Finally watched Deadpool 2…I’d heard a lot of people say that it paled in comparison to the first, but I feel that I enjoyed it just as much, although I’d concur that the plot was a little iffy. Also how could I dislike anything with Morena Baccarin on screen?
Also caught Hereditary which appears to be very much LIKE / HATE. I understand what it was going for, and as someone who’s read old school horror (think Lovecraft) I was ok with it, but I can totally follow why some people hated it.
Having finished The Flash Season 4 now, am going to give Quantico Season 2 a try too for my TV fix…the first season was ok, and I’m expecting nothing of this second.
And also finished Night Fall by Simon R. Green, and so have now concluded a multi-series set of novel (lots at last count)…a little sad to see the Secret Histories end, but perhaps we can get some more Deathstalker? Decided to give Racing the Beam a go next…certainly reading about the Atari VCS and the technical constraints that had to be overcome is a change of pace compared to Aliens and world(s) shattering battle.
Yesterday YouTube recommended a 7 minute long cartoon pilot for Final Space which I haven’t heard of before, so I gave it a shot and was intrigued. After putting the name into Google I found out its first season already aired and started watching the show.
Final Space lends heavily from Star Wars and other pop culture to the point where it feels like it lacks its own identity, but what it lacks in originality it makes up with good humor and a great, mature story for a cartoon show.
Definitely recommended!
@xist Deadpool 2 was a great watch and worth the time invested, but otherwise really forgettable in my opinion. Definitely went a little overboard with the story and introducing too many elements too quickly. Basically trying to go from Iron Man 1 to Infinity War in two movies, know what I mean?
Believe it or not but I’m yet to see Infinity War, but I take your point (will be remedying that at some point soon!). Cable and Domino made the film for me, and I’d love to see more of them in the future, but the story rocketed along as a vehicle for jokes and unlike other Marvel films we got little to no character development. Although of course they probably weren’t aiming for that…not enough Negasonic Teenage Warhead though!
Final Space definitely looks like something worth checking out, so thanks for the heads up.
Oh, I’ve seen Infinity War just recently, because I don’t go the cinema anymore, so I always wait for the DVD to be released and then uploaded to the great interwebz. So, I believe you!
Well, I do somewhat agree and Domino was awesome, but the whole deep ending was too much for me. Overall I would’ve chosen something else instead of cramming X-Force and Cable into the same movie. Like the Head Trip arc or maybe even Deadpool corps, although these are probably too trippy for the screen.
Also doesn’t Deadpool hear multiple voices or has it just been too long since I’ve read the comics? When are they introducing them?! :C
Took my wife to see Crazy Rich Asians, I was really nervous about going because I was afraid we would see a lot of racially specific language and jokes that would make me cringe. Turns out it was a very good Rom-Com with decent development and pretty good acting from most of the non-actor cast members. We both enjoyed the movie and are now looking forward to the sequel.
In other parts of the watching TV/movies front we took a long hiatus from NCIS for no specific reason a couple of years ago, and now we are finally getting back into it, we are in season 10 and enjoying it as much as we ever did. Of course it would have been even better if
I woke today thinking of The Lord of the Rings, from the books to the movies and the soundtrack. It is hard finding a good quality video on youtube though of what I’m listening to.
Marvel, this is what you could turn out and instead you push out the other stuff you make? Now, the other Marvel movies are in no way “terrible”, but good god, put those movies up against this movie and it becomes painfully obvious just how little they compare in quality. The last time a super hero movie could compare to it was the The Dark Knight Trilogy and the Raimi Spiderman movies.
This movie truly was a delight in every single way. I had fun watching it from the start to the end, and I didn’t need endlessly weird humor every second to have it (though it did have its humor). It also had a consistent, well thought out and extremely well written story line. It also, and I’ll admit I am a bit biased towards, dozens of lines entirely in Xhosa which I absolutely love the sound of.
Now, did Marvel put another genius in charge of their next title? That is to say…can Captain Marvel be just as good? I sure hope so, because I am extremely excited for it.
Rating: 5/5
Outside of movies, I listened to…well, a lot of Toby Keith and country in general.
Toby + Country
I had a lot of time to sit and study some languages, so it also meant I could play a lot of my favorite music. though for some reason, youtube links don’t work in spoiler tags…weird. They’re great songs, so I encourage anyone who is willing to explore genres for good songs to give them a chance!
♫ We talk about your dreams and we talk about your schemes
Your high school team and your moisturizer creme
We talk about your nanna up in Muncie, Indiana
We talk about your grandma down in Alabama
We talk about your guys of every shape and size
The ones that you despise and the ones you idolize
We talk about your heart, about your brains and your smarts
And your medical charts and when you start
You know talking about you makes me grin
But every now and then
I want to talk about me
Want to talk about I
Want to talk about number one
Oh my me my
What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see
I like talking about you, you, you, you usually, but occasionally
I want to talk about me
I want to talk about me ♫
Oh Toby Keith, you know how to make a comedic song.
Complete opposite for me concerning Black Panther. Sure, it wasn’t bad, but with all the things I’ve heard about it and how transformative it supposedly was, it came nowhere close to what I expected. It was a damn meme, especially considering they even used some. “What are thoooooose?!”, really?
Kanye West has always known how to make good beats.
Well to me, I prefer movies that tell a story with some humor rather than a comedic movie with some story.
It was different to me because all Marvel movies are these days are the same comedic formats of each other. Just look at them all and compare their stories structurally. Disregard how much you loved the humor completely and look at the way they wrote the story, or how the characters evolved throughout the story or how they interacted with others in it (even the villains). You will find that post Iron Man (that means post Raimi) you will see a serious degradation in story telling quality and character development for the sake of making the audience laugh with the same type of extremely awkward or easily foreseen humor. Iron Man was amazing because you saw Tony Stark evolve from this selfish, billionaire selling weapons without any regard to the world and innocent life to realizing, first hand, how his actions directly caused harmed, which resulted in him become on of Earth’s mightiest defenders after a believable and very well written character turn. You don’t see that kind of writing in Marvel anymore (key example, the newest Spiderman movie). Heck, even though many consider the first Thor to be the worst in the series, even it had better character development for Thor than most of modern Marvel (except for Doctor Strange).
The shallowness of Marvel’s storytelling becomes extremely clear when you take a step back and look at it. Black Panther takes a step away from that familiar format Marvel has found “successful” with its audience (especially with the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy audience) by telling you a story that is not only as rich as its character development (T’Challa is constantly moving forward but is at war with something, emotionally and physically) but in content as well that it takes you through carefully the entire way of the film rather than staggered through with the aid of constant jokes (T’Challa’s confrontation with Wakanda’s secluded and selfish past, his father and forefather’s decisions, their “sins” and the need to reach out finally to help the suffering of not only the black community but the suffering of the world by seeing how it corrupted a good boy (N’Jadaka) into a radical racist movement due his and others being discriminated against).
Black Panther was a turning point in modern Marvel and Marvel needs to seriously consider its success and look at its other movies and think about why it was so successful. People don’t want constant humor, especially if it is the same kind of dry stuff they can predict. They want substance—substance with heart.
hehe I thought that was pretty cute but I’ve never come across this meme before so that’s probably why.
I agree with the very essence of your argument, but Black Panther just wasn’t that turning point in Marvel’s filmography to me.
The MCU began after the Dark Knight trilogy started and to me Nolan’s movies were and will be the standard to me when it comes to comic book adaptations, so in my opinion even movies like Iron Man already wasted a lot of potential. Marvel’s movies have easy-to-digest stories, have no stylistic character (although that’s intentional), are very “comic book-y” and rely more on their one-liners than anything else. They’re popcorn flicks, just pure entertainment. And I grew up reading Marvel comics and Marvel only!
And to me Black Panther was in the same vain, but the humor was cornier and I even cringed every now and then. Only difference is the focus on the antagonist which gives the story more depth, but in my opinion it was still pretty shallow.
I think I would need to rewatch the filmography to be completely sure on that, though. I know that the Iron Man villains were always portayed as cliché evil and motivated by money, but Ultron was also a very compelling villain! Also the conflict of Loki and fighting against his own family? The more I think about it… Nah, Black Panther was just like the rest.
To me Marvel got interesting again with Guardians of the Galaxy because it had its own feel, its own style that set it apart from the universe and made it interesting, apart from the humor and story that were just as good.
And I personally loved the Spider-Man reboot, not so much for the choices they made on the origin of Peter Parker and his surroundings, but because the writing seemed to be on par with the Will Ferell days of SNL. That movie was actually a really amazing comedy before anything else.
For example I really liked Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man because it was dark, gritty and had actual impact with the story. Don’t want to spoil anything, though. But it bombed and so that was done unfortunately.
Anyway, I don’t know what and why I’m writing anymore. I hope this is still relevant to our discussion, ha. Also really liked Dr. Strange by the way. And Infinity War. Thanos was amazing as a character.
Yeah, I guess Marvel is getting better overall and they seem to become consistent with the quality of their movies, but still Black Panther was meh. Maybe I should rewatch it, but that was my opinion after finishing it and still is.
It is rather lengthy due to quotes, so I thought I should put it in a spoiler so I don’t impede on others.
Reply
And that’s understandable. I know a lot of MCU fans think that Guardians of the Galaxy is the greatest film series to ever grace the Earth so it comes down to opinion, but I just think that the reason BP appealed so much to so many different people is telling and it is because it fulfilled a sort of narrative Marvel very rarely tells now.
Oh, yes, I was merely discussing Marvel, but outside of it…well I also consider The Dark Knight trilogy to be far superior. I am a rather huge DC fan myself so people might consider me biased, but those movies were simply fantastic in every way to me (I own a collector’s of The Dark Knight DVD that comes with the helmet statue ). It is especially so as an adaptation. Bruce’s character development is critical to the story, which you are presented to minute one to the very end without any sort of quality loss.
Yes, I agree entirely. It is hard to explain that to many of the fans. It is intentional because they mostly rely on the extensive comic book universe, despite not being connected (as in what happens in the comics doesn’t carry over to MCU). However, when you try to point that out to them…
Hmm, I guess the humor really does come down to the person. I couldn’t stand the humor in Guardians (like the pelvis magic jokes etc) or most of the humor in the Avengers (though Infinity War was way better) but I found the humor tolerable or good in Black Panther because it wasn’t every twenty seconds or in the same quality as other movies.
And oh man, I liked Ultron as a villain, he was portrayed very well (plus he had a great actor), but ultimately the assembly of assorted of heroes and how they reacted to each other, to Ultron and the story just fell flat in the end. A great potential wasted.
I will give GoG that. I do not much like the series at all, but it came out of a dry MCU with its own style with a very powerful punch. A very big shame what happened to the third movie and Gunn, by the way. I feel sorry for the fans.
The newest Spider-Man reboot just felt hallow. I could get over the drastic changes and the cliche fill ins (nerdy side-kick friend), the skip over the origin story, taking away Peter’s intelligence, taking away his efforts towards his suit so Stark could have some show time in his life and everything else, but it just felt so…empty. The jokes when there were good enough—SPOILER (I liked the scene when he was locked in the storage place)—but I didn’t feel attached to Peter as I did with the Raimi movies because it was fast pace, another action flick as you so aptly called it, just trying to meet a quota of CGI “cool scenes”, “hilarious” funnies and “just” enough story with the bad guy to remind people they didn’t just spend $12-17 on 1h basically a quick action comedy sequence.
Oh, wait, I thought you were talking about Disney’s latest Spider-Man with the kid in it, not Andrew Gardfield’s Spider-Man. I consider those even worse in terms of humor, but even they understood the importance of story telling and character building even if I should disagree with the approaches they made they at least did it.
I should hope we’re allowed to discuss things in here as well, as I think it is very relevant and very interesting. and glad to see Dr. Strange is on common ground. I was surprised by how impressive that movie was, especially visually. I went into Infinity War initially just for him, though I ended up being surprised by how good the movie was and how the humor was actually funny for once.
I think they are getting better, but I think they need to understand the cameos and forcing “buster teams” is a problem. They need to consider DC. They tried it and it distracted too much. The only reason MCU can get away with it is because the initial Avengers movie had some starters we already saw in one movie, but now they’re just throwing more and more people in and it makes things complicated. Hopefully they take some steps back and make things a bit smaller next time, it’ll help with storytelling and character building.
And I think you should give it another try, but odds are it is a style you do not like. However, I would be interested in knowing if a rewatch resulted in any changes of your opinion. I hated my first watch through of Batman vs Superman. I then watched the unedited version and absolutely loved it because it made far more sense than the weird nonsensical stuff they put in theaters.
This.
It’s not the worst Marvel movie BUT it was the least enjoyable to me personally. The villain was just straight up unlikable with no redeeming factors (they are supposed to be evil fine, but not whiny edgelord racists).
But hey the south african girl I went to see it with loved it so I guess hit some notes right.
Guardians 2 was a much better movie. Nonstop comedy, extremely good action and even some
surprising feels.
Deadpool 2 was also a fine movie apart from the fact that they tried to do way too much in a short time frame.
I love Wardruna so much. I wish I could attend a concert, it would be the greatest thing ever.
I agree and disagree there. I had a complaint with Killmonger being whiney, and it was towards (around) the end. He was great until he went totally insane (couldn’t even hold it together long enough to formulate his evil plans right). So definitely agree there. I wish they had written his character as well as they had towards the end as they did the beginning half.
In the comics he’s also a radical racist that uses his misfortune to try and eradicate those he thinks did him wrong, even the innocent people. He goes about it a lot worse though. But yea I wish they had more time to portray N’Jadaka as Killmonger so it didn’t come across (especially toward the end) as a superficial racial baiting to dissuade people based off reviews (which I unfortunately saw happening with people assuming it was anti-white simply because the villain was).
I unfortunately don’t like comedy movies* much, so Guardians ends up generally irritating me with the constant jokes, but I won’t lie it has its moments with a certain set of characters. Drax always makes me laugh in the films (especially with Mantis) with how brutally honest he is and how he over explains stuff. The ugly jokes were just amazing. I do love Rocket and Groot though, I think they are absolutely perfect in every way.
I did like Deadpool (1) though because it was bold enough to follow some of the comics more than other Marvel material. I take it that the second isn’t as good as the first one?
*_I think the last one I liked from modern times was Tropic Thunder and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
It falls a bit behind imo but it was still a pretty good sequel. It has a bit of a budget this time around (the first one barely had shit) so it got a few fancy action scenes. The main issue is that everything was over too quickly, some things definitely deserved more screen time like a certain x-men villain that I really love.
Kind of unrelated but I used to be way less into comedy and action when I was younger, drama and romance was my go to. Then I started loving humorous explosions I guess. Something like Deadpool is right up my alley nowadays.
I personally believe most of this comes from the sociopolitical aspects of the movie and therefore creating a public opinion for you. Even before I watched the movie I only heard how it changed the movie landscape forever. That kind of hype definitely affected the success and blurred the lines between the quality of the movie and the supposed political impact, but I hate politics of any kind and I don’t like 'em in my entertainment, so maybe that’s a reason why I don’t like it as much as others.
To be clear I don’t like most humor in Marvel movies. The only joke I remember that was funny is that scene where Hulk whips Loki around in Avengers. So Guardians was the first one that hit home.
Well, yeah, they’ve stuffed a lot into the reboot, but that’s understandable considering they had to include him into the MCU quickly. At first it was only the after-credits-scenes that connected the movies, but now you get cameos left, right and center and everything is intertwined. I also didn’t like the entire Tony Stark connection, but on the other hand the whole “with great responsibility” story has been butchered enough, so taking away these elements of the origin didn’t actually hurt, because you’ve seen them already and they could jump right into the meat 'n taters without establishing the character over several movies.
Now I’m confused. I liked Spider-Man: Homecoming (Tom Holland) for the comedy and The Amazing Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) for the style and story.
You liked Talladega Nights? Have you watched the other movies? I’m a huge fan of Will Ferrell, during that time at least since his newer movies are degrading in quality, and I think that you can’t only like one of them! Anchorman, Stepbrothers (Also with John C Reilly), Walk Hard (Only John C Reilly), Casa de mi Padre…!
Totally on the same page with you about Black Panther and Garfield’s Spidey. Black Panther is near the bottom of my mental Marvel movie rankings, sitting around the Iron Man 2 & Incredible Hulk level, and I had real issues with the portrayal of the mix of science and culture. Although not so much a fan of the new Spiderman though…
Speaking of heroes and whatnot I read all of Gotham Academy a few days ago. It was quite good for the most part, something like a mix of Scooby Doo and Harry Potter.
I finished the latest season of Iron Fist. It starts very, very slow but it pays itself off in the end. The same way with season one, I suppose. Of course it doesn’t compare in quality to Daredevil season 1, I doubt anything they could make could (besides Jessica Jones s1 which I think is the best Marval tv content made) but I don’t get people’s problem with it. It is a good show.
I also finished Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger. It has political stuff in it too, it should have been obvious given the channel it was on, but it was actually pretty good once it got its feet on the ground. I had some complaints outside of the politics, like with how they ended it on such an open, relatively unanswered cliffhanger, but overall, pretty good for those typical teenager shows.
As for things I am listening to, I actually came across this video looking for more music featuring Old Norse (old Scandinavian music), loved the music (just listen to the words and the vocals, so pretty) and then realized the man talking (and briefly shown) was familiar to me. He’s a well known professor in the field (Jackson Crawford). xD
(if you’re willing, give it a try. Very short, but very good.)
I don’t like politics in my entertainment either, I really despise it, like when the music award tv shows or the movie award tv shows, but I think I could accept it in Black Panther because it started in the comics and way back then before it became the norm for people/media to use politics to control and influence people etc. I understand completely how that can turn people off this movie though. I hadn’t thought of that before.
As for the latest Spider-man and the responsibility thing, the story has been redone a billion times with the comics, and yet Raimi was able to do it with such emotional grace despite it. I don’t think that’s excuse enough for them to not do it or try, though I would understand if they really wanted to try something different, that doesn’t explain the lack of substance elsewhere. That’s where Garfield’s movies come in, and while I didn’t like them, were in my opinion better in that regard because of it.
I absolutely loved Talladega Nights. And oh yea, Anchorman. I have seen that, and loved it (oh, and the Other Guys!). I have not seen Stepbrothers or the other movies you have mentioned, but I probably should since I think Will Ferrell is extremely funny. The comedy movies I love are very old though, like National Lampoon’s Vacation, See No Evil, Hear No Evil (probably, in my opinion, one of the greatest comedies ever), Airplane!, and stuff like that.
though for some reason, youtube links don’t work in spoiler tags…weird. They’re great songs, so I encourage anyone who is willing to explore genres for good songs to give them a chance! 
feels
But yea I wish they had more time to portray N’Jadaka as Killmonger so it didn’t come across (especially toward the end) as a superficial racial baiting to dissuade people based off reviews (which I unfortunately saw happening with people assuming it was anti-white simply because the villain was).
