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!
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!
I heard some of the controversy about the infidelity of BBC’s “The Watch” to its Discworld source material. Even Terry Pratchett’s daughter stepped in to say such. I was totally prepared to be bemused by another fairly rote police procedural adapted from a wonderfully quirky property dear to my heart. Then I watched the trailer. And …
Well, it’s not exactly that. It’s not feeling like Discworld, which gives more credence to the complaints I was hearing. But it doesn’t actually look entirely bad? It looks like something vaguely intriguing that could stand on its own merits, bolstering the opinions of those who question why they bothered to attach it to Pratchett’s legendarium in the first place. Beyond the dollars of course.
But yeah. I do so love Discworld, and this is not going to hit that spot, but maybe it’ll miss by a margin wide enough to make it land in a place I might enjoy for completely unrelated reasons. Like crashing a plane to Hawaii in Spain or something.
Bonus Question!
Best disc?
Aten, aspect of the Egyptian sun god Ra!
Of the DC shows, “Legends of Tomorrow” has been the clear favourite for me, in large part because it’s a weird, whimsical time travel romp that’s especially
brazen in its embrace of superhero surreality.
Which has often been what “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” didn’t do. Where “Legends” felt like comic book “Doctor Who”, “Agents” felt like an “X-Files” imitation with little connection to justify the placement of “Marvel’s” before its name. It’s not bad. It just often felt bland to me.
But this final season has turned that around for me. From what I can tell, it started by taking a page from the “Legends” book and went on to take several chapters, and I’ve honestly been having more fun with it than I did at its previous high point, which would have been the end of the first season when it was allowed to get crazy with the aftermath of “Winter Soldier”.
So yeah. For anyone who wants a slightly more directed take on comic book time travel questing from the Marvel side of things after exhausting DC’s version, this last season of “Agents” gives solid satisfaction.
Bonus Question!
Best Marvel Agent?
I remember liking Agent Zero in the old Weapon X comics.
I had to decide between two movies to see recently. Which to see first. The obvious choice would have been “Sonic the Hedgehog”, since I’m always up for a silly adventure like that. The fact that Jim Carrey became my first favourite actor after I saw “The Mask” at day camp when I was 3 or 4 is just a bonus on top of everything else that guaranteed I’d see that movie. However, I became increscently intrigued by “Fantasy Island”. Old television shows have been rebooted into new movies for ages, and they’ve switched tone and genre before. But I can’t recall any example wherein an old comedic series became a modern horror. And that very thing, which so piqued my curiosity, combined with the surprising financial success of “Sonic”, made me think that “Fantasy Island” would have a tenure in theatres far outmatched by the furry blue dude, and I hit up “Fantasy Island” first.
And then I realized Ryan Hansen was in it, and that dude resonates in everything I see him in.
So yeah. A good time.
Bonus Question!
Best furry blue dude?
Over the summer, I started watching that new “Four Weddings and a Funeral” series just for the sake of it, but I eventually came to realise that, despite its name, it’s essentially an amalgam of the greatest hits from the guy who did the original film. And that includes “Love Actually”, which introduced me to that director, Richard Curtis, around this time of year a decade ago. I was in hospital at the end of summer vacation, and watching that movie endlessly on the hospital’s DVD player in my room on bed rest did a lot to brighten my spirits. I didn’t know that it was a Christmas movie before I saw it, and now it’s basically in my mind as a summer movie. So yeah. Cheers for releasing this new mishmash of a show at the right time for me. I feel the love, which is, actually, all around us.
Bonus Question!
Favourite “Love Actually” subplot?
Probably the Bill Nighy one. Maybe Hugh Grant though?
“Endgame” just came out. “Game of Thrones” is ramping up to its finale. Talk about spoilers and the ethics thereof has not been more prevalent in recent memory.
Now, I remember hearing about some study a few years ago where scientists claimed to prove that spoilers can enhance the consumption of a story because humans subconsciously enjoy putting together a puzzle when they know the end result. Which is fine for some people.
But in recent weeks, I’ve heard that study cited far too much by all sorts of people who hold it up to be some sort of universal truth. But humanity’s not a hive mind, and it’s insane to claim that someone who avoids spoilers actually just doesn’t know that they secretly want them.
I’m not the most fervent opponent of spoilers. Its a personal decision. Like everything, people bear some responsibility for avoiding what they don’t want in their lives, but they also have the right to be annoyed at those who ruin their fun. People generally understand themselves enough to know what they want, and no study is going to trump individual taste. It’s not like vaccination. That stuff doesn’t care if you like needles. It’ll help you anyway. Not the same deal here.
Bonus Question!
Best needle?
Gun.