Superheroes!

io9 reports that DC Comics have got N.K. Jemisin to write a Green Lantern series. Far Sector will be about a human Green Lantern tasked with protecting a populated 'Dyson Sphere' around a distant star.

Jemisin, if you're not familiar with her work, is one of 5 people to ever win Hugo Award for Best Novel more than twice. The others are Lois McMaster Bujold, who won 4 times, Isaac Asimov, Vernor Vinge, and Connie Willis. Jemisin is the only person to win 3 in a row, for her The Broken Earth trilogy. I don't really read comics much these days, because they're expensive and because I don't want stacks of them around my house anymore, but this sounds cool as f.

(Large image, not a spoiler.)
Spoiler :
 
Wow, Hellboy is getting completely shredded in reviews.

"feels like an eternity, lurching incoherently from one loud set-piece to another"
"an unholy mess"
"you just want it to stop"
"so much gore and profanity that it gets dull"
"muddled mess of a movie"
"bring a mop" <- That one's my favorite. :goodjob:
"a fun ride as long as you put your brain into 'do not disturb' mode"
"the race for worst movie of the year is heating up"
According to Rotten Tomatoes, "A convoluted and uneven trek over the same familiar ground" comes from a positive review. :lol:

Rotten Tomatoes: 13%
Metacritic: 35

Yikes.

It's a shame, David Harbour and Milla Jovovich have a ton of charisma. I feel like there's a fun movie starring the two of them out there somewhere. Maybe in an alternate universe, they're in some kind of mismatched-couple action-comedy with a snappy script. Harbour will head back to Stranger Things, but I can't remember the last time Jovovich was graced with a good movie. Oh well. At times like this, I like to remember the words of the great philosopher James Franco: "Making a [good] movie is really, really hard."
 
Jovovich was good in Fifth Element. But being good in the Resident Evil movies was kind of besides the point. I can't even recall what other movies I've seen her in. Looking through her IMDB the only other thing I probably saw her in was Married with Children, and that was back when she was just starting out.


Saw Antman and the Wasp again last night, as a friend of mine hadn't seen it, and was told that it was needed for Endgame. While they are connected, I can't see why it would be a necessary leadup.
 
Cutlass said:
Saw Antman and the Wasp again last night, as a friend of mine hadn't seen it, and was told that it was needed for Endgame. While they are connected, I can't see why it would be a necessary leadup.
Click to expand...
Yeah, fun movie, but definitely not required.

The only required viewing before Endgame, imo, is Infinity War.

Recommended viewing before Endgame:
Captain America: Civil War, because I think the reunion of Steve and Tony will be an important moment. At least, I hope it will.
Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, because there's a lot of relationship-building in those movies, and I think Endgame is going to feature the original Avengers and their friendships. For instance, the scene in Avengers where Natasha is tied to a chair and gets a phonecall from Phil Coulson tells you a lot. "What do you want? I'm working!" "Barton's in trouble." There's more development of the relationship between Nat and Clint later, but the simple moment where Natasha drops everything because Coulson 'says Barton's in trouble' tells an entire story in 6 seconds. There's a moment in the Endgame trailer where Hawkeye is standing over some guys he's presumably just kicked the [stuffing] out of, and he turns and sees Natasha standing there. It's like a 2-second scene, but if you've seen Avengers and heard Clint's little girl call Natasha "Auntie Nat" in Age of Ultron, even such a brief moment tells you something; if you haven't, it doesn't.

Optional, but if you really want to get the most out of Endgame:
Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man, Thor, because they're the introductions to the core Avengers. Iron Man 2 is technically the introduction of Black Widow, but I rewatched that recently, and I don't think you learn much about her in that movie that would be key to Endgame.
Ant-Man & The Wasp, Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Guardians of the Galaxy, mainly to meet the characters who died when Thanos used the Gauntlet, so you'd know who the surviving heroes are fighting for.
 
For that matter, Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange, just so far as to know who those characters are. The Hulk movies they sort of retconned into the series, but aren't in any sense... well, worthwhile. And I don't imagine any version of the Fantastic 4 showing up.



___________


Thought later last night: Are the Antman movies even worse than Black Panther for sciencemagic? Sciencemagic seems largely inseparable from superhero stories in the first place. But we go with it for the overall story. But in some of them it really gets a lot more out of control than in others. Antman and the Wasp was an overall fun movie. But the sciencemagic was kind of out of control, and the technobabble would have fit in with a Star Trek Voyager episode. And that was kind of the weakest points of the movie.
 
Cutlass said:
For that matter, Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange, just so far as to know who those characters are. The Hulk movies they sort of retconned into the series, but aren't in any sense... well, worthwhile. And I don't imagine any version of the Fantastic 4 showing up.
Click to expand...
I thought Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange were skippable, for anyone who's trying to figure out what's necessary and what isn't. I think Wong may be in Endgame, but I think you get a sufficient introduction to him in Infinity War. It seems like Carol Danvers* will play a big part in Endgame, but I don't know if the events of Captain Marvel will have any relation to Endgame. It provides the background of the Avenger Initiative, I guess, but nothing real important - after all, the rest of us only just found out where the name came from, and we weren't all scratching our heads for the last 10 years. The main relationship in Captain Marvel, imo, was the friendship between Carol and Nick Fury**, but Fury got dusted and won't be in Endgame.

* I have to keep reminding myself not to type Kara Danvers.
** So many of the reviews I read and hear talk about the friendships Carol had with Maria Rambeau and Dr. Lawson, but the Carol who's the protagonist of the movie doesn't know either of those women. Her primary friendship in the movie is with Fury.

Cutlass said:
Thought later last night: Are the Antman movies even worse than Black Panther for sciencemagic? Sciencemagic seems largely inseparable from superhero stories in the first place. But we go with it for the overall story. But in some of them it really gets a lot more out of control than in others. Antman and the Wasp was an overall fun movie. But the sciencemagic was kind of out of control, and the technobabble would have fit in with a Star Trek Voyager episode. And that was kind of the weakest points of the movie.
Click to expand...
"Do you guys just put the word 'quantum' in front of everything?" :lol:

I definitely agree that sciencemagic is integral to superhero stories. We simply can't look at the science of superhero stories with any kind of critical eye without going blind from the glare. I'd disagree on one point, though: I thought the sciencemagic in Black Panther was threatening to go overboard, even for a superhero story. From places like Captain America, it was easy to understand to vibranium as a magic-metal that was incredibly resilient and had some ability to redirect kinetic energy. But in Black Panther, vibranium seemed to be a catch-all wonder-substance that could do just about anything the writers could think of. It was almost too much, even for me.

Laurana Kanan said:
Confirmed three new series for the Disney+ streaming service set in the Cinematic Universe.
  1. "Loki"
  2. "Falcon & Winter Soldier"
  3. "WandaVision"
Disney+ will be priced @ $6.99/month debuting in November this year.
Click to expand...
They're also doing a live-action Hawkeye with Jeremy Renner that will introduce Kate Bishop, and an animated What If..? series, the first episode of which will be about Peggy Carter getting Dr. Erskine's "super-soldier" formula instead of Steve Rogers. They're working to get Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper to voice Peggy and Howard Stark, but they haven't dotted the I's and crossed the T's yet.
 
EgonSpengler said:
Fury got dusted and won't be in Endgame.
Click to expand...

Nobody got dusted outside the mirror dimension that Doc Strange stuffed Thanos into, so everyone can be in Endgame. When Thanos thought he was fending off the portal he was already in the mirror dimension. Everything beyond that point was illusion meant to get him off guard so the heroes could get organized and all jump him at once to get the glove off of him.

Okay, it's a theory.
 
I was surprised by how much I liked Aquaman. The CGI-heavy action scenes were a lot more exciting than I expected them to be. The design was top-notch, up there with Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. They did a great job making all of the ridiculous characters believable, yet kept them amazingly close to the comics. Mera, Black Manta and Ocean Master were all done really well, without disowning the source material, and without being embarrassed by it (hello, Batman & Robin). And they really went full-throttle, pedal to the metal, with the above-mentioned sciencemagic.

It was definitely too long, though. I had to take break about 100 minutes in. Kevin Smith thought the filmmakers were worried they wouldn't get a sequel, so they crammed everything into one movie.
 
EgonSpengler said:
I was surprised by how much I liked Aquaman. The CGI-heavy action scenes were a lot more exciting than I expected them to be. The design was top-notch, up there with Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. They did a great job making all of the ridiculous characters believable, yet kept them amazingly close to the comics. Mera, Black Manta and Ocean Master were all done really well, without disowning the source material, and without being embarrassed by it (hello, Batman & Robin). And they really went full-throttle, pedal to the metal, with the above-mentioned sciencemagic.

It was definitely too long, though. I had to take break about 100 minutes in. Kevin Smith thought the filmmakers were worried they wouldn't get a sequel, so they crammed everything into one movie.
Click to expand...


Still haven't seen that. I'll catch it on disk eventually.
 
Entertainment Weekly did a major article group on Endgame. Didn't read it all, but apparently Feige was on the scene to prevent any spoilers from getting out.

https://ew.com/movies/2019/04/11/ultimate-guide-to-the-avengers/






To the point of the earlier conversation about hiring Thor to play Thor:


People always ask, what do you bring to your character? Are there any parts of your character that have become part of you?
HEMSWORTH: There was a much clearer [sense of] who the character was the first time I played it, and then…it slowly just became me screwing around and having fun. There’s more of me in the character now than ever. It’s the most honest place you can operate from as an actor.
Knowing everybody, I feel like the personal relationships start to echo through. What you see, the authenticity of Iron Man and Captain America when we’re on screen, there is a real friendship with Chris and Robert. Then it starts to just come through whether we like it or not.
Click to expand...

https://ew.com/movies/2019/04/10/avengers-endgame-cover-story/
 
Cutlass said:
Still haven't seen that. I'll catch it on disk eventually.
Click to expand...
If it makes any difference, it's not a superhero movie, it's a space opera. With sharks and crab-men.

Would crab-men be horrified that we boil crabs and lobsters alive and then eat them?
 
EgonSpengler said:
If it makes any difference, it's not a superhero movie, it's a space opera. With sharks and crab-men.

Would crab-men be horrified that we boil crabs and lobsters alive and then eat them?
Click to expand...

Well, we are generally horrified when the ME is talking about the corpse on the beach and says "yeah, the crabs got to it..." so I think it would be fair to expect them to be.
 
I noticed that Amazon has the digital versions of all of the MCU films on sale, $3.99 to rent and $9.99 to buy the HD version. I have no reason to buy any of them, but I might pay $4 to watch Spider-Man: Homecoming again. You normally need to get the STARZ add-on to watch that one, but they made it part of the $3.99 event promoting Avengers: Endgame. I'm sort of curious to watch Iron Man 3 again too. I haven't seen that one since it was in theaters. I have to admit, though, I was a little disappointed with the twist on Ben Kingsley's character. I mean, it was clever, don't get me wrong, but I was enjoying Kingsley's performance as the iconic villain, with his bizarre accent and everything.
 
I've got a lot of them on disk already. I may eventually get most of them on disk. But the collected sets are cheaper than buying them individually. Also the local library has most of them on disk to borrow for free.
 
I stopped watching Gotham in season 1, but the promos for the series finale have me wondering: Has the entire series just been an extended origin story for Batman and his rogues gallery?
 
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