fucking Aquaman with it’s ghastly rubbery Sea World. I’m perplexed by this film all round. It grows clearer and clearer that I have no grasp of DC properties at all. In fairness, it’s about as good a grasp as Warner Bros’… 

  Doing: Creative Mentoring

Every month, for the last seven years (I think), I’ve spent a few hours with my delightful creativity client. We write stories, play improv and inspiration games, all with the aim of simply being mentally and creatively stimulating. And because it’s fun. Not too much to report on this occasion, other than to note (and remind myself) that’s always a genuine highlight of my week. I deeply enjoy the time I spend with Rebecca, and find it inspires me creatively too. What lovely reciprocity!

  Doing: the Glowstick Trials at National Justice Museum

After a number of rehearsals we finally got to play for real! Seven improvised courtoom dramas, back to back last Friday evening. The chaps directing it this time around (Richard and Ben) rejigged it very smartly from our previous version, putting it much more opportunity to freely extemporise in our various roles of Judge, Defendant, Prosecution, Defence and Witness 1 & 2. A small tight cast, with lots of quasi-legal nonsense. I was lucky enough to end up playing most roles, not least because of the hideous traffic jams that marred the whole of Nottingham for hours, delaying a third of our team. It might have had some effect on audiences too, as we saw far fewer folks in the streets that in previous years. Ho hum. I had an absolutely marvellous time. Hearing Judge Duncan screaming away behind closed doors, myself mounting a vigorous defence (against Marilyn’s thorny prosecution) for poor Alistair accused of thinking about stealing birdseed (he couldn’t possibly have done – he never thinks!), waxing lyrical as a defendant in my maudlin teenage diary, and countless things I’ve forgotten. It was a blast, and I really want to do it again, somewhere, soon… Any offers? 

  I am the LAW

I am a felt-tip pen

Last Week, Sunday 9 February 2020. I've been doing things, honest, I just can't always remember what they were... #lightnight #Lego #birdsofprey #octoberfaction #diary Midweek Confusion OK, so this next week thing has slightly got away from me. As ever, by this point in a new week my recollection of the seven days past is blurring...

#Birds of Prey #blood pressure #DC films are terrible #DC movies #drugs #film review #Health #medication #MissImp: Improv Comedy Theatre Nottingham #Netflix #October Faction #The Glowstick Trials #TV review

[kindabraveandlittlestupid]

A Love/Hate Review of the movie Black Panther and my thoughts on feelings on this MCU addition. Please note these are just my feelings and thoughts on the film, its an opinion and I am simply one guy from the internet so if there is something you agree with (great) and something you disagree with (also great) just know I am not looking to have a fight over an opinion, which lets be frank have very little influence over the real world and your own like/dislikes.

After watching the trailer and months later stepping into the movie theater, I carried with me three concerns I hopped the movie would address. The first was noting Wakanda’s isolationism in the trailer wondering why a country so advanced would allow so much chaos to go on around them which was addressed and also a main plot point in the movie carrying some good political messages with it. A+. The second was a concern for the score of the movie worried they might go the way of Blade or Daredevil letting a bunch of artists put some random songs to the movie which would feel out of place but instead they opted for the orchestra with some heavy influences from proper African music. A++. The last prejudgment was the suit being bulletproof which I could get behind with Vibranium but somehow not being affected kinetic energy (momentum) from a projectile IE AK 47 being shot at him close range. Which he would have jerked back after being shot but instead shrugged the bullets and absorbed their energy. D -. Call me a stickler but I take the Neil deGrasse Tyson approach to movies and let science influence my opinion when watching while the kinetic energy could be absorbed he is still wearing a soft flexible suit which would have had him bruised and on his ass during that first convoy attack scene.

With those three concerns addressed going into the movie, I found there were some things I loved about the movie and somethings I hated as well. I know not everyone will agree with me on this but like I said its an opinion and we all have the right to be critical of art. It's once you go from being a critic to making personal attacks against other people or the actors/crew themselves that your opinion doesn't matter anymore... looking at you Star Wars Fanboys attacking The Last Jedi.

Shuri (Love) Getting past the immediate point that I think she is beautiful, she is easily my favorite character in the movie. She injected the humor, was a proper heroine and above all else the smart girl in the movie. I don’t know why it's so important to me personally being a white guy and all but I been wanting to see a female scientist role filled by Black Woman. Perhaps it was the fact Ghostbusters 3 had that chance but dropped the ball with Leslie Jones, The Martain had a bunch of white astronauts and only one of them was Latino, Marvel itself had been lacking a smarty character who wasn't Stark or Strange, or perhaps Geostorm (god knows why I watched that movie) had a black astronaut female but I can only remember her in one scene. I know lots of people got excited for Black Panther for its dominantly African American cast (no love for Luke Cage?) but to me personally seeing Shuri as the inventor of Wakanda was the major win in the movie and I hope to see more of her in the next Infinity War and BP2. 

Heart-Shaped Herb/Vibranium (Love/Hate) I am used to many films using a MacGuffin and/or Applied Phlebotinum where something or some item seems to have a cure-all effect for the storyline that explains everything away without explaining anything. The Force, the Infinity Stones, Asgard Magic = Science, and so on most of the Marvel movies utilize something like this so I am no subtracting points completely for Black Panther doing the same but whenever I asked questions about how Black Panther never gets bruised I hear (it's because of the Herb) and no one seems too eager to break down the ‘How’ aspect behind the story. With Stark we could believe in the concept of the arc generator powering his suit and keeping shrapnel from his heart, it was explained during the movie. Black Panther, on the other hand, felt like the writers kinda mumbling “Something something something Vibranium allows them to do it” without investing to the audience's intelligence that might be able to follow along with the logic. Maybe I watched too much Star Trek and appreciate a universe that had explanations and limitations for its fantasy tech but there it is.

Killmonger (Hate) Perhaps spoiled again by good writing in other movies or years of reading comics in both the DC and Marvel Universe but Killmonger (to me) was an underdeveloped villain that quite honestly seemed kinda forced on the internet community as "the Best Marvel Villain" which I honestly feel he isn't deserving of. Here is a list of reason why I don't think he was the best.

CIA Colonizer - I realize Colonizer is supposed to be at a sting for early white exploration building colonies around Africa, Asia, India, etc but hard to feel empathy for Killmonger when served their interests so wholeheartedly. He felt justified for learning their tactics by going to Afghanistan and racking up kills of people who were not colonizers at all just Afganies. 

Dead Girlfriend - He seemed to have a relationship with one girl who was going to come back with him to Wakanda before Killmonger shot her in order to get to Klaw. I am aware this is supposed to make him look like a cold-hearted killer but its just another victim under his rampage towards the throne.

Civil War - The attempted to play up that this was his plan all along as some sort of calculated long game but the underhanded approach of trying to shame T’Challa only fractured the Wakanda people and undermind his legitimate claim to the throne. Not to mention the resulting battle ended up leaving hundreds of Wakandans dead on a battlefield when the two factions clashed.

A Stupid Fucking Plan - So his plan, in the end, was to export weapons to communities to fight ‘colonizers’ all over the world. Sounds like a solid idea but is it? It was one of those plans that were less sound the more you think about it. Was he going to deliver arms to who? Northern African Terrorists (Boko Haram) the same who kidnapped hundreds of school girls? Was he going to deliver it to inner cities in the United States where there would be massive collateral damage in black neighborhoods and where there is a real chance that some might use their weapons against each other first? If the mission was to simply sow chaos into the world then yeah its a pretty good plan to start distributing Vibranium weapons but that was not his objective, he claimed liberation which would lead to lots of bloodshed that would likely leave African Communities decimated along with most major cities.

So that's why I wasn't a big fan of Killmonger. His story was yes tragic but he adopted the means/methods of the people he hated. He seemed to have killed more of his own people or people in Afghanistan then he did any white oppressor. And lastly, his plan to dishonor T’Challa and deliver weapons around the world wasn’t a strategy of someone playing the long game but rather someone who was acting out in anger and emotion. If that is what makes him a good villain fine but I think Black Mariah tapped into that tragic backstory better.

M'Baku (Love) I suppose I liked M’Baku because he was clearly an honorable leader. Sure he challenged T’Challa for the Throne as was his right but when the others arrived to provide him the flower so he might fight Killmonger himself he instead revealed he saved T’Challa and gave the man who beat him in fair combat. He could have easily taken the flower and attempt to take the throne a second time. He could have let T’Challa float down the river to wherever but he chooses not too. Gotta show him some love for not letting temptation sway him.

W’Kabi (Hate) Not much character development invested into W’Kabi but he was presented as a friend of T’Challa and lover (maybe husband) to Okoye. I suppose what bothered me was how quickly he shifted loyalty from T’Challa to Killmonger. Not the long-standing relationship presented in the movie and also one that shouldn't have happened considering a 30-second conversation with T’Challa would reveal that Eric was working with Klaw and that the only reason WHY Klaw escaped was that Eric blew a hole in the wall. I wonder if there will be redemption for W’Kabi in the next movie or not. I certainly hope so.

Nakia (Love/Hate...Ok Love) I loved her and I hate the fact her role was so little in the movie (doesn't hurt that she to was easy on the eyes). I always appreciate someone who represents the altruistic part of society and isn't willing to sit back and watch the world burn around her. I struggle to think of any male or female character of the MCU who believes in that sort of behavior as purely as she did. Maybe Danny Rand (if he wouldn't shut up about being Iron Fist and training in K'un-Lun) had his altruistic moments by wanting to sell medication at cost but that isn't quite on the level of activity that Nakia was. Either way, I want to see more of her and see her a greater influence on T’Challa. Also, why didn’t she fly to Oakland to help Shuri setup the Wakanda Outreach centers?

Wakanda AI (Love) I know its such a small thing but think Trevor Noah is a great guy. The kind of guy we need more of in the United States to tip the scales away from the more conservative extremists. I was completely unaware he was in the movie and when I found out he was the AI for Shuri’s lab I went back to watch the movie a second time just to hear his voice. As a political nerd and just general nerd, I love little details like that laced into the film as ‘easter’ eggs and putting forward one of South Africas (and now Americas) greatest progressive comedians into the film made me happy.

Attack on Museum (Hate) I understand the whole first act was basically to help establish Killmongers character but his approach of working with Klaw for some reason seemed well... pointless. He could have any point shot Klaw threw his ass on an airplane and flown all the way down to Wakanda and challenged Black Panther for the title of King without any underhanded approach and ALL the tribes would have been loyal to him. I am sure some people think it was a way to disgrace the Black Panther but there was no way he could predict if T’Challa would kill Klaw or put him directly on one of their private jets and flown all the way back to Wakanda after the Hong Kong chase scene. Its one of those things that seemed to rely on chance to much instead of planning it out properly. I am sure someone will say he (Killmonger) tipped off the CIA so they would bring him in first but I dont buy that.

Oakland (Love) Perhaps a little bit too much of community pride is the addition of Oakland to the movie and me being a Bay Area local I am always a bit prideful when one of the local cities makes it into a show or movie. I feel San Francisco has always been our go-to city for movie magic in Nor Cal and even San Jose/Silicon Valley has become popular with the tech community dominating the region but its good to see the 510 get some love as well. Well done Marvel.

Conclusion So all and all Black Panther was pretty good. I think they should explain more the Vibranium and Heart Shaped Herb some more in next movie and apply some limitations. I think this movie has provided a great cast of strong women for young girls to look up too. An I am excited to see a part two and/or part three to the series. Even more so the conclusion of Infinity War.

If I were to put it into my top ten marvel movies...

Iron Man

Thor: Ragnarok

Avengers: Infinity War

Guardians of the Galaxy Part 1

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Spiderman: Homecoming

Black Panther

Guardians of the Galaxy Part 2

Doctor Strange

Captain America: Winter Soldier

Hope no one is upset its not my personal top five but I am trying to be honest with myself in what brought me the most joy. Look on the bright side I didnt add Blade or Deadpool onto the list which might have pushed some movies (including Black Panther) lower on my list. ^_^

With Regards Michael California

#MovieReview #Black Panther