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2022 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 2)

20. THE WOMAN KING – While Wakanda Forever was making a bit of a pig’s ear of things, this action-packed historical epic from The Old Guard director Gina Prince-Blythewood tackled broadly similar material and pulled it off without a hitch. I’ve been fascinated with the intriguing story of the Dahomey Amazons for a while now, even before I got into Black Panther and the Dora Milaje they inspired through the MCU, so when I heard there was gonna be a movie about them I got REALLY excited, so I was already pre-programmed to love this movie. Y’know what I’m like around strong woman … anyway, the story here is of the Agojie, the all-female warrior elite of the West African sovereign nation of Dahomey, circa 1823, when king Ghezo (John Boyega), new to the throne and determined to bring his people out from under the oppressive shadow of the slave trade, begins to clash with their aggressive neighbours and the Portuguese slavers who stoke the flames of war in order to grease the shameful wheels of their business. Boyega is, as ever, a noble and charismatic presence in the cast, but OF COURSE this film is dominated by the Amazons themselves – Viola Davis, it turns out, was BORN to play the role of Agojie General Nanisca, the army’s commanding leader, who’s forced to confront a troubling ghost from her well-buried past in the form of a new recruit, Nawi (The Underground Railroad’s Thuso Mbeda, a fiery and intense focus for the story’s driving narrative), a wilful young girl who dreams of becoming a mighty warrior rather than facing a life of drudgery in an ill-made marriage match; Captain Marvel and No Time To Die’s Lashana Lynch, meanwhile, essentially STEALS THE FILM from everybody else as genuine force-of-nature Izogie, a badass veteran fighter whose irreverence is matched only by her ferocity, and Sheila Atim (also from The underground Railroad) brings focus and stately grace to proceedings as Amenza, Nanisca’s close friend and trusted confidante. They’re a fierce and intimidating lot, raising merry hell in a series of explosively blood-soaked set pieces that stir the blood and whiten the knuckles, while the screenplay from Dana Stevens (Life Or Something Like It, The Nightingale) wears its standard historical adventure tropes on its sleeve, turning what could have become tired, rote cliches in the hands of a lesser writer into comforting strengths for all their familiarity. Certainly Prince-Blythewood is on fine form here, clearly having as much fun crafting a stirring epic actioner as she did with her Netflix-based breakthrough, further cementing her status as an emerging blockbuster director of genuine promise. I look forward to seeing what else she’ll deliver when the incoming sequel to The Old Guard arrives …

19. THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH – this adaptation of one of my very favourite William Shakespeare plays is a particularly notable milestone in cinematic history, because for the very first time, writer-director Joel Coen has made a feature film without his ubiquitous filmmaker brother Ethan having anything to do with the project. That being said, Joel’s always been such a dominant force on the DIRECTING side of the Coen Brother’s output that, if you didn’t know this, you’d never know Ethan was absent on this one, because it’s still EVERY INCH a Coen film. It’s also Denzel Washington’s first time working for either Brother, but he’s SO magnificent as one of the greatest fictional villains OF ALL TIME that you won’t have any idea WHY they never worked together before. He’s absolutely MESMERISING as Macbeth, the doom-courting Thane of Cawdor, who decides to murder his way to the throne of Medieval Scotland after receiving a very tempting prophecy from a trio of creepy-ass witches right after a decisive battle sees him get one hell of a royal promotion – Washington sizzles and sears in every scene, whether he’s smouldering with pregnant understated menace or exploding with un-righteous fury as Macbeth is haunted by gruesome ghosts or egged on by his scheming, ambitious wife. Coen-regular Frances McDormand matches him in every scene as the DEFINITIVE Lady Macbeth, particularly as she crumbles spectacularly once the guilt of what they’ve done starts to weigh her down; Brendan Gleeson is typically grand yet cuddly as ineffectual ill-fated King Duncan, while Harry Potter star Harry Melling continues to prove that he's grown up into a truly DYNAMITE star-in-the-making as his untested but prematurely put-upon son Malcolm, The Boys’ Alex Hassell is obsequious but complex as duplicitous young nobleman Ross, and Straight Outta Compton’s Corey Hawkins makes for a suitably strapping and dynamic Macduff (ALWAYS my favourite character in the play and EVERY adaptation). Joel Coen has once again dropped a blinder on us, solo-effort or not, making Sakespeare’s text breathe in fresh and interesting ways while he weaves a beautifully bleak and haunting visual spell, unleashing compositions on us that recall the subtly unsettling weird mundanity of American Gothic art or the surrealism of German expressionist cinema, especially in the film’s very unusual interpretation of the supernatural, as well as framing the story’s bloody and decidedly non-glamorous violence with an almost clinical detachment which perfectly complements the gorgeously stylised world he’s built, all of it topped off with an unsettlingly lowkey atmospheric score from regular Coen collaborator Carter Burwell. Thoroughly deserving all the immense acclaim it’s had heaped upon it, this definitely proved to be one of the year’s early surprises and one of its most downright exquisite works of art. Most important of all, though, Joel’s taken what’s always been a definitive Shakespearean villain and turned him into one of the all-time GREAT Coen protagonists ...

18. DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS – Okay, maybe I am being A LITTLE hard on this year’s MCU offerings, I’ll admit this one IS pretty great. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but there’s no denying that it’s a PROUD example of its breed, and if I’m honest in some ways it’s certainly better than its titular character’s FIRST feature in the franchise canon. Ultimately a HUGE reason for this undeniable success is the triumphant return to the Marvel stable of Spider-Man’s original big screen shepherd, Sam Raimi, who MAGNIFICENTLY makes up for the shortcomings of his frustratingly muddled and underwhelming third entry for the Web-Headed-Wall-Crawler with this far more solid effort. Sure, it has its flaws and once again there are points where it’s clearly trying to do too much, but this time round Raimi manages to rein in the excess JUST ENOUGH to keep things consistent and coherent throughout, and the end result is one of the MCU’s darkest films to date. 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home saw Benedict Cumberbatch’s former Sorcerer Supreme tackle the Multiverse for the first time, and now he’s got his hands full dealing with the aftermath as the emergence of ‘Verse-hopping teen America Chavez (The Baby-Sitters’ Club’s Xochitl Gomez), a young superhero with the ability to “punch” through dimensional walls sets all his hard-earned efforts to repair the damage spinning into chaos. America’s been targeted by the Scarlet Witch herself, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), who wants to use her powers to tear through the walls between worlds so she can be reunited with her “lost” children after the tragic conclusion of Wandavision, but Strange takes issue with her methods, foreseeing nothing but darkness and ruin across the Multiverse should she be allowed to pursue her insane plan, which sets them at loggerheads with the fate of all existence in the balance. Raimi’s presence in the director’s chair in lieu of original Doctor Strange helmer Scott Derrickson makes sense when you realise this is the MCU’s first true, full-blooded HORROR MOVIE, Marvel wisely bringing one of the greatest directors in the genre’s history onboard to usher in a pervading atmosphere of pregnant dread, chilling suspense and jolting terror to many of the set-pieces while one-time Avenger Maximoff has been ingeniously recast in the mould of a genuine horror movie MONSTER, frequently triggering some of the film’s most ruthlessly effective jump-scares. As a result, while this movie does (just) pull its punches enough for its PG-13 rating, it’s DEFINITELY NOT one for the kids, and while it’s certainly got plenty of the ubiquitous MCU heart, spectacle and winning sense of humour, this is sometimes pretty dark, hard-hitting stuff. (A good yardstick for you – remember that What If? Marvel Zombies episode? It's very much like THAT.) Cumberbatch is once again on TOP FORM as Strange, treading an admirably fine line between hero and prick as the erstwhile Master of the Mystic Arts navigates the murky waters between what’s right for the greater good and what he knows in his heart should REALLY be done, while Gomez is a phenomenal find for Kevin Feige and the other MCU bigshots, emotive, effervescent and often downright lovable as a simple teenage girl trapped by her unavoidable circumstances in the eye of a veritable hurricane of fate, and it’s wonderful to see Rachel McAdams return in more than one form as Strange’s one-that-got-away, Dr Christine Palmer, who brings an important grounding element to her scenes as the one entirely human anchor for the audience to experience all this craziness through, as well as the ever-reliable Benedict Wong as, ahem, Wong, once librarian at Kamar-Taj but now the CURRENT Sorcerer Supreme (because Strange got Blipped for five years), who’s just permanently done with all his shit, and always down to remind him not to be such a PRAT; there’s also a phenomenal who’s-who of supporting turns and cameos from new and returning faces I’d be painfully remiss in spoiling for anyone who wants to experience some of the Multiverse’s ingenious twists and turns, although I can say that’s it’s one of the film’s biggest momentary joys that Raimi even found time to get his old mate Bruce Campbell a fun little role in this too. The real runaway star of the film, however, is Elizabeth Olsen, who does a beautiful job of taking a heroic mainstay in the narrative of the MCU and, through some VERY clever screenwriting and character development, twisting her into something dark, dangerous, sometimes genuinely terrifying and ultimately heartbreakingly tragic in her paradoxical sympathy (I swear, your heart breaks for Wanda even when she’s scaring the wits out of you). Sure, at times this is glaring by-the-numbers MCU and there are times when it doesn’t quite work, but there are also moments of downright GENIUS on offer here, from some elaborately inventive action sequences (a scene involving music as a weapon is beautifully conceived), while the skill of everyone involved is certainly great enough to keep things on the right track and paper over the cracks when they DO appear. Certainly Raimi’s firing on all cylinders here, producing what’s most definitely his best film since the heady days of Spider-Man 2, and it certainly does an admirable job of establishing the Multiverse in the MCU in the interests of opening the franchise up to much wider scope in the interests of moving forward into its future. Maybe bringing him on again for another entry somewhere down the line might be a smart move for Feige and the boys if THESE are the kind of results he can deliver …

17. HELLRAISER – I’ll admit, when I first heard they were making a new soft reboot movie adaptation of Clive Barker’s classic cosmic horror novella The Hellbound Heart, which of course spawned a much beloved cinematic franchise (even though it ultimately went off the rails after the third instalment, albeit with a few decent blips in the interim), I was deeply sceptical. Then I heard that it was going to be directed by David Bruckner, who did such a phenomenal job with the spectacularly creepy horror flick The Ritual, and I started breathing a little easier. Then I heard about some of the casting choices, and it sounded like they were definitely heading in the right direction … and then I saw the trailer, and THAT had me frothing in my excitement. Needless to say when it finally arrived I POUNCED, and it did not disappoint me in the slightest, as you can see. XD Thankfully this has followed the smart move of taking things RIGHT BACK to the start, although this time round they’re trying things a little different, introducing a new, richer narrative take that expands on the established mythology while also carving a fresh path for the future. That being said, the classic ingredients are still present and correct – the lethal puzzle box, the Faustian pact, the Cenobites, it’s all there, and all handled exquisitely. Odessa A’zion (Fam, Grand Army) makes for a plucky and determined but also compellingly vulnerable lead as Riley, a recovering drug addict who stumbles upon the cursed box after one bad night drives her to do something really stupid, but then things go from bad to worse when the device is triggered, the Cenobites come calling and her brother Matt (13 Reasons Why’s Brandon Flynn) is taken. Now she must solve the mystery behind the box’s ever-evolving puzzle in an increasingly desperate bid to find her brother and save her soul from unknowable, nightmarish torments, tumbling headfirst down a dark rabbit hole of twisted conspiracy and demonic vice spearheaded by monstrous nihilistic playboy Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic). Your heart genuinely hurts for A’zion as she goes through hell, but she’s got some impressive steel in her when things get hard, while there’s interesting supporting turns from Adam Faison as Matt’s sweet, straight-laced boyfriend Colin and Drew Starkey (Love, Simon and The Hate U Give) as Riley’s twitchy enabling lover Trevor; Visnjic, meanwhile, brings his inherent edgy dark side to the fore as a suitably despicable, entitled villain, and the Cenobites are a spectacularly nightmarish bunch, especially Sense8’s wondrous Jamie Clayton, who brings us an intriguing and strangely sensuous new take on fan-favourite Pinhead. The horror elements are, interestingly, somewhat stripped back throughout much of the film, Bruckner again clearly preferring to value atmospherics and plot-based intrigue over gruesome shocks and cheap jumpscares as we follow Riley while she delves into a suitably labyrinthine mystery, although when the film DOES decide to get scary it sure don’t pull its punches, delivering some truly twisted moments that are sure to please the hardcore faithful. Gods know I was impressed throughout – no only is this a PHENOMENAL step back in the right direction for a franchise that’s been flagging for far too long, but it’s also a glorious tribute to the undeniable horror master who birthed the original. Clive deserves to be proud, from the looks of this his baby is in very safe hands indeed.

16. BULLET TRAIN – The award for the year’s most spectacularly OTT blockbuster went to the latest magnificently bonkers darkly comic action-packed thrill-ride from hot shit stuntman-turned-director David Leitch (the first John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw), which has a title which tells you pretty much all you really NEED to know about this going in. Convinced? Then just go and WATCH IT, you won’t be disappointed, and there are plenty of neat little twists and turns in this that mean this is best watched going in good and cold (ESPECIALLY if you haven’t seen any of the trailers yet). Still with us? Well all right then … adapting Japanese author Kōtarō Isaka’s popular black comedy novel Maria Beetle, it follows a disparate collection of contract killers and a professional thief onboard a speeding Japanese bullet train who are brought into frequent violent collision by a series of bizarre events and the deadly machinations of a brutal legendary crime boss known as The White Death. Brad Pitt is already well-established as a bankable action hero who can easily pull off the physical requirements of his leading man role here, but once again he shows us that what he TRULY excels at is COMEDY, winning us over with brilliant hangdog exasperation as Ladybug, the thief in question who’s long suffered from BIBLICAL levels of bad luck, hired to go onboard purely to steal a briefcase full of money, only to find his personal curse keeps throwing him into increasingly crazy confrontations while he’s desperate to just GET OFF THE TRAIN and deliver his ill-gotten cargo; Kick-Ass’ Aaron Taylor Johnson and Atlanta’s Brian Tyree Henry, meanwhile, are an unapologetically chaotic pair as Tangerine and Lemon, “twin” British hitmen who’ve been charged with rescuing The White Death’s son (Percy Jackson’s Logan Lerman) from kidnappers and returning him to his father, although their constant bickering quickly lands them in much deeper shit once Ladybug’s stolen the case-full of ransom money they liberated while they were at it; then there’s the Father (Snake Eyes’ Andrew Koji, hard-bitten and magnificently vulnerable throughout), who boards the train with the intention of killing the person responsible for putting his young son in a coma, only to fall foul of the devilish machinations of The Prince (The Kissing Booth’s Joey King, manipulative and frequently downright CHILLING in her sociopathic Machiavellian brilliance), a mysterious young woman plotting something truly TERRIBLE when the train reaches its destination; and finally there are excellent supporting turns from the likes of Deadpool 2’s Zazie Beetz, Michael Shannon, Sandra Bullock (wonderful as Ladybug’s much put-upon handler Maria) and the legendary Hiroyuki Sanada in a variety of rich and meaty roles I really couldn’t begin to get into because of, y’know, SPOILERS … needless to say Leitch and his crew are on comfortably firm ground to bring more of their patented overblown mayhem to bear in a series of explosive and frequently batshit mental set-pieces that also play beautifully into the film’s jet-black sense of humour – this is a story that SHOULD NOT be taken seriously for a second, and the hit-rate for the substantial procession of quickfire gags, skits and ingenious call-backs and references is one of the highest I’ve ever seen in an action comedy. The end result is a work of pure mad genius, and despite the critical detractions (and somewhat surprising accusations of whitewashing given the author himself gave the adaptation his full blessing) this is about as close to perfect as an action movie can get, a precision-crafted masterpiece you need to pay close attention to since there’s so much going on and it’s all so intricately important because every brilliant little detail ALWAYS pays off in the end. This is BY FAR the most fun I had at the cinema all summer, some of the most fun I had with a movie ALL YEAR even, and I can’t recommend it enough.

15. DC LEAGUE OF SUPER PETS – My animated favourite of the summer is a pretty interesting beast (yeah, I know, cute choice of words in this context, ha ha ha, etc). I’m sure it was originally conceived as an amusing little distraction for DC Universe fans while their favourite properties’ futures are in such great upheaval on the big screen, but ultimately I think this is actually the one DC flick I’ve come across that most perfectly GETS the overblown hilarity at the centre of the whole property. Certainly Jared Stern (who co-wrote The Lego Batman and Ninjago movies, here marking his second feature as a director after his debut with Netflix romantic comedy Happy Anniversary) understands this better than some, having expertly lampooned (and somewhat perfectly captured) the inherent truths behind the classic core members of the Justice League of America and their encompassing universe in a 105-minute animated comedy adventure that focused everything through the simplified viewpoint of Superman’s beloved pet dog Krypto. Dwayne Johnson (who got his own major DCEU debut when Black Adam hit our screens in the Autumn, for what it was ultimately worth) is a fine choice for the vocal role of the super-pooch in question, who finds himself suddenly de-powered and forced to enlist the help of a quartet of rescue pets who’ve just been “gifted” with superpowers by a tiny fleck of orange Kryptonite – Johnson’s Central Intelligence co-star Kevin Hart is Ace, an independent but loyal boxer dog who becomes super-strong and indestructible, I Love You For That’s Vanessa Bayer as PB, a Wonder Woman-fangirl potbellied pig who develops the ability to grow or shrink to insane degrees at will, Natasha Lyonne as Merton, an incredibly old, extremely near-sighted box turtle who inherits super-speed, and Rogue One’s Diego Luna as Chip, a neurotic squirrel who’s granted lightning powers – acquired by Lulu (Saturday Night Live legend Kate McKinnon), a megalomaniacal hairless guinea pig obsessed with Lex Luther (legendary stand-up comic Marc Maron), whom the shard grants terrifying telekinetic abilities which she uses to imprison the Justice League and kickstart her own plans for world domination. Yeah … sounds pretty bonkers, right? Thing is, anyone who really knows DC Comics knows how this really is pretty par for the course with a lot of DCU backstory, which is definitely something Stern and his regular co-writing collaborator John Whittington totally understand and definitely ran with here – the inherent batshit craziness of the premise is milked for all the comic genius it’s worth, with the film paying delightful homage to the JLA, the titular pets themselves and a whole raft of other brilliant little winks, nods and easter eggs along the way, while also ruthlessly lampooning the DC Universe with utmost love for the property itself. The voice cast are all ON FIRE here, with Johnson and Hart again hitting it off magnificently as a thoroughly entertaining canine odd-couple, while McKinnon consistently steals the film right out from under everybody with her unabashed comic genius, and Lyonne is an absolute delight all on her own; the Justice League, meanwhile, are brilliantly realised in a delightfully skewed comedic take that nonetheless does them all (ahem) justice, pitched to perfection by the likes of John Krasinski (Superman), Jemaine Clement (a cracking piss-take on The Water Guy, Aquaman) and, best of all, Keanu Reeves (a glorious deconstruction of Batman at his broodiest). The animation is some of the best CGI work I’ve seen from the Warner Animation Group to date, the set-pieces are definitely pitched for laughs but surprisingly well-done in pure action terms, and the humour levels really are full-on OFF THE CHARTS here, but Stern and Whittington have also wisely injected a whole lot of emotional heft and pure HEART into the film too. The result is an animated feature that’s a thorough joy to behold, keeping you gripped, entertained and stuck in the feels right through to the end. This is definitely a film anyone trying to make a GOOD DCEU movie NEEDS TO WATCH, because it’s about as true to the Universe as I’ve EVER seen a movie get … even while mercilessly spoofing it …

14. BELFAST – Kenneth Brannagh’s an interesting duck. As an actor, I love his work, he’s consistently impressed me over the years, blowing me away with some truly spectacular performances, whether in his favoured territory (essaying Shakespeare) or doing something fun and different (such as The Road to El Dorado), or even just providing some solid support to other stars in a smaller role (Dunkirk instantly springs to mind); as a director, on the other hand … yeah, the results have been mixed at best. For every masterpiece like Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Thor or Murder On the Orient Express, he’s also brought us dreck like Dead Again, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or (gods help us) Artemis Fowl, and a fair amount in the middle ground that’s either kinda meh or actually not too bad if you just go with it (Hamlet, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Peter’s Friends are certainly ones I actually kinda liked). Approaching a new release, therefore, is always a trepidatious business, you never know what you’re gonna get … so you can probably imagine my surprise when his OTHER latest offering (JUST preceding the pretty decent Death On the Nile) ACTUALLY turned out to be the very best feature I’ve ever seen from him. Then again, this is BY FAR his most personal film to date, Brannagh going RIGHT back to his roots with a semi-autobiographical story which is HEAVILY based on his own personal experiences as a boy growing up in the titular city in Ireland at the height of the Troubles, specifically the August Riots of 1969. The film is told largely from the point of view of nine year-old Buddy (newcomer Jude Hill), the younger son of a small working class family living on a mixed denomination street, who find themselves in the middle of a powder-keg when anti-Catholic resentment starts to boil over in their neighbourhood. His dreamer “Pa” (Jamie Dornan) is looking at the possibility of a brighter future for him and his family if they move abroad to greener pastures, but forceful and pragmatic “Ma” (The Beauty Inside and Ford V Ferrari’s Catriona Balfe) just wants to stay put, and both are forced to make hard choices that directly affect the family’s future as the Troubles start to impact their lives as a whole. Dornan and Balfe are both exceptional throughout, Balfe in particularly shouldering a lot of the film’s heavy lifting with spectacular skill and undeniable talent, while Dame Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds warm our cockles and pluck at our heartstrings in equal measure as Buddy’s grandparents, two people who are clearly still deeply in love even in the twilight of their time together, and Merlin’s Colin Morgan brings a charged menace to proceedings as the film’s nominal villain, Billy Clanton, an up-and-comer in the local sectarian movement who wants Pa to join The Cause. Buddy’s the undeniable beating heart of the film, though, Hill instantly showing he’s gonna be a star in the future as he essentially brings a young Brannagh to life, a deeply imaginative boy who loves movies and science fiction (especially Star Trek) but is struggling to find his place in the world and what’s going on around him. The director shows as much skill with his writing as he does behind the camera, weaving a compellingly rich tapestry out of a deceptively simple storyline and bringing some genuinely palpable, fully realised characters to vital breathing life (although I guess he had STRONG inspiration to draw from), as well as paying frequent, loving respect to all the massive influences he’s drawn from over the years, from the films he grew up with (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and One Million Years BC among others) to the music his parents taught him to love (the soundtrack includes several gems from the great Van Morrison). The resulting film is a powerful and rewarding experience, a clear labour of love which is equal parts dramatic, moving, heart-breaking, warmly funny and deeply inspiring. Brannagh wins our hearts by wearing his on his sleeve.

13. THE BLACK PHONE – I see now why Scott Derrickson pulled out of directing the second Doctor Strange film – he had to get what was ALMOST the horror highlight of the summer out of his system. Adapting Joe Hill’s short story with his Sinister co-writer C. Robert Cargill, Derrickson’s comfortably ensconced back in the genre he clearly resonates with best, crafting a fiendishly complex and spine-chillingly intense suspense thriller out of a deceptively simple premise that, at least on the surface, has been reworked more than once before on the big screen. The year is 1978 (that’s when I was born!), and a serial killer is stalking the suburban streets of Denver – the Grabber, a mysterious man-in-a-van who kidnaps teenage boys who are never seen again. His latest victim is Finney (For All Mankind’s Mason Thames), who wakes up in a basement with a defunct payphone on the wall before being periodically visited by the mysterious masked killer (Sinister’s Ethan Hawke) who repeatedly tries to involve Finney in his wicked, sadistic mind-games … only for him to be warned of his fate and coached on how he might escape by the spirits of the Grabber’s previous victims, with whom he communicates through the broken phone (yeah, I know it sounds like a bonkers premise but it’s portrayed in such an ingenious way you never once fail to swallow it hook, line and sinker). Meanwhile his younger sister Gwen (The Mandela Effect’s Madeleine McGraw) is trying to find him with the help of her wildly unpredictable psychic dreams, despite the consternation of her troubled father (the incomparable Jeremy Davies) and the deep scepticism of the detectives assigned to the case. Hawke delivers what’s definitely his most unhinged performance to date, taking his charismatic, likeable leading man persona and tearing it to shreds by investing the Grabber with an air of unpredictable menace and sadistic malevolence that frequently chills the blood even though he spends essentially the whole film with his face obscured by an intriguingly malleable demonic facemask; the two young leads, meanwhile, are both an absolute revelation, with Thames bringing an unbearably palpable uncertainty and vulnerability to Finney which makes his ultimate manning up so deeply fulfilling, while McGraw is a sweet but decidedly salty (and sometimes VERY SWEARY) joy in a rewarding turn which steals every scene she’s in; in the supporting stakes, Davies is enjoyably complex, a drink-addled bad-dad who nonetheless has a good heart beaten down by powerful personal tragedy which ultimately makes us root for him, especially when he finally starts to open himself up to the possibility that Gwen might actually be onto something, while Sinister and It Chapter 2’s James Ransome delivers a delightful crackpot turn as a local conspiracy theorist who thinks he’s got it all worked out. This is a beautifully written film, skilfully realised by a marvellous up-and-coming talent of literary horror and then further refined by a true master of the genre on the big screen, Derickson constantly defying expectation as he throws perfectly pitched twists and turns at us before finally bringing the film to its nail-biting, piano wire-taut climax. Far as I’m concerned this is the best film he’s ever made, and with his track record that’s an impressive feat – I can only hope this is a sign of even greater things to come from him in the future …

12. KIMI – we were already getting movies about the COVID outbreak and the resulting chaos that the Coronavirus has wrought upon us around the world as early as late 2020, but for the most part it’s largely been small, under-the-radar indie stuff. Now we’re starting to get BIG stuff, and the latest from Steven Soderbergh is one of the most impressive offerings I’ve seen to date. Written by thriller cinema extraordinaire David Koepp (Carlito’s Way, Panic Room, Stir of Echoes), this is a spectacularly taut and blissfully streamlined suspense thriller that not only brings the impact of the Pandemic into sharp perspective, but also our growing overreliance on smart device technology and social media – altogether then, fertile ground for a socially-conscious filmmaker like Soderbergh, who essentially PREDICTED all the shit COVID just put us through with 2011’s terrifyingly prescient outbreak-thriller Contagion. The Kimi of the title is the latest creation of the film’s fictional tech conglomerate Amygdala and its visionary CEO Bradley Hasling (Derek DelGaudio), an all-encompassing smart speaker which revolutionises the technology by taking the potentially controversial step of having live human moderators overseeing its operation instead of AI in order to cut down on potential voice recognition-based cock-ups. The film’s main narrative focuses on one of these moderators, Angela Childs (Zoe Kravitz), whose long-standing social anxiety and agoraphobia have been immensely exacerbated by lockdown to the detriment of many aspects of her life. Then a routine review of some of her daily moderations uncovers something deeply disturbing – what sounds to her VERY MUCH like a break-in and the murder of a Kimi owner. Under pressure from Amygdala to bury the information but driven by her own conscience and personal trauma from a similar incident, Angela decides to take matters into her own hands instead … this might be the best performance I’ve EVER seen Kravitz deliver (which is definitely saying something when we just saw her PERFECTLY embody one of my favourite comic book characters of all time), as she invests Angela with twitchy awkwardness but also fierce, unshakeable determination when faced with insurmountable obstacles, creating one of the most refreshingly compelling and resourceful lead protagonists I’ve come across in cinema, and since big chunks of the narrative are a one-woman show with many of her interactions with other characters playing out through phones and computer screens, this means she largely DOMINATES the film. That’s not to say there aren’t other great performances in this – DelGaudio does a lot with quite a small part, while there are excellent turns from Byron Bowers (The Chi, Honey Boy) as Angela’s occasional casual friend-with-benefits, Terry, who wants to become something more to her, Devin Ratray (Blue Ruin, The Tick) as Kevin, a fellow shut-in neighbour, and Rita Wilson (Runaway Bride, The Good Wife) as Natalie Chowdury, an executive with Amygdala to whom Angela attempts to blow the whistle on her findings. Soderberg and Koepp have crafted a spectacularly suspenseful thriller which expertly ratchets up the atmospheric dread of Angela’s situation from the slowburn scene-setting start to the fraught and harrowing climax, the film’s determination to keep its focus squarely on Angela meaning that we’re right there in the thick of it with her throughout all her anxiety, paranoia, terror and downright feral fight for life. This is one of the best films either Soderbergh OR Koepp have delivered in a good while, and definitely one of the year’s top big screen thrillers. Not bad for something which was inspired by and executed entirely in the midst of COVID.

11. ENOLA HOLMES 2 – Back in 2020, while we were waiting for Guy Ritchie’s long-mooted but still conspicuously absent third Sherlock Holmes movie, we got a welcome surprise from another quarter – director Harry Bradbeer, taking a break from making TV shows like Fleabag with something a good deal more ambitious, and screenwriter Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials, Wonder). Adapting the intriguing “AU” young adult novels of Nancy Springer, they brought her intriguing character to the fore, unleashing Sherlock and Mycroft’s previously unknown kid sister Enola Holmes upon the cinematic world in fine style in the form of Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown. The resulting breezy, cheeky and enjoyably irreverent mystery adventure was, rightly, a major hit for Netflix when they released it in the middle of the Pandemic, so it was a no-brainer for them to order a sequel right away, and having had a ball on the first, Bradbeer and Thorne were HAPPY to deliver once again. Better yet, the resulting sequel is JUST AS GOOD as its predecessor … after the events of the first film, Enola’s trying to carve out her own career as a sleuth-for-hire like her brother, but the inherent prejudices of Victorian society regarding her youth and, more importantly, GENDER are very much working against her … until she finds herself called upon to help a young matchgirl who wants to find her missing sister, and once again Enola finds that her seemingly simple case is, in fact, just the tip of a massive conspiratorial iceberg, one which also relates to her brother Sherlock’s own latest case, one which seems to be vexing him like none before. Once again, it’s an absolute joy to join Brown on her adventures, the immensely talented ingenue perfectly portraying a fiendishly brilliant, naturally-talented mistress of detection whose frequent fourth-wall-breaking asides always tickle me; Henry Cavill, meanwhile, is once again clearly having immense fun as the most famous gentleman sleuth of all time, as well as getting to bring an intriguing new dimension to his portrayal as we see Sherlock revealing frustration and ennui for the first time as he has to deal with a mystery that just doesn’t make sense. When they’re together they’re a joy to behold, and I truly hope we’ll get to see more of them working as a team in the inevitable follow-ups, while the other returning faces from the first film are all given plenty of time to shine in their own right here too, from Louis Partridge (Pistol) as sweet but quietly determined young Viscount Tewkesbury to Helena Bonham Carter as Enola and Sherlock’s wayward revolutionary mother Eudoria, while there are some equally talented newcomers to enjoy here too, with David Thewlis’ brilliant but hateful corrupt Scotland Yard Superintendent Grail particularly impressing here, while the film does a brilliant job of introducing a couple of other key characters from Arthur Conan Doyle’s pantheon for future instalments in suitably interesting ways. As with the first film, this is a bright and breezy adventure that rattles along at an impressive clip, Thorne’s razor sharp script sparking and fizzing appropriately as the story unfolds, while we have plenty of fun following Enola as she navigates her world’s various social pitfalls and idiosyncrasies with her usual irrepressible determination and exasperation. Once again, it’s also frequently LAUGH-OUT-LOUD funny, from Brown’s adorably playful narration to the perfectly observed social satire … that being said, there’s also a good deal of HEART here too, with the central story dealing with some very potent hot button subject matter which is as relevant today as when it was actually happening (no I WON’T say what, you’ll just have to watch it and find out). Altogether this is another phenomenal instalment in an already brilliant new franchise, and one which EASILY rivals the other popular, established adaptations we already know and love regarding Conan Doyle’s more famous Holmes sibling, and I for one cannot wait to see what Bradbeer, Thorne, Brown, Cavill et al are gonna bring us next …

#the woman king #the tragedy of macbeth #doctor strange in the multiverse of madness #hellraiser #hellraiser 2022 #bullet train #bullet train movie #DC league of super pets #belfast #belfast movie #the black phone #kimi #kimi movie #enola holmes 2 #2022 in movies

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gokufangirl · 1 year

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school was soo boring earlier that i made an entire villain chichi concept idea

um kinda like rambling/ fic idea too ig? um well just read if u want..

so like it would be set at the end of z and we all know how terrible *that* ending was

and Like chihci is all sad and heartbroken over goku leaving and then idk specifically how But like she'd get um kidnapped or smth idk by some New VillainTM and this dude is just like sadness based and like he sensed her great sorrow and worked w that and

also bonus bc he figured out that she could be agreat weapon against goku yk

then like he manipulates all the anguish n stuff and like channels into power and then makes chichi so ridiculously powerful that Like she's at goku's level

also she can fly and use ki ig?

and also he brainwashes her and erases all/most of the good memories of goku frm her brain and Then

she's just like a maelstrom of Terrible Feelings and Thoughts and

pls dont question as to why the boys did not know abt how when and why their mum was missing ok i havent gotten to thaT THINKIng level yet

and Evil DudeTM like unleashed her into the world

and like idk why but like i thought that she'd got to like the war torn areas or smth first oh wait bc like

her colour concept is like white and gold and i made a sketch/doodle of her but i might add it in ltr

complete outfit look is like(skip to next next next next paragraph if u dw read this part):

she has her regular cheongsam top and its white with gold trim and her sleeves though are like the ones from anastasia the disney movie's sleeves and like they're there to add on to the whole angel look and she has a flowy skirt and

its got two thigh slits for ease of access also she wears tights and from afar it looks like theres floral-esque gold lace on the skirt but when looked at closely its actually all horror and macabre lace

and her hair is the one in end of z and ther these little black flowers all over and also this has this weird gem on a chain around her neck

she wants to destroy these people the way goku destroyed her heart (in her brainwashed mind anyway) bc to her its like she loved and practically worshipped him and hse thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread but all he did was leave her while trampling all over her

and so she decides to repay the favour

so she looks all angelic but actually she's more like the new terrible terror

and the hypothetical they being the media n public etc.. call her the angel of death(or doom or destruction)

and then word gets round and of course the z gang despite half of them being hermits, hear of it and like yk do the usual Oh No Its A New Villain! Someone Call Goku! thing and like of course goku does come and then like

they go to where this 'angel of death' is at and see the mass destruction she caused and still no one knows its chichi

(AGAIN PLS Do not QUestion the boys)

and so when they first meet her she actually looks oh so angelic bc somehow the sun's at the right angle and the breeze is blowing juust right and Well

they are all stunned esp goku

And like insert extra shock when they find out its chichi and So

everyone EspecIally goku is just extremly confused shocked and also in awe bc she looks so beautifully deadly

and poor goku is just trying to comprehend how his Dearest became like this

then The whole introductory convo w the villain happens

(also idk what happened to ori villain dude ok lets assume he ran away and he did all this for revenge against smth goku and/or his fam did)

Then she will proceed to reveal all the times he's broken her heart and her heart is still in amillion pieces and

Goku is just so sad and angry at himself

then they have The Battle

also vegeta is unmentioned here bc well he KNOWs if gets in between them and hurts chichi goku will get his ass even though she's evil

and so vegeta is just doing passive hero work by moving people in the threatning manner that he has yk

and like goku despite knowing that chichi is evil, still cannot bring himself to hurt her and is simply blocking all her hits

thAt is until chichi threatens to blow up the planet if he doEsnt Fight back

and so he does and she doesnt

and he, in the midst of battle realise that if he doesnt do smth soon she might snap and blow up the planet anyway

so he unwillingly w tears of regret aims a spirit bomb at her bc it was the only way

all the while knowing that it might and probably will kill her

he's crying as he throws it at her

and as expected it does hit her and goku

just couldnt bring himself to see if what he did to Her and

he Cant feel her energy

and he sobs on the ground knowing that it was all his fault

but then goten who we all know is a mama's boy, just had to see if she was actually gone

and of course she's still alive!

but her energy is extremely veery low and she's injured and bleeding A Lot

and even when he transfers energy it doesnt reach her

and so goten calls his dad n bro and

goku snaps out of his sad condition and quickly but delicately grabs her in his arms and gets her to dende asap bc no one has a senzu

and dende quickly cures her but for some reason she doesnt wake up

dende theorises that its from stress or trauma maybe?

but then goku sees the gem on her neck and it glows weird? and so he destroys it and a mysterious glow flows to back into chichi

and suddenly she awakes and after a while she remembers EVERYTHING

and she's just trying to process eveything and saw goku and is having major panic attack in her head bc she knows all that she's done and

she starts crying bc she killed all those people and goku hugs her and whispers soothing words to her ears and she's just apologising but he's apologising too and they're both hugging and crying and blubbering and its all so sweet

dende has subtlely given them privacy

and then the others arrive and like happily reunite w chichi or happily observe the sweet scene cept for geta and pic who demand explanations

and after of course its a happy ending and chichi still has those powers and so she went w goku and they both trained uub and lived happily ever after yay!

also goku secretly sneaks off and hunts down the ori villain dude and kills him heh

so like that was longer than i thought it would be..

um what dyu guys think?

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imagine-loki · 3 years

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You Have Heart

TITLE: You Have Heart CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 2/?

AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine finding out that your soulmate is Loki and your very first kiss is interrupted by Thor shouting “Yeeessss” RATING: M NOTES/WARNINGS: This is a rewrite of the original work of the same name. Also on AO3 here

You looked up in shock and saw that the entire theater was looking at you. The flash of power had been brighter than you thought to draw everyone’s attention away from the action on the screen. But it wasn’t every day that someone became the soulmate of an Avenger. Or worse, the soulmate of Loki. Loki was supposed to be the villain, wasn’t he?

No, the news and the team had made it clear that Loki had been under mind control during the battle. Loki wasn’t a villain, he’d just been made to do terrible things.

That didn’t stop your shock at the flash of power from your tattoo. Or the rest of the theater’s. The whispers started almost immediately. The tattoos sometimes did weird things when they were activated, when the soulmate had been found. Changing colors was frequent. Some people reported a buzzing, fiery, or cold sensation. There were reports of a flash of light.

Usually, it wasn’t quite so flashy.

You glanced at the words on your arm again, still in disbelief. There was no denying it, though, the words had changed from black to emerald green with gold sparkles throughout the letters.

You have heart

You hadn’t expected the words to be said in the manner they had been.

Would he even believe you?

There was no way a god would want someone like you for a soulmate.

Soph was looking over at you with her mouth hanging open. “Did-?” She couldn’t even form a sentence. Her eyes went to the tattoo on your arm, which was still glowing faintly. That definitely wasn’t normal. Her eyes went wide. Neither of you had known why those would be the first words you heard your soulmate say.

Now you knew.

Fuck.

What were you going to do?

The entire theater was still whispering and you realized that moments had passed, if that. They were all still staring at you and you wanted to vanish and get away from all of their stares. But of course that wasn’t going to happen. The best you could hope for was everyone deciding it wasn’t interesting anymore and going back to the movie.

After the movie, you could figure out what to do with this new development.

And try to come up with something to say to Loki.

But… that would never happen. There was no way a no one like you was going to get to the Avengers, get them to believe you that you were Loki’s soulmate because you’d heard this line spoken in the movie, or get them to care or help you. There was also no chance Loki would want you as a soulmate.

You were doomed to being alone, your soulmate found but not reciprocated. It was very rare for the soulmate bonds to be rejected, for soulmates to never be found, but it did happen on occasion. And there seemed to be little to no hope that you would actually meet yours in person.

You tried to focus your attention back on the movie. Maybe if you looked at it hard enough, everyone would stop staring at you and return their attention back to the movie.

For a moment, you thought it was going to work.

For one single moment.

Then the moment was ruined by the shimmer of green magic at the front of the auditorium. Two figures appeared there and you could see them clearly as the green shimmer faded away. There was no denying who the two men were. Especially since one of them was still on the giant screen behind them.

Thor and Loki.

The two brothers couldn’t be more different, Thor hulking, blond, and bearing his trademark hammer. Loki was slimmer, though no less muscled and raven haired. Both were dressed in their armor with their capes of red and green.

“Brother, why are we here?” Thor boomed, drawing any eyes that hadn’t already been on the pair. There were very few pairs of eyes that hadn’t been on them. Most everyone was taking out their cameras now to take pictures of the pair showing up in the middle of the Avengers movie screening. Thor seemed surprised that Loki had teleported him here. You hadn’t even known Loki was on the realm. Last you had heard, he had been taken back to Asgard to face punishment for a crime that wasn’t his fault.

So why was he here on Earth? And why was he here now in this movie theater?

“You saw my tattoo light up. She’s here somewhere, Thor. I have to find her,” Loki replied in what sounded like a panicked snarl. Her. He wanted to find his soulmate. Fuck. Not her. You. He was desperate to find you. You heard what sounded like disbelief in his voice, like he hadn’t believed that he would have a soulmate.

“And you brought me along because…?” Thor asked as he scanned the staring crowd. All eyes and cameras were on the brothers. The whispers were back and louder than ever and not a single person was paying attention to the movie, which kept playing in the background. “And how do you know she’s here anyway?”

“I put a spell on the tattoo centuries ago to make sure I would know when it was activated. And I brought you along because the mortals like you better, oaf. I did not wish to start a panic. Now stop scaring them and help me look for her-“ Loki growled at his idiot brother. The pair were definitely brothers with how they interacted.

“Oh shit. It’s real…” Soph said from beside you, her eyes wide with shock. You were sure your expression was just as shocked and stumped.

You nodded dumbly. You had no idea what to say. Or what to do. Not only were you Loki’s soulmate….somehow… but he was here and was looking for you. It was only a matter of time before…

His eyes rose up the rows of seats and caught on you and the glowing mark on your arm. You still weren’t sure what to do. Or what to say. How did you greet a strange god? How did you greet your soulmate?

You forgot your phrase. You’d come up with a stupid phrase to greet any stranger you came across, as everyone did. You couldn’t remember what it was at the moment. Whatever it was wouldn’t have been appropriate for meeting this soulmate. Nothing you could say would be appropriate for meeting a god.

So what were you going to say?

Loki’s eyes lit on you and he strode with his patented murder strut up the aisles toward you and Soph. You had to come up with something to say. And fast.

#Loki #Lover #Submitted fic #submission #you have heart #chapter 2 #nekoamamori

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doctorstrangeaskblog · 4 years

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MUN MY FRIEND JUST SENT ME AN ARTICLE SAYING THAT MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS MIGHT BE THE LAST MOVIE WITH DOCTOR STRANGE IN IT AND PLEASE HELP

They said the same thing about Infinity War...about Endgame...such as 'Strange will sacrifice himself' or 'Strange will die'...

They just want attention and clickbaiting....I personally don't think they'll kill Strange, specially now they have the magic universe set and so much they have been working on. Dr. Strange 2 should be something like Avengers or Civil War was, something to set new characters to start a new saga. Phase 4 is a new starting point.

I could be wrong, I would be very VERY surprised if Strange died or something.

Anyway, media always finds a way to make anything that no one would be worrying about turn into a SCANDAL while important things don't get the spotlight the way they should, just to get views and clicks, honestly, I don't take seriously anymore:

Articles about upcoming movies (happened with Civil War, Infinity War...)

Polemic citiques that misinterpret out of context lines or interviews (Thor Raganarok, Captain Marvel...)

Reviews from people who didn't even see the movie yet (Joker, Black Panther...)

Viral "BIG NEWS" that are just a theory but people make such a scandal everyone believes it will be true only to get turned down later such as "Doctor Strange dies in Infinity War permanently", "Iron man will be an AI", "Everyone is in the Soul Stone", "Loki didn't die, he's in disguise", "There's no time travel in Endgame"....

Reasons why it would be silly to kill Doctor Strange (definitely)

Doctor Strange 01 made more money than Iron Man 2, from a franchise which took a LOT of effort, hate and time to be recognized as a "valid, important, relevant" movie. Doctor Strange has the field already "favorable", since prejudice against magic and hero movies decreased a lot.

Benedict always was the first choice for the role, they delayed the movie over 6 months so he could play the role, why get rid of him now?

The magic universe is set. The cosmic universe is set. Why abandon the previous plans now?

Strange is the main character from the mystic stuff in the MCU, killing him would pretty much lower the hype and destroy all the set up being prepared since 2016.

The producers, directors and actors already stated more than once in interviews they have many plans for Doctor Strange.

We know waaaay more about Strange and his development than most characters from the MCU and he only had ONE movie so far, meaning the main branch of the movies has been focusing on him.

He was put together with Tony (just like Peter was) in Infinity War so they would get popular and highlighted for the new upcoming movies (and they did it: Ironstrange, Iron family...)

Strange participated 2 Avengers movies having just 1 solo movie, and he was very relevant to both, even if he got just a cameo in Endgame, he was the key for victory, as it had already been said in interviews with Kevin Feige.

Benedict isn't that expensive for Disney

Benedict stated he likes the role so far, he doesn't seem to have intentions of leaving it.

His salary was renegotiated and it increased last year, however, IW and Endgame were already being filmed so WHY would they increase his income if he would die in the next movie?

The Sanctums still don't even have enough masters, Strange is the newest one and they will kill him?? Okay I doubt.

In interviews it was said (Derrickson?) Nightmare was planned for the first movie, but now he will be in the second movie (that probably will explore Stephen's past), so if the second movie still will be kind of an "origin" story (about his childhood etc.) it would be still introducing the character in some way....so....even less sense in killing him off.

Strange's storyline still needs to solve: him becoming the Sorcerer Supreme, Mordo, Nightmare, Dormammu, relationship with Christine, the introduction of new characters, Wanda and Loki. They will do all that in only one movie? I DOUBT.

Strange has a strong comic storyline linked with Black Panther, Namor, Spiderman, Galactus, Mephisto, Nightmare, Dormammu and especially VICTOR VON DOOM, and these are mostly upcoming characters or in development ones. Don't forget Illuminati, House of M, Secret Wars and Battleworld, all strongly possible upcoming adaptations Strange has a VERY important role in.

Stephen has been getting more and more spotlight in recent game updates (since 2016, more and more).

Strange is the founder of the Iluminatti with Tony, who is gone, so now...I guess he will found it? LIKE...HE HAS TO....?

Strange is Wiccan's mentor and he kind of guides the Young Avengers and also has a leadership role in New Avengers and later on in Defenders, so....he HAS to be alive to do all that.

Canonically, Strange still is alive in the comics, meaning there is not a "definitive death moment" anywhere for him in novels or comics for the movies to be based on.

All his deaths in the comics were part of his character development (Mephisto, Gorath, Dormammu...) so even if he dies....he's getting back...? Until now, it was like that.

All the characters who died had a congruent time line for their death (Tony already went through Civil War, Infinity Saga, had a child, married and his own trilogy, so did Steve and Black Widow still will have a movie to complete her journey since she didn't get her proper development before). Gamora and Loki still are being developed in upcoming movies apparently...?

Stephen didn't even face 2 different villains of his own saga (Kaecilius was a comic book side character and mostly antagonist). We still have to see Nightmare, Gorath, Mephisto, Dracula, Von Doom and now following the newest comics, Loki and Galactus. Not to mention Death, Eternity, the Vishanti and the Living Tribunal, no sight of them yet.

Robert, Chris Evans, Hemsworth, Scarlet, they all have been in the MCU from 8 to 11 years, Benedict has been around for barely 3 years.

Normally 6 or 8 movie contracts are set for main roles, Stephen was in 4 movies so far, and Endgame and Ragnarok were cameos, so I guess they don't count as proper participation? That would make 2 relevant roles only. Doctor Strange 2 would be the 3rd relevant role, and Hemsworth is getting a Thor 4, and the first Thor movies weren't that well received by fans and critics, and it's the 8th movie Thor will be in? PLUS Guardians of the Galaxy??? WHY NOT DO THAT WITH BENEDICT SINCE HIS MOVIE'S BOX OFFICE WAS BETTER?

Benedict's contract doesn't seem very strict, since he's working in many other projects and productions since Doctor Strange 01 (theaters, Sherlock, Patrick Melrose, this new movie Iron something, Brexit, a lot of voice acting, audiobooks and more), meaning Benedict doesn't have to end his contract to work on the stuff he wants to.

Could Marvel kill Strange off and never use him again? Yes, but I think it's VEEEEEEEERY UNLIKELY. They were RUSHING to add him in the MCU so the story could unfold, and the Wanda and the Loki series are linked to his movie, and to his saga probably. Strange can't fight all alone or just with Wong, he sure needs a team, just like Tony, Steve and Gamora did. Strange is one of the new leads of the MCU, along with Carol and T'challa.

#doctor strange #marvel #multiverse of madness #avengers #benedict cumberbatch

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some-lists · 4 years

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Ranking all the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers

Go Go Power Rangers! I felt it was time for another 90’s throwback. Today I’m ranking all the Power Rangers from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Just about every 90’s kid was obsessed with this show. It was a phenomenon. It started out with the original five in its first season. As the show went on, we saw a number of replacements added to the cast.

As a child, I had my definite favorites based on my childhood memories. I later rewatched the series as an adult and my perspective on the characters really changed. This is my ranking based on what I observed as an adult looking back.

10. Kat Hillard (Pink Ranger)

Kat had the unfortunate task of filling Kimberly’s shoes as the new Pink Ranger. She was doomed from the start. The writers introduced the character as a villain -- a fellow student under an evil spell to undo the Pink Ranger. It made us not like her from the very beginning. Kat eventually grew into her role, especially in the following seasons of Zeo and Turbo. But initially, she felt like an imposter who literally did not fit the suit.

9. Aisha Campbell (Yellow Ranger)

I liked Aisha as a kid. I liked her sassy attitude and that she was girly and short. After watching the show again as an adult, I realized how completely useless she was as a ranger. She had no fighting ability whatsoever, couldn’t do any flips, and didn’t offer any brain power either. I actually felt embarrassed watching her fight scenes.

8. Rocky DeSantos (Red Ranger)

I think Rocky got a raw deal as the new Red Ranger. Many viewers were used to seeing the Red Ranger as a leader. However, when Rocky was introduced, he was just another ranger on the side. I don’t think this was his fault as Jason had already been demoted as leader after Tommy became the White Ranger. As a kid, I liked Rocky. I didn’t mind him as an adult either. His taekwondo skills were actually better than Jason’s. He was faster, more agile, could kick higher, and do more flips. Unfortunately, as one of the replacement rangers, he was always in the background.

7. Jason Lee Scott (Red Ranger)

Ranking Jason this low is gonna shock some die hard fans. As a kid, I absolutely loved Jason. He was one of my favorite rangers. I thought he was a great leader and strong fighter. He was the glue who got his team to work together. I especially preferred him as a leader over Tommy. But when I rewatched the show as an adult, I realized he really didn’t do anything! He had maybe two episodes about him. One was about him bench pressing a world record where he lifted weights the entire episode. That’s pretty much all he ever did. He lifted weights, punched bags, and occasionally taught a karate class or two. Essentially, he was there to flex his muscles and not much else. Even his sword, which I remembered being so cool, was pretty much useless. That was a big eye opener for me. I was also disappointed to see that his taekwondo skills weren’t as great as I remembered them. He was really slow, kinda clunky. Overall, Jason deserved better than what we was given.

6. Billy Cranston (Blue Ranger)

As the resident brain, Billy managed to invent the team’s communicators, which were also teleportation devices, and a flying car. He often operated the computers at the Command Center along with Alpha-5. It’s fair to say he contributed significantly to the team. He was a weak fighter in the beginning, but somehow became a super ripped expert gymnast by the end of his run. The show never explained that, but it was never a realistic show anyway.

5. Adam Park (Black Ranger)

I remember not liking Adam very much as a child. He was so quiet, shy, and often in the back as one of the replacement rangers. In my child mind that meant he was boring. However, as an adult, I realized how awesome he really was. First of all, he was way cute and I didn’t even see it before. He was smart and often operated the Command Center along with Billy (good ole Asian stereotyping). But mostly, he was an incredible fighter. His Shaolin kung fu style was a beauty to behold. His kicks, spins, and flips were so quick, effortless, and graceful. He had the best line in the movie: “I’m a frog,” which turned out to be the best zord as well. As the seasons went on (especially into Zeo and Turbo), he became much stronger, more confident, and a lot funnier too.

4. Zack Taylor (Black Ranger)

Zack is seriously underrated. He had a great personality. He was the life of the party, a great dancer, and funny. He even created his own martial arts style called Hip Hop Kido. He especially shined in the second season as he incorporated his karate with dance moves and incredible acrobatics. In my opinion, he was a way better fighter than Jason. If he had been given the proper treatment, Zack would’ve been on the same level as Tommy. After Zack left the show, the cast wasn’t nearly as fun.

3. Trini Kwan (Yellow Ranger)

Original Yellow Ranger Trini was the best. She was strong, brave, and intelligent. She had a spiritual side to her that was cool, calm, mature, and classy. She had natural leadership skills that were completely overlooked. I’d even say that when unmorphed, she was the true leader. She often stepped up and encouraged the other members no matter what situation they were in. She could understand Billy’s nerd talk and translated for the team. She also kicked serious butt. She became a big role model for many Asian American girls, as she was one of the first Asian American actresses with a visible role on television.

2. Tommy Oliver (Green & White Ranger)

I loved Tommy as the Green Ranger. His karate took the show to the next level. He was super bad ass and totally convincing as a villain. That evil laugh was perfect. Even after becoming good, the writers found a way to keep him around. His weakening powers and ultimately losing his powers gave him a tragic appeal. His relationship with Kimberly was also super cute. He was an exciting fighter and a compelling character. But, I didn’t really like him as the White Ranger. Once he became the White Ranger and the new team leader, he became a lot less interesting. He no longer had a real story. His martial arts was always top notch, but compared to the Green Ranger, White Ranger Tommy was too perfect and a lot more boring. Separately, I would’ve ranked White Ranger Tommy after Adam, but Green Ranger Tommy was awesome. Like I said, he elevated the show.

1. Kimberly Hart (Pink Ranger)

Kimberly was such a popular character. She was loved by girls who wanted to be like her, and by boys who had a crush on her. As an adult, I could easily see why and I was actually really surprised. She was hands down the star of the show. She had the most episodes dedicated to her out of all the rangers. Even when the episode wasn’t about her, she often saved the day with her bow and arrow. Seriously. She saves the team in almost every episode. Even though she wasn’t the strongest fighter unmorphed, her gymnastics skills were crazy impressive. Overall, she was the most valuable and consistent ranger on the team. Without her, they would’ve been toast.

Overall Thoughts

First of all, I couldn’t believe how poor quality the show was. They obviously reused the same footage over and over again. Even more unbelievable is how we all believed it as kids! But that cheesiness is now one of the best aspects of the show.

I was also surprised by how much the show favored certain characters over others. Kimberly had the most spotlight, followed by Billy. When Tommy showed up, it became all about him. Zack and Trini were tied for second to last place for air time. Jason was dead last. He was barely even in the show. It’s no wonder the three were unhappy and left the show when they did.

Rewatching the series also made me realize how much the movies glorified Tommy at the expense of the Pink Ranger. In the first film that meant Kimberly, who I mentioned in this list was an incredibly strong character. In the Turbo movie, they weakened Kat for Tommy to rescue her as well. That’s super disappointing as the show offered some really cool role models for young girls.

One thing I appreciated about the female rangers was how feminine they were. Kimberly was a fashion crazy mall rat, but she was never diminished for it. It just happened to be her personality. It was never a weakness. None of the girls were expected to act like boys in order to be strong. Later in Zeo and Turbo, Tanya was more tomboyish. She naturally excelled at sports and that was really cool too.

Overall, I was impressed by how much stunts these young actors did. The putty scenes were my favorite. We got to see the real actors (not costumed stunt doubles) do all their own stunts. They were all talented martial artists of various styles and masterful gymnasts. As the show progressed, so did the choreography. I can understand why the actors complained about not being paid enough.

Today, most of the newer Power Rangers shows don’t do their own stunts like the originals did. They’re a lot more flashier as well with explosions going off in every episode. Even though the budget is higher and the actors have more rights now, it doesn’t beat the nit and grit or the talent of the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.

#90s nostalgia #90s #90s throwback #power rangers #mighty morphin power rangers #red ranger #blue ranger #yellow ranger #black ranger #pink ranger #green ranger

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Helstrom: The Comic History of Marvel’s Son of Satan

https://ift.tt/33Vbv3V

On Oct. 16, Hulu will be releasing the latest Marvel tie-in series Helstrom. It’s not so much like one of those upcoming Disney+ MCU shows that feature high-profile superheroes telling stories that will be important to the overall fictional universe. It’s more like Daredevil or Runaways where quality be damned, you’re never going to hear anyone in the movies make anything close to a reference to it, but it counts as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe anyway.

The series is about siblings Daimon Helstrom and Ana Helstrom, who have seemingly normal lives, but oppose demons and evil people on the side. Their mother is institutionalized, which is fairly true to the comics, but their father is also referred to as “a powerful serial killer.”

In the comics, things are a bit grander. Their father isn’t just any serial killer, but a variation of Satan. Marvel has a bunch of guys whose identities are “basically Satan, but not really.” Instead of suits and turtlenecks, the two have comic adventures where they dress like they shopped off the sexy Halloween costume rack at Party City.

Daimon Helstrom (played by Tom Austen) gets both L’s in the comics as Daimon Hellstrom, but also has the rad nickname of Son of Satan. Shockingly, he’s a good guy! Mostly. Even when bare-chested with a glowing pentagram over his torso. Even with a magical pitchfork as his weapon of choice.

Son of Satan and his sister Satana are essentially the Marvel versions of Dante and Vergil from Devil May Cry. Both are half-human/half-devil and they lean on opposite sides of their genetics.

So let’s say you want to get into Hellstrom’s comic book exploits. Well, you’re in luck because we have a list of his main character runs since showing up in 1973.

The Early Spotlight (1973-1975)

Hellstrom made his first appearance in Ghost Rider #1. In the first two issues of that series, Hellstrom was hired as an exorcist to help deal with a missing woman who had been possessed. Interestingly enough, they never gave a clear look at Hellstrom in those two issues other than the demonic birthmark on his chest.

Initially, Hellstrom had a Jekyll and Hyde gimmick to the point that he told the woman’s loved ones to lock him up in a dark room and not let him out no matter what he said. Unlike the supporting characters in Young Frankenstein, the bozos didn’t take that to heart and let Hellstrom’s more maniacal personality Son of Satan loose.

Sidenote: His adventures were originally going to be called “the Mark of Satan” with more emphasis on Satan as the antagonist, but doing comics focused on Satan was deemed a little over-the-line, so they changed it.

Second sidenote: I did not hit her, it’s bullshit, I did not hit her, I DID NOT! Oh hi, Mark of Satan!

How Helstrom Became One of Marvel Television’s Last Shows Standing

By Alec Bojalad

Son of Satan’s adventures continued into Marvel Spotlight #12-24. It didn’t take long for Marvel to realize that giving him a double-identity was kind of a lame idea and instead had Satan Sr. magically handwave that away and make Son of Satan just one dude. Definitely for the better as he no longer felt so blatantly like Marvel’s answer to Jason Blood/Etrigan.

Hellstrom continued to fight against ghoulish enemies while opposing his father’s ways and dated some generic woman whose name I couldn’t tell you if you paid me a million dollars. It all culminated in a really strong finale issue where Hellstrom fought against and with his sister Satana, but maybe ignore the part where Hellstrom had a dream about the two of them making out.

Striking Out Solo (1975-1977)

Son of Satan had his own self-titled ongoing series that only lasted eight issues. From the beginning, Hellstrom went to Hell to basically tell off his dad as a way to say that this series wouldn’t be about their rivalry. Instead, it was Son of Satan dealing with a bunch of random villains that nobody would ever really remember.

There was one ridiculous enemy named the Possessor (not to be confused with the Elder of the Universe) who wore a mask to hide the fact that he had demon faces where his ears are supposed to be. Too bad he never showed up outside of this series.

It was a trippy outing, but ended before it could find its footing.

Demon Defender (1981-1983)

The Defenders are, of course, the bundle of heroes who don’t quite fit in with the Avengers, Fantastic Four, or X-Men but need people to hang out with. Guys like Hulk, Dr. Strange, Namor, Valkyrie, etc. Son of Satan became a regular ally in the team’s early days, appearing to help out every now and then. Most notably, he was part of a storyline where the Serpent Society kidnapped the Defenders and Clea put together a second team to rescue them, featuring the likes of Son of Satan, Daredevil, and Luke Cage.

Then again, the only thing anyone truly remembers about those issues is a very bizarre and legendary scene of a random guy getting killed by an Elf with a Gun.

As the series reached its 92nd issue, Hellstrom finally joined the team. On one hand, having Son of Satan on the team meant the Defenders had to take on the occult more than usual. On the other hand, Hellstrom soon fell in love with fellow Defender Hellcat, who was regularly dealing with constantly being possessed and turning into a scantily-clad demoness.

When Defenders hit its 100th issue, they did a really climactic storyline where a handful of the various Marvel Devil guys invaded Earth and Son of Satan had to take on Father of Son of Satan for the fate of Earth. The conclusion is rather surprising.

Prince of Lies (1993-1994)

Okay, so Daimon Hellstrom and Patsy Walker have been married for ten years (our time). It’s a fairytale romance where they’ve made a few guest appearances here and there, but have otherwise retired, happily ever after. What could POSSIBLY taint such true love?

90s comics. That’s your answer.

Welcome to Hellstorm: Prince of Lies, a 21-issue ongoing series where every issue looks like a Nine Inch Nails video and they try to see how much lanky nudity they can get away with showing in a Marvel comic. Like, holy crap, there has to be a world record for shadowed-out junk in this series. They even edit in some obvious, hastily-drawn underwear on characters at times as if the editor has realized they’ve gone too far.

It’s a gritty and grimy series that you’d expect from a 90s comic where much of it is written by Warren Ellis and the main character is Satan’s son. Lots of spikes, sharp teeth, long hair, suffering, insanity, and so on. It’s most definitely a product of its time.

Plus it’s called “Hellstorm” instead of “Hellstrom.” Scout’s honor, I didn’t notice the difference until my editor pointed it out.

Maximum Hellstorm (2006-2007)

Ah, Marvel MAX. The days when Marvel decided to give R-rated comics a shot and just threw everything at the wall. Hellstorm: Son of Satan was one of them, going for five issues. By this point, we’re in the mid-00s, so Hellstrom has a more down-to-earth look and is constantly talking to his father on a cellphone and tries so hard not to remind us what he looked like in the 70s and 80s.

But because it’s Marvel MAX, it means that his adventure is filled with lots of curse words, ultra-violence, gross demon boobs, and explicit Jesus imagery you normally wouldn’t see in a comic like this.

While the whole “Hellstrom messes with Egyptian underworld deities” storyline is a bit high concept, it still feels more like the new Hulu show than anything else.

Zombie Slayer (2009)

Speaking of gritty Marvel trends, there’s Marvel Zombies! While the initial Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline and the first two volumes of Marvel Zombies dealt with the happenings of a doomed universe, the next few volumes went slightly more uplifting. After all, sometimes you need to have people to root for who can back it up.

In Marvel Zombies 4, the Black Talon and the Hood (under the influence of Dormammu) try to use the decapitated head of Zombie Deadpool (otherwise known as Headpool) to bring forth the zombie apocalypse in the regular Marvel universe. Yes, we actually have canon stakes this time.

To prevent this, we have the Midnight Sons, made up of Son of Satan, Morbius, Jennifer Kale, Werewolf by Night, and Man-Thing. It’s an incredibly badass group working through an incredibly badass adventure. Too bad the team doesn’t last.

On a similar note, around this time there was a miniseries called the Last Defenders where Son of Satan was a major character. It’s just that by the time the team came together, they were an immediately-forgotten afterthought, so there’s no use in giving it its own entry.

Ghost Riders in the Sky (2009-2010)

Jason Aaron had a really, really, really great run on Ghost Rider. Most definitely read it. It’s pure grindhouse and I love it.

The whole run finished with Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire. This culmination featured Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch working together against a corrupt angel, the anti-Christ, and a group of villains from earlier in the run teaming up.

At least they have Daimon Hellstrom there to help out. Unfortunately, Hellstrom looks outright goofy with a bald head and Fu-Manchu mustache. The story brings back Jaine, his EXTREME love interest from the 90s series who he ended up with after his relationship with Patsy went very south.

Anyhow, Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider run. Read it!

Strikeforce (2019-2020)

Much like how X-Men had X-Force as the team that would do the really dirty work, Avengers had a spinoff team called Strikeforce. Made up of Winter Soldier, Angela, Blade, Spider-Woman, Wiccan, and Spectrum, the team soon brought Hellstrom into the fold. Which is just as well, since he was working for Baron Zemo for a little while and really needed to get his head back on straight.

Unfortunately for Hellstrom, 1) he retained his bald look from Heaven’s on Fire and 2) the series didn’t last all that long. Only nine issues, sadly. Eh, it was fun while it lasted.

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At least he’s joining the Savage Avengers next! And they’re giving him his hair back!

The post Helstrom: The Comic History of Marvel’s Son of Satan appeared first on Den of Geek.

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ivory-haired-queens-blog · 5 years

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Unpopular Opinions: Fandom Edition

Hey none of you asked but I’m here to deliver so here are some unpopular opinions for the fandoms I’m in. Spoilers, duh.

Marvel:

I don’t like Natasha. Or Steve.

Pepper Potts is a top.

As much as I love Loki, his death was nessicary in Infinity War.

Steve should have killed Bucky in Civil War. He was a threat, plain and simple.

I ship Ironstrange/Supremefamily.

Clint should have died in Infinity War.

I love Tony Stark with my whole heart. (Not an unpopular opinion but you needed to know that)

I’m not happy with the end of Endgame.

10 years in the making....for you to do Thor like that?

Not because he’s fat or because he’s dealing with trauma, that’s totally acceptable.

What’s not acceptable is them making Thor into the butt of the joke because he’s fat.

I love the Antman movies.

I’m totally not biased because I loved lost.

(I’m kinda biased)

Shuri is the best Marvel character and would beat Tony Stark in a battle of wits.

(I’m so gay I love her.)

With as many years as Marvel has had the MCU, I am disgusted at the lack of diversity within the movies.

Like it’s 2019 and we JUST got a female empowerment scene in Endgame.

Like I want a gay superhero.

(We have a disabled one thank god. Love you Stephen.)

And don’t give me that Valkyrie/Captain Marvel BS because they never blatantly stated or showed it in their movies.

I want an Asian superhero bitch.

A superhero who is Muslim/Islam/and religion besides Christian.

I think that, as much as I hate Natasha and Steve, they should have been the ones that Bruce first sees in Infinity War. I know it set up the whole “earth is closed today” sequence but it didn’t make sense and was OOC.

I love Stephen Strange and he’s never done a single thing wrong ever in his life I would die for this man.

I like MCU Peter Parker over the origional movie Spider-Man.

Fight me.

I also like the Tony Stark/Peter Parker better than the Uncle Ben/Peter Parker so @ me.

The 100

I don’t ship Bellarke that hard.

Like yes, I think they’re obviously being groomed to end up together. I know the show runners will make them official before the end of the series. I’m not mad about that, I just don’t really care to be honest. It’s like, too obvious.

But there are some cute bellarke scenes

What they did to Monty was bullshit but what they did to Jasper was worse.

I feel no guilt whatsoever in saying that I think that killing all of Mount Weather was what they should have done from the beginning.

Yes, even the kids. Because if you kill their leaders, the men and women will fight back. The colony would have been left with a handful of adults, and a bunch of kids if the origional plan had worked. This is doomed to fail and honestly just killing them all would be better than seeing them kill eachother for food, power, whatever. If that makes sense.

I think that Finn deserved to die.

I think that Murphey deserves the world.

Charlotte fucking killed Wells. Yes she’s young but she knows better than to kill someone. Maybe not kill her, but we all know that Clarke wouldn’t have banished her like she did Murphey. Clarke has a gender bias because Murphey didn’t do anything and she wouldn’t have punished Charlotte as hard because she’s a young girl. I rest my case

Even though what he did was bad and wrong, I don’t think Murphey should have been banished. He’s right. They were all compliant and even excited when he was being hung, but when it’s a little girl all bets are off.

Like Bellamy brought the whole hostage thing upon himself because he fucking tied a noose around Murphey’s throat.

Again, not that what Murphey did was right. He didn’t have to act like that. Jasper didn’t do anything to him.

Also this segment is getting long but the show writers and everyone else just casually forgot that Murphey was TORTURED? Hello? Are we not going to acknowledge that?

I shipped Clexa with my whole heart.

Another actually popular opinion: what they’ve done to Raven’s character this season is bullshit. Her only role is Abby’s moral compass. This is the same girl who shuttled to earth in a Tin Can. She’s better than this.

What the fuck??? Happened to??? Jordan???

Like Madi stabbed him

And then they proceeded to not talk about it for like four episodes and then casually mention it in passing like “oh he saved Pria that means he gets to live”

Like they set up his character to be really important this season.

But he’s not.

I think that Murphey/Emori is the best ship.

I also think that Either Murphey or Emori or Both are secretly double crossing the Primes. (This comes out before the finale of season six)

They didn’t have to do Onyia like that

The opening of season three is so weak that I actually stopped watching the show around that time (I’d been watching since the beginning of season two) because there’s just nothing there in the first like 10 minutes and I couldn’t do it.

Maybe I’m just impatient but it’s bad.

I think that Octavia did the best that she could with what she had available and I think that’s she’s not a bad person for what she did with the fighting pits/cannabalism. And I know that if Bellamy had been in her place, he would have eventually done the same.

Kane was a whiny bitch in season 5.

Why’d the kill Diyoza(I can’t spell) like that?

I liked Joesephine. It was really fun to see Eliza Taylor be able to get a new character in the show. Also props to her for that last episode with pretending to be Joesephine and being Clarke at the same time.

I called the dude being Gabriel from the first time I saw him you peasants.

Octavia’s redemption arc this season is beautiful.

They did....that.....to Kane. I’m angerey.

Lost In space

Not enough people watch this show. (The Netflix remake or the origional)

Seriously guys it’s a good show.

Absolutely nothing is wrong with it.

I love Don West with my whole heart.

I love Dr. Smith with my half heart.

I love the robot with my two hearts.

I love Penny Robinson with all the stars in the galaxy.

I love all of them okay.

There are no plot holes, no inconsistencies, no faulty science and anyone who says (or proves) otherwise is wrong.

It’s confirmed for a season two which should air in like the December-February time area.

It’s a Netflix show so you can binge the entire season in like a weekend.

Seriously watch it.

The Umbrella Academy

Five x Delores is weird.

Luther x Allison is illegal.

Klaus deserves all the push pops in the world.

The handler is hot.

The Comission killed Dave.

Luther is the most boring, Unorigional, straight white guy character I’ve seen in a long time. I hate him so much.

Allison is a queen but her character is brought down by her weird relationship with her brother.

Tbh if I was Allison you know I’d be telling my kids that I heard a rumor that theyd go the fuck to sleep. Like that’s a good thing. Idk maybe I’m just a sociopath.

Istanbul not Constantinople being played over a scene where five murders a squad of Commission people is the greatest cinematic masterpiece ever conceived by man.

“Where are you going” “to save the world” “oh is that all?” Iconic.

None of these are really unpopular but the show writers seem to think differently.

Diego has never done anything wrong in his life like yaaaasss bitch kill your brother at yo daddy’s funeral!!! Work!!!

PaTcH

AAaAHh

Big Theif - Mary is the perfect song to play over Klaus returning from Vietnam.

Will you love me, like you loved me in the January rain?

It’s up there with Goodbye July.

Speaking of Goodbye July....

Z Nation

Many people haven’t watched it

It’s like if The Walking Dead and Zombieland had a baby....and then the baby did a line of cocaine.

It’s wild.

Watching Garnet die ruined every sliver of hope I had in humanity.

I have a special place in my heart for this show because it’s the first show that me and my mom would stay up and watch the new episodes air every Friday. It brought us closer and I can’t thank the cast and show runners enough for this.

So maybe I’m biased, but you should watch it.

Having Murphey switch from being an anti-hero to a villain back to an anti-hero and then to a regular hero, amazing. Astonishing. The peak of human existence.

Even though he’s not entirely human.

What color is Murphey today? Is he pale, discolored, grey, blue, red? We don’t know!

Roberta Warren is the Black Goddess main protagonist that we deserve.

Addison Carver is a functional Bi.

10k is tragic backstory central but other than that, his character development is pretty lacking other than him persuing love interests.

None of these are really unpopular opinions but I doubt any of you have watched the show. It’s on Netflix. Watch it.

Oooooohhhhh George.

Georgia St. Clair could stomp me to death and my ghost would still want to fuck her.

Anyways I’m gay

God damn I have a lot of pent up Gay energy.

Murphey and Lucy have a realistic enstranged father/daughter relationship and it’s heartwarming.

And then they killed her off to save him.

Honestly if you name a character Murphey they can only be assholish bad boys with a good heart deep down sorry I don’t make the rules.

Also if you name a character Murphey I will love them with my whole soul.

I’m so mad they cancelled the show.

I’m infinitely more mad that they named that disgrace of a show Black Summer and claimed that it was a prequel....but it didn’t follow the same cast and had they not advertised it as a prequel I would never have guessed.

Black Summer gives totally opposite vibes than Z Nation does. I get that black summer is supposed to be the worst time that the zombie apocalypse ever had, with cannibals and no food, but it feels like s completely different show.

It’s like if The Walking Dead claimed that it is a prequel/occurs during Shaun of the Dead.

Like....no. They’re....no.

Anyway watch it it’s good.

Detroit: Become Human

Connor isn’t the best character.

This is an unpopular opinion post deal with it.

Markus has to be my favorite.

Honestly this game is so good and not even just graphics-wise.

It’s the same robotic sentience story we’ve been fed for years, but this time it’s from the Android’s perspective and this time all they want is to be free. That’s it.

I fucking hate North.

Hank is literally if Rick from Rick and Morty were serious.

The only correct way to play Connor is to walk the thin line between deviant and regular A.I. Without leaving out Hank. The correct thing to do is make Conner deviant at Jericho.

The only correct way to play Kara is to protect Alice with every fiber of your being. Meanwhile, get close to her. Do not get caught, even if that means dissappointing her.

The only correct way to play Markus is to lead a peaceful revolution. Also tell North to fuck off.

The border patrol guy who either gets Kara and Alice caught or knowingly lets Androids cross the border is the best character. Forget about Markus, this guy sees either “oh fuck androids are killing people, maybe we shouldn’t let this one cross the border” or “Androids just want to be free and are peacefully fighting for this. Let this one and her daughter through.” I love him.

LUTHER.

YES DADDY.

anyway.

Let Out The Bear He Just Wants To Say Hi :)

Even though I think Conner is overrated by the fandom, I do like him.

But he’s not a pure innocent cinnamon roll either.

It depends on how you play, but he has really violent options so stop the “He wouldn’t harm a fly” attitude.

But he is cute.

The home screen for the game is revolutionary (no pun intended) and I hope future game follow suit in making the first impression of the game something cool.

Stealing clothes/money/the fence cutters is literally okay.

Also if you put Kara in white hair you can die.

If in your first actual play through you got the Kara lives at the recycling plant ending but Alice dies, you can die too.

I’ve never actually seen the steal money and go to motel option play out because it’s stupid, especially if you don’t steal clothes. Like that’s begging to be caught.

Stranger things

Billy Hargrove is bad and just because he’s abused does not make what he does okay.

Harringrove is gross and I’m gay so my opinion counts as double.

That being said, there are some really cute fics about Harringrove and I can see the appeal of “good boy falls for mysterious bad boy with a dark past and trauma”

I’ve said I’m gay this whole post because I say it a lot, but I don’t like actually labeling myself but I like girls and boys and everything in between and I say I’m gay kinda as a joke when girls are hot.

That being said...

Steve Harrington calling himself Daddy made me feel things.

Strange things.

Haha get it I’m making a joke to distract you from the daddy part.

Steve Harrington is a good person now, but he was still an asshole before and he can still be criticized for his past.

I used to be hardcore Jancy but after season three I feel like Nancy needs and deserves a break from boys so she can figure out herself and who she is now and what she wants to do without the weight of boys and boyfriends constantly around her.

That being said i still don’t like Nancy because she was flirting/slept in the same bed with Jonathan whilst obviously having feelings for him while she and Steve were still a thing. It’s not cheating but to me it’s close enough to raise red flags.

Robin is perfect in every way.

I don’t like Jonathan. He’s creepy in s1, fine in s2, but then is s3 he doesn’t do anything to or about his male bosses when Nancy is being made fun of because she’s a woman.

Seeing Nancy’s class priveledge/Jonathan’s male priveledge clashing was so cool tbh

Elmax > Mileven > Lumax

Jim Hopper, with all his faults, is still a caring dad.

Plus him threatening Mike made me laugh so hard sksksksks

Steve Harrington deserves the world and then some.

Low key I really want s4 to give in insight on his family life.

I also want him to get an apartment with Robin.

Robins cute tbh but for half the season I though she was a Russian spy. I guess I was wrong.

Mrs. Wheeler shouldn’t sleep with billy (not that she can now) because it’s wrong, but the reason she wanted to is because her husband is so boring and she gave up on her dreams to be his perfect housewife. She wanted a challenge with Billy. Instead, she should leave her pushover of a husband and find someone better.

Anyway Steve Harrington deserves the world.

Yeah okay hate me whatever.

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pastelbatfandoms · 4 years

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asks for fanfic writers

things that inspire you- Aesthetic Images,Pinterest,FanFiction,Shows,Movies,Fan Music Videos,Songs,Whichever Celeb or Character I have a Crush on that Week or Month.

things that motivate you- My Muse,When People like and Comment on My work!

name three favorite writers-as in Published Authors? Cause I have alot of Faves on Tumblr. Authors-Yasmine Galenorn,Marissa Marr and Francesca Lia Block.

name three authors that were influential to your work and tell why-Not too many tbh. I’m mainly influenced by TV Characters. and OTP’s in MV’s. I would LOVE to write like Francesca Lia Block one day and I’d say as a Teen I was heavily influenced by Amelia Atwater Rhodes.

since how long do you write? How long have I been writing you mean? since I was 13.

how did writing change you? Made me more of a Day Dreamer and a bit Absent minded lol

early influences on your writing-Already told one but other’s would be Christopher Pike as well as Watching WWE and Anime’s like Sailor Moon.

what time are you most productive? Whenever I get free time and am Inspired.

do you set yourself deadlines? No.

how do you do your research? Again watching Episodes of a certain Character,Headcanons and such,or Wikipedia if it’s something on The None Fiction or Mythological side.

do you listen to music when writing? Sometimes.

favorite place to write-My Room I guess.

hardest character to write-Right Now Peter Hale,which is why I took such a long break from Teen Wolf lol (I need to finish watching it)

easiest character to write- Eobard Thawne aka Reverse Flash aka EoWells.

hardest verse to write- Not Verse but My hardest Fic to write was actually a One Shot of My Wells of Hearts Fic From The Flash. It was after HR Wells dies (on The Show) and I was pretty sad writing it.

easiest verse to write-idk about Verse but The easiest Fic I wrote was My Cat & Mouse one with WWE’s Bray Wyatt. It’s a bit too NSFW to put here though ;)

favorite AU to write-All Mine are AU’s since I create a bunch of insert characters lol

favorite pairing to write-Freddy Krueger/Robert Englund with My OC Rika. Also Michael Langdon and My OC Helena. I have a weak spot for Dark,Tragic Soul Mates.

favorite fandom to write-WWE’s The easiest lol I’d probably have to say The Flash or Walking Dead though.

favorite character to write-That’s not mine. Negan.

least favorite character to write-Archie Andrews from Riverdale lol I feel bad because I think reading my Mughead story you can tell.

favorite story you’ve ever written-Online I’d say My Flash one that is STILL not done.

least favorite story you’ve ever written-I probably have a few Sailor Moon one’s I wrote when I was younger that aren’t that good or Some of My Michael Jackson One Shots.

favorite scene you’ve ever written-Ok I’ll just Copy and Paste it. again keeping this SFW. TWD Kings and Queen of Disaster pt1- “Don’t. Merle knew you’d kill him for siding with his Brother and you did anyway,I was there when Daryl had too…” I closed My eyes briefly trying to calm myself. It didn’t work. Before I realized what I was doing I was standing,my gun pointed at him. But The Governor was always one step ahead as he pulled a gun from the back of his waistband and pointed it at me as well. We had each other a stand off. I didn’t waver as I glared at him. “Merle was the one man i knew loved me for all his faults and you took that away.” I said through clenched teeth,angry tears pricking my eyes.The Governor stared at me unblinking. “I loved you. I did.” He insisted at my scoff. “I realize it now. Killing Merle wasn’t personal. Even if it was,it didn’t make a difference,we both lost that day. Merle,My Daughter,Each other.” The Governor looked at me remorsefully. “I am sorry.” “So sorry you disappeared.” “So did you!” Governor shot back. “I had to…” I trailed off not wanting to explain myself to him. I felt defeated,saddened,confused in that moment,that I didn’t notice when The governor slowly circled around the table,gun still in hand to walk behind me,grabbing my wrist that held the gun,putting his own to my temple. I stiffened but didn’t shrink away. We both knew we wouldn’t shoot one another. No matter how psychotic he could be or how hurt and angry I was.

story you’re most proud of- That one ^ or Wells of Hearts.

best review you ever got-On My Gotham one or My Cat & Mouse Trilogy.

worst review you ever got-None yet.

favorite story/poem of another author-Not sure.

hardest part of writing-Getting enough Motivation to write what is in your Head!

easiest part of writing-The Smut lol at least for me. ;)

alternate title for (The Alpha) My Alpha. Yeah very original I know lol

alternate ending for (Wells of Hearts) Not to give anything away but I had this big Fight scene between Reverse Flash,Obsidian Storm and Team Flash and Obsidian was going to turn her back on Eobard and side with Team Flash again at the last minute. But I decided her staying a Villain,essentially staying how Eobard made her,and joining The Legion of Doom plus all that happens afterwards would be more interesting.

alternate pairing for (MugHead) I really don’t change My Mind when it comes to Pairs lol But I may write an Alternate Story with Michelle ending up with FP Jones instead of Jughead.

single story or multi-part story? Multi.

one-shot or multi-chaptered story? Multi.

canon or AU? usually AU unless the Canon is REALLY good. usually stay in The Canon World though.

do you reread your own stories? Yeah all the time lol

do you want to be published some day? Maybe but since I write about Other Creators Characters I don’t think that’s possible.

which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series-Any of The Wrestlers actually being in a Romantic/Sexual Relationship like the one’s I write them in would be ideal. I’d watch it!

one song that captures (Wells of Hearts) The title is literally a Song except it’s WELLS instead of WAR of Hearts. Kings and Queen of Disaster is inspired by Queen of Disaster by Lana Del Rey.

do you plan or do you write whatever comes to your mind? Whenever it pops into My head or when I can.

would you ever write a sequel for (The Mark) I’d write another Baron Corbin x Roxy story but probably not a Sequel to that one since Dean is no longer in WWE.

do you write linear or do you write future scenes if you feel like it? Linear. Though I should just write what pops into My head so I don’t forget it later. That just seems Messy to me.

share the synopsis of a story you work on that you haven’t published yet- The Alpha-My OC Marianna is 18 and Best Friends with Lydia,Alison,Childhood Friends with Scott and Stiles. When She meets Peter (in his Teenage Guise) After much banter and courting by Peter,they start dating. Until Derek tells her the truth about Peter being a WereWolf and killing Alison’s Aunt (She knows Scott’s a WereWolf at this point) and Peter appears to her in his adult form. Marianna breaks up with him but Peter starts stalking her,claiming they have a bond. It turns very dark after that and a year goes by until Marianna admits her real feelings towards him. They start dating again but in secret. Peter ends up turning her and becoming her Alpha,which is when The Group is finally told. After many Deaths,Forgotten memories,a short lived Relationship with Stiles and Memories restored,they end up leaving for Arizona and having a Child,Malia.

share a scene of a story that you haven’t published yet-The Alpha-I noticed his dark slicked back hair and all black attire but I also noticed The Claws on his hands and The Fangs jutting out as he snarled at Stiles,ready to take another swipe at him or a bite. I recognized that look and not just because My Pack,Scott,Derek and Erica,wolf out. This was different this wasn’t out of Protectiveness,because I mean it was Stiles,but Jealousy and Possessiveness,over me. Because this Wolf was... “My Alpha...”” I whispered in shocked realization as My memories started rushing back, I knew something had been missing,I just didn’t know what. “How could I forget you...”

how many unfinished ideas/stories are you working on at the same time? Currently like 5 lol

three spoilers for (Kings and Queen of Disaster)-Suzanna will end up becoming Pregnant with Negan’s Child,Philip Blake will eventually be told of His and Suzie’s Daughter but it will be too late as Negan will end up Killing him after.

writing advice-Nah this has already been too long.

open question to the writer

#fanfiction #asks #Imagines #Survey

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chiseler · 5 years

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The Briefly and Occasionally Great Del Tenney

He wasn’t as culturally attuned as Roger Corman. He wasn’t as obsessively prolific as Jess Franco. He wasn’t as personally flamboyant as Ed Wood. Still, writer/producer/director Del Tenney is a legend in the annals of low budget horror. That he’s a legend is in itself legendary, given that he’s remembered for only four films, all of which were made during a two year stretch in the early 1960s. I’m hard-pressed to think of another director with a filmography that brief who earned a legacy like Tenney’s. They weren’t great films, some weren’t even particularly good, but they had a spark to them, and they were undeniably memorable, sometimes for reasons that had nothing to do with the films themselves.

“My friends used to come up to me and ask, ‘How could you do all those terrible films?’’’ Tenney was fond of saying. “And I tell them, ‘I cry all the way to the bank,’”

He was born in Mason City, Iowa, but in the early ‘40s his family moved to Los Angeles. Tenney began studying theater in school, and by age 15 he was already working, both on stage and later as an extra in the likes of The Wild One and Stalag 17. His focus was on theater, though, so in the late ‘50s he moved to New York and found work in summer stock. A number of the young actors he worked with then, like Roy Scheider, Dick Van Patten, and Sylvia Miles, would later appear in Tenney’s films, many making their screen debuts with him.

By the early ‘60s Tenney and his wife, actress Margot Hartman Tenney, had also started directing productions of their own. After a conversation with a friend who was involved in (as it was described in polite company) “the exploitation film business,” Tenney took a job as assistant director on a couple of pictures, including the merely sleazy Satan in High Heels (a nasty little cheapie involving carnival strippers, junkies, robbery, sex, and murder) and nudie cuties like Orgy at Lil’s Place, (which concerned two girls who decide to get into the nude modeling racket). In later years, while Tenney spoke freely about the former, he rarely mentioned the latter. Still, his experience there inspired him to start making films of his own.

While in the theater he preferred to stick with Shakespeare and the classics, when he moved into film it was all about the bottom line. His goal was not to make great art, but to make a few quick bucks, and to do that he knew what audience he had to aim for. He was determined to give them exactly what they wanted.

Seeing potential in a story his wife had told him about a girl she knew in college who was found murdered, in 1962 Tenney sat down and began working on a script he initially called Black Autumn. Later it would be called Violent Midnight. Then shortly before its release the distributor changed the title to Psychomania, thinking it would cash in on Psycho and pull in the kids.

Financed by his father-in-law and filmed (as all his pictures would be) in Stamford, CT, Psychomania focused on a string of brutal sex murders in a small college town. The obvious suspect is that eccentric painter with a family history of mental problems who lives all alone out in the boonies and paints nude models who often end up getting stabbed (Lee Philips). The above-mentioned Dick Van Patten and James Farentino co-star as a couple of suspicious detectives, and Sylvia Miles appears, well, doing that great Sylvia Miles thing.

It’s a sharp and surprisingly stylish little b/w suspense thriller clearly influenced not only by Hitchcock in the camera work, but also by film noir and horror films of the ‘30s and ‘40s in its use of deep shadows. The shadowy murder scenes are especially shocking here. But none of that really mattered. The picture guaranteed its drive-in popularity by including plenty of nudity along the way. In fact prior to its release the same distributor who changed the title also insisted on more boobs, so without any tantrums about “integrity” or “artistic vision,”Tenney went back and shot another ten minutes of skin and mild sex and cut it in.

Although Richard Hilliard receives the on screen credit as director and Tenney’s only credit is as producer, he would later say that Hilliard was a friend of his and a theater person who knew nothing about making films or dealing with actors, so he had to step in himself and take over, making this the first picture he wrote, produced, and directed.

The film made a lot of money (given its budget, anyway) but today is the least recognized of his films. That always confused me a little, given that in technical terms alone it’s the best thing he ever did. But I guess that’s not what people are always looking for in low-budget films.

There’s something else going on in Psychomania, though, that I’ve been touting for years even if no one seems to care. In terms of genre film history, those self-satisfied types who concern themselves with such things comfortably and endlessly cite Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace as the first giallo, the film that launched a thousand copycats made by everyone from Fulci to Argento. The Bava film is the immovable cornerstone. Without taking anything at all away from what is undeniably a great picture, I’d still argue that Tenney beat him to the punch. Psychomania (released on DVD as Violent Midnight) contains everything that would later be cited as fundamental to any giallo picture: a string of sex crimes, an obvious suspect, several other obvious suspects, lots of boobs, savage violence, and a twist ending. But Psychomania was released in early ‘64, roughly 14 months before Bava’s picture. Okay, so maybe it’s not Italian, and maybe it wasn’t based on those tawdry little yellow paperbacks that were so popular at the time, but dammit it’s still a giallo, and it was the first.

I’ll shut up about that now.

After making a film with style, intelligence, and even a little class compared to the usual drive-in fodder, a film whose influence would be felt for the next twenty years (even if no one will admit it), and a film that made him a little money, Tenney took a hard left.

Filmed over two weeks in 1962, Curse of the Living Corpse was a costume melodrama set in 1892 that’s reminiscent of those AIP prestige numbers or early Hammer films. When a wealthy, possibly crazy, and just plain mean old man dies, his will stipulates that if the surviving members of his family don’t shape up and fly right, he’s going to rise from the grave and kill them off one by one. Well, they don’t and he does. Or at least it looks like that’s what’s happening.

It’s still a film with style, intelligence, and class, but of a different kind. While Psychomania was intense, sexy, and at times brutal, Curse of the Living Corpse was a very stagebound, theatrical piece, a bit slower, a bit more deliberate. A sitting room murder mystery heavy on the dialogue, punctuated here and there by a thematic murder. Plus most of the characters are wearing too many layers for things to get terribly sexy.

Curse features Roy Scheider (in his film debut) as one of the profligate heirs in question, Carnival of Souls’ Candace Hilligoss, and Tenny’s wife Margot Hartman. It’s one of the things that has always made Tenney’s films, cheap, fast, and DIY as they were, stand out. By pulling in friends from the theater, good, professional actors willing to work on a goofy movie for no money, he ended up with performances several cuts above what you’d normally find in something like this. When none of the actors in a costume drama are, say, chewing gum, it just adds a layer of credibility to the story, no matter how ridiculous that story might be.

The other thing that made Tenney’s first two films stand out was the sharp b/w cinematography. The shadows are so deep here, the contrast so sharp and detailed, the film at times reminds me of those early Bava pictures (to go back there again). Even when the story lags a bit, the atmosphere carries it along. It’s something that can’t often be said about the low-budget pictures of the era.

Well, even as he was still working on Curse of the Living Corpse, pre-production was underway on his next film, The Horror of Party Beach. Shooting began about three days after Curse wrapped. If Tenney took a hard left from Psychomania into Curse, this time he had to jump all the way to the other end of the spectrum.

He admitted he wasn’t sure the genre-mashing satire, the horror musical beach movie, would work, but he charged ahead anyway. What made it work was sticking so tightly to the conventions of both the bug-eyed monster film and the beach blanket movie, while at the same time pointing up the ridiculousness of those conventions. Plus there’s a great fucking soundtrack provided by the Jersey-based surf band The Del-Aires.

In the film’s first five minutes he lays everything out. We meet an assortment of young attractive couples and character types on the beach, each with issues of their own. We meet the potential (human) villains in the form of a local motorcycle gang. And out in Long Island Sound, nuclear waste is being dumped into the water where it settles down on a shipwreck and transforms (with the aid of some neat in-camera trickery) the skeletal remains of lost sailors into an army of fishmen in search of human blood.

After that, well, there you go. The monsters are intentionally silly takeoffs on the usual “man in a rubber suit” creatures (note particularly the eyes and the teeth). But if the monsters are silly, so are the people, and in between the two Tenney crams in as many drive-in standbys as he can fit: motorcycle chases, baffled scientists, malt shops, some of those crazy teenage dances, doomed drunks, convertibles, incredulous cops, superstitious black maids who accidentally save the world. And he holds it all together with some editing that’s a bit more clever than you’d expect. The first victim, for instance, dies during a series of cuts between the attacking fishman and The Del-Aires performing the unbelievably catchy “Do the Zombie Stomp” to a bunch of dancing teenagers on the beach. For something this goofy it’s surprisingly disturbing.

(Jokes and surf bands aside, Humanoids From the Deep owes a serious debt of gratitude to Horror of Party Beach).

This and Curse of the Living Corpse were released as a double bill by 20th Century Fox later in ‘64, complete with a gimmick. Would-be audience members were required to sign a release before entering the theater absolving the theater owners of any blame should the viewer die of fright during the screening. It’s unclear if there were any casualties.

The double bill was the last thing to play at the legendary 3,000-seat Paramount Theater in Times Square, and Horror of Party Beach went on to become Tenney’s most successful film. After that things started to slip.

His next picture, which he completed in ‘64, was Voodoo Bloodbath, a horror comedy that can trace its roots directly back to Val Lewton’s classic I Walk With a Zombie, but with more bad jokes. William Joyce stars as a bestselling, wisecracking, playboy author of adventure novels. Given that he hasn’t turned anything in to his editor for months, his editor drags him onto a plane and flies him to, yes, Voodoo Island in search of inspiration. See, not only is a famed scientist conducting cancer research there, but the place is supposedly overrun with zombies, too.. It’s a million-selling novel in the waiting. When they arrive they discover three things:

1. The Caribbean island is actually populated by Mexicans for some reason.

2. The scientist has a beautiful blonde virgin daughter.

3. The local natives are preparing for a human sacrifice that night.

None of it bodes well for anyone, though no one realizes this yet.

The humor arises mostly from the editor’s shrill and boorish wife, and the author’s overbearing attempts to pick up any woman he sees (particularly the scientist’s daughter). Neither are terribly funny. The rest of the film is straight-faced and boilerplate, reminiscent of a dozen voodoo pictures from the ‘40s. It’s not very good, either. Compared with his first two films in particular the production values and direction had gone straight to hell. It’s a clumsy, sloppy picture with very little charm. There’s not even much of a bloodbath. Drumming’s good, though. Up to this point he had worked near miracles with standard storylines and no budgets by bringing in good actors and skilled editors and cameramen. Here he didn’t seem to be trying all that hard. Of all four films, this one really did look and feel like everything else out there.

I wasn’t the only one who thought it could’ve been better. The picture sat on the shelf for nearly seven years until 1971, when low-budget distributor Jerry Gross came nosing around in search of a film to drop in the bottom half of a double bill he had in mind. After a quick and simple title change, the Tenney film was just the ticket he was looking for. As great and fun as those first three films had been, it was Gross who, if accidentally, helped make Tenney a legend.

Today Voodoo Bloodbath is all but completely forgotten. Even under its new title, I Eat Your Skin is less remembered for what it is as a movie than for being half (together with the utterly unrelated I Drink Your Blood) of one of the most notorious double bills ever released. After seeing them we may not remember anything that happened in either, but we sure do remember those newspaper ads, and sometimes that’s worth a hell of a lot more.

Tenney didn’t talk much about the experience or the film after the fact, but while Voodoo Bloodbath was still sitting on the shelf he all but completely stepped away from the film business, though he admits he kept the monster suit from Horror of Party Beach and wore it at parties. He and his wife had never strayed from Connecticut, never became part of the hobnobbing Hollywood crowd, so they simply settled down where they were all along, and returned to their first love. They founded what would become a very well respected theater company, putting on three or four productions a year.. Years later when they moved to Florida they opened another. In between Tenney got involved in real estate up and down the East Coast.

Then in the late ‘90s, over thirty years after retiring from motion pictures, he and his wife, together with producer/director Kermit Christman (Wicked Games) , founded DelMar Productions and Tenney began writing, producing and directing again. Between ‘99 and 2003, he made three pictures: Clean and Narrow, about an ex-con trying to go straight in a small town; an I Know What You Did Last Summer knockoff called Wanna Know a Secret?; and a supernatural thriller called Descendant, in which a would be writer is haunted by the spirit of an ancestor who happens to be Edgar Allan Poe. The last was particularly dear to Tenney, because he’d always loved Poe and wanted to do some kind of movie about him.

Ah, but the movie business was a very different animal by then. It wasn’t merely a matter of borrowing a few bucks from your father-in-law to make a silly monster picture, then hooking up with an independent distributor. Now even making the smallest film meant raising a few million dollars. Worse, the lawyers had gotten involved. And forget about any kind of distribution if you aren’t connected to a major studio. The fun had been sucked out of the game, and this was evident in the films themselves. Sure those films he made in the ‘60s were blatantly, even cynically commercial, but commercial in a ragtag, adventurous, slapdash way. The new films were commercial, but much more carefully so. They were slick and serious. If they weren’t slick, audiences wouldn’t look at them, and you had to be serious about the whole process, because there were millions of dollars at stake. Hell, there was even a desperation evident on the screen. While before Tenney had been working with a bunch of young actors on their way up, now he was working with a bunch on their way down (William Katt, Sondra Locke, Wings Hauser), and you can almost hear their nails scratching as they scramble to hold onto anything at all before they vanish completely.

No, it wasn’t much fun, But those aren’t the films Tenney will be remembered for, and they won’t take anything away from his status among fans. He’ll be remembered for those four pictures from back in ‘64 (even if one wasn’t released until ‘71). They weren’t as good as some, but a lot better than most. In all four pictures he never once repeated himself. They were all radically different in mood and style and story, and there was a seductive, sloppy magic about them that’s inescapable. No matter how many times I go back to Psychomania/Violent Midnight (and I go back to it a lot) the ending still catches me off guard. After all these years “The Zombie Stomp” still gets stuck in my head. I even find myself returning to I Eat Your Skin every couple years, not to laugh at it, but just to wonder. I guess that’s why Tenney, on the basis of only those four pictures, can now take his rightful spot among the pantheon of cult directors.

by Jim Knipfel

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misas-biggest-fan · 5 years

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some detailed thoughts on an LABB movie w a ‘read more’ bc i have A Lot To Say

i want it to be a movie bc i love movies

im also open to the concept of a mini series but a full tv show might be a challenging stretch

animated or live action would both be incredible and both have their unique pros and cons

the whole thing is DISTINCTLY LA

busy streets and palm trees and the Hollywood sign and the shiny, overly false glamour of everything

would really contrast well with Rue Ryuzaki’s disturbing fake-ness

like he’s just as fake as the whole city, that both he and Hollywood have on this costume to hide tragedy and hideous deeds

i want it to have the glitz and glam and extravagance of the recent gatsby movie (which i adore, dont come for me)

if bahz luhrmann doesn’t direct i will RIOT id die for bahz luhrmann he’s Good and he has the same energy and chaotic attitude of beyond birthday himself

i want beyond to have a scene like the one where Nick realizes who Gatsby is and Gatsby turns around with the champagne flute and the fireworks go off in slow motion as he smiles that’s my favorite shot in all of cinematic history no joke

it’s HIGHLY STYLIZED. i want bright colors and weird aesthetic choices

I also want some shockingly beautiful frames of LA and surprisingly sophisicated shots of Beyonds face lit up in different neon colors or something

Indie enough to be weird and fun but pop enough to be easily digestible

it opens with mello writing his book (like moulin rouge!! a;lsdjfk)

his burn scars are just healing and he knows he’ll die soon so he has to write down all his important memories, leave something behind

he wants to write down something important to him, something that he can leave for Near, something that might put his own life and actions into context

something that might help other people understand who he was more

so of course, he thinks of beyond

who he respects and admires and pities

who has such a similar and yet different story from Mello’s own

so maybe in understanding beyond and understanding how mello feels about beyond

people will understand mello

near will understand mello

so mello gets to work detailing this story his incredible mentor L once told him, describing this beautiful memory he has of meeting with and talking to L and how L told him about Beyond

(in this scene, you don’t SEE L. you just get an idea of what he looks like, flashes and shots, so that the audience can know L well enough to still wonder about the identity Rue Ryuzaki throughout the movie)

and then of course, we dive into the story

Beyond is OVER THE TOP. he’s more than unsettling, he’s downright terrifying. but he’s still somehow intriguing and even charming at times, like he can turn the smoulder on and off at will.

Hes a disaster nb, a fabulous hodgepodge of discarded gender roles and impressive makeup skills

Him practicing his evil laugh and trying so desperately to be this comic villain didjdjdje hes such a loser i love him that scene NEEDS to make an appearance

he and naomi’s chemistry is incredible to watch on screen because beyond dominates any scene he’s in unless naomi is there to challenge him because her acting is also so powerful that when they’re on screen together, it’s like you can’t tear your eyes away from this insane car wreck that is their relationship

and NAOMI

a;lksdfj;dlkfj naomi misora <3 <3 <3 <3 ok im ready

so naomi is also a powerful presence on screen, even though she’s not crawling on the ground or eating with her hands or you know whatever ridiculous garbage beyond is doing

more time is spent on her

her disastrous relationship with raye

her feelings over her suspension from the FBI

and really play up the whole jessica jones thing she’s got going on

i want black leather for DAYS

I want “gritty LA detective who’s on suspension from the FBI because she doesn’t play by the rules” or whatever except it’s a twist because not only is she not a man, like this trope usually calls for, but it turns out she was suspended because of her tenderness and humanity instead of her brutality

she still needs to have MULTIPLE fight scenes, a few with beyond and maybe even a few with other attackers, who she absolutely mops the floor with

but then she and beyond have a scene where they fight against someone together

he’s not a good fighter. she mostly has to save his butt every time but he’s just happy to be there and probably keeps saying stuff like ‘wow misora you’re amazing!’ and she’s like ‘?!?! ryuzaki you loser?1?! run?!?’

and of course, there’s enough twists and changes from the book to keep everyone on their toes, but GOOD changes

like maybe we go back to mello a few times and he has more of his own subplot where his relationship to near is revealed more fully, that he wants near to understand him and he wants to reach out to near emotionally in this way

contrast mello’s story with beyond’s so when we learn beyond’s full story at the end, he and mello are revealed to be foils of each other

we get shots of wammy’s house and we see a and beyond interact and we see beyond’s life-destroying grief over a’s death

we get contrasting shots of wammy’s with mello and near and we’re allowed to hope that maybe they can be happier

A and beyond become something of a subplot leading up to as death but you dont entirely realize who beyond is until the big reveal at the end

maybe beyond does some more unsettling things that are just as creepy and in-character but are a terrible surprise for those who’ve already read the book!! i can’t imagine what other horrific thing he could do to scare naomi, but there’s got to be something

i’m rly into bday massacre bc i love naomi and beyond’s rly twisted relationship so i’d love to see more of him being in awe of her, more of them connecting, more of beyond opening up to her even. maybe she tells him a little bit about her suspension. just a little.

also if we could like clean up some of the plot holes in this joint pls and thank you

id even be ok if it’s insinuated that he self-sabotaged a little, on a conscious level or not, bc i feel like that wouldn’t be tooooooo ooc i mean, he’s a hot mess. most of this is just a really twisted cry for help anyway, at least in my interpretation. he wants people to realize he’s suffering. he just… can’t do it in a normal or healthy way :/

beyond pls a;lkdfj

Anyway. Theres also a boppin soundtrack

Fire is a big motif. Maybe make a connection between wildfires in CA and beyond using this case to self-destruct

A little more closure at the end. Thats part of the drive behind my bday massacre fanfic rn is that i feel like he and naomi never got any real closure on the traumatizing, like, week or two they spent together

I also want more closure on naomi as a character arc. I want her to dump rayes sorry butt and i want her to have had some sort of real internal change. None of this “she picks up her life where she left off and never thinks abt beyond again”

Of course, L is revealed and has his glorious little spill down the concrete subway stairs. Its What He Deserves :)

And of course we have to make the obvious contrast between both beyond and mello having survived serious burn injuries its just another thing that makes them such interestingly comparable characters

If Naomi visits Beyond in prison to say goodbye, i wouldnt be opposed. If they made my fanfiction into a movie i wouldnt be opposed

Mello prints out his book in the mafia hideout, his arms folded and waiting as paper after paper comes out, just begging any of these mafia dudes to mock him for liking to write. None of them do. Its a funny moment tho

He debates sending it to near, feeling so awkward and prideful, but he finally does it, leaving instructions for it to reach near after his death.

In the end, naomi and beyond are revealed to be dead at the same time as near receives the package from his dear mello

Naomi and beyond were doomed, and so were beyond and a, but now… near has mellos last love letter to him, cryptically begging him to try to understand. And so theres hope that although the rest of these relationships were doomed, maybe near can still have one piece of mello and be happy

#death note #beyond birthday #naomi misora #mello #meronia #birthday massacre #axb #i might add more later #might draw some screenshots #might eff around and write a screenplay

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theserpentunderneathh · 5 years

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Since Marvel Acquired 21st Century Fox, I have some ideas for Black Panther 2...

Here’s what I think BP2 should be like since Disney Acquired Fox.

First off, I’m totally on the Namor (Atlantis) vs Black Panther (Wakanda) bandwagon.

I think initially the movie should start with the two Kings and nations working to be allies. But after an attack of some kind (maybe a tsunami), that is believed to have been done by Atlantis, the two nations erupt in an all out war.

Instead of portraying Namor as a big bad evil villain, he is shown to be a King just as honorable as T’challa who wanted to avoid war but is just doing what he has to in order to protect his people.

T’challa recognizes this, as well as his some of his own less reputable decisions, and soon begins regretting retaliating so quickly. But right as he and Namor are both on the verge of peace talks, an attack takes place that kills his one true love, Nakia (I’ll explain my reasoning to this later). Simultaneously another attack takes place in Atlantis (maybe an explosion) and someone close to Namor (maybe one of his children or his wife. Or both.) is killed as well, making both kings become angry and vengeful (think T’challa in Civil War x10). This results in the two kings personally going head to head in what needs to be one of the best one on one fights in the entire history of the MCU.

This fight scene needs to be fucking EPIC! Black Panther needs to redeem itself in action sequences after that CGI shit show from the first one. It needs to be mostly practical stunts with Namor and T’challa going hard as fuck on one another. I mean just seriously wailing the shit out of each other. Beating each other to bloody fucking pulps. T’challa comes out on top, because this is his movie, and right before he’s about to kill Namor he realizes that Namor has basically given up and wants to be killed. Namor tells him that the recent attack in Atlantis killed someone close to him. T’challa, tells him he never ordered an attack in Atlantis and Namor tells him he never ordered one in Wakanda and that the initial attack that started the war wasn’t Atlantis’ doing. The two finally begin to realize that they’re being played by an outside force.

Who is this outside force?

None other than Victor Von Doom.

This is where the Disney/Fox deal comes into play. And since a Fantastic 4 reboot is inevitable this would be the perfect way to introduce them into the MCU.

Anyway, it turns out that Victor already has his powers and is already the monarch of Latveria. This way when they do a Fantastic Four reboot its of an already established team instead of another origin story.

Doom is beginning his conquest to take over the world and sees his two biggest obstacles as Wakanda and Atlantis. Instead of attempting to take them out one by one on his own, he concocts a plan to pit the two nations against each other. He plans on making one wipe out the other and then taking on the winner while they’re still weak from the war.

Realizing that the war was completely orchestrated by someone else, T’challa and Namor, Wakanda and Atlantis, ban together to take down Doctor Doom. In the end, Doom is defeated and the two Kings agree to work together to rebuild both their kingdoms.

Before I go into why Nakia needs to die, let me first say I love both Nakia and Lupita deeply. But it needs to happen in the story for a number of reasons.

First because someone close to T’challa has to die to push him to the edge and it has to be someone that makes him completely irrational. Shuri can’t die. She just can’t. When it comes to Queen Mother or Okoye, the support of both Shuri and Nakia would be enough to keep him grounded. But if Nakia dies, he would be alone in his grief. Yes, Shuri, Okoye, and Queen Mother all cared for Nakia but T’challa is in love with her. No one else would understand losing Nakia in the way T’challa has. It’d be the thing that pushes him to his breaking point.

Another reason is with the Fox Merger there are going to be a huge group of fans that want Storm with T’challa and because of that it’d create an amount of unwarranted resentment and animosity against Lupita and Nakia that neither deserves. This way Storm and T’challa could possibly get together. The third reason is going to be explained as I talk about the end credit scenes so stay tuned.

I have an idea for two end credit scenes which is usually the norm.

The first end credit scene would be Doom in a cell in Wakanda’s prison. He would give this long monologue about how he can’t be contained and how he’ll break out and take over the world. T’challa just laughs and tells him, “you’re not staying here”. When Doom asks where he’s going T’challa answers he’ll being staying with one of his [Doom’s] old friends. Then out of the shadows steps a man who‘s face isn’t shown to us. Victor rolls his eyes and groans out the name of the man, “Reed”. They turn the camera and show us the face of Mr.Fantastic (who better be played by John Krasinski). Credits roll.

The second end credit scene shows someone in the tombs of Wakanda (I imagine them mummifying their dead Egyptian style). In a barely noticeable quick shot you see that N’jadaka (Erik Killmonger) tomb has been opened before they get to the tomb of Nakia. A mysterious and unknown person (most likely Threnody but could be anyone) is singing a creepy song while stroking Nakia’s face. The women suddenly says something like “Awaken” and Nakia opens her eyes and gasps. Credits roll.

Then in part three you not only have a revived Killmonger as the big bad but Nakia as Malice along with whoever is responsible for bringing them back to life. But that’s an entirely different post.

#Black Panther #Marvel #Marvel Cinematic Universe #T’challa #Namor #Shuri #Nakia #Okoye #Erik Killmonger #Killmonger #Reed Richards #Victor Von Doom #Mr Fantastic #Doctor Doom #Doom

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honeylikewords · 5 years

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I am freaking out over all the Marvel news out of Comic Con. You?

Honestly, when I first got this ask, I was going to answer “no” because I legitimately hadn’t heard anything from Marvel at all. All I knew was that we were in for a bunch of Disney+ shows like Loki, which I wasn’t interested in, and Falcon and Winter Soldier, which I am interested in but concerned about.

But then I did a quick Google, and saw that there’s plenty of other stuff to be excited about, so here’s a listicle-style breakdown of what I am and am not excited for, as was released in the press junkets regarding the SDCC Marvel Hall H panel.

1. Black Widow: Nope, not interested. Way, way back in 2012, I might have cared, given that Natasha was LITERALLY THE ONLY WOMAN in the MCU with any agency or hero role, but now that we have significantly more women, significantly more interesting women, and women of color (who aren’t played by white women stealing roles from actual WOC lmao), I think we don’t really... need a Black Widow movie. I mean, cool that David Harbour will be in it, but, uh... yeah, count me out of that one.

2. Falcon and Winter Soldier: Yeah, I’m excited for this one! Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan have a lot of fun chemistry, and I hope the series plays up the fun buddy-cop aspect of their relationship rather than “doom and gloom, Steve is gone, boohoo” stuff. They deserve to be heroes in their own rights and to not live in Steve’s shadow. Also, I’m not hugely into Bucky Barnes (I kinda find him boring, sorry) so I hope the series will, at least a little, start to endear me more to him. But I am very excited to see Sam getting more screentime!

3. Eternals: Eh, can’t really say. I don’t know enough about the original Eternals, nor do I have any information about who the new Eternals will be to weigh in. Ask me again when we’re closer to the release date.

4. Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings: Honestly, some warning flags are popping up for me on this one. Much as I want more POC led MCU films (and just, fucking, like, any films in general), Marvel comics has a pernicious history surrounding Asian fetishism and mysticism. I’ve talked about it before with my hatred for Iron Fist, and the problems Marvel had during the big “Asian Craze” of the 60s and 70s, but I really do worry about re-adapting works based in and rooted in the comics made during those times. I don’t know enough about Shang-Chi’s origins to weigh in just yet, but I am on high-alert about how this could go wrong. Hopefully, though, with actual Asian and POC actors involved in the project, it will be done tastefully and respectfully. Hopefully.

5. WandaVision: Nah. I never liked either character to begin with so I’m not really gonna waste my brainspace on some TV show about a random white girl and her toaster boyfriend. I know that sounds mean but I have a lot of pent up anger about how the MCU depicted the Maximoffs, given that the Maximoffs were originally Jewish and survivors of the Hol*caust, but then somehow the MCU decided to make them not only white, but white people working with a literal N*zi organization. So I have beef with that, and I just... don’t care about Wanda or Vision. They haven’t been with us long enough for any of us to really, you know, see them have arcs or be meaningful people. They’re just kinda there. So no thanks. Maybe if the show turns out to be great, I’ll watch, but as it stands, I’m uninterested.

5. Doctor Strange: Multiverse Of Madness: Eh. I never saw the original Doctor Strange because of the whitewashing issues and Benedict Cumberbatch’s, shall we say, history of anti-autism comments and classist perceptions about poor and undereducated people, so I just noped out of that. But I also didn’t like Stephen Strange from what I saw in the other MCU films I have seen him in, so I don’t feel like I’m missing much. If this movie turns out to be cool (apparently, it’s going to be the MCU’s first “scary” film, whatever that means?), I might see it, but for now it’s largely off my radar.

6. Loki: Nnnnnnnnnot especially excited. As I’ve said before, I like Ragnarok Loki, and that’s about it. 2012 Loki was, no joke, literally set up as a N*zi, and y’all know how I feel about N*zis. I’m not being hyperbolic. He is literally supposed to be equitable to a N*zi. So I’m disappointed that we’ve regressed all of his character development back in time to his worst stage, and we’re going to be seeing that play out in his show. Hopefully, the directors allow Tom Hiddleston to have more fun with Loki, because holy shit does Tom have great comedic timing, and I hope we get some redemption for Loki, because as it stands, I feel sad and hurt that they just threw away everything Loki grew into being. And if you’re one of those salty “Loki is a Classy, Intelligent, Sexy Villain, And Ragnarok Made Him DUMB, Give Us Back Our King” fans, please leave me alone. He was gross and greasy and weird and Ragnarok made him funny and likable, in me humble onion. Also, Loki is canonically not straight, not cisgender, and has been pregnant with horse babies, so, uh, let’s all just chill out and have some fun.

7. What If...?: The What If...? comics can be really confusing and fun, alternatingly. So it’ll be interesting to see how this show manifests itself to match the wild, changing, freewheeling chaos of the What If...? storylines. Let’s see what happens!

8. Hawkeye: FUCK I AM SO MAD THAT THIS ISN’T AN ANIMATED SERIES BASED ON THE HAWKEYE COMICS THAT CAME OUT RECENTLY. FUCK. I would have loved that! But instead we’re getting Ronin Hawkeye (which sounds so dumb and also question-mark-y racist?). At least we’ll be getting Kate Bishop, I guess. C’est la vie. Not a fan of the Jeremy Renner Hawkeye, tbh, so I don’t know how this show will keep my interest, but fingers crossed.

9. Thor: Love and Thunder: BUCKLE UP BOYS I FINALLY HAVE A MOVIE TO CARE ABOUT YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAW AMEN PRAISE GOD WE HAVE A GOOD MOVIE COMING YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FEMALE THOR AAAAAAAAAAAAA GAY RIGHTS YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

FUCK! I AM SO HAPPY OH MY G O D!

10. Blade: YEE FUCKING HAW! Mahershala Ali has been in the MCU three times now (1st as Cottonmouth in Luke Cage, 2nd as Uncle Aaron in ITSV, and now as Blade!) and I’m both pleasantly surprised and a little confused, since the MCU very rarely reuses actors. Oh, well! I’m so happy to see him back and I hope Blade does him justice. I worry that the original Blade (comics and movie alike) were a little, uh, Blaxploitation-y, so I hope this update will be more thoughtful and more progressive in its depictions. But at the end of the day, this is one I’ll be watching.

11. Fantastic Four: I’m worried but hopeful. The last swings at making a Fantastic Four film have been, um, mixed to say the least. Fingers crossed for a diverse set of characters this time! Although I do think that David Harbour being in the Black Widow movie does rule him out of being The Thing, as was previously speculated. Well, anyway, here’s hoping it’s good.

12. Black Panther 2: SHIT BOI DO I DIE I AM READY YES YES YES YESSSSS

But please for the love of GOD bring back Ryan Coogler to direct. I don’t trust this story in the hands of, well, non-black people, especially because the story of Black Panther is so intrinsically tied to the black experience. That being said, I’m ready and excited for a return to Wakanda and to see what is next in T’Challa’s saga. Also, please, more Shuri, more Nakia, more Okoye. Honestly, Black Panther brought us some of the best women in the MCU so just... bring back all the ladies. Ramonda too!

13. Guardians of the Galaxy 3: I’m a little nervous about this one re: the issues surrounding the firing of James Gunn (which is, like, such a can of worms to get into), but fingers crossed. The GOTG films are really fun and such a great break from the rest of the dull, painfully self-absorbed MCU, so I hope that the light-hearted tone and center on found family comes back. I also hear that this one will be more female-centric (focusing on Gamora, I believe?) so that’s good to hear!

14. Captain Marvel 2: I didn’t see the first one, but, hey, my lesbian friends sure are happy to have Carol back so you’ve got my approval on that one, Marvel.

15. Mutants: DOES THIS MEAN...MCU X-MEN...I’M SCARED...SOMEONE HOLD ME

16. This one technically isn’t MCU but it’s what I’m most excited for...

THE SPIDERMAN 2099 COMICS ARE COMING BACK!

I’M SO HAPPY I GET TO SEE MY BOY MIGGY AGAIN I AM SO SO SO SO HAPPY OH MY GOD I WAS SO SCARED THEY’D PERMANENTLY CANCELLED MIGGY BUT HE’S HOME I GET TO SEE HIM AGAIN I COULD JUST C R Y AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

anyway, that’s just what I’m excited for. Y’all tell me if I missed anything or if there’s other updates or news! Or tell me what you’re excited for-- I’d love to hear!

#long post #messages #anonymous #k reviews #sorta?? this is all very preemptive so if shit turns out to be good i'll change my mind

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ink-logging · 5 years

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More Superhero Comics, Revealing My Reactionary and Facile Engagement with Art as Little More Than the Accrual of Social Capital, Benefiting Nobody But Myself, 4/7/19

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 4: The Tempest #5 (of 6), Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill, Ben Dimagmaliw, Todd Klein: This is an often very funny issue, set up like a pasted-together UK edition of old US pre-Code horror and crime comics, which, in addition to being funny, plumps up the page count as the plot moves maybe two or three tics forward in advance of the very-last-issue-of-LoEG-ever. The conservative in me wonders why we’re being this digressive in the penultimate number of the entire saga, but then -- at least since “The Black Dossier” -- this project has been more about positioning various strands of fiction and their accrued cultural baggage against one another than telling a propulsive adventure story. Anyway: the realm of Faerie, having easily survived an attempted nuclear strike on the collective imagination by a military-corporate black ops fiction squad comprised entirely of various revamps of James Bond, has brought in every character from every game, comic, cartoon, TV show, movie and book reality with everything for a HUGE apocalypse!

Scenes of bedlam involve: the life story of Victorian painter and murderer Richard Dadd; cameos by Stardust the Super Wizard and David Britton’s Lord Horror; the oeuvre of musician Warren Zevon, brought to terrifying life; a Corbenesque image of a nude muscleman’s massive dick flapping into battle in 3-D; Mick Anglo’s Captain Universe, presented by Moore in unmistakable evocation of his own Marvelman/Miracleman stories of decades ago; a ghost wearing the word CRIME on his head a la Charles Biro’s Mr. Crime, the greatest American comic book horror host; at least one figure from the annals of racist caricature firing powerful sound waves from his mouth; a monster named Demogorgon, the leviathan of Populism, which the heroes allegorically cross as a footbridge en route to a safehouse named the Character Ark; a page-long parody of Batman (via the forgotten UK superhero playboy character the Flash Avenger), describing his origin as motivated entirely by hatred of the poor; a text feature telling of UK comics artist Denis McLoughlin, who worked consistently since the end of WWII, never made enough money to retire, and spent decades as an elderly man drawing for survival on titles he hated, eventually taking his own life in his 80s; and the secret of what happened to all the British superhero characters after the midcentury, which is that they were all eaten by Capitalism, pretty much. I laughed a bunch, but if you think LoEG is tedious shit, this probably won’t turn you around.

Savage Dragon #242, Erik Larsen, Ferran Delgado, Nikos Koutsis, Mike Toris: The latest installment of the longest-running Image comic written and drawn by one of the Image founders, now deeply dove into problematic network tv drama stuff. The Dragon’s relationship with his partner Maxine is still strained in the wake of her sexual assault, a video of which the Dragon viewed in the police archives; meanwhile, the mother of one of the Dragon’s young children has been telling them all the truth about their parentage, further disrupting the peace of the household. Also, a formerly aggressive sex robot has joined the gang, dressed as an anime maid. And, the Dragon reluctantly teams up with the mid-’00s-vintage sexy heroine character Ant (which Larsen purchased from creator Mario Gully a few years ago) to foil a scheme by elderly elites to project themselves into the bodies of mythic gods in order to provoke the Rapture. Most interesting to me, however, is a bonus segment in which Larsen presents newly-lettered pages of his preliminary solo work on “Spawn” #266 (Oct. 2016), which would later be filled out by contributions from Todd McFarlane, colorist FCO Plascenscia, and letterer Tom Orzechowski.

As usual, I prefer the ‘unfinished’ version (top) to the official release product (bottom).

Superman Giant #9, Erika Rothberg, ed.

Batman Giant #9, Robin Wildman, ed.

These are two of those 100-page DC superhero packages they sell for five bucks exclusively at Walmart (for now; later this year they’re gonna have them in comic book stores too), which marry one new 12-page story per issue with three full-length reprint comic books from elsewhere in the 21st century. I just wanted to know what was inside them. Here is what I found:

-The new Batman comic is written by Brian Michael Bendis as a very conspicuously all-ages prospect, where the story is about nothing more than what it’s about, and the title character is presented as a serious-minded but inquisitive and compassionate man of adventure. This issue -- just in time for the remix of “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus -- Batman and Green Lantern travel back to the Old West, trade in their superhero outfits for cowboy clothes, and meet up with Jonah Hex. Nick Derington draws the heroes smooth and squinting with Swanian sincerity, and Dave Stewart colors it all bright and sunny. This is not my thing at all, but it’s confident to the point of acting like almost a rebuke to the rest of the book, where literally everything else is chapter whatever of a nighttime doom ballad drawn by either Jim Lee or something trying very hard to look like him.

-Like:

I can spot the differences, sure - if nothing else, reading superhero comics trains you to spot differences in otherwise similar things. But, there is absolutely an aesthetic at work. The top page is from an issue of “Nightwing” that tied into the 2012 “Night of the Owls” crossover in the Batman titles, produced by a seven-person drawing and coloring team fronted by pencillers Eddy Barrows & Andres Guinaldo. The writer, Kyle Higgins, has Dick Grayson fight his semi-immortal great-grandfather, who is an assassin for the Court of Owls: one of the more popular recent Batman organizations of villainy, presented here as a fascist group mediating society’s function through murder from the gray space between social classes. The Graysons, therefore, are the Gray Sons, but Nightwing resists the pull of destiny by winning a big fight, slinging the villain over his shoulder, and walking away toward a better future of just beating the shit out of bad people instead of killing them, I think. The Batgirl story -- from 2011, written by Gail Simone -- is comparatively orthodox, finding the character gripped with uncertainty about the superhero life and going about some downtime character-building activities, though most of it’s a big fight with a villain with a tragic past. The penciller, Ardian Syaf, kind of has trouble blocking the action so that characters’ movements are clear; I think Syaf is best known for having his contract with Marvel terminated in 2017 for slipping what were widely interpreted as anti-Christian and antisemitic references to Indonesian politics into an X-Men comic.

-There is a whole lot of Jeph Loeb among the reprints. He is not a writer who has been in critical fashion for much the past two decades, but he has undoubtedly sold a lot of comics for DC, and they probably feel he can do it again. The Batman book is serializing (deep breath) “Hush”, a 2002-03 storyline notable for its extraordinarily easy-to-solve central mystery, and generally being a taped-together excuse for Jim Lee to draw as many popular Batman characters as possible across 12 issues; it sold like hot cakes. The highlight of chapter 9 is probably a bit where a three person fight ends in one panel, and then one of the characters leaves, and then a second character wakes up from unconsciousness and also leaves, and then the first character comes back and nurses the third (also unconscious) character back to health, and then Batman arrives, all in the transition between the aforementioned panel and the next, which takes place in the same room; such is the befuddling desire to race ahead to more spectacle. Jim Lee (with Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair) is indeed Jim Lee (et al.) throughout, though at one point the team drops a howler of a swordfighting panel where Batman’s blade appears to grows to JRPG length due to what I think is the colorist filling two whoosh lines with the same hue as the swords.

Meanwhile, the Superman book is serializing a 2004 storyline from “Superman/Batman” -- the series where Loeb has Superman describe the action on the page with his own Superman-branded captions, and Batman does the same with Bat-captions, and Superman says tomayto and Batman says tomahto -- in which the late Michael Turner, one of the rock star 2nd generation Image artists, illustrates a new introduction for Supergirl. But this isn’t quite the same comic that was originally published... can YOU spot the difference?

Is this like how Walmart won’t sell CDs that have an explicit content sticker, but with teen superhero g-strings? It’s hard to explain to younger readers how the low-rise/thong panties combo forever sealed the horniness of a generation of het male superhero artists into the late 1990s, and maybe DC doesn’t want to face that. Or, they’re just leery of how Turner slipping some peekaboo glimpse of Supergirl’s underpants or bare thighs into virtually every panel in which she is depicted below the waist might affect the marketability of the comic in 2019 - although I guess it could have happened in an earlier reprint somewhere too.

-The new Superman comic is a series of 12 splash pages depicting a race between Superman and the Flash. There is very little sense of speed, because Andy Kubert (inked by Sandra Hope, colored by Brad Anderson) draws the characters as frozen in time in a way that prioritizes muscular tension in the manner of contemporary superhero cover art; at one point the two characters part the sea with the force of their bodies, and it looks to me like they’re gesticulating in front of a theatrical backdrop. And, anyway, the story pulls back almost every other page to depict Batman standing on a ledge, or Lex Luthor in a sinister chair -- or some birds flying next to a building, or the Earth as viewed from space with streaks on it -- as the race occurs deep in the background or off to one side. The point is not excitement, but reflection, as imposed upon us by the between 13 and 21 narrative captions and/or dialogue balloons pasted atop all but the first page.

The writer is Tom King, whose “Mister Miracle” (with artist Mitch Gerads) gets a double-page advertisement later in the book, festooned with breathless blurbs from major media outlets. His narrator here is a little girl who is literally chained in captivity, clutching a Superman doll, and delivering her soliloquy in a manner of a superhero-themed TED talk with handclap repetitions on the nature of contradiction. Being faster than a speeding bullet is a CONTRADICTION. Being as strong as a locomotive is a CONTRADICTION. Leaping tall buildings in a single bound is a CONTRADICTION. Superman is about to lose the race, but then he wins, because to beat the Fastest Man Alive is... a contradiction. No wonder the GQ entertainment desk was blown away. DC comics do this kind of thing a lot, where they just have the writer tell you how great the characters are, and since you’re still reading superhero comics in the 21st century, you’re expected to pump your fists in recognition, because you and the writer and everyone at DC are just big ol’ fans... but I am not, because I am Jesus Christ, the only son of God.

-Elsewhere in the Superman book is an issue of “Green Lantern” from 2006, drawn by Ethan Van Sciver (inked with Prentis Rollins, colored by Moose Baumann), who is known today mostly as a conservative ‘personality’ online. He also netted more than half a million dollars last July in a crowdfunding campaign to make a 48-page comic book which he has not yet finished; funny to see an American right-winger on the French schedule. Funnier still to see the kind of people (mostly guys of a certain age) who mill around such personalities croaking about how diversity is ruining comics, because ALMOST EVERY FUCKING STORY IN BOTH OF THESE 100-PAGE BOOKS IS DRAWN BY EITHER SOME DUDE FROM THE 1990s OR SOMEBODY WORKING EXPLICITLY IN THAT STYLE, but - I guess when you’ve been pampered for so long, every paper cut feels like a ripped limb. Speaking of dismemberment, the writer here is Geoff Johns, who is often pegged as a superhero traditionalist, though he also has a grasp of gory pomp which occasionally pushes the comics he writes into a Venn diagram set with loud youth manga... at least in terms of how the action plays out, all broad and pained. So, needless to say, he’s currently writing “Doomsday Clock”, which is DC’s present attempt to extend the publication life of the valuable “Watchmen” property, so that they needn’t return it to the original creators, per the original writer, Alan Moore.

-To hear Alan Moore say it, the America’s Best Comics line was done on a work-for-hire basis as a means of ensuring prompt payment of the various creators from Jim Lee’s WildStorm, the original publisher. WildStorm was then acquired by DC (Jim Lee is now their co-publisher and chief creative officer), and Moore -- who has been (fairly) criticized in the past for taking ethical stances that cause financial harm to his artistic collaborators, who are in a less economically flexible position than writers in the comic book field -- allowed the line to continue under DC’s ownership, as to cancel everything would disadvantage everyone working on the titles. One of those titles, “Tom Strong”, was written by Moore and pencilled by Chris Sprouse for a while, and then there was a long line of guest creators, and then Moore and Sprouse came back when the ABC line wrapped, so that the concept could reach its logical termination point in an apocalyptic manner... Moore does love an apocalypse. The final story in the Superman book is a very recent, late 2018 issue of “The Terrifics”, in which we find an attempt to revive the DC-owned Tom Strong characters as players in broader DC stories. Jeff Lemire & José Luís are the primary creators. Jack Cole’s Plastic Man is there, as well as the John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake version of Mister Terrific. It’s a lot of offbeat characters; we even see Moore’s own parody of Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, because, I mean, Alan Moore does a lot of riffs on preexisting characters too, right? It’s a big blob of cartoon whimsy, filled with available characters running around. If they’re available, you might as well roll ‘em out, off the new releases rack and into a supermarket reprint package stacked in a box next to squeeze toys and discount Pokémon merchandise, which I bought, because it was really cheap.

-Jog

#JogList

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years

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Have you ever gone on the Spider-Man ride at Universal?

Have I ever gone on the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man ride at Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park in Florida?

That thing that I have a 2001 photo of near my bed and have had it there since 2001?

Er...only like 8 times!

Sit down and let me spin you a tale.

Long before there was a Spider-Man movie, long before I knew there was GOING to be one, I found out about the ride at like age 9-10.

It then became my life’s dream to go on that ride. And I do mean dream because I lived in England and my family at the time were living with my grandparents home as we slowly built our new house, a feat that took 2 years so we didn’t have the cash to spare on a big holiday like that.

One of the most crushing childhood memories I have is when there were vague discussions of a holiday to Florida with our closest family friends. But that fell through and I had to live with almost getting to go on that ride. I eagerly scoured our family friends’ holiday photos for a mere glimpse of the Spider-Man ride but nothing!

Remember this was the late 1990s/early 2000s, there was no Youtube and your internet connection was a joke, even if I knew how to use it.

But by the Summer of 2001 we’d finished our new home and moved out. And we finally decided to go to Florida with our family friends...and two other groups of family friends for a two-week mega vacation hitting all the Disney and Universal parks and other tourist attractions (which for us included a bona fide American ‘mall’).

I enjoyed Disney’s MGM studios and Animal Kingdom, but I was waiting for the day we’d hit up Islands of Adventure.

And then the day finally came and I was sure something was going to go wrong and get in my way.

First it was the lines to get into the park.

Then it was being confronted by some admittedly well meaning actors portraying Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle, trying to engage me in conversation when I just. Wanted. To. Get. To. Spider-Man!

And when I finally arrived at SUPER HERO ISLAND it seemed insane. For some reason in my child’s mind the idea of a theme park where every corner you looked and built into the street itself you’d see Disney characters, made sense.

But to see that for my heroes, the Marvel characters just didn’t seem real. Remember this was 2001, the Marvel Universe wasn’t as well known to the public (especially not in England). So whilst I had of course learned about it from all the 90s Marvel cartoons, no one else I knew could instantly recognize like Doctor Doom.

But here I was seeing Jim Lee inspired art of him, Storm, the Hulk and a gigantic Bagley image of Spider-Man in front of THE Daily Bugle!

But alas...the Spider-Man line was immense.

So we got a fast pass and arranged it to come back later and in the meantime I got to be traumatized by the Jurassic Park water drop ride. I was in the front seat age 10 with a T-rex approaching me and then...the ride stopped. Technical difficulties. In fact MOST rides that summer were having technical difficulties.

So we were stuck a T-rex looming over us. Unnoticed by me everyone else on the ride seemed to take a grip and bow their heads. I didn’t get why until it was too late and my eyes sharply turned from the T-rex to the like 60 foot high sheer drop as the ride came down with a splash.

Far less traumatic was getting a photo and autographs with the various superheroes and villains who showed up at Marvel’s Super Hero Island. Of course I got to meet the real Spider-Man...and my mother asked how Mary jane was.

His reply:

You’d have to ask Peter Parker about that

Fucking A.

Anyway, finally, finally, finally we got in the fast pass line for the ride. Which still wasn’t THAT fast but still we weren’t baking alive in the summer heat. And as a bonus I got to take in the surroundings of the Daily Bugle and the 1994 inspired animated shorts made for the ride explaining the whole story behind it (including my first ever look at Scream, a brand new symbiote I’d never even known about!).

Then we got to the ride. It was thrilling, the best feeling of my life. I was on an adventure with my hero Spider-Man! And we were all falling through the roof tops, spinning around and then...

We are sorry to inform you we are experiencing technical difficlties

The ride just stopped DEAD.

In hindsight I suppose it was all too appropriate.

I wanted to experience what it was like to be Spider-Man and now I was going through some typical Parker luck!

A few minutes elapsed before we all yelled because a literal burst of flame exploded nearby us, the ride had started again.

It finished up and I don’t think I’d ever been happier in my life.

But I was about to be because due to the technical difficulties...we got to go again without lining up!

Whilst my family, friends and family friends in attendance enjoyed the ride well enough (except for my friend’s Dad, he’s always had chronic back pains) they all knew this day, this moment, was for me!

And it wasn’t quite over yet.

As we walked down the corridor towards the gift shop we saw...the Green Goblin!

It was a lifesized statue standing just besides the doorway to the gift shop, presumably set up so people could get photos with him.

Well, he was my favourite villain so I had to. I stood beside the statue and posed when...he came to life!

It was one of the actors who’d accompanied the heroes on their periodic arrivals to the Super Hero Island for photos and autographs.

Somehow this was less traumatic than the Jurassic Park ride. I asked for his autograph and he obliged, plunking his pumpkin bomb bean bag onto my head to free up his hands.

Fucking awesome.

And this didn’t even cover the gift shop itself.

I’d never seen so much Spider-Man STUFF in the same place at the same time. I got myself a Green Goblin action figure from the now defunct (but fondly remembered by Marvel Toy historians) Spider-Man Classics line of toys and picked up my very, very first trade paperback (before I even knew that’s what it was!)

Spider-Man’s greatest Villains

It was an eclectic collection of single issues (and one annual) spotlighting an individual villain. Doc Ock, Mysterio, Kingpin, Electro, Hobgoblin, Vulture and mah boys Carnage and Venom (drawn by McFarlane himself, in my first exposure to his work, it left a major impression!)

Being a child f the 1990s and specifically the 1994 cartoon (which was the most recent and influential adaptation at the time, merchandise for it abounding in the store) Venom and Carnage were among my absolute favourite...things in life basically.

I wasn’t alone because just about every Spider-Fan my age loved them too. Hence why getting toys based on them proved elusive for me. And Spider-Man’s bad ass super mega ultra cool black costume even moreso. I’d long resigned myself that getting that toy was just a pipe dream and I’d missed my window for it long ago...Less than 15 minutes after leaving the gift shop my Dad got me this:

There were at least two other stores around the area of the Spider-Man ride and one of them sold toys and other collectibles.

Not only did I fulfill another childhood dream of having a black costume Spider-Man, but the toy even came with a SYMBIOTE toy too! And it was super posable, unlike all my other toys, including my Spider-Man ones.

AND...it came with a reprint of ASM #252, the debut of the black costume itself by DeFalco and Frenz and starring Black Cat too. An all round awesome issue and one of the first classic Spider-Man stories I ever got to read.*

The other of the two nearby stores was what an older me would call a relatively modest LCS, as it wasn’t that big of a store and sold ONLY comics and trades.

But you have to understand, 10 year old me had NEVER been inside an LCS. The idea that so many comics could be in the same place and that a store JUST selling them could exist was akin to the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin, something that could only ever exist, not just in America (the land where Spider-Man and all those other characters I loved, were from) but specifically there on Super Hero Island.

The rest of the day was pretty fun.

My friend somehow coerced her mother and mine to go on the Incredible Hulk roller coaster which I believe at the time was the tallest roller coaster in America, with this savage twist in the middle of it and a net to catch keys and other falling items.

We went on the Popeye ride, one of those rubber dingy rides that is supposed to splash you a lot and...I do not know if I’ve ever felt more wet in my life.

All in all it was a good day and I vividly remember being in one of the restaurants on the boulevard leading up to the theme park (a Three Supremes themed place for some reason, with wax statues of the band nearby our table) just pouring over my new toys, my new comics and my experience.

Best day of my life up until then!

Hell the ‘after party’ when we finally got back to England was awesome too. My beloved grandmother had bought me the latest issue of Astonishing Spider-Man that I wasn’t able to pick up whilst I was away. Who was the villain of the story?

Carnage!...Also Silver Surfer was there and he was pretty cool too.

It wasn’t the last time I went on the ride though.

My family and family friends made it an annual tradition between about 2002-2008 to spend the Christmas holidays in America and every year up until 2006 we spent some time in Orlando, meaning I got to check out the Spider-Man ride at least once every year and pick up a new trade and a bona fide original American comic book (not a reprint!) off the stands.**

So to answer your question definitively, yes I have indeed gone on the Spider-Man ride at Universal. I’ve done so many times and the ride and location are incredibly special to me.

*When I say classic I mean anything from before like 1995 because the stories I’d been reading in my UK reprint magazine, Astonishing Spider-Man, were all from 1995-1998, except for when they specifically spotlighted an older comic and referred to it as a classic. To me a classic was anything with ‘older art’.

**This experience led to me getting one of my favourite stories ever, Revenge of the Green Goblin, the second JMS trade with the 9/11 issue and Aunt May and Peter’s conversation, and also Kraven’s Last Hunt and Spider-Man Torment.

I fondly remember reading KLH whilst walking between rides and shows in Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios, I even remember I was reading part 2 or 3 at like a Wild West show at the latter after dark and somehow this added to the atmosphere of the story.

Torment was a different experience. I’d seen the cover, I knew and loved McFarlane’s art and the story turned out to be a sequel to KLH to my delight. But I had a really bad stomach bug during that particular vacation and Torment helped me get through it. Half because it was a Spider-Man story I loved reading and half because the pain of my bug led me to relate to Peter’s pain in that story.

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