Month: July 2022

Why Marvel Phase Five Will Suck

Quantumania is a sequel to the Ant-Man movies that will continue to milk a dry horse. My guess is it will take us down some road where Scott and Hope get to do a Science(TM) version of the multiverse so Disney can sell more toy variants of the same crap.

Secret Invasion is a huge confusing mess in the comics, and it’ll be simplified into something that gives YouTubers easy fodder for critique videos. At least those guys will cover their rent for the year.

Guardians Vol. 3 still has the appeal that the first movie earned it, so I’m not going to curse it outright. Gunn is back in the director’s chair, we’ll see what happens. I’ll give it a fair shot. The Guardians movies continue to be the best Star Wars movies Disney has made.

Echo. DOA. A deaf version of Daredevil that will probably not have a whole lot going on. Like Jessica Jones with more karate.

Loki 2. DOA. Didn’t even finish the first one.

The Marvels. Only thing I’m looking forward to here is dunking on the idiots who look at Captain Marvel’s box office returns as if they weren’t insanely propped up by Infinity War and Endgame.

Blade. Zero hope here, that saga ended in 2004 with Snipes. Disney can’t do this character right any more than they can do Deadpool. It’ll be too soft and clean and he’s not that character.

Ironheart. This story was dead in print before it even hit shelves, it’ll be deader than that on the screen.

Agatha. Bro. This was a dead meme five minutes after WandaVision ended.

Daredevil Born Again. No. They’ll never make it as good as it was when Netflix had it. This will make Cox and D’Onofrio regret signing on.

Blacktain America: Great Reset. Couldn’t just…make a Falcon movie, could ya

Thunderbolts. Because we want more Dancing Zemo, and we need him to lead his own Suicide Squad.

Are you tired yet?

I’m tired.

Cinema on Life Support

Took the wife to see Maverick last night, and it was awesome the second time–despite being stuck between a cussy meathead on my left, and a Latino couple on the right, the woman of whom had never seen Top Gun, and was asking her boyfriend in Spanish the whole time WTF was going on.

Anyway, I’ve griped about this before and I will yet gripe about it in the future. SDCC is going on this week so Disney is blasting out its ongoing comic book desecration project known as Marvel Phases Four Through Six.

Pretty much everything else coming out this year is a sequel or spinoff of something that was good before and is just tired now. Top Gun is of course a 1980s American staple, but it’s the rare exception that got a late sequel which didn’t suck. The Mission: Impossible movies are adding a two-part finale that starts next year, and I’ll probably see it because those movies are predictably exciting. But by the time that series wraps, it will have been in cinemas off and on for 28 years. 0_0

I’m not even wasting time on superhero movies on streaming services anymore. I could watch them for free in my car on the way to work and I still won’t do it. I’m just done. And that’s increasingly the case with movie theaters in general. It’s all too corporate, too calculated, too much of the same thing digested and discarded over and over again.

What’s some older stuff I should watch? Drop me some recs. Hopefully American cinema gets its act together.

RIP Teren Christensen

I’m gonna mention our late bro Teren on the Radcracker podcast today, but in case you wanted to donate to his memorial fund, here’s the link.

I really don’t care for GoFundMe, but that’s where it’s set up, so it is what it is. Teren was a great man and deserves to be mourned and remembered.

It looks like he hit his head, got a concussion, and the condition worsened from there. (See tweet.)

RIP, Handicap Hulk. See you down the road.

Fresh Meat, Not Reboots: Brian Robeson

Like me, you’re probably tired of every new movie franchise really just being a retread, reboot, sheboot, or genderbend of an old classic.

There are plenty of other characters out there who deserve to make it to the screen besides Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and so on. I could list a million more.

We’ve seen every damn iteration we should see. Studios will just milk a property that has no trademark but enjoys high brand recognition.

Here are some book series that you should jump into so that we increase the chances of seeing them on screen someday.

How the hell do we not have a blockbuster adaptation of HATCHET? This is BS. Get on it. This kid was The Martian before there was The Martian.

Fresh Meat, Not Reboots: Aleksander and Deryn

Like me, you’re probably tired of every new movie franchise really just being a retread, reboot, sheboot, or genderbend of an old classic.

There are plenty of other characters out there who deserve to make it to the screen besides Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and so on. I could list a million more.

We’ve seen every damn iteration we should see. Studios will just milk a property that has no trademark but enjoys high brand recognition.

Here are some book series that you should jump into so that we increase the chances of seeing them on screen someday.

Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy is an alternate World War One story. The Allies have genetically altered animals and the Germanic powers have heavy iron machinery. “Darwinists” vs “Clankers.”

Aleksander is the fictional only child of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Deryn is pulling a Scottish Mulan so that she can be an aviator. Their paths cross after the Archduke is assassinated, and a British airship crashes near an Austrian safehouse in the Alps.

Excellent series that plays with history in a fun way. Strong story, strong characters, great illustrations. Go read it.

Fresh Meat, Not Reboots: Silas and Josie

Like me, you’re probably tired of every new movie franchise really just being a retread, reboot, sheboot, or genderbend of an old classic.

There are plenty of other characters out there who deserve to make it to the screen besides Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and so on. I could list a million more.

We’ve seen every damn iteration we should see. Studios will just milk a property that has no trademark but enjoys high brand recognition.

Here are some book series that you should jump into so that we increase the chances of seeing them on screen someday.

DID YOU THINK I WOULDN’T?

HA.

Go read SLEEPLESS HOLLOW. Silas and Josie are time-traveling ghost hunters who have to save Sleepy Hollow on Halloween in 2020. I published this book pre-pandemic, so I didn’t write the lockdowns, the riots, or the election BS into the story, because that stuff is stupid.

Get me on the big screen.

Fresh Meat, Not Reboots: Vin and Elend

Like me, you’re probably tired of every new movie franchise really just being a retread, reboot, sheboot, or genderbend of an old classic.

There are plenty of other characters out there who deserve to make it to the screen besides Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and so on. I could list a million more.

We’ve seen every damn iteration we should see. Studios will just milk a property that has no trademark but enjoys high brand recognition.

Here are some book series that you should jump into so that we increase the chances of seeing them on screen someday.

Vin and Elend are the central characters in Brandon Sanderson’s first Mistborn trilogy. She’s a street rat, he’s a noble, and they both live under the oppressive regime of an immortal ruler, in a landscape that is almost barren and devoid of life.

Also, Vin can drink alcohol with metal fragments in it and gain superpowers. The first book is a heist, the second is a siege, and the third is an all-out war. Strong religious overtones about as well, but not from real-world religions.

One of my favorite epic fantasy series. Keep reading these books, Sanderson will make a movie of this eventually.

Fresh Meat, Not Reboots: Courtney Crumrin

Like me, you’re probably tired of every new movie franchise really just being a retread, reboot, sheboot, or genderbend of an old classic.

There are plenty of other characters out there who deserve to make it to the screen besides Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and so on. I could list a million more.

We’ve seen every damn iteration we should see. Studios will just milk a property that has no trademark but enjoys high brand recognition.

Here are some book series that you should jump into so that we increase the chances of seeing them on screen someday.

From the graphic novel series by Ted Naifeh. Courtney Crumrin is a social outcast who has to move with her parents into her weird great-uncle’s house. Turns out said great uncle is a warlock, and from him Courtney starts learning magic.

This ain’t no Hogwarts though. Bad stuff happens and it costs dearly to undo it. Courtney learns valuable lessons along the way. And the aesthetics are to die for, especially if you read these books as part of your Halloween stack.

Get us an adaptation of this instead of Minions 873, please.

Fresh Meat, Not Reboots: Darrow of Lycos

Like me, you’re probably tired of every new movie franchise really just being a retread, reboot, sheboot, or genderbend of an old classic.

There are plenty of other characters out there who deserve to make it to the screen besides Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and so on. I could list a million more.

We’ve seen every damn iteration we should see. Studios will just milk a property that has no trademark but enjoys high brand recognition.

Here are some book series that you should jump into so that we increase the chances of seeing them on screen someday.

Darrow is the protagonist from Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy. I say “trilogy” because I don’t care for anything that comes after book 3. The first three stories end fantastically and after that, the story unwinds itself. I wrote about this over at UpstreamReviews.

As for Darrow, he’s a low-class drill operator who was genetically remade into a ruling-class warlord, joining a group of underground rebels who want to destroy a pseudo-Roman empire in the future. They killed his wife. He’ll burn everything they love to the ground.

Read RED RISING, GOLDEN SON, and MORNING STAR. That is all.