• Tag Archives Marvel Comics

  • Venom & SPIDER-MAN: Far From Home

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The 2018 Venom movie is a reboot of the character which draws inspiration from the Planet of the Symbiotes comic plotline, which makes it a little strange that people were surprised it came across like a love story; it was a love story. Overall I think this focuses a little too much on being goofy and would’ve been better if Brock had more agency instead of basically being piloted by the symbiote for much of the runtime. The visual effects are solid though and I’m now cautiously optimistic for the upcoming Maximum Carnage adaptation.

    The second of the Marvel co-produced Spider-Man films, Far From Home, acts as a postscript to Endgame (which is mainly why I watched it, having been ambivalent about Homecoming) in addition to advancing its own ongoing relationship plotline. It has pretty much all the same pros/cons as its prequel (impressive visuals; Parker’s still in school) and will probably end up better if you aren’t familiar with the featured villain ahead of time.

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  • LEGIⓧN & THE ALIENIST

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Based off of a Marvel Comics’ character, the 3-season television series Legion is a study in high-concept insanity. It takes guts to make something so deliberately incoherent, to essentially thread together one concept episode after another until you have a consistently inconsistent schizophrenic tapestry… that I can’t deny. Doesn’t mean it’s worth watching though.

    The Alienist is something quite a bit different. A Victorian era thriller with police procedural elements set in New York City, its first season mainly busies itself with highlighting police corruption and reminding people that prostitution is a gender-neutral profession. I’m not at all surprised that it had a middling reception (though I liked the first half or so), especially since the narrative basically falls apart once the focus shifts to ‘the west’.

    The second season, subtitled Angel of Darkness, puts a greater focus on Sara and women’s suffrage in general with the murder victims being babies this time rather than adolescents. The corruption elements here come across as excessive/overwhelming and the work as a whole almost feels less like a thriller and more like soapbox preaching. Meaning I can’t really recommend watching this series either.

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  • Assorted, Mostly DC, Movies

    Posted on by Offkorn

    Went on a brief movie kick recently in a fit of boredom (though I watched the first two on the list below at the time they were released):

    • Detective Pikachu: Reynolds and the pokémon are good; the humans are all extremely cringe.
    • Avengers: Endgame: Does a fantastic job wrapping up all the disparate plotlines featured across the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Surprisingly, a good chunk of it leans strongly toward comedy.
    • Mad Max: Fury Road: Most of it is quite strong… if a little odd in places. The third act however (revisiting the citadel) is a disaster.
    • Suicide Squad: The prologue bits (before they’re captured) are pretty good and the visuals are stellar throughout, but the rest is pretty meh and I wasn’t feeling the ‘forced to fight for the government’ angle.
    • Wonder Woman: Eh. The first two Captain America movies do something similar far more competently.
    • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: This is a very strange movie which plays out like a TV miniseries for the first two-thirds, featuring more thriller elements than action. But then Doomsday appears and holy shit. It’s like night and day; an insanely strong finish worth the price of entry alone (and Wonder Woman is better here than she is in her own movie).
    • Justice League: Not sure what this was supposed to be. An imitation Infinity War? It doesn’t succeed. It’s closer to the first Avengers movie… which is not a good thing.

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  • Marvel Cinematic Universe

    Posted on by Offkorn 2 Comments

    Having recently seen Captain Marvel and wanting to do a little preparation for the upcoming release of Endgame I decided to finally watch a few Marvel movies I’d been passively avoiding following the disappointment of Thor 2 and The Avengers:

    • Guardians of the Galaxy – It’s good. It’s really good with a great mix of comedy & action along with some fantastic character banter.
    • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 – Same as the above.
    • Avengers: Infinity War – The first Avengers movie suffered from being too busy, a problem this one managed to solve through a sort of compartmentalization. It separates the cast into several groups each doing their own thing and then manages to seamlessly merge those separate plotlines into a cohesive whole. It’s quite impressive and Thanos looks much better in motion than he does in still images.

    After the success of those three, and not really wanting to do anything that would require effort, it seemed catching up with a few more was in order:

    • Avengers: Age of Ultron – This starts out pretty meh, and honestly never manages to rise above decent. The only important takeaway is Vision‘s creation.
    • Thor: Ragnarok – This feels less like a movie and more like a TV episode. It’s not bad, and certainly entertaining for the most part, but it very much comes across like an episodic installment. If you’re not planning on watching Infinity War immediately after I’d strongly suggest just reading the plot summary and moving on.
    • Iron Man 2 – I’ve seen a lot of hate/disappointment directed at this movie, and honestly suspect I actually watched it once before and completely forgot everything that happened, but this time around it was a lot of fun.
    • Iron Man 3 – Hated the kid-related subplot and it gave me a very Bruce Wayne kind of feeling overall.

    Despite the mixed results, I was on something of a roll now and decided to move on to the last batch:

    • Captain America: The First Avenger – Very, very different from the other Marvel works. It starts out more period drama than flashy action spectacle, transforming into a relatively low-tech warfare thriller reminiscent of Command & Conquer.
    • Captain America: Winter Soldier – Ah, now here’s the action spectacle I was looking for. Still leans more toward special agent than superhero, and that’s not a bad thing.
    • Captain America: Civil War – Starts off and concludes very Avengers, briefly slipping back into spy games mode in the middle. Won’t make a great deal of sense unless you’ve already seen both the prequel and Age of Ultron.
    • Black Panther – This also happens to be quite a bit different from the other Marvel movies; less in genre though and more in theme and cultural focus. The disconnect/dissonance between the modern day high-tech setting and heavy traditional/tribal imagery is extraordinarily severe.

    So was all that necessary to watch Infinity War/Endgame? No, not at all. If you just want to see those two I would suggest going with the below viewing order:

    1. Age of Ultron (or read its plot summary)
    2. Civil War (just read the plot summary if you haven’t seen Winter Soldier)
    3. Captain Marvel (skip the post-credits scene)
    4. Guardians 1 & 2
    5. Thor: Ragnarok (or read its plot summary)
    6. Infinity War
    7. Endgame

    And maybe try to fit Doctor Strange and Black Panther in there somewhere pre-Ragnarok to cover a few extra references.

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  • Alita: Battle Angel & Captain Marvel

    Posted on by Offkorn 1 Comment

    The live-action Alita movie is pretty bad in ways fairly common to Anime adaptations: Spontaneous romance, questionable character behavior, and suspect plot developments. Then it decides to throw in some of the more eye-rolling tropes from superhero origin stories (“I know kung-fu!“, only worse) as a bonus. The action scenes at least are engaging for the most part, though that’s certainly not enough to outweigh the cringe-worthy performances (Zapan‘s is the only decent one, and even he goes to shit at the end) and face-palming events.

    Captain Marvel is an actually competently constructed adaptation comparatively. Though not without problems (most notably any scene designed to evoke sadness/sympathy) it’s a consistently entertaining mixture of action, comedy, 90’s references, and self-discovery with even the most minor characters getting a brief chance to shine. One aspect which could be taken either way is how events progress/develop at a brisk pace over a short timeframe; on the one hand this keeps you engaged with what’s happening, but on the other it makes the close Danvers-Fury friendship come across as pretty unnatural.

    The take-away here is that I’m definitely not watching any potential Alita sequels in the theater (where skipping through painfully awkward scenes isn’t an option), while I just might end up going to see Avengers: Endgame (which ties directly into Marvel‘s post-credits scene).

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  • Semi-Random Shows

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Some recently watched non-Anime shows that were picked up for no particular reason:

    TV Shows

    • American Gods: Far too much edgy atmosphere and smoke machines masquerading as depth.
    • Daredevil: Apart from some of the action scenes dragging on too long, and some of them just looking ridiculous, this does a good job of balancing the investigative side with the crime-fighting side. The second season is less adept at this and goes too far overboard with the ninja army (it also comes dangerously close to goreporn territory).
    • The Punisher: A lot more varied than expected. That variety ends up being a flaw at first, with events feeling disconnected, but changes into a positive following the point those disparate elements begin interacting.
    • Jessica Jones: The overabundance of early-series sex scenes and flashbacks aside this is a decently engaging gritty drama with an impressively creepy villain.
    • Luke Cage: A very good street-level crime drama. However, The flashbacks are not integrated well and it sort of loses focus as it progresses.
    • Iron Fist: The early series suffers from the psychiatric ward angle, the mid-series corporate scenes feel artificial, and it just suffers in general from coming across like a Macbeth imitation. The martial arts sequences are pretty good though.
    • The Defenders: The ninja army bits are the weakest parts of Daredevil S2 and Iron Fist, and this is completely focused on them so….

    Movies

    • Doctor Strange: Most of the visual effects are pretty interesting (if occasionally overwhelming), but the transition from egotistical neurosurgeon to selfless sorcerer happens far too quickly.

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  • Random Movies & TV Shows

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    On a whim I decided to check out some of the many, many non-Anime TV shows I’ve been ignoring for the past 12 years or so (along with a few movies as well):

    TV Shows

    • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Everyone’s far too smug.
    • Almost Human – A very good buddy-cop action series. It’s practically criminal it only got one season.
    • Alphas – Not bad; the pieces are all there… they just don’t cohere into something greater. It’s serviceable and no more.
    • Andromeda – Eh. Everything about it screams low-budget.
    • Caprica – I don’t know what I was expecting really, but it wasn’t this. It’s an odd collection of disparate elements that don’t really work on any level.
    • Dark Angel – Deliberately avoided watching this in the past for no particular reason. Checked it out now and something about the atmosphere/tone/look doesn’t quite work for me.
    • Defiance – Reminiscent of Farscape and surprisingly good. Both expansive and structurally coherent with an engaging cast of characters. The third season however goes too far off the rails.
    • Falling Skies – Could do with less children and the protagonist’s constantly bemused expression is annoying. Those issues aside it doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be post-apocalyptic survival or hi-tech sci-fi.
    • Nikita – Huh. I wasn’t really expecting anything from this reboot, but it seems to capture the mood and tone of the 1997 version rather well (based on my hazy recollections from that time).
    • Sanctuary – Okayish. Kind of rough around the edges though and the episodic stories are all over the place… deliberately it seems.
    • Sherlock – More like a collection of movies than a TV series/mini-series. While they’re a bit ambling and the lectures are kind of dry (and it becomes more and more unhinged as the seasons progress), there’s some good banter scattered about.
    • Space: Above and Beyond – The sci-fi aspects here are almost incidental; a few visual tweaks and this would easily pass for a conventional war drama.
    • Stargate Atlantis – I don’t like how a random pilot suddenly becomes the hotshot ranking officer protagonist with zero transition time. Other than that it’s perfectly watchable, if formulaic and overly episodic.
    • Stitchers – Only took a look at this because I wanted to see what else the actress who played Claudia in Warehouse 13 was in. Curiously, it reminds me of a peppy Le Femme Nikita… which is surprisingly engaging.
    • The 100 – Remarkably well made post-apocalyptic survival… assuming you don’t mind young protagonists.
    • The Expanse – Pretty good. Reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica if that show happened to have police procedural elements.
    • The Last Ship – Starts out surprisingly similar to Stargate Atlantis, just with stiffer character interactions and far more engaging storytelling. Unfortunately it deteriorates once the focus moves to the government, with events seeming to occur for the sole purpose of artificially dragging things out.
    • The Magicians – Something’s off here. There’s a distinct air of contrivance, with events coming across as especially forced.
    • Threshold – Feels staged; looks awful.
    • Torchword – Doesn’t look professional in the slightest. It’s as though it were filmed in someone’s backyard with a camcorder.
    • Warehouse 13 – Brings to mind a cross between Bones and Fringe. A nice mix of episodic stories, overarching plotlines, and character dynamics… though the dialog can be cringe-inducing at times.
    • Z Nation – The camerawork is all over the place, which gives a distinctly amateurish impression.

    Movies

    • Autómata – Decent enough. Feels more like a TV miniseries than a movie though.
    • Dredd – A solid, entertaining action movie.
    • Green Lantern – There’s a lot going on here, most of it extraneous. The childhood flashback and related family drama along with the whole alien-autopsy subplot, for instance, could’ve been removed without losing anything. Aside from that the only notable aspect is the pretty great CGI.
    • Rogue One – Better than The Force Awakens, but the characters just didn’t grab me.
    • Sherlock Holmes – Good action scenes.
    • Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows – More madcap than the prequel. Which is a positive.
    • Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Average I guess? Neither the characters nor events are particularly interesting and it has the air of fanfiction.

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