People keep saying “The Incredibles” is the best live action adaptation of the Fantastic Four.
It’s good, but for real, that award has to go to the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” TV show.
Check it! Family, time travel, big gruff sweet guy. Even a council of Reeds!
When do I have to turn on Endgame so that Thor knocks Thanos’s block off right as the New Year’s ball drops?
I just saw “Shang-Chi”! It was the first movie I’ve seen in theatres since I went to “Onward” on the last day cinemas were open before the pandemic. And it was the right one to go to. I was expecting some sort of crime intrigue adventure with martial arts and family drama. But yo! Vague spoilers? It was so much more! It veered hard into mystical wildness from the jump, and that was right in my jam.
Like alright. Just going to say it. Dude rode a dragon. And that wasn’t even a clear contender for the most fabulous thing.
And for real, everyone had such wonderful chemistry with each other. The whole swishy thing was joyous throughout.
It just felt right to join some friends in seeing this film put the “cinema” back in “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Watching “Black Widow” at home was fun, but that was a different thing.
I heartily endorse all this big screen magic wuxia fantasy.
I was just thinking about the new Black Widow movie in the context of a recent comic that featured the character’s return from the dead. In comics, unless you’re forgettable enough for your death and subsequent return to pass without much notice, there’s probably going to be a story about that. In this case, cloning was the answer. If I recall right, Black Widow died and came back in a cloned but otherwise unaltered body and fought against a bunch of other Black Widow clones that were under the control of the cloners. Probably the Red Room?
And now, since everyone’s predicting ways in which this prequel movie will have ramifications for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I have this image in my head of a stinger where someone stumbles across this room with countless vats of Natasha clones to open the door for the return of Black WidScarJo. Maybe alongside the new blond one.
Bonus Question!
Best room of clone vats?
Shadows!
I’m somewhat infamous among people who know me for …
Well, probably a bunch of things. But if I weren’t infamous for all of those, I might be infamous for liking enough stuff to the point where there’s not really any room for stuff to hate.
Which apparently isn’t the standard way of things? I don’t know. I’m never great at the standard way of things.
But recently, I’ve noticed an increscent amount of space for vindication of my naive enjoyment of things that are not widely hailed masterpieces. As a kid with no memory of not knowing Vader’s true identity, I was ready for more Star Wars long before “The Phantom Menace” came out, and “Attack of the Clones” is still my favourite film in the entire saga. While I can generally agree with everyone that Chris Evans is wonderful in the role of Steve Rogers, I’ve also said that there are other actors who could capture that kind of energy, but Chris’s Johnny Storm was inimitable. And the rest of the cast worked for me too!
And of course these are just a small sampling of the opinions that were vociferously contradicted by the voice of the populace for years.
But in recent years, more people are constantly rising up to agree with this sort of positivity. I noticed it to a high degree with the Star Wars prequels, though I’m sure some would write that off as a response to sequel discomfort. But now people are even coming out in support of the early 2000s Fantastic Four films, which for years seemed to be the most execrable superhero movies of the modern era to the point that scores of unimaginative cynics claimed they proved that the property was unadaptable long before the 2015 outing?
Such turnarounds warm my heart. Maybe any dumb positive opinion just has to live long enough to become smart.
Bonus Question!
Best clone?
Stryfe!
Probably not actually. But it’s fun to say.
There are rumours of a new non-white MCU Punisher, and of course people are complaining about malefic social justice agendas and stuff.
But here’s the thing. If the Punisher just stays as a white dude in his next screen appearance, those same complainers are just going to whine about the inevitable swathes of articles that decry the new Punisher franchise for being a glorified ode to fragile white masculinity or whatever.
But if Frank Castle isn’t white, the volume of those articles will be severely diminished, and all of Frank’s fans will still get a satisfying Punisher movie or whatever it is without having to cavil about that polemic aftermath. Everybody wins! Or at least no one loses?
Well, maybe someone loses. There is one group to whom my mollifying arguments do not apply. Yup! White supremacists. For whatever reason, Frank, through no fault of his or Marvel, seems to have an inordinate number of avowed bigots in his fan base, and obviously, they’re always going to want a white protagonist. But those are some feelings I care even less about.
Bonus Question!
Best castle?
Howl’s. It’s in the sky, dudes!
So. Everyone knows Evan Peters, the Quicksilver from the Fox movies who was far less accurate to the comics than the Age of Ultron version even if I liked him more, was cast in the WandaVision series. Everyone assumes he’ll be reprising his Quicksilver role. But was he even Quicksilver to begin with?
Initially, he reminded me more of Iceman, which was great since the Iceman of the movies, while he was portrayed well, didn’t seem to be written in a way that emphasized the quirkiness of the comics version. But now, especially amidst rumours of an imminent assemblage of Young Avengers in the MCU, I’m recalling a character Evan’s Quicksilver, with his youthfulness, charm, jauntiness, and goggles, resembled even more: Tommy Shepherd, the speedster named Speed. He’s the late arrival brother of one of the Young Avengers’ founders and the reincarnated son of Wanda and the Vision.
So. Instead of doing that thing of bringing in a Fox Human Torch to play an unrelated MCU character or bringing in a Sony Spider-Man to play that same Spider-Man in a multiverse kind of cameo, maybe they’re doing a bit of a mix of both where they’re bringing in an actor who played one character who was basically another to play the MCU version of the character they basically were.
So. Evan Peters is Speed. Calling it now.
Bonus Question!
How was that Quicksilver goggle costume?
Like this.
I’ve heard that Richard E. Grant has been cast in the new Loki show, and people are speculating that he’ll be playing an older version of Loki, in line with the weird time happenings of the series. I remember when he was cast in an X-Men film, and I hoped he’d be playing Mister Sinister, who’d also been teased for an appearance. But despite that perfect casting, he turned out to just be playing a random scientist. And not Mister Sinister playing a random scientist, which that character has been known to do.
But I think the aptitude he’d have for portraying Loki would compensate for that missed opportunity. Especially since “Loki” feels partially like a Marvel take on “Doctor Who”, and Grant could knock out that part too. And I think he might have in some comedy sketch or something? I don’t know. But yeah.
Bonus Question!
Best Marvel take on “Doctor Who”?
Probably Dan Slott’s Silver Surfer series. If for no reason beyond the dude’s obvious passion for the franchise. Actually, I liked when he basically turned Hank Pym into the Doctor before that in his Avengers book. I’ll go with that.
Alright. I know I've always said that Andrew Garfield was my favourite Spidey, and I still think he was a fresh breeze of cavalier air after the somewhat dour Tobey Maguire, who still wasn't really bad at his take, but "Far From Home" convinced me to join everyone else in 2016 and accept that Tom Holland is god tier Spidey. And that's even with my soft spot for the Ultimate Peter Garfield reminded me of. Tom even nails the aspects of that version. It's not really news to anyone but me. In some ways, it's not even news to me. But Tommy's a wondrous distillation of some kind of Platonic Spider-Ideal.
And the movie as a whole is my favourite Spider-Man film. Even its mix of high school jinks and rangy adventure brings to my mind the Ultimate comics that elevated
the character to new heights in my young mutant heart. Also, while I'm somewhat ambivalent about the direction of the credits scene, the character who steered it was a welcome surprise of the grandest order.
The fact that Mysterio's presented as a fusion of my two favourite Avengers doesn't hurt either.
Bonus Question!
Mysterio's described as a mix of Iron Man and Thor, just like Sigurd Stark, the Iron Hammer of the Infinity Warps event. Who wins?
Mysterio's extra stylish in the movie, but he's still just a trickster. Not even a trickster god. Iron Hammer's
got divine science magic. And a hammer. So . . .
