#the kid is actually a Marvel comics minor character my sister and I like to cross over with bnha

[jesse-eisenberg-interview]

Jesse Eisenberg On The Return Of Lex Luthor: “I’d Be Shocked If I Wound Up In A DC Movie – But It Would Be A Pleasant Shock”

Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd at the 28th Sarajevo Film Festival after screenings of his directorial debut When You Finish Saving the World, Jesse Eisenberg covered a lot of bases, from his introduction to acting as an anxious teenager to his dislike of the sitcom Friends (“My sister loves it, and we get into arguments all the time,” he said. “Because no one talks that way, and there’s not a group of six people that are all that good-looking and all that funny”). Eisenberg also expressed dismay at the response to his portrayal of Lex Luthor in the 2016 blockbuster Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. “I felt very personal about it,” he said. “The writer, Chris Terrio, is a very serious writer, and he’s a very emotional person. He thought a lot about my character, and I thought a lot about my character too. I talked with my acting coach about the character a lot, about his backstory with his father and his emotional life—and then people hate me.”

Speaking to Deadline afterwards, Eisenberg clarified that he would not rule out a return to the DC or even Marvel world if called upon. “I’d be shocked if I wound up in a DC movie, but it would be a pleasant shock,” he said. “Listen, I’m not a comic book fan. To me, it was not playing a role that I’d envisioned since childhood. To me, it was a chance to play this great character that this great writer wrote, and I loved doing that. So, to play it is a joy, and to not play it isn’t something that I’m going to be ashamed to tell my kids about, because that is not an important genre in my life, even though I loved doing that movie.” So he would still do a superhero movie? “Yeah. Because as an actor, you do all kinds of different things, and sometimes great roles show up in really commercial things and sometimes terrible roles show up in independent films.”

For the time being, however, Eisenberg is keeping his diary clear, as he prepares to shoot his next film, A Real Pain, in Poland. “The story is about two cousins who have grown apart,” he explained, “and they go on a heritage-slash-Holocaust tour after the death of their grandmother. It’s about their lives and their little struggles, as opposed to the bigger struggles that they’re facing, and trying to juxtapose how we think about modern pain versus how we think about the pain of our ancestors. Our ancestors were killed, and our struggles are so minor, comparatively. The movie kind of asks the question, ‘Are [those minor struggles] also valid?’”

The writer-director’s co-star in the film will be Succession star Kieran Culkin. “I always thought of him for the role,” said Eisenberg. “I actually haven’t seen Succession, but my little sister, who I send everything I write to, had. When she read the script, she said, ‘You have to give it to Kieran.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’d love to, he’s just phenomenal.’ He does Kenneth Lonergan plays in New York, and I have real love for those plays.”

Eisenberg not having seen Succession isn’t entirely surprising, given that he doesn’t even see his own movies. But it’s perhaps a little remarkable that he doesn’t keep tabs on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose portrayal brought him an Oscar nomination for 2010’s The Social Network. “I guess I don’t, because I don’t have a Facebook page,” he mused. “The stories are typically meaningless to me. I notice sometimes when a story comes out about Facebook in the news, but I think people just worried that their data is being mined or sold. I feel a little chuffed that I never got a Facebook page.”

Despite the many plaudits for David Fincher’s film, Eisenberg doesn’t get much recognition from the public for it. “When I go to the airport,” he said, “people have seen me in Now You See Me. As great a movie as it is, The Social Network is still a drama. It’s not a popcorn kind of movie. Even though it’s considered one of the greatest movies [of recent times], it’s just not a movie that people shout at me about from across the room. People shout at me from across the room because I was in a movie about magic.”

Fans off the Now You See Me franchise will be pleased to know that a third is very likely on the way. “They’ve been trying,” he said. “but I think it will happen sooner rather than later. It’s such a beloved franchise. I only know this because I’m in it, but you feel it. I don’t know why that is, because my finger’s not really on the pulse of culture, but I feel, as a person involved with it, that it’s something that people really love, and I know that the people who produced the movie feel that too.”

All this recent activity will presumably make up not just for the disappointment of Batman V Superman but also for the crushing rejection that happened during the pandemic, when his work was turned down by satirical website The Onion. “I got very, very close,” he said. “They give you a probationary period, so you submit 10 ideas a week for a number of weeks. I got very close twice, and then, ultimately, I didn’t make it. It’s very competitive.” How hard did it hit? “Listen, I’ve had every advantage in my life because of being in movies. This experience proved to be completely useless during this time. They don’t have bylines—no one knows who writes these things—so for me to be a famous actor is completely meaningless. In a way, it was a humbling experience, because you kind of learn, ‘Oh, this is the way the world would react to me were I not in movies.’ Which is to say that I’d probably get rejected multiple times.”

SOURCE

#jesse eisenberg #2022

[radioactivepeasant]

I like to think that All Might still saves people after retiring. I mean, he really isn't the type to sit on the sidelines willingly. He's probably helped a few lost kids, or handled groceries for someone going through a difficult time -- little things that save people every day, they're just not so visible to the public.

#yagi toshinori #toshinori yagi #bnha #my hero academia #All Might #copicmarkers #my art #the kid is actually a Marvel comics minor character my sister and I like to cross over with bnha #because Hala Child 9 reminded us of Eri and she deserved a happy ending

[emiliachrstine]

ok this was an ask i got and had a good time with but! what would jackie’s comics history be if she had been canon/how would it have differed from the film adaptations?

Okay, I need to preface this by saying I know nothing about the comics. Only what I’ve read through my research, so I apologize if I get something wrong. Anyways, here we go! (also I know I’m going to forget major points so I apologize)

Comics History:

Jackie doesn’t appear in the comics until the late 1960′s when they revived the character and comics in the early 60′s. When she’s first introduced, she is the only child of Addie Harris (nee Lewis) and Joseph Harris. She takes on her mother’s maiden name when she joins the academy. Jackie was born after WWII and her mother was friends with Steve during the war. She grew up around SHIELD and the stories about Steve Rogers. Since Peggy Carter was a very minor character in the comics, her relationship with Peggy wasn’t shown too much in the comics. But she did often talk about how much of an influence Peggy had on her growing up. 

By the time Jackie is introduced, she is already working as a SHIELD agent and has a rather fractious relationship with Tony Stark. She’s not as close with him as she is in the films, in fact, there are several instances where her dislike for Tony is very prominent. They are very much reluctant friends and allies, but they work very well together and share a few moments of genuine friendship and admiration for each other. There’s even a period where Tony has a clear romantic attraction towards her but Jackie persistently rejects him. But as the comic series goes on, their animosity slowly melts away and they become really good friends. Close to what would happen in the films.

Jackie is one of the best agents working for SHIELD. She and Sharon Carter are two of the most trusted agents and often go on missions together. However, there was always a level of competitive nature between the two, but it was always in good fun. They were always like sisters to one another. 

The character’s popularity spawned her own spin off series which were actually a rather big hit. The Argentina mission was the first major arc to be covered. The series starts off in the early 60’s during the first few years of her working at SHIELD. And it starts this whole complicated relationship between Jackie and Bucky Barnes that actually turns romantic at one point, way down the line. Jackie’s trauma from the failed mission isn’t as intense in the comics as it is in the films. She’s able to understand Bucky’s situation and forgive him more easily. It’s a very on and off type relationship, never one where they officially are together or anything of that matter. And it is a big rival against Natasha and Bucky. 

An offshoot comic series, has Jackie getting pregnant by Bucky and giving birth to a son. She gives her son up for adoption to protect him from a domestic terrorist, Baker, who discovered her identity after she infiltrated his group. Jackie ended up going on the run, never telling Bucky that he had a kid. It’s not until the kid returns as an adult in search of his parents. Jackie is presumed dead since going on the run and Bucky doesn’t believe that this kid is actually his. The kid is named Michael and he makes on and off appearances in this issue run.

But going back to the main comic series, Jackie is made head of the team who found Steve in the North Atlantic. While she’s not assigned to help with reintegration, she ends up helping Steve adjust to modern life. And they become close friends fairly quickly. But Steve and Sharon become a thing and they are a couple for quite some time. However, during the periods where they are not together, it makes way for a romance to blossom between Jackie and Steve. Much like her romance with Bucky, her romance with Steve is a very will they won’t they type relationship. But it became a very popular couple and most of the reception given was that people wanted them to get together. But they never do. Steve and Jackie’s romance is the tragic love that was deep and affectionate but was never meant to be. Even though Sharon and Steve are considered the couple and have a longer trek history, Steve never stops loving Jackie, even up to when he’s killed by Sharon. One could make the argument that Jackie was his true soulmate. 

Jackie is a lot more involved in the comics’ run of Civil War. She takes on the side of Captain America, becomes part of the Secret Avengers, and fights against the ones who are for the federal registration which brings her face to face with Tony Stark. When the Secret Avengers respond to a fake emergency call, they are ambushed by pro-registration forces and Jackie ends up getting killed during the skirmish which makes the team retreat. Steve continues on with the fight but ends up surrendering at the end, as we all know. Her death is mourned by everyone. Sharon lost her best friend and sister, Bucky lost someone he felt truly understood him, and Steve lost the love of his life. Even Tony ends up feeling guilty for what happened to her. 

Jackie remains dead throughout the proceeding comic issues. When the first few mcu films are released, marvel makes a whole new comic run that could run parallel with the films, while still keeping some details different. Of course, Jackie is brought back with a lot of changes done to coincide with what was being done with her in the films.

The Films:

There are quite a few changes that are made to Jackie and her backstory. Since the films were taking place in the 21st century, her birth date was changed to 1985. She is no longer the child of Addie but retconned to being her granddaughter. Kathleen and John were created for the films, then were put into the new comic runs. Jackie’s relationship with Tony becomes a more familial bond than what was depicted in the comics. Although, it was important for the films to keep in the fact that they butt heads a lot with each other. And the romantic interest on Tony’s part in the comics is completely erased in the mcu. 

Her involvement in Civil War is drastically changed compared to what happened in the comics. In fact, when it was announced that the civil war storyline was being done, a lot of the fans speculated that Jackie would end up dying in the film since she did so in the comics. In the film, Jackie refuses to take sides despite being against the accords. Her relationship with Tony and Steve prevents her from choosing one or the other. She very much becomes a witness and only intervenes when she sees no choice. Her being pregnant in civil war is a new detail created for the film. 

The biggest change is her relationship with Steve and Bucky. It is definitely decided between Feige and Stan Lee to try and put Steve and Jackie as the endgame couple, since their relationship tenure in the comics was quite popular. Their relationship is made to be much more complex and ended up being controversial because of key events that happened (i.e. the biggest being Steve choosing Bucky over a pregnant Jackie). Her relationship with Bucky is definitely toned down a lot more, the movies played more into her trauma and her hesitation to forgive Bucky. And this did not please bucky stans and also the bucky/jackie shippers because their relationship in the comics is pretty significant, and the films pretty much erased how important they were to each other.

Madison and John are also a new addition. They are eventually written into the new comic run and are given their own spin off as well. Though, John is based loosely on the son that bucky and jackie had in that offshoot series. And as for Madison, her name comes from a Captain America issue where Steve and Jackie talked about what a normal life together would be like. They would have a house on an isolated patch of land, away from the city. And they would have a kid, they always debated whether it would be a son or daughter. They liked the idea of either but always agreed that Madison would be the name of their daughter. So in the films, they decided to give them two kids with the daughter being named Madison and they move to a new home almost in the middle of nowhere.

Then, there will be Madison and John’s tv show, maybe even a show depicting Kathleen and John in their early years at SHIELD. There would definitely be a comic run for her parents in the new comic run. 

#answered #ava tag #okay i don't think this makes any sense #so I'm sorry #but thank you so much for asking this #this was SO MUCH FUN #villanele

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Marvel Universe LIVE: Age of Heroes Thoughts

I just got back from seeing the Marvel Universe LIVE: Age of Heroes stage show at London’s O2 Arena and thought I’d share my thoughts on it.

The first thing I have to acknowledge is that I am absolutely not the target audience for this thing even a little bit.

The target audience is at absolute minimum 5 and at a huge push maybe 12 years old, with 8-10 probably being the sweet spot.

It’s essentially for kids who’ve seen the MCU, the 2010s cartoons, played the most child friendly video games, picked up the sticker books and so forth. If there were any winks to the comics or deep cuts me and my friend (who’ve both been around the block many times when it comes to comics) either didn’t catch them or they might’ve been unintentional.

But what exactly is this?

Simply put it is a stage show that runs under 2 hours (including an intermission) in which a group of heroes engage in stunts and acrobatics in a bare bones story wherein they tangle with Nebula, the Ravagers (including Yondu) and most chiefly Loki across some famous Marvel locations for control of the mystical item, the Wand of Watoomb (which debuted in ASM Annual #2!).

The heroes in question are:

·         Doctor Strange

·         Star Lord

·         Gamora

·         Rocket Racoon

·         Drax the Destroyer

·         Groot

·         Spider-Man

·         Captain America

·         Iron Man

·         Thor

·         Bruce Banner/the Hulk

·         Black Widow

·         Wasp (Hope? Janet? It is unclear)

·         Black Panther

·         And a surprise guest appearance from Iron Fist

There are also some other more minor characters of note too:

·         The Chitauri who act as Loki’s soldiers

·         Green Goblin

·         Rhino

·         Lizard

·         Electro

·         And Black Cat

Sans the Chitauri the latter villains only appear briefly in a battle just there to introduce Spidey and the Avengers (sans Iron Fist, Hulk and Doctor Strange) on stage.

The scenario is Green Goblin is committing a crime in NYC that Spider-Man shows up to stop but is then attacked by Black Cat and soon the other Spidey villains. Ultimately outnumbered and out gunned that’s when the Avengers show up to help.

From there Doctor Strange shows up to inform them that Nebula got her hands on the wand and it’s teleporting her somewhere on Earth (this was all shown earlier in the show during the introduction to the Guardians and Ravagers). With Banner’s help they narrow the locations down to K’un-Lun and Antarctica.

As the Guardians head to Knowhere to get one of the Collector’s items that will be able to take them to the wand, the Avengers split into two groups and head to both locations.

The K’un-Lun team consists of Thor, Iron Man, Wasp and Doctor Strange and the Antarctic team consists of Spidey, Cap, Black Widow and Black Panther.

They plan to bring in Bruce/Hulk if the situation gets really dire, but little do they know Loki has invade Avengers Tower in New York and captured Bruce, casting a spell on him that prevents him from getting angry and thus transforming.

Part 1 concludes with the K’un-Lun team fighting Loki who uses his magic to bring a statue of a dragon (who is clearly meant to be Shou-Lao the Undying) to live. The dragon in turn animates a group of stone soldiers to fight the Avengers who’s abilities are ineffective against them. That’s when Iron Fist appears to help out. Deducing that beating the dragon will enable them to beat the soldiers, Iron Fist ends it and the soldiers are defeated soon after. Unfortunately Loki still captures the Avengers.

In Part 2 the Guardians manage to beat the Ravagers (who are also after Rocket’s bounty) and find what they need to get to Earth.

Meanwhile the second Avengers team have found themselves in the Savage Land and the natives are not pleased to see them. Nebula is teleported there but Spider-Man webs the wand out of her (and everyone else’s) reach thus prompting a battle to reach it in time. The good guys win and use the wand’s power to take them to the other Avengers, unaware they are captured in Loki’s throne room on Asgard.

Loki soon captures everyone but thanks to Rocket’s especially dangerous big gun most of the heroes are freed. The big exception is Bruce. This is a problem because only he can penetrate the force field protecting the wand and avert disaster. Unfortunately his own prison cell won’t open.

The heroes then resolve to use a device Iron Man talked about way back in their introductory battle. In short through the power of combined positive thoughts Iron Man’s device can unleash a powerful burst of energy. The heroes (and the audience) send their positive thoughts and succeed in releasing Banner and unleashing the Hulk who saves the day.

Good guys win. Bad guys lose. The crowd claps and cheers as the actors pose and bow. Hulk and Groot squabble.

Based upon everything above you might be thinking this show is rather...well lame.

However it is in fact really, really fun!

As is so often the case with stage shows you have to actually see them (and really in person) to appreciate them, reading a summary or even a script doesn’t do them justice.

As basic and simple as the plot and characters are (we never see the heroes out of costume for instance) it is all service of the point of the show.

Cool stunts, acrobatics, fight choreography and set pieces with some of your favourite super heroes.

On that front the show is a rousing success and the story mostly works towards that end. You want deep thoughtful Marvel storytelling that’s the movies and the comics. You want just pure superhero fun, this is it.

I guess you could argue the writing could be better because it gives little in the way of stuff for the adults inevitably dragged to this by their kids like many Pixar films succeed in doing.

And yes that would have made this stage show better. Better...but not good. After all where is it written that a stage show made specifically to entertain children and just children is bad merely because it doesn’t seek to do more than that, let alone when it totally succeeds?

The stunt work, acrobatics and effects mind you are not Cirque du Soleil or anything. But they are great for what they are. Almost everything in the fight scenes works for instance, stand outs for me being the Spidey fighting his villains (especially Felicia), Black Cat vs. Black Widow (has that ever even happened in canon?), Black Panther vs. the Rhino, Cap fighting whilst on a motorcycle (I felt  the kicks!), Spidey’s own motorcycle stunts (the only time Spidey on a bike has ever been cool), Gamora vs. Nebula and everything with Iron Fist.

The only nitpick I have regarding the fights is that occasionally one character might be off to the side tossing their hands around and stamping for no reason because it isn’t their turn to get involved in the action yet. This happened with Electro actually, I don’t know why. Maybe they felt if they had him actually attack when the heroes were otherwise occupied the villains would just win.

Again though it’s a nitpick. As is the fact that when they introduce us to the Savage Land they reused stock background footage from the ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ show that played at the O2 Arena earlier this year. To let you appreciate just how much of a nitpick this is, I’m pretty sure I was the only audience member to notice this and that’s purely because by coincidence I saw that very show way back in January.

One final nitpick which is really just me is that the gesticulations the actors make and larger than necessary body movements kind of ruined my emersion a little bit, but that’s probably a necessity for this show.

None of the stage performers were really talking, their dialogue had all been pre-recorded by professional voice actors (Cree Summers and Fred Tatasciore being the more obvious ones I caught) and if their costumes revealed their mouths they just lip-synched. As such those over the top gestures are probably an important part of the performance of the show to bring the characters to life considering there isn’t a single person acting in the role. Plus you need some way of communicating emotions (however simplistic) to the audience through distance (the O2 Arena is huge) and costumes.

Since I know so little about stage productions in general and I’m clearly not the real target demographic for this show (nor do I have children of my own so I can’t even really envision their mindset) I’m just going to talk about the stuff I liked and disliked.

To be honest the only thing I honestly disliked were the Guardians. The Guardians films are wonderful but the unintended consequence of their success is that every iteration of the Guardians thereafter (be it video games or sticker books) based themselves upon the movies. It’s not just that that gets repetitive since there isn’t as much material to draw from but it also has the unfortunate effect of making the Guardians kind of caricatures of themselves. The Guardians movies to be blunt do place the 5 main Guardians within clear cut archetypes and then builds upon that. In other media though they really are just reduced to those archetypes.

Star Lord be the cocky leader who can at times be less smooth than he’d like.

Gamora is the serious warrior woman who rolls her eyes at the antics of her team mates and has a rivalry with her sister.

Drax is also a serious warrior but more direct and there is the gag that he takes things totally literally.

Rocket is the snarky and short tempered one.

Groot is the heavy who prefers to be a gentle giant and is Rocket’s BFF.

Because they have been like that in EVERYTHING sans the MCU it’s like watching an old cartoon from the 80s or something where you know exactly what every character is going to do and how they are going to do it because everything is so stock.

In this production that’s not really that big of a problem since everyone is so simplistic and the spectacle is really the entire point. But for me personally I did just get a little bored with their scenes whereas with the Avengers I was at least curious how they were going to do Thor, Cap, Black Panther, etc. Even if their take was what was most likely and little different to most other media to feature these characters in current pop culture, there was just more there for me.

Seeing Banner used as the tech guy but also secret weapon hasn’t been done to death or the only direction you could realistically have expected for the character to have gone in this. And that’s owed to the Hulk having a long and rich history in the comics and other media from which to draw from. The Guardians technically have that, but they were so minor before the film, the simplistic takes based on the film became the default and I knew that within five seconds. Hence their scenes felt like going through the motions whenever they were talking.

Everything else in the show though I really enjoyed. I’m not going to call out the show for doing Green Goblin, Lizard or Black Cat wrong because the nature of the show simply didn’t demand it. the project called for some recognizable and colourful Spider-Man villains that could be practically realized on stage and fight the Avengers. Venom comes with baggage and is kind of too similar to Spider-Man is spectacle is all you are going for and Doc Ock or Scorpion would’ve been way too expensive. So who else are you going to have lead the villains besides the Goblin, who’s abilities allow for aerial stunts and the like? Felicia I grant you could’ve been switched out for the Shocker or someone, maybe they felt they should have at least one other female villain somewhere in the show besides Nebula.

I didn’t care though. Seeing Felicia at all in other media is generally a treat for me and seeing her realized in live action for the first time ever (in a comic book accurate outfit no less) just put a grin on my face as did seeing her duel with Black Widow.

In fact the entire Spider-Villain brawl was the highlight of the show for me and I didn’t even know it was going to be in the thing. As each villain showed up me and my friend were squealing under our breaths. If only they’d had one more villain though we could’ve gotten ourselves a Sinister Six.

How about Spider-Man himself? He was mostly done well too. Now he was obviously influenced by the USM cartoon version of Spider-Man so he sounded like Drake Belle...but a way more tolerable not really annoying Drake Belle. There was also only one moment in the show he was made to look the buffoon. Technically there was another when he was figuring out how to ride the motorcycle but that was an excuse for some impressive stunt work so it’s forgivable.

Speaking of stunt work...they straight up had Spider-Man swinging around the stage at various points, coming close to the audience and thwipping at times! It was spectacular and sensational. He even had an aerial tussle with the Goblin on his glider. That officially makes this more successful than Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark in that regard. They seemed to save Spider-Man swinging around for big moments of the show too, like they knew that was going to be the most impressive thing about it.

They also mercifully didn’t make Spider-Man sellout to the Avengers or Iron Man in any way. Iron Man isn’t treated as his Dad and he and Spider-Man barely talk to one another. Equally whilst Spider-Man is an Avenger in this and is rescued by them, it’s exactly once and he is shown to hold his own as an equal with any of the team. In fact he’s arguably the MVP of the Savage Land battle when he gets the wand.

He also has the best line of the show and one of the best I’ve ever heard from Spider-Man in general. I’m paraphrasing but it goes like this when he’s addressing Nebula (IIRC) after removing the wand from her:

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. And you don’t seem like the responsible type.”

I question how 55 years of Spider-Man comics elapsed with the character never saying that before this stage show!

Besides Spider-Man the character I enjoyed the most in this was Iron Fist.

I’m not a huge Iron Fist fan, I actually find him kind of pointless whenever he’s not teamed up with Luke Cage. But the mere fact that he showed up at all, that the producers cared enough to use him when he hasn’t been in a movie and kids would only know him from the USM cartoon showed there was a respect underlying the production of this show.

More poignantly these less than 30 minutes of stage time Iron Fist got in this did him better than the entire 13 agonizing hours of his Netflix show and to be honest even his much improved second season. The bare minimum anyone wanted out of this character was him to wear the suit, light up his fist and kick pull off some cool martial arts moves.

Netflix instead gave us boardroom politics for practically a whole season whilst this stage show nailed it in 5 seconds. The action choreography was especially great with him in fact and whilst his costume was unique to anything I’ve seen in the comics it captured the gist of his comic book outfits. In fact I’d go so far as to say that this might be the best Iron Fiat outfit ever!

Hulk and Groot were well realized through actors using stilts and I’m actually surprised they made Hulk the show stopper. The whole show was building towards his transformation. Maybe they just realized if he was always there they’d win too easily. I prefer to think the producers just liked Hulk that much.

Over here in the UK, obviously the MCU is big. But for most of the last 50 odd years Spider-Man and Hulk were far and away the most popular Marvel characters. Maybe that’s why they got the best moments in the show?

Iron Man was also used quite well. They respected that because he’s the most famous/popular MCU star not called Spider-Man they had to give him one big moment, but he didn’t steal the show or save the day or get more attention (outside of that moment) than anyone else the way it was too often in the MCU.

His big moment came from when the showmakers apparently either really liked the Happiness Gun from Maximum Carnage or really liked the Spirit Bomb from Dragon Ball Z because Tony’s super positive thoughts device was essentially the same concept.

#Marvel #marvel comics #marvel universe #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #Marvel Universe Live: Age of Heroes #o2 arena #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Avengers #Guardians of the Galaxy #the hulk #hulk #captain america #Iron Man #Loki #Thor #Thor Odinson #Black Widow #Black Cat #Iron Fist

[empireofstarsandcrows]

Marvel’s Runaways

I just finished watching season 1 of Marvel's Runaways.  It's an interesting story.  But I also have zero problems understanding why it wasn't a smash hit.

The kids are all decent actors, but holy hell the script isn't doing them any favors.  An attempt has clearly been made to write unique, interesting characters, but it feels more like they've just put a fresh coat of paint on old, offensive stereotypes.

You've got the Withdrawn Goth.  She's also Wiccan. Oh!  And the one pre-trauma flashback we see her in she's dressed in jeans and a tee.  Not even, like mildly alternative style that she then leaned into hard after the tragedy.  Just full on girl next door, "average" teenager stuff.  The implication is that that's also when she turned to Wicca. So...  you know... I'm not even sure they attempted to avoid stereotypes here.

There's the Jock whose "depth" is that he's actually super smart and developed a high tech weapon...  that essentially allows him to punch harder and at range. So... there's that. He's intentionally written to be socially unaware, probably as a contrast to another character (more on her shortly), but it doesn't play as "can you believe this guy thinks this way?" It just plays like a normal, acceptable thing to say...  except of course, that in real life I'd want to dick punch someone who says half the stuff he says.

The show also sports a Raging Feminist / Hippie who is probably the most offensively written of all the characters. She's exactly the kind of feminist / activist that makes pro-equality people shy away from identifying as feminists.  She's offended by basically everything, and super hypocritical.

There's her younger sister, who's written like she's 12, even though she's meant to be in high school with the rest of them.  At one point they go "undercover" by changing their clothes and doing absolutely nothing to disguise or obscure their faces...  and she puts on a bandana folded so that the corners stand up like cat ears.  It's a super cute effect, and when I picture it drawn as a comic I can see how it probably strikes the right balance between Brawler Super Hero (which she is) and Twee (Pre) Teen.  Honestly, I don't mind that she's still into cutesy things as a teenager (Hi, I'm 36, guess how many stuffed animals are in my bed/on my nightstand).  It's that as she's written, her entire personality is "younger sister." And the cutesy stuff feels symptomatic of that.

The only one of the group without some sort of super power/quirk is the nerdy ringleader.  He's into computers and video games and coding. But he's black, so, totally not a stereotype, right? *eyeroll*

And finally, there's The Popular Blonde Girl.  Her fresh coat of paint is that even though she behaves like the popular girl / cheerleader stereotype, she's actually /un/popular.  And a member of a new-age-y church that her mom runs.  But if you were worried that she wasn't stereotypically girly enough, don't be! Her super power is that she glows!  Pink!

Now, to be fair, the cast is relatively ethnically diverse (4 of the 6 heroes are minorities!) which I approve of.  And there's a smidgen of LGBT representation in there too.  But that doesn't quite outweigh the problematic aspects of the above stereotypes for me.  On the other hand it /is/ an interesting story.  So I'll probably watch season 2 after a little break.  Hopefully, now that the characters are all firmly established they'll also be allowed to develop.

#mcu #marvel's runaaways #runaways #stereotypes

[elementroar]

So, about ‘Proxima’s pup’ Kaldera...

Right, so there’s this minor character called Kaldera who briefly appeared in 3 issues of Nova during the events of the Infinity event back in 2013.

I think she’s interesting on her own, read after the cut more about her brief appearance, and my own theory about whether she was or wasn’t suppose to be Proxima’s kid.

(PS: I’m aware ‘Keep Reading’ cuts don’t work on Tumblr Mobile for gawd knows what reason. So BIG apologies for a very long and image-heavy post).

Thanos knows of her, so high praise there. And he refers to her as ‘the pup of Proxima Midnight’, which of course makes you think it’s her daughter. Or pet.

Thing is he’s saying that to Corvus, and he didn’t say ‘your pup’, so apparently, Kaldera’s not related to Corvus.

(I really do not like how this artist drew Corvus. WTF is up with his nails)

Anyway Corvus though, does know Kaldera by name, and actually respects her enough that he thinks she shouldn’t be wasted on chasing a kid Nova.

Anyway, shortly we’re introduced to Kaldera...

Ok so first of, to be clear she is not Proxima’s daughter, much less related to Corvus in anyway by blood. But for the brief bit she appears, some of the interesting things to note about her relationship to Proxima, and Thanos’ armies in general:

She calls herself a slave, tho apparently there’s certain ‘slave-rights’ she feels she’s entitled to. In this case, being ‘Proxima’s pup’ may mean that Proxima was the primary Black Order member to enslave Kaldera and/or her planet. However since Kaldera primarily works in the slaughterdecks and the animal handler deals with her more, she doesn’t appear to often get orders directly from Proxima at all.

She’s primarily a hunter, in the sense that her main job appears to be hunting down and providing beasts (and humanoids as we’re see later) for Thanos’ armies. She’s also hinted as a specialized hunter of Nova Corp members in particular, but it could be she can track and hunt almost any kind of particular group or energy signature.

There’s a certain familiarity between her and Proxima that almost seems like Kaldera is her protege. Kaldera isn’t afraid to talk back at Proxima, or ignore her summons. Proxima herself just goads Kaldera, and very lightly reprimands her. She just seems amused by Kaldera’s anger (though when she punishes her, she’s not soft, as we’ll see later).

As noted by Corvus as well, Kaldera is erratic and can be very violent. It could be just because Kaldera seems to be pretty young, somewhere in mid-to-late teens (no confirmation of her age though), so she just rages out without much care. However, later in her fight with Nova, she does try to offer a deal and has a sense of honor about fighting without powers.

She did threaten to slaughter Nova’s sister for food though, which again, leads to her primary role in the army as literally a hunter for meat. Any kind of meat.

And finally, at the end she does fail, and she does get punished. She takes it stoically, and it builds on the death-cult-culture of Thanos’ armies quite a bit because she didn’t die, just suffers eternally.

Okay, so that was Kaldera, and the only time we ever saw her. She hasn’t reappeared or is mentioned in any recent comics at all and even the ‘midnight sphere’ she got sealed in is highly likely to be gone since the Marvel universe was reset post-Secret Wars last year.

So the debate, is she suppose to be Proxima’s daughter? No. I think it was just the way Thanos’ phrased her intro that made people immediately think she is.

Then of course there’s how she looks nothing like Corvus or Proxima (except being humanoid, but the human-tone skin of hers marks her as a different alien).

Though she actually has some interesting designs that maybe hints the writers originally thought of making her their kid, including being Corvus’:

Two toes - Kaldera has two toes on her feet, similar to Corvus’ two-clawed feet. It makes them both seem cloven-hooved.

Two-toned eyes - Kaldera has one green and one red eye. It could have been used to denote her hybrid nature. In this comic, Corvus has red eyes. The problem is that both Corvus and Proxima have widely varied eye colors and even pupils between different artists, with everything from yellow, red, to white.

Proxima’s not a motherly figure, but in general, her attitude towards Kaldera could be taken as the closest thing to ‘motherly’ as possible for her and within the culture they’re both in. At the very least, fostering a very violent daughter by goading her, but also giving her leeway even she argued with her, seems plausible if a writer wanted to write about how Proxima would raise her kid. Iffy on the punishment bit, whether you think Proxima would be softer on her own kid or not.

But the rest of Kaldera’s design seems to paint her as being distinct from either of them. Obviously her skin tone doesn’t match, at best she’s humanoid like Proxima but that’s about it. And she has a devil tail, for...reasons? It appears to be kinda tacked onto her design to be honest and doesn’t match any other part.

Which actually, is why I think the tail bit was deliberately tacked on, just to make her as different as possible to either Proxima or Corvus.

Say that the writers were originally debating if Kaldera was suppose to be their kid; hence the two-toned eyes, the two-toed feet, while being humanoid like Proxima.

But then it’s decided to not do that, but you don’t want to scrap the artwork or design decided on already. So tack on a fairly cartoony devil tail, and just change her skintone and hair to not match. 

That’s the best case theory I got anyway. Another confirmation to me that she’s not related to them is that when the Black Order were resurrected in Avengers: No Surrender, they make no mention of her. And the writer for that, Al Ewing, is a stickler for continuity, that’s partially why he bothered to write them as being loving again despite the previous writer seemingly forgetting they were married.

IMO, if Kaldera was actually theirs, Ewing would have written them saying something. Alternatively, they may completely not care about any offspring they have, but even then Ewing would have written some reference to her in that case.

Still, this is the closest thing we’d get to see of how Proxima handles young kids, so there’s that!

#proxima midnight #corvus glaive #the black order #thanos #kaldera #nova #marvel #comics #fan theory #long post

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Character Names in Eleutherophobia

Since I’ve had a few people ask me about the character names in Eleutherophobia, I figured I’d run down the whole list.  These names are approximately in order of appearance in my various fics.  To be clear: this is not crossover fiction.  These are supposed to be nods to these characters, not the characters themselves.  Bearing that in mind, in approximate order of appearance:

Day the Earth Stood Still

Essa 412: a yeerkanization of “Boy 412,” the main character of the Septimus Heap series.  In my opinion, the second best treatment of the impact of war on children ever written into a modern fantasy series.

Leslie Burke: the deuteragonist of Bridge to Terabithia.  The character always reminded me of a younger Rachel, so I chose to give the name to the bearer of Rachel’s death.

Anne Shirley: the main character of Anne of Green Gables, who often goes underestimated for the extent to which she is a tough, complex, socially awkward heroine written in 1908.

George Little: the younger brother of the title character of Stuart Little.  Mostly named because I wanted to give David a last name that implied cowardice without being ridiculously obvious about it.

Lost World

[Steve] Carlsberg: the not-quite-antagonist of Welcome to Night Vale.

Akira 

Dr. Miranda Franklin: named for Miranda of Dr. Franklin’s Island.  Kind of a pun on my part: the plot of that book involves one of the main characters involuntarily turning into an anaconda. 

Jennifer Murdley: titular character of Jennifer Murdley’s Toad, one of the books in Bruce Coville’s Magic Shop series who learns the very hard way to love herself. 

Mrs. [Hannah] Gruen: Nancy Drew’s housekeeper.

THX 1138

Joey Costello: the deuteragonist of Tangerine, a story about two boys who have very different sets of troubles with their respective older brothers. 

Dr. Pendanski: one of the incompetent counselors from Holes by Louis Sachar.

Jodi O’Shea: far and away my most pointed literary allusion.  Jodi is a minor character in The Host by Stephenie Meyer, a book which I love (except for the extremely problematic ending, but I’ll get back to that). The Host is essentially a love story between a yeerk (Wanda) and a human (Ian) whose entire plot is driven by consent negotiations.  It’s about Wanda and Ian wishing they could be together but knowing they never will because they can’t be without violating the right to consent of the yeerk’s host, Melanie.  Melanie, meanwhile, is in love with a different guy... Who can’t be with her either without violating Wanda’s right to consent.

[SPOILER WARNING] Eventually Ian resolves this love quadrangle by putting Wanda inside a human (“Pet,” and don’t get me started on that name) who has been a controller for so long that she has forgotten how to exert her own conscious will.  Wanda and Ian presumably do the horizontal tango using that host instead, AND THIS IS TREATED AS A HAPPY ENDING.  Jodi O’Shea also meets the same fate as Pet: Jodi has forgotten how to feed herself or move on her own, so her own husband decides that they should just put her yeerk, Sunny, back in her head.  Sunny claims that Jodi is brain-dead... But Sunny is also strongly motivated to lie.  (There are also implications that Jodi’s husband becomes romantically involved with Sunny instead, a plot which is so horrifying it deserves its own blog post.)  Most importantly, all the main characters are really happy that these poor hosts are vegetables.  There is an entire subpopulation of humans who have become entirely dependent on their alien slave masters for survival... and this fact is treated as the solution to all the characters’ problems.  It’s celebrated.  And, yeah, both THX 1138 and Ghost in the Shell contain some pretty pointed commentary from me on why I find this ending to be so deeply unfortunate.  [END SPOILERS]

Ghost in the Shell

Mary Lennox: the main character of The Secret Garden, the first book without pictures I ever read on my own. 

Rose Rita: main character of The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, and arguably one of the first genderqueer characters to make it into a children’s fantasy novel.

Margaret White: the antagonist of Stephen King’s novel Carrie, obsessed with preserving the innocence (and thus the dependent ignorance) of her teenage daughter.

Sophie Hatter: main character of Howl’s Moving Castle, who does in fact make her own clothes.

[Mr.] Broxholm: the titular alien from My Teacher Flunked the Planet by Bruce Coville, one of the most awesome and profound children’s sci-fi novels I have ever read.

Anita Psammead: a nod to The Five Children and It by E. Nesbitt, one of the first ever fantasy novels written for children. 

Miss Zarves: the teacher from Sideways Stories from Wayside School who doesn’t exist, because she was accidentally assigned to teach on a floor that was never built.

Nikto 770: nod to the code phrase in Day the Earth Stood Still (the original movie, not my fic).

Kit Rodriguez: the deuteragonist of the Young Wizards series, known for his passion and tendency to care deeply for others.

Aristotle “Ari” [Mendoza]: main character of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.

Dante [Quintana]: main character of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.

Gabriel “G.T.” Stoop: the main character’s mentor in Hope Was Here.

Elijah Springfield: a teen detective from the Veritas Project series.

Lydia [Bennett]: supporting character from Pride and Prejudice.

Nick Adams: a recurring Ernest Hemingway character.

T.J. Avery: next door neighbor to the Logan family in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry.

Cecily Tallis: the narrator’s older sister (and unwitting victim) in Atonement by Ian McEwan. 

Maybeth Tillerman: one of the main characters in Homecoming by Cynthia Voight, a book that critics like to describe as “the anti-Boxcar Children” for its unflinchingly realistic portrayal of childhood homelessness.

June Boatwright: one of the protagonist’s mentors in The Secret Life of Bees.

Caitlin Somers: a Judy Blume character from Summer Sisters.

Alex Morales: main character of The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer.

Cooper-Trebond: shortening of “Alanna Cooper of Trebond” the name of the main character of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series.

Jesse Hauptman: the protagonist’s stepdaughter and mentee in the Mercy Thompson series.

Timmy Dugan: lesser-known real name of WWII comic book hero Dum Dum Dugan, sidekick to Nick Fury and Howling Commando as part of the Marvel universe. 

Luke Castellan and Chris Rodriguez: two of the supporting characters from Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  I wouldn’t say that Luke Castellan is the first meatsuit I ever fell in love with (despite him being basically a voluntary controller and also a human dumpster fire), but I would say that he made my tendency to care too much about meatsuits in general about 1000 times worse.

“Cornelius”: okay, this one is in fact a crossover—that’s meant to be Tyler Durden, main character of Chuck Palahnuick’s Fight Club. He’s a schizophrenic, lonely guy who goes to support groups for various traumas that he never actually survived (usually under the fake name Cornelius) because that’s the only way he knows how to connect to people. 

Odette: the protagonist of Swan Lake and several subsequent adaptations, including Mercedes Lackey’s awesome The Black Swan.

Rod Allbright: another character from My Teacher is an Alien, because I love that series. 

Officer Nice: a nod to the song of the same name by Vio-Lence, one of my few non-literary allusions.

Gerald “Jerry” Cruncher: a guy who works as a porter (and remover of bodies) in of A Tale of Two Cities. 

Paul Edgecombe: main character of The Green Mile, a deeply conflicted prison guard who gets cast as Pontius Pilate in a modern-day gospel retelling.

Kate Malone: narrator of Laurie Halse Anderson’s amazingly powerful novel Catalyst.

Mae Tuck: matriarch of the titular immortal clan from Tuck Everlasting.

Annie Hughes: one of the main characters from The Iron Giant.

Kirsten Larson: one of the first characters from the American Girl series, an immigrant from Sweden who struggles to acclimate to the United States.

Adah Price: one of the co-narrators of The Poisonwood Bible, a disabled polymath who loves palindromes and puzzles.

Iris Chase: a society lady and heiress from The Blind Assassin, which chronicles family dysfunction and its unique impact on women over several generations. 

Dawn Schafer: part of the enormous rotating cast of protagonists from The Babysitters’ Club series, and one of my favorite characters as a kid.

Henry Case: main character of the genre-creating cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.

Parvana Weera: a tough, outgoing young woman whose struggle to keep her family safe during the American invasion of her home in Afghanistan forms the main plot of The Breadwinner.

Raven Madison: main character of Vampire Kisses, who spends a little too much time in her intense fantasy worlds and not quite enough connected to reality. 

Mr. [Bob] Grey: pseudonym used by the creature also known as Pennywise the Clown and simply “It” in several of Stephen King’s novels.

Ms. [Mary] Logan: mother of the main character in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, because I love that book.

Karana Nicoleño: although Karana, the main character of Island of the Blue Dolphins, doesn’t technically have a last name, her tribe is historically referred to as the Nicoleño.

Total Recall 

Vicky Austin: main character of A Ring of Endless Light, a book about coming to terms with dying—and about the many complex shades of victim blaming that can occur in light of unquantifiable tragedy.

Samuel Cornick: roommate to the eponymous Mercy Thompson of the bestselling Patricia Briggs series, a werewolf-doctor who continuously struggles to find meaning in an excessively long life and one of my favorite characters of all time.

The Thing from Another World

Seth Clearwater: a minor character in Eclipse, one of the youngest werewolves of the Quileute pack.

Captain William Nasland: one of the more obscure characters to hold the title Captain America; retconned into the role following Steve Rogers’s “death” in 1945.  Acts as both a hero and a villain because he has a well-intentioned but also closed-minded idea of what Captain America should be. 

Allison Chapman: main character of Sharing Sam, K.A. Applegate’s lesser-known novel about teenage basketball geeks who back their way into understanding the life, the universe, and everything.

Simon Grace: one of the main characters of the Spiderwick Chronicles.

Giselle Villard: one of the main characters from the Mystic comic book series who is awesome, tough... and more than a little power-hungry.

As far as I can tell, that’s it for the character names in Eleutherophobia.  I mentioned here why Marco’s last name is Alvarez and Cassie’s is Day in my series.  There are a few dozen other allusions as well (Tom and Bonnie bastardizing the “tears in the rain” speech from Blade Runner, Cassie quoting the epigraph from Home of the Brave, several nods to Remnants and Everworld and The One and Only Ivan, Marco making jokes about Lost World and Alien) and obviously all my fic titles are from classic sci-fi movies while all my song nods are The Best of 1990—2000, but as far as I know that’s it for allusions. If there are any that I missed, or that you’re still wondering about, let me know and I’ll happily clarify.

#eleutherophobia #animorphs #animorphs fic #writing #ya sf

[furederiko]

He's your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man...

I initially thought I would not get a chance to see this at the theatres. So I felt somewhat lucky that I've been fortunate enough to see it yesterday, on the first viewing, of its premiere day(although I had to skip the 3D due to the ticket price)! Unfortunately, it wasn't that good of an experience, unpleasant even. I mean, that's what I got when I pre-ordered a ticket late in the game: I had to sit really close to the giant screen. I'm feeling the result now... exhausted watery eyes and stiff neck. Also, it's currently still school holiday, so I was seated between teenagers and kids who... either couldn't stop chomping food loudly, kept asking questions throughout the movie, or... just didn't have proper ethiquette towards older people. Gosh, that awkward moment made me feel really 'old' and 'out of place'. Thankfully, the movie itself was the complete opposite to that annoying real life situation. So in a way, well worth the patience I had to endure during the screening. Okay, enough chit-chat, let's get to the review now!

NOTE: This is a spoiler-free review. At the very least, it was written with that thought and intention in mind. So there's still a possibility that it contains some implicit spoilers. With that said, feel free to proceed cautiously, okay! *wink*

They should've called this SPECTACULAR Spider-Man. Seriously. Because it's indeed one! A movie that felt small and stand-alone, but firmly incorporated the titular character VERY nicely in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Afterall, that's what 'Homecoming' is all about, right? The movie began following the aftermath of 2012's "The Avengers", it then picked up right in the middle of last year's "Captain America: Civil War" for a brief minutes (featuring some fantastic larger-than-life cameos), before it became its own thing following the conclusion of that amazing Berlin Airport scene. And then several months later...

There's an honest good reason why Marvel Studios appointed Tom Holland as the new Peter Parker. And that's because it's going to be extremely hard to picture anyone else but him to embody both Peter and Spider-Man after seeing this movie. As proven over and over again with their movies, the studio certainly isn't messing around when it comes to casting. Holland IS Peter (not to mention a striking resemblance to young Stan Lee), and that's just one of the key ingredients that made this movie so captivating. There's an earnest youth-innocence exuberating from this version. An excitement that we haven't seen in both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's version. Not saying both were bad (theirs got pushed to adulthood too soon, I say, thanks to the actors being much older), but this one got the personality of comic book Peter in the most perfect way. Also, have I mentioned that Holland is HOT? He's so easy on the eyes, that I wouldn't doubt his Peter would make anyone (men or women, young or old) swoon. Assuming I got my memory right, I think he and his six-pack were the lenghties shirtless fan-service scene of all MCU movies so far. Thank goodness the actor's 21 years old now, otherwise that sentiment would sound really inappropriate. Pheew!

He's Peter in the most charming and geekiest way. Smart, sweet, sometimes overwhelmingly curious, but also an underdog who is ridiculed at school. Who once again reminded you, that hey, nerds CAN be true heroes too! Yes, that's the best of all! Just like the deepest inner desire that some of us shared, he's just THAT eager to become a hero. He's a dreamer, who looked up to the Avengers, and wanted to do good to be among their ranks. But being 15 years old, a student in a high school, things weren't as easy as one might think. When he has classes and after school programmes, would he even have time to be a crime fighting hero? One that placed his life on the line numerous time, while deep inside, still struggling with the sensibilities and struggles of growing up? That's what this movie succeeded to explore, making it feel... 'different' to the previous MCU movies.

The supporting characters, were also fantastic. Marisa Tomei's May Parker, was more of a sexy older sister than an elderly aunty. It's a modern change that felt just right for her, especially in this era of feminism. But as always, she was also Peter's emotional anchor. Particularly in one scene that... well, I'm not spoiling anything, but let's just say, had Holland showcased his specialty in moving dramatic performance. Those who had seen "The Impossible" would know, that Holland could really made it possible. On the other side of the table, Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark played out as the kind of mentor, big brother, or surrogate father that Peter aspired to. Peter tried so hard to please his good side, and in a way, that's one of his focus in this movie. That's why his presence could be felt looming around the background. Contrary to what people assumed though, Tony wasn't in the movie that much. It was Jon Favreau's Happy Hogan who actually spent more screentime and connection with Peter. So nope, before you accuse Stark of stealing another character's movie, that's not the case. He had just about right amount of screen time, and the movie was wholly Peter's from start to end.

Jacob Batalon's Ned was a charming chubby sidekick. He's as excited as Peter, and shared a sweet chemistry with him that would make you wish you're their best friend too. Not trying to sound racist, but it's nice that we're getting another support character that's not black. I mean, that's certainly a pattern in the first two Phase of the MCU, right? Laura Harrier's Liz was the love interest, who as always, ended up becoming a damsel in distress at some point in the movie. Zendaya's Michelle on the other hand, was the weird girl who's out and about, and seemed to be tailing Peter for... unknown personal reason. She didn't have much to do, but likely because she's being set up for expanded involvement in the sequel(s). Tony Revolori's Flash was Pete's bully, but not in the way you think. He's a modern-type 'hater' who harrassed people with words and attitude, and not through muscle. And then there were other minor characters, filling up the school as either students (Abraham Attah, Tiffany Espensen, Michael Barbieri, etc) or teachers (Martin Starr, Selenis Leyva, Hannibal Buress, Kenneth Choi, etc), building up a truly diverse looking environment. It might feel like a crowded cast, but really, most of them only had small participation in this movie. But you know what I really love about the portrayal of this high school? That in a technology-based MCU, science IS the cool thing. For crying out loud, even the cool kids were the smart achiever ones, and the Academic Decathlon's its MVP! Unlike the typical high schools we saw in various TV shows (filled with actors sometimes too old to be students), this one personally felt more at home. Looking familiarly similar to the place I've went to all those years ago, it sure didn't take a while before nostalgia slowly kicked in.

One might argue that the villains weren't really 'that threatening' here. Particularly the Shockers: Logan Marshall-Green's Jackson Brice and/or Bokeem Woodbine's Herman Schultz. They felt like lower-tier 'bad guys', especially when compared to say... Ultron, or Loki, with their global-level annihilation ambitions. Nevertheless, Michael Keaton's Adrian Toomes was a truly intimidating antagonist, who would conquer the scene with his chilling presence. He firmly sit as one of the best MCU antagonist we got so far, just NOT the way you might think. In a strangely relatable way, situation somehow forced him to be one, placing him on the other side of the law. Not just him, but his crew as well, because most of them couldn't even be considered 'evil'. There's a moral ambiguity of why Toomes did what he did, an amazing angle that made him different to previous bad guys. You'll particularly see about this during the third arc. I sure would love to see more of him in the future, but Keaton's only contracted for one movie so far. Beside, without being too oblivious, there's a high possiblity that Michael Mando's character will be taking that spotlight in the sequel. Likely alongside Michael Chernus' Phineas Mason, who was the technical-brain of the Vulture.

Thanks to these antagonists, the action-pieces, while making such grandiose spectacles as usual, felt different this time around. It was intense, nervewracking, and many other emotions I couldn't describe. Surprisingly, it put me on the edge of my seat most of the time, due to how personal and sometimes intimate they were. There's a desperation in these scenes that made my heart racing, a sensation that strangely reminded me of that last battle on "Civil War". Perhaps because this Spider-Man is young, and that he made honest mistakes that led him into trouble instead? Or because his life and those around him was truly put in jeopardy every single time, as if jumping straight into a tank full of sharks? A real sense of danger? I couldn't tell. One thing for sure, you might think you've seen it all from the trailers (which are still best avoided, IMHO), but there's way more to that. I can assure you, the complete sequences were still unexpected and shocking to watch.

In the end, just like James Gunn's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" that arrived three months ago, the sensation of "Spider-Man: Homecoming" was a little difficult to properly describe. Both movies had some jokes and humors that didn't land with the audience I was with, but mostly because they were lost in translation. "Vol. 2" felt personal to me, but "Homecoming" also felt relatable in many ways. It's all kinds of emotions, a roller-coaster as one would expect from an MCU movie. And this movie was a down-to-earth adventure for the web slinger, that's still loaded with plenty of surprises one after another, big or small. It even saved one really GOOD one at the closing minutes of the movie!

Devoted Marvel fans will be thrilled with how Spider-Man is perfectly captured, while gleefully scavenging those many easter eggs sprinkled throughout the movie. Ones that connected to the larger MCU, or those teasing what might be coming ahead (Angourie Rice's Betty Brant and Donald Glover's Aaron Davis, to name a few). Meanwhile, general audience will be delighted to see this, as a genuine high school movie disguised as a superhero one. A coming-of-age movie, where its lead character learns to deal with the challenges of being young, his lack of experience, responsibilities of being a hero, and the cost of trying to do good. As shown by Peter's powerful decisions in several key scenes of the third arc, it's also a movie that reminded its young (both by age or at heart) viewers to never lose sight of what's important: kindness and compassion. All I can tell is, that director Jon Watts truly nailed this movie, and now I can't wait to see him progressing with the same 'everyday hero' magic in the upcoming sequel (set for 2019).

The collaboration between Marvel Studios and SONY to include Peter Parker in the MCU was like a dream come true to Marvel fans. More than that, it truly has been proven to be THE right decision. Here's hoping they will further extend this wonderful deal to the future, because I honestly feel, Spider-Man is where he's supposed to be. HOME...

Overall Score: 8,5 out of 10 PS: It's common sense for an MCU movie, that there will be post-credit scenes. And as publicly reported, this movie had two, with one of them teasing for the sequel. That second one, though?! Dang it... it's a sweet 'cap off' that will leave you smiling as you walk out of the theatres. Seriously, don't miss out on that! LOL.

This review had gone through minor adjustments and corrections to make some points clearer on July 6th, 2017, 09:10AM (local time).

#movie #marvel #Marvel Studios #spider-man #Spider-Man: Homecoming #review #awesome #melancholymoments

[aion-rsa]

Daredevil Season 3: Complete Marvel Universe Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

https://ift.tt/2OuUOGq

We're hunting down all the Marvel Easter eggs we can find in Daredevil season 3. Here's what we've found so far...

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Mike Cecchini

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Oct 19, 2018

Daredevil

Marvel

Daredevil Season 3

This Daredevil Season 3 article consists of nothing but spoilers. We have a spoiler free review right here if you prefer.

Marvel's Daredevil Season 3 has finally arrived on Netflix, and kids, it is spectacular. This is one of the best seasons in the entire Marvel Netflix pantheon, and even though it is (relatively) light on the Marvel Comics references, there is still plenty to unpack, and probably plenty more I'm going to miss on the first viewing.

So here's how this works...I've tried to catch all the cool Marvel references in Daredevil Season 3, but there's only so much I can do. I'm only one man trying to clean up Hell's Kitchen, after all. Let me know anything I missed down in the comments, or hit me up on Twitter. If your catch checks out, I'll update this with it. Together, we can make the most complete guide to Marvel Easter Eggs in Daredevil Season 3 out there!

One quick word of caution about all of this. While I will try not to spoil future episodes in the entry for a specific episode, sometimes speculation leads to spoilers. And while I definitely endorse everyone calling out what they spot down in the comments, I can't control any Daredevil season 3 spoilers you might see if you're down there, or if you scroll too far. Just be careful if you're trying to remain unspoiled!

Fire up your Netflix machines, and let's get to work!

Daredevil Season 3 Episode 1: 

It’s not a spoiler to say right out of the gate that this season is influenced by several Daredevil comics stories, and one of them is Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s classic Born Again. But if you’re looking for an adaptation of Born Again, this season definitely ain’t it.

That being said, opening with Matt recuperating in a church while being cared for by Sister Maggie is straight out of Born Again. It’s the circumstances that are slightly different, though. Here, we kick things off because of the events from the finale of The Defenders, where a building quite literally fell on Matt Murdock. In Born Again, the church (and Sister Maggie) doesn’t appear until midway through the story, when Matt is already physically and mentally broken. And while a building didn’t fall on him in that story, he ends up in the church after his actual apartment building is blown to bits...so there’s a little bit of a parallel.

- Sister Maggie Grace, by the way, first appeared in Daredevil #229 (you guessed it...that's a Born Again chapter). She’s also a prominent figure in Kevin Smith, Joe Quesada, and Jimmy Palmiotti’s Guardian Devil. The more sharp-tongued, assertive Sister Maggie we see here is slightly more reminiscent of the way the character is portrayed in that story.

- Another parallel with Guardian Devil is Matt’s generally shitty attitude and his crisis of faith. While the circumstances contributing to those in that story were drastically different, and supernatural in nature (that is most certainly not the case this season), it’s the closest parallel to this season’s dickhead Matt I can think of. In Born Again he was more just broken and mentally unwell. While that is the case here, it's just manifesting differently.

further reading: The Genesis of Daredevil Season 3

- Nice to see the return of Ben Donovan in this episode. It's a relatively small thing, but without Rosario Dawson's Claire Temple to show up and link everything together, I rather like how these shows are now just letting minor characters weave in and out of all the shows, much the way they do in the actual Marvel Comics themselves.

- Ray Nadeem is not from the comics, nor, as far as I can tell, is he even loosely based on anyone from the comics. Don’t let that stop you from getting involved with this character, though. Jay Ali’s performance is terrific.

Otherwise, there aren’t a hell of a lot of actual comic book easter eggs this episode. Just lots of influences. Sometimes it’s better this way, and once again, it’s not a spoiler to say that I think everyone is going to enjoy the hell out of this season.

Daredevil Season 3 Episode 2: 

- I feel like maybe once per season each of these shows allows themselves one "comic book style" shot. The bit with Matt staring off into space in the basement of the church fading into Fisk looking the other way feels almost like a comic book split panel effect. Maybe this wasn't intentional, maybe it was.

- The Mother Theresa back tattoo on that Albanian thug has nothing at all to do with the comics, but it's an amusing touch, especially how the FBI guys jokingly refer to him as "Mother Theresa."

- Is Fisk’s incident in the weight room the first time we’ve gotten an indication of JUST how strong he is? In the comics, it’s always pointed out that Kingpin isn’t fat, he’s “all muscle.” Here, he’s benching, what...315? Damn, Wilson!

further reading - Daredevil Season 3: What's Next for Matt Murdock?

- It took me until my second viewing to catch that Ray is a vegetarian.

- When Matt is out wandering outside the church, he’s kind of dressed like Stick, isn’t he? He’s already acting like his old sensei/frenemy, so may as well dress like him, too.

- Oh, do you think this cool fight in the backroom of the sketchy dry cleaner is this season’s answer to season one’s brilliant hallway fight? Keep watching...

- I’ll be honest, I’m not totally sure if Foggy had this kind of working class background in the comics, or if Theo Nelson ever appeared or was mentioned there. In the comics it turned out his actual mother was Evelyn Sharpe, a powerful, high-class attorney. I’d be shocked if they ever go that way here.

- Karen’s “there’s no proof of that!” when Foggy is trying to convince her that Matt is dead feels like a sideways nod to the old comic book logic that “if there’s no body, they can still come back.”

- Fisk’s “Love is the perfect prison” sounds like something Billy Corgan would have written circa 1996. Hell, ol’ Billy is looking a bit like Kingpin these days.

- Gosh, that one FBI agent sure is a hell of a shot isn’t he? Almost like they’re telling us something...

Daredevil Season 3 Episode 3: 

- That full Ralph Ellison quote from Invisible Man, “Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat" feels both like what should be carved on Matt Murdock's tombstone and...just a quote we all really, really need to hear right now.

- Fisk keeps referring to Vanessa having a bodyguard named Felix, but I don’t think this is from the comics. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

- I’m pretty sure that Agent Poindexter is not and cannot be the sniper briefly glimpsed in Daredevil season 1 we all hoped was going to turn out to be Bullseye. A minor trade off for a great introduction to the character here. At this point, it's not a spoiler to say he's Bullseye, right? You all figured that out already. Plus, it's in the trailers!

Bullseye is the closest thing to a "Joker" Daredevil has in his rogues' gallery, and he's been hitting targets of all kinds since he first appeared in Daredevil #131 back in 1976, where he was created by Marv Wolfman and John Romita Sr. Bullseye was played by Colin Farrell in the 2003 flick, but let's try not to think too hard about that, as Wilson Bethel is looking like he's going to be the definitive version of the character. 

Want to know more about Bullseye? We've got you covered right here.

- Can someone help me out? Is Julie a reference from the comics? I'm stuck.

- Even via hallucination, it’s great to see Wilson Fisk in the classic Kingpin white suit. Matt hallucinating Fisk is a nice indicator of just how far gone he is at the moment, and again, while this isn’t straight out of any particular comics, it’s right in the spirit of both Born Again and Guardian Devil.

- I really appreciate the “stealth mode” fight in the parking garage. For all of Daredevil’s ninja training and roots, that’s usually focused on the actual ass-kicking elements of it, rather than the ninja’s crucial arts of stealth and deception. The fact that it takes place in a well lit parking garage is even cooler.

- Matt being a dick to Foggy is kind of like Born Again, too. Only there, it was because he had basically lost his mind to pressure and depression. Foggy would reach out to Matt by phone and Matt would pretend not to know (or maybe not actually know) who he is.

Daredevil Season 3 Episode 4:

- They establish here that Matt is 5'10, which I think is about right for Charlie Cox's actual height. However, I'm pretty sure that in the comics (either via The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe or those awesome trading cards from the '90s) it was established that Matt stands around six feet. Anyway, whatever, as a short dude I am totally here for more superheroes of average height.

- THIS is the hallway fight you’ve been waiting for. And you aren't hallucinating, this long take fight goes on for nearly 15 minutes. No comic book easter eggs here, but...god damn it's good.

- Pretty sure Jasper Evans isn't from the comics, but please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll update this!

- Kingpin is playing some very familiar mindgames with Poindexter. Pretty sure we've heard this kind of talk from a certain occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Yeah, yeah, yeah "keep politics out of your articles" blahblahblah, I've heard it all before and I do not care. If you refuse to see the connections between art and the real world, that's not really my problem.

- Sending Matt to a watery grave via checkered taxi is straight out of Born Again. All that did was make Matt even crazier.

Daredevil Season 3 Episode 5:

- Fisk deciding to ruin Matt Murdock's life is perhaps the biggest parallel to Born Again we've seen so far. While he has certainly been suspicious of Matt since their brief chat during season two, if he isn't 100% clued in to the fact that Matt is Daredevil right now, he sure will be soon. In any case, he loathes Matt enough to want to destroy him, and making that happen via apparently "legitimate means" is the most Kingpin thing ever, and right in line with Born Again.

- Felix Manning is from the Born Again story. He first appeared in Daredevil #230. There, he was responsible for outfitting someone with an authentic Daredevil costume. Hmmm...

read Daredevil: Born Again on Amazon

- Keeping all of the flashback materials in an Airwalk box is a nice touch.

- The logo of Poindexter’s old baseball team is very much the Bullseye logo from the comics. The black and white of the scene only drives that home further.

- In the comics, Bullseye's history with baseball has been explored a couple of times. The first was in Bullseye: Greatest Hits by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon. There, Bullseye was a promising minor league pitcher, and he demanded to be taken out while he was in the midst of a perfect game (not the differences between what happened on the show). His coach asked him to get one more batter out, and Bullseye obliged, by killing the batter with a pitch. 

The other was in the really interesting and fun Bullseye: Perfect Game by Charlie Huston, Shawn Martinbrough, and Lee Loughridge. That tells the tale of how Bullseye took a year off from supervillainy to become a Major League Baseball pitcher. His intention was to take a hit job on a problematic opposing player. Instead, the two got into an incredible pitchers' duel. If you can track this down, it's totally worth a read, especially if you're a baseball fan.

Daredevil Season 3 Episode 6:

- Ahem...you will note that Karen Page and Matt Murdock most certainly do not have coffee together in this scene. Symbolic? I mean, Luke Cage kinda ruined that beverage for any character pairing for the entire Marvel Netflix Universe, didn't he?

Here's an amusing thing Deborah Ann Woll told reporters while this season was filming:

"You know what happened? On our Marvel shows, we are no longer allowed to just actually literally go for coffee as characters because of that euphemism. We've literally had scenes where, I'm like, 'alright, well let's go get some coffee.' Literally let's get coffee, and they're like, 'no you can't say that because people will read into it.' Isn't that too bad?"

- Every time Karen Page is in a sketchy situation, or even in the vicinity of drugs, it makes me think of (you guessed it) Born Again. While the show has long been building a very different kind of tragic backstory for Karen, and at this point I don't think the comics version would ever work here, it's still a little unnerving, considering how attached we've all become to this character.

- Poindexter's increasing derangement as he feels his world unraveling almost feels a little like one of Bullseye's earliest appearances, during the early days of Frank Miller's legendary tenure on the Daredevil comics. At one point Bullseye had a brain tumor and it affected his perceptions and his already shady behavior pretty dramatically. I don't think they're going there (and certainly not so soon), this just felt like a little bit of a reminder.

read Daredevil: Guardian Devil on Amazon

- Welcome to the first proper Daredevil and Bullseye fight. And while it had already been well established that Poindexter is an almost supernaturally good shot, this is the classic “can use anything at all as a weapon” Bullseye from the comics. This is truly a spectacular action sequence, and the fourth in four episodes. And we're not even halfway through the season yet!

There are two massive parallels to the comics here. One involves Bullseye, the other doesn’t.

In Born Again, Fisk hired an unbalanced person to masquerade as Daredevil. In the case of this show, that unbalanced person is actually Bullseye. BUT…

...Bullseye did spend some time in the Daredevil costume himself, during Ann Nocenti and Lee Weeks’ underrated period on the character. Hell, Bullseye ended up convincing himself he was actually Daredevil for a while. It’s easy to imagine how that could end up playing out here the rest of the season. The fact that he introduces himself with an "I'm Daredevil" would almost seem to play into this, so I'm curious to see how it plays out as the season continues.

Spot anything I missed? Drop it in the comments or hit me up on Twitter and if it checks out, I'll keep updating this!

Mike Cecchini is the Editor in Chief of Den of Geek. You can read more of his work here.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2018 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Essay One: ‘Anastasia’ Probably Could Have Been Great

This post will contain spoilers. There, I'm guiltless.

Have you ever heard a premise or logline to a movie that sounded so promising that there was no conceivable way in your mind that it could fail? And were you absolutely bewildered when you watched said movie your hopes were slowly choked out of you? Well, that's what watching Don Bluth's 1997 animated musical Anastasia feels like. Now, despite being a 90s fetus and having grown up watching French-dubbed Disney Renaissance films from relatively the same time period this film was released, I had not watched Anastasia until last December. It was the Tuesday night before my final exams/presentations/seminars went into full swing, and rather than dutifully studying like a good boy trying to retain his scholarship and federal grants so he can attend an out-of-state college for half the price, I decided to watch a couple animated movies that had been on my bucket list for well over a year at that point (though I only got around to watching two). 

The first was Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat, and while Fritz's plot is kind of a disconnected mess, it was quite enjoyable thematically and aesthetically. I had also went in with very little context. Sure, I saw the opening scene of those dumb college girls fawning over the crow dude just cause he was African-American, I knew it was famous for being a raunchy, animated movie intended for adults, and on more than one occasion I have had to draw in Robert Crumb's style for class, but that's all I really knew about Fritz.

Anastasia on the other hand has perplexed me. I knew of it, which is to say, all I knew was the premise, that of the sole surviving heir of the Romanov Dynasty living in secret after the Bolsheviks deposed her father during the Russian Revolution. I don't recall watching it as a child. However, as I got older and began transitioning into high school, I started taking an interest in the Edwardian period, Tsarist Russia, World War I and tons and tons and tons amateur alternate history stories I found online. I specifically became curious about what led to the fall of the 300 year-old Romanov dynasty.

 I even wrote a similar story going off Anastasia's premise because I was so infatuated with the idea that the Romanovs were able to survive such a violent deposition effort, just as the House of Bourbon did following the French Revolution (the first one at least). Like your average American Civil War buff, I like this idea of putting a “what-if?” spin on history that is fairly recent in the grand scheme of things, but has long since left cultural memory on account of those living at the time slowly dying off, and it seems that modern American media agrees with me on that sentiment, even if the more maintstream content is centered almost exclusively about Nazis and World War II.

But yeah, Anastasia has a premise that I'm sold on, is set in a country that I love for a bajillion and one reasons during a rather recent period in European history that I am genuinely fascinated by.

And guess what? It sucks.

Anastasia, for all that it does stylistically to emulate the story, aesthetic and pacing of a Disney film, is just mediocre, its premise wasted. It very much feels like a knock-off or a mockbuster with an extraordinarily high budget to match that of your average 1990s animated feature. Those who have watched Anastasia before reading this post probably assumed that the film's budget was remarkably lower than that of other big-budget animated movies being produced at the time, and I am here to dispel that assumption with the help of a series of simple Google searches.

For context, 1995's Pocahontas had a budget of $55 million, 1991's Beauty and the Beast had approximately half the budget of Pocahontas, and 1994's The Lion King, arguably the most well-remembered of the Renaissance Disney films according to my generation in particular, had a budget of $45 million. Anastasia had a budget of $50 million. And I am using Disney films as a comparison because Anastasia is very much trying to look and feel like a Disney film, and it's falling embarrassingly flat. Its character designs look like Disney knock-offs, its score feels like imitation-Alan Menkin, and even its use of 3D renders feels like Don Bluth was trying to 1-up the technological marvels done well by Beauty and the Beast. Hell, you can even tell based off Anastasia's character designs who fits into which archetype in your big-budget kids movie. 

The titular Anya is the unquestionably feminine but nonetheless strong-willed female lead, as well as the “Princess™”, and her design by the third act of the movie reminds me strongly of 1953's Cinderella. Vlad is the obligatory comic relief because... well, cause he's older and fat. You think he's gonna be the protagonist? As much as that would have been cool, considering his background as a former member of the exterminated nobility and the emotional implications the Russian Revolution may have left on him and all, this movie had to be marketed towards kids, ergo, young leads in their twenties. But I digress. That annoying little dog-looking creature (whose name I forget even after re-watching the movie to write this) is the mute comic-relief animal sidekick who can be pushed heavily in the marketing, and Bartok is the other animal sidekick who is cute enough to be memorable and/or marketable for the movie's sake, but not cute enough to make you forget that he's technically an antagonist. Bartok's master Rasputin is self-explanatory, though that said, the over-exaggeration of facial features to make the antagonist inhuman is kind of par for the course regarding animated movies from this time and the eras preceding it. I don't feel that I need to explain myself in too much depth here, especially since the Don Bluth take on Grigori Rasputin has the emotional depth of the Sea of Azov.

However, Dmitri appears to be the exception to this rule of taking  well-established Disney archetypes and making knock-off characters from them. Obviously he's the dude half of this movie's forced breeding pair on account of his youthful charm (that translates into hideously rotoscoped facial features), but I don't think he really embodies any direct resemblance to a male Disney lead or even the generic handsome princes characters of Snow White, Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. Maybe he's meant to be modeled off all those lookalike, generic handsome prince characters with a hint of Aladdin on account of his street smarts and non-royal status. Or maybe, just maybe, Dmitri's design makes him less an archetypal Disney rip-off and instead, a carefully-crafted prettyboy meant to catch the eye of the average preteen girl in 1997, one who probably listened to a lot of boy bands with pasty, broody, Dmitri-looking skinny white dudes on the cover with his exact haircut. This is honestly just speculation with no further research on my part, but I genuinely think Don Bluth was going for a 90s-boy band look for his strapping male lead, or was otherwise convinced by some focus group during pre-production that this was a sound decision. And I have to repeat myself here: it's shame that in trying to capture the essence of a moody bad boy, Bluth went the extra mile and made him as awkwardly-animated as possible, which is saying something considering how awkwardly-animated every other proportionally-realistic character is to begin with. 

The animation quality of Anastasia is probably the most glaring indicator that you're not actually watching a Disney movie, not because it's awful, but because its quality varies from character model to character model. Dmitri's character design is probably the closest in resemblance to a real person, but that benefit, if you can even call it that, is immediately squandered when you put a more stylized character like Vlad (or really any one-note side character from the film) in the same shot. Members of the royal family suffer from this issue too. Their designs seem to be based off real models rather than possess the stylization Don Bluth is famous for. Nicholas II and Anya's sisters in this regard are alright since they are minor characters with only a few speaking lines if any at all, but in the case of Empress Marie, a major supporting character, she ends up animating in the same janky manner as Dmitri. I don't think Bluth could decide whether or not to go with the exaggerated caricatures he is so accustomed to, or committing to realistic character models that would likely be hard to animate consistently. The end result that was reached seems to be this loose middle-ground where everything just feels awkward and inconsistent.

I also wanna touch on the liberal use of 3D animation a bit too, because it is probably my biggest issue with this movie's overall aesthetic. This isn't to say I have an issue with 3D, and if you can make it work in your movie, then more power to you. This issue with 3D in Anastasia however is simply the fact that it does not mesh well with the 2D setting at all. This movie has all these beautiful hand-painted backgrounds for nearly every shot but once we've moved on from the abandoned Catherine Palace (why wasn't that touched at all by the Bolsheviks again? It's been a solid decade post-timeskip right?) and onto the the train, the fact that the entire locomotive itself is a CG render will not be able to leave your head, because it is just that obvious. The one time the CG isn't blatantly tacked-on is the opening shot, depicting two music box figurines of the tsar and his wife, and that's where I think this then-budding animation technology worked the best. It did not work for a model as big as an noticeably unmanned ocean liner being battered by painstakingly-animated 2D waves.

Now, this isn't to say that CG animation was not viable for animated motion pictures of the 1990s; it very well was. The Hunchback of Notre Dame uses it quite excellently throughout the film to render large crowds of Parisians as well as various exterior shots of the eponymous cathedral itself, and are perhaps the most memorable shots of that movie. Beauty and the Beast famously used the new technology to great effect as well during the famous ballroom scene. But in these two particular cases, the 3D was used largely as a backdrop to save the animators time when working on a particular shot. They were not necessarily the point of attention in the shots they appeared in; the protagonists were.

When Quasimodo is expressing his desire to attend the Festival of Fools at the beginning of Hunchback and is climbing all about the cathedral singing all angelically and whatnot, he is always the center of attention in each shot. Meanwhile, in Anastasia, many of the ship scenes during the storm are wide shots which go on for long enough that the viewer is able to identify that these backgrounds, are in fact, 3D. In all of these instances, 3D rendering was used as a crutch that made production easier. In the better-executed examples however, the directors demonstrated a degree of restraint.

Don't even get me started with that CG pegasus statue either.

Now this entire post so far has been me harping on the technical blunders of Anastasia, but if a movie looked a bit goofy at times due to inexperienced animators, the grandiose expectations of a director, time constraints or experimental technology that just wasn't there yet, it can probably make up for that with a cohesive and engaging story, of which Anastasia does not have any of these things. My first glaring issue going into this movie was how the movie introduces and frames Rasputin. There is no explanation given as to how or why he's a necromancer. In fact, necromancy seems inappropriate for Rasputin's character considering from a historic basis, he was believed to be a spiritual healer blessed by God, who I'm pretty sure frowns upon pagan magic regardless of one's denomination. I will admit that it is an interesting take on Rasputin's character given the fact that he is remembered pretty negatively by history, but with that said, if he was a necromancer, how would he have been able to convince the extremely religious, extremely superstitious Tsarevna Alexandra that he was in fact this God-blessed mystic who could cure her son of hemophilia? What could have made this work was if Rasputin was in fact used his infamously adept persuasion to convince the tsar that his dark powers were actually good powers, allowing the suspicions held by his detractors in court to appear far less warranted than they were in reality.

Regardless, the nature of Rasputin's powers go unexplained in the movie and is hand-waived by Empress Marie as “oh, we trusted him but he turned out to be hella fake lol”. It is also never explained in Anastasia how Rasputin lost favor with the Russian court, which is arguably the inciting incident of the film and happens within the first five or so minutes of its runtime. That is an issue in of itself. These thoughts immediately came to mind as I was watching Anastasia, breaking the immersion even more with each raised question gone unanswered. Would I have known Dmitri was going to be an integral character from the split-second shot where he was introduced? That's the biggest issue with the plot of Anastasia itself: it does not give you any breathing room. 

The first five minutes throw story beat after story beat at you; Russian aristocrats are celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty, Dowager Empress Marie confides in her granddaughter that she will be leaving for Paris and hands her the plot-device music box, Rasputin storms in, crashes the party, curses Tsar Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks immediately attack the Catherine Palace, and Anya escapes, only to contract amnesia while fleeing. Ideally, these beats are meant for the first half of a first act, spanning about ten to fifteen minutes at most, not the first five!

The opening scenes of this movie feel insanely rushed, and it just keeps happening and happening. Rasputin destroyed the train? Fuck it, Anya, Vlad, Dmitri and Annoying Dog will just walk to the nearest port city instead, and it'll be a merry old trip where Anya's groomed for her inevitable reunion with her grandmother! Not a single beat in this story felt organic, which in turn, as someone who has watched enough family-friendly animated features as an adult to pick up on particular narrative beats, made it predictable. By the time the climactic confrontation between Anya and Rasputin had commenced, I was so disinterested with what was happening because I knew where this story was going: Rasputin was gonna die in some way, be it through hubris, being outwitted by Anya, or a deliberate fake-out (guess what, it was behind door #3!). My only respite throughout this entire movie was the fact that Anya and Dmitri's endless exchange of sarky retorts never got tired for me for some odd reason. I understand that giving both of these characters sardonic, witty personalities was  meant to show chemistry between the two, but it all feels like filler dialogue when their inevitable union at the end of the movie barely feels earned, especially when I'm 20 minutes into the movie and I still can't figure out if this animated musical is supposed to be an intense historical drama or a romantic comedy. I can barely remember anything about Anya's personality beyond her snark. She's humble, pretty without trying, and a well-meaning person, but so was Cinderella. She's witty and sharp-tongued to a degree, but so was Beauty's Belle and Hercules' Megara.

Finally, no criticism of Anastasia is complete without examining the ethics behind basing a story off a violent major event in a nation's already violent history. Anyone who has read up on the causes of the Russian Revolution would be made aware of the empire's horrible mismanagement at the hands of Nicholas II. They would know that at the time of World War I, Russia was bankrupting itself, it was conscripting young men my age into a losing war without even being provided the proper equipment, and the Romanovs were effectively sitting on their hands the whole time. Listening to a grandiose opening musical number sung by the citizens of St. Petersburg bemoaning their lives under Soviet leadership all the while exchanging hopeful whispers of Anastasia's survival just puts a bad taste in my mouth. 

Moreover, on the opposite side of the social hierarchy, I was hoping to see surviving members of the old regime expressing how they felt after losing their power, and how it might have changed them, namely Vlad as well as Anya's grandmother, Empress Marie. I was hoping, from premise alone, that this movie would explore some more mature themes about power and how one comes to terms with losing it. Family-friendly movies don't have to be sanitized to be family-friendly, no matter what the hypersensitive, suburban white mom may tell you. Hunchback approached themes of infanticide, emotional manipulation, racism and religious zealotry through its villain, Claude Frollo, while Beauty and the Beast confronted hypermasculinity and human cruelty through Gaston. With that in mind, why did this film, predicated on a violent revolution with horrifying consequences in the form of a civil war, purges and genocide, have end up as thematically sterile as it did?

Admittedly, what I was hoping from Anastasia was probably too much for the production team at Twentieth Century Fox to get away with, because after all, when you make media that is meant to have a broad appeal, it means you have to make thematic sacrifices mandated by corporate. Sometimes, you can't write the story you want to write. I was expecting the very same story I wrote for myself all those years ago, one of a lost royal who must come to terms with the fact that the old empire has fallen and things will never be the same again. I was hoping that the true villain would be a former revolutionary or a member of Lenin's cabinet whose hatred of the monarchy spurred him to ruthlessly pursue any Romanov survivors, and not the one-note Rasputin whose motivation we don't even completely understand. 

Apparently, Bluth never considered to use Bolsheviks as the antagonist faction of the film, though at one point it was bounced around that a fictional vigilante police officer with a grudge towards the old regime would be the central antagonist rather than Rasputin. And you know what? I'd dig that! But while a communist police officer taking the law into his own hands doesn't seem nearly as menacing as a corrupt priest turned-evil wizard, I definitely think it would have been a step in the right direction. If the writers went for the “vigilante police” angle, I think that aspect alone would be enough to warrant less egregious comparison to Disney at the time, at least from a characterization standpoint. We could probably have had this officer villain be multifaceted a villain with a complex sense of justice, or even a redeemable one at that! Not even Hunchback's Frollo had that narrative luxury! 

I honestly think this movie could have been great, but it could only have been great had it chose to stand on its own two feet instead. It tried to be a Disney movie at Disney's then-artistic height since the 1950s. it tried to make use of 3D, it tried to make use of diegetic, catchy musical numbers, it tried to play into appealing character archetypes right down to their designs, and it tried to copy the broad-appeal narrative trappings of your average well-received Disney film. I think what Anastasia proves the most about itself is that while the “Disney style” can easily be replicated on account of its ubiquity and impact on western culture, that doesn't mean imitating the formula will always be a successful endeavor.

#shaggy essays

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

The Civil War Novelization is trash

Spider-Man’s role was such garbage in the Civil War Novelization. Not of the movie, I mean of the comic story.

 It’s particularly bad when it comes to the changes made to the story.

 Like Spider-Man was written badley during Civil War anyway (he’d never agree with Tony’s side, never unmask, never be convinced by the flimsy arguments made for him to do that, never go on the run, etc) but this was in it’s own way worse.

 Check this.

 In the novel Spider-Man isn’t married. I don’t mean he and MJ are in a committed relationship but just not married.

 I mean they are not dating period.

 The novel starts with Peter as Tony’s new Iron Spider costume wearing protégé/stooge and has him reveal his identity to Aunt May IN the novel. She doens’t already know. And during that conversation Aunt May gives him a talking too about his bad luck with women. Because ya see he and Mary jane broke up recently.

 So maybe this is in continuity with the equally shitty novelization of the first New Avengers arc which literally cut out Mary Jane’s minor ass role and supplanted her with some random woman Peter isn’t even into and later on has Peter say something like ‘Take THAT Mary Jane’ in one of his inner thoughts.

 THEN Peter has to go see his ‘ex’ MJ in order to bring her into protection following his unmasking. Shit they don’t even include the goddam scene where Aunt May spouts BS nonsense to convince him to do that. He just somewhat reluctantly agrees to it because Tony wants him to do it. As OOC as it was in the actual story at least in that they paid lip service to how Peter was considering just NOT doing it. The scene made no sense when you look at it but the nonsense was at least well written in terms of pacing and dialogue and this Novelization just wiped it out so Peter could be infantialzed by going to his teenage bedroom in Aunt May’s house, eat cookies with her and hug her with the narration literally saying it was like when he was a kid.

 Like fuck dude.

 It’s so goddam stupid. Like putting aside how up the ass of Marvel’s anti-marriage agenda it is for Peter and MJ to not be married why the fuck do May and MJ need to not know his secret and be broken up from him respectively in the first place? Wouldn’t it make MORE sense to just have them in broadly the same status quo from the original story. Like okay they don’t like with Tony Stark and MJ and Peter are not married but WHY does Aunt May need to be ignorant of the truth and MJ need to be broken up with him?

 Why is their break up the defining aspect of their relationship in this goddam novel? Why couldn’t they just be in a non-married living situation or at least dating?

 What is the point of this to the narrative? What is also the point of trolling fans?

 Bear in mind when this novel was published Peter and MJ were not dating but Slott in 2011-2012 was clearly shipping them hard so WTF this wasn’t even proper synergy. Like the events of OMIT apparently still happened because Peter left MJ at the altar but in this continuity they just apparently broke up shortly after that which is NOT what happened in post-OMD continuity.

 It’s literally just DEFINING MJ and her relationship with peter through the FACT that they are not married. Like Peter literally wonders if HE could ever be as close to someone the way Reed and Sue are close to one another.

 And yet they STILL lean hard on how much Peter is in love with her.* So WHY define them through the lens of being broken up? Why the Hell not just HAVE them be in a relationship and adapt ACTUAL scenes from the Civil War era stories?

 Oh and mischaracterizing MJ beyond that.

 You get the usual utterly bullshit post-OMD crap of MJ just refusing to marry Peter if he is Spider-Man, but taken up a notch because whilst MJ from BND and beyond essentially refused to be in a relationship with Peter if he was Spider-Man at least in their revised history she WAS with him for years before that, just unmarried. In this and the New Avengers novel though she not only breaks contact with him after she gets jilted but she resumed contact only for the express purpose of making it clear she will NEVER be with him if he is Spider-Man. So MJ made the selfish ass ultimatum of her or the thing that saves people’s lives that she obviously knew about and accepted when agreeing to marry him.

 But then you just get mind boggling stuff too. Like check this out, the first scene she is in (more than half way through the novel btw) pushed the idea that she’s super into gardening. Yeah she says it’s because she ‘just needed a project’ after she got jilted at their wedding.

 But like...what? Has the author even READ any Mary Jane stories? First of all if MJ needed a project GARDENING wouldn’t be it. She’d open up a club, go travelling, go partying, some shit like that? This novel has her talking about possibly drilling a geothermal well into her backyard. Why is gardening like this even remotely big deal to her character? It’s like if you introduce Lois Lane and she’s defined through her love of knitting. Like wtf!

 And the idiocy doesn’t just stop there. In this version of the story Peter has Mary Jane and Aunt May go on the run without him. Granted he did this BEFORE he turned on Tony and it was oly a precautionary measure.

 But it’s still asinine.

 As asinine and irresponsible as it was for Peter to go on the run at all in the comic version of Civil War, keeping May and MJ close once he had gone on the run did make sense. Because the government had proven themselves totally untrustworthy.

 Oh and...it gets worse.

 Because the LAST thing that happens to Spider-Man in the novel is him having a tearful phone conversation with MJ in which the following shit happens.

 ·         He continues to insist that she and Aunt May stay in hiding for an indefinite amount of time...without him...with him not even knowing where they are.

·         He REFUSES to take amnesty from the government when it is offered to all heroes (which was not the case in the original comics to my recollection, they were all just fugitives) and his reasons are that they’d make him do training and he’s ‘just a loner’. In other words Spider-Man when genuinely offered the chance to keep his aunt and beloved ex safe and NOT live as a known criminal opts to NOT do that for shallow selfish reasons. He even outright tells MJ he’s lost his job, doesn’t have a home, has no clothes, cannot talk to any of his friends without endangering them, the cops and Jameson are after him and his life has been blown apart

·         Oh but this is all okay because as he says ‘But you know what I can sleep at night.’ And MJ says ‘”Well I guess that’s what matters” WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SERIOUS!

·         MJ says that what she was REALLY angry about when Peter missed their wedding (she literally says she used to ‘wake up screaming at night’) was that she was worrying about him. Which is again utterly mischaracterization of her even in post-OMD continuity because she STILL entered into a relationship with him.

 Ah but don’t worry we end on a postitive note because even though Peter has fucked himself, his friends and his family over and refuses to fix the situation because he just wants to sleep well at night he still suits up and goes to stop a mugger cos he’s just the gosh darn amazing spider-man don’t ya know.

 Ugh.

 I don’t know what is worse. This novel the New Avengers novel or the travesty of the Kraven’s Last Hunt novel. 

 P.S. The novel does BS with other characters’ relationships too. Like they talk about Reed and Sue Richards’ sex life.

Like...why?

Why do we need that?

You can’t even say because some of it was in the original story because as Spider-Man’s situation reveals the novel was happy to just overhaul stuff entirely.

 P.P.S. The novel says that MJ is the ONLY person Peter truly trusts. Like first of all screw Aunt May I guess. Second of all if that is true it makes Peter just NOT consulting her about unmasking even more asinine. And it was already asinine because he didn’t consult Aunt May about it either, he just came clean that he was going  to do it.

*Which makes scenes like him trying to kiss her then her stopping him, then him hugging her ‘like a sister’ royally messed up.

#Spider-Man #Civil War #Marvel Civil War #Civil War 2006 #mjwatsonedit #Mary Jane Watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #mj watson #Aunt May #May Parker #Iron Man #Tony Stark