Thor 2 the Dark World

There's good news and there is bad news to this one. First off , its better than first movie, if for no other reason than the fact , Thor has his powers the entire time. The movie is much more action, based it goes into at least three of the 9 realms , not all of them like the promo interviews claimed and if a fun watch. 

Hemworth is starting to get the character and fill out into his role, though often rather than being a quiet stoic of few words, he offers up his little inspirational good guy speeches. Granted the character has been written a few different ways in the past, but a love for Jane Foster as his motivation for not ruling up in Asgard, isn't cutting it. 

The big elephant in the room is the lack of god, power and the cinematic version not , following the mythos or mythology close enough. At one point Odin tells Loki, they are not gods, to they live and die, Loki retorts by saying they do live give or take 5000 years more than humans. So Asgardians are in aliens who live 5000 years longer than humans, are good with majick , but no different other wise. Wrong, this is not how they are depicted in the comic book. 

There are 750000, pagans in the U.S alone, so you are telling all of us , that our gods are not gods , I find this offensive, it nagged at me through out the entire movie, so the sequences that jolted me out of this resentment were obviously good enough to do that. If Disney is the reason behind this you would think, they would be o.k with having Hercules be related to gods as he was depicted  in the cartoon version, then Thor would be no different, why the change of heart? 

It effects the movie as a whole because Asgard then becomes this science fiction planet like Krypton was depicted in Man of Steel , and we have laser cannons and rocket boat, not to mention elves in space ships which is like something from Santa Claus vs the Aliens. Another big no no, is Freya dies and gets sent off on the funeral pyre, and no Valkyries swoop down to take her to Valhalla. There goes a missed opportunity to introduce that character, so don't expect her to show up in Neflix's Defenders show, and of course Dr. Strange is going to need some alien technology to explain his majick. 

Kurse's original helmet worn ,when the character first appears was more like his comic appearance, than the Predator he would turn into. The big showdown fights were all well done and the action paid off in a big way. 

So while a fun action jammed film, that offers a more balanced use to Earth and Asgard, it's more a problem of tone.Loki almost stole the show, and Sif was not as developed as it was claimed she would be. The little mocking blip of Captain America showing up, was funny and cool, The sneak peak into Guardians of the Galaxy with the Collector popping up was pretty cool, not sure if the Captain America end scene will link into that as well or set up Avengers 2. 

Overall as superhero movies go they are becoming overblown attempts to be bigger than the next, but anyone afraid how Thor 2 stacks up against the Avengers , well it holds its own and I would say it's better than any of the Iron-Man sequels.  Iron-man and Iron-man 3 are both better than the first Thor, sayings a lot considering how Thor is one of my favorite characters, alongside the Hulk and Dr. Strange .  Its worth seeing on the big screen and you will get  your  money's worth of spectacle out of it.   

Horror in Comics

If you didn't know I'm now writing for Soletron so most of my comic blogs can be found their , so sorry to make you feel neglected over here , here's a taste of what you ahve been missing out on.
How scary can a comic book really be ? Well that's debatable, but more often than not they have to resort to over the top imagery to grip, but often come with some of the more stellar writing in the business. Here's the top ten...

10 - Walking Dead

The comic is almost as popular as the show based off of it . Grittier and more stylized than most of its peers.



9- Vampirella

Created by Famous Monsters of Filmlands Forest J Ackerman in 1969, she re-defined the sexy vampire or vampire alien as she is from the planet Drakulon, where blood flowed in rivers.

8 - Sandman

Neil Gaiman's break through work for D/C comics was his tale of Morpheus the dream king. Darker than the common super-hero model, this ground breaking work  was darker and more surreal.

7 - Were-Wolf By Night

He's Marvel's take on the Wolf Man, but he was also an anti-hero, back when Wolverine was bouncing around in yellow spandex.



6 - Hell-Boy

This  hell-spawned paranormal detective , hunts down darker evils and creepy folks of folk-lore.

5 - Tomb of Dracula

Not only did this comic focus on every one's favorite count, but is also the comic book which Blade was spawned from.

4 - Swamp-thing

Watch-Men creator Alan Moore's run on this comic is one of the most iconic in comic history, he made the book not just about a swamp-monster but it resonated with something deeper and mythic.



3 - Tales From the Crypt

One of the original pulp horror comics.



2  - 30 Days of Night

The art work alone to this graphic novel was scary.

 1 - Hack/Slash

My favorite on super-hero comic. Cassie Hack who is also one of the hottest women in comics, is like Buffy , but rather than hunting vampires, she hunts down slashers...supernatural based killers like Jason or Chucky.

The Wolverine

The movie was fun and paid more tribute to the comics than the first Wolverine solo outing. First off  if you are hung up on the height thing, well then the Transformers sized Sliver Samurai isn't going to do it for you.  Nor will the fact Viper doesn't have green hair, I mean was that a lot to ask of the wardrobe department, not to mention we will never see Logan in a full costume and mask.  So once you have all that out of the way you can enjoy the movie.

I do have one more beef, so its good news bad news with the bad news first. The fact Logan doesn't have his healing power for the whole first 2/3 of the movie irked me , just like having a de-powered mortal Thor bumbling around on earth the middle of his movie... you are telling me that you don't think the character is relatable because they are so powerful, well though shit Hollywood it's a super-hero film. Wolverine did transcend a lot of the spandex stereotypes by feeling more like a martial arts films with the yakuza and ninjas flying about.

The film was well directed and the part somewhat over dramatized by Jackman but it was balanced out , my attention was kept and the action was reasonably paced. For some reason I had it in my head Omega Red was going to be in this but...oh well.  Jean Grey did haunt Logan throughout the movie which was a nice connective tie, as well as an Trask industries in the news footage and of course the two big cameos at the end.

The end was big and cartoonish, which was a slight departure from the rest of the film that kept a somewhat grittier tone than most Marvel films this side of Punisher Warzone. There was a lack of blood for someone who should have been cutting his opponents to shreds, but maybe that was flying off screen. I think Iron Man 3 was a slightly bigger and better movie,  it was a hello of a lot less chaotic than Super-man, but  aside from the whole mutant thing it was grounded in reality, though Viper who doesn't have powers in the comics somehow got the toads tongue in this.

My expectations were pretty low, so it was surprisingly good all thing considered and worth the rare trip to theater. Granted I only have a moderate interest in the character, I'm not sure he is even in my top ten marvel characters, though he is immense in his popularity almost surpassing Spider-man, I appreciate the thought behind this now if we just stick to everyone's powers as is, i'll live with the compromises in costuming.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. COMIC -Con Spoilers

It's Saturday Morning  is the midway point for Comic-Con, many out of towners begin to pack it up to catch flights on Sunday afternoon so this is the biggest day of the Con so lets take a look at the biggest panel of the weekend so far  Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. There is now way we can discuss what went down at the panel with out spoilers being revealed so you have been warned ...the mandatory SPOILER ALERT is in effect .

This panel seemed to be more Marvel fueled than ABC, Jeff Loeb starting of as the Master of Ceremonies. He was soon joined by Writers/executive producers/show runners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen  followed by writer Jeff Bell and then the cast of the show before Greg Clark came out to deafening applause that was eclipsed by the fan reaction when Joss himself came out.   Whedon fielded a few questions and it almost seemed planted when a girl asked if their were any clips to share and he answered  "There was a whole legal thing with lawyers, So we can't show you a clip. We're just going to show you the episode." Before they showed the pilot episode. Which is very much felt like a Whedon show closer to Dollhouse and Avengers than his other work, the dialogue retains the very real feeling banter than is his trademark. I have friends who aren't familiar with his work previous to Avengers other than knowing I'm a huge Buffy freak so it didn't catch them in the Avengers movie and might fall just as flat on the general minority would didn't like Avengers. Cobie Smoulders reprises her role as Maria Hill on the show, though how much of a role she can have in the series remains to be seen as she is still under contract for another Season of How I Met Your Mother.   It's no secret  Gregg Clark returns to play fan favorite Agent Coulson who is back from the dead. Though the story gives purposefully conflicts account of how this happened , so it looks to be another plot thread in the series, as Coulson thinks S.H.I.E.L.D  just had him fake his death.

J. August Richards role has been speculated as being Luke Cage and this is not the case. He does play into the shows tie-in to Iron-man 3 , as his powers come from Extremis. That's not the only tie in as Iron-man appears on one of the monitor screens in the control room. The movie tie-in's to the larger Marvel Movie Universe  don't stop there, as the Super-Soldier Serum , Gamma Radiation and the Chitauri whose weapons have fallen into the wrong hands factor in, not to mention  Black Widow and Thor come up in conversation.     though any one of these elements.

Fans of the Whedonverse will be happy that Ron Glass — who played Book on Firefly — appears as a doctor so going forward we can hope to see many other familiar faces as casting has Buffy, Angel , Dollhouse and Firefly to pull from. The Show premieres September 24th on ABC

Finally!!

Well before I go any further I have to express my excitement at the fact ...SENTRY IS BACK!!! o.k as a horseman of Apocalypse and since his return is taking place in the pages of Uncanny Avengers this will lead to a rematch between Sentry and the man who put him down...Thor. This will of course be a fight that I am conflicted over since I like both characters , if I think back to Seige, I was rooting for Thor and  will prolly always root for Thor over Sentry, just like I would want the Hulk to beat either of them should those tussles ensue ...which if this bleeds over into Avengers it very well could.

I do think he should keep this black and blue looking tron suit that he's wearing , I like it better than the yellow one , though he has that blue Arch Angel looking face that I could do without and the pale white hair is an improvement in the  characters look. Hopefully there will be some positive fan response and this can be a permanent thing rather than just a few issues. We have seen other characters like Wolverine , the Hulk and Angel all go back to their normal selves after a stint with Apocalypse, but since his current horsemen have been brought back from the dead then does that mean they go back to being dead?

So who are the other three? They are choices designed to target specific avengers for sure , and good choices one in particular would make me a little excited for the next issue but is eclipsed by Sentry for sure and that's Daken. The other two are Banshee and the Grim Reaper who just died an issue or so ago, when Rogue killed him.

oh and other comics came out as well,   new avengers or  the Illuminati Avengers, has the Wakanda and Atlantis war building, I think Atlantis will take them.

The Hulk was alright, Daredevil's guest appearance was not annoying and the build here is that Baron Zemo is going to be a big bad, not really much the Hulk should worry about.  Superior Spider-man was pretty decent , the amped up Scorpion and Vulture loose on the raft as the Spider-slayer is hunting him or J,J Jameson.    

Cable and the X-force, the Uncanny Avengers showed up for Cable there was a brief fight , Thor schools Colossus in a big way and the Avengers get Cable, pretty satisfying and a fun read. The art in that book is pretty good, not up to the level of new avengers which was the best marvel art.

Then there was Age of Ultron 10, Marvel got butt hurt that it leaked after being poly-bagged, but truth be told I would have been pissed if I had paid to read that piece of trash, it's not the first time Bendis has wasted my time, they used up the space time continuum, so this gives them a loop hole for all sorts of multi-universe abuse, they go into the Ultimate verse and show galactus show up. Thor knocking Ultron's head off was the best of it all , but overall the whole ten issues has been a waste.

Movie Review: Man of Steel

If you read this blog, it is no secret that Super-man is my favorite D/C comics character,  so the anticipation and the expectations are raised pretty high, though after the Rotten Tomatoes reviews started coming in and the social media reaction was not negative but just not knowing how to take the film, I tried to lessen my expectations. Now after seeing it myself I can understand the odd reactions as it was not what people expected and I am still a little unsure how I feel about it.

It was entertaining and did not suck. Part of this was due to the fact it was incredibly well made. Some of the mega-galatic qualities made elements of the Avengers look like cheap video game cgi.  So from a production and cinematic level it was a better movie than Avengers as it had more of a Ridley Scott feel than the more comic like elements Snyder normally employs.

From the get go liberties began to be taken with the mythos. Krypton resembled something that was a cross between "City of Lost Children" and "Dune". Truth be told I am so tired of this origin story being told I guess the visual element was needed to keep from losing me. The last adventures of Jor-el, while fun to watch could have been trimmed to have put more screen time with Clark in the suit before he turned him self over to the military. Zod shows up and outs Clark via a broadcast threat, so the fact the military decided to just take Zod's word or everything seemed a little off to me.

The Fortress of Solitude being a space ship instead of an ice castle , made sense i selling it with as much realism they attempted with this and I think overall the film succeeded in what it intended to do in making Super-man more feasible to modern audiences when he was so grounded in World War 2 values. The Smallville elements were handled better than previous films , I feel even more than the Donner films. Reeves had more charisma on screen and made you feel like Super-man was your friend, this movie he was much more clearly alien and there was an sense of isolation and being on the outside looking in that almost took from the Bill Bixby Hulk television show.

As with Smallville or any of the movies there is this sense of joy that wells up inside of me when ever I see him first appear in the suit. Its such an iconic image that somehow manages to almost hold more weight for me than when I see Banner transform on screen. I think this is because the Hulk is more about release where Super-man is the actualization of our higher selves. It was in these moments the movie excelled, but when it threw a lot of hard sci-fi at you in the big battle scene in the movies second half that it lost something for me.

After Clark saves Lois when she is crashing to Earth and becomes embroiled in stopping all these various terra forming plots and devices Zod has set in place it gets scattered and then turns into a disaster film combined with the third  Matrix film. Snyder dialed back his trademark slow-mo fight scenes but went just as over  the top but in a much more Micheal Bay manner and lost me because then I couldn't see the character. The character came back in the final fight scene with Zod. I find it hard to believe Super-man would have allowed for that much destruction of Metropolis to take place, but this is a different Super-man who will kill, when he has to.

Overall I will have to see the middle section again to make a final judgement, it quality film making but feels weird seeing this as the portrayal of his world be it on Earth or on Krypton, it was gritty and often serious , though I don't think that was necessarily problematic, it was an intangible element in the tone, but maybe I just need to see it again to get use to the stylistic difference. It was one of the more well made Super-hero films to date and raises the bar on Marvel when they think about the quality in which they wish to bring the cosmic elements to life.    

Faster Than the Speed of Sense

Comics continue to not really inspire and the plague of alternate universes / time travel to weasel their way around continuity and make readers really give a shit less , is most pronounced in Age of Ultron but books like the Indestructible Hulk where the team up with the Walt Simonson Thor occurs and while mildly entertaining at least more so than other books I read this week I don't feel like for all the talent working on it it really lived up to it's potential , the Avengers books continue to be mired down in cosmic goobly gook , this includes new Avengers, I'm not sure if I forgot to read Dark Avengers or it it really left that little of an impression on me.

While we are on the subject of poor first impression , X-men one did little to dispel the notion that an all female team can't carry a book. It was less than memorable with Rogue the only character worth caring about and Jubilee who didn't appear to be a vampire with a baby. While the art in Savage Wolverine was pretty good and had a guest spot with a Hulk from where and why is he mindless? the story was weak.

What's there to look forward to ... mmm the Daredevil arc of the Hulk can go either way , I think Superior Spider-man has more promise than any of the X or Avengers book though Uncanny could get back on track making Fantastic Four pretty much a lost cause.


 
in other news

It's no secret now that Quicksliver and his sister the Scarlet Witch will be in the sequel to the Avengers, though now Fox and Disney/Marvel get to slug it out over the fine print concerning Marvel's speedster who has already been cast for the X-men film, as Evan Peters from American Horror Story fame playing the role. In the X-men film the Avengers can't be referenced and the Fact Magneto is their father can't be referenced in Avengers nor can the word mutant, so genetic freak is o.k? I'm sure Joss can work around it if it's justa matter of verbiage and hopefully this will mean skipping over origins all together.  Scarlet Witch runs neck and neck with Tigra  for being may favorite female Marvel character, I like Wasp, Carol Danvers and She-Hulk as well but I know at least Jennifer Walters will never see the light of an Avengers Movie.

Other news to be raising their prices over the years Dragon-con is certainly lacking any interesting guests so far the only ones I give a shit about are

James Marsters

Traci Lords

 Doug Jones

Laurell K Hamilton

Jim Butcher

Richard Lee Byers

 and then geeks in general might care about but I don't really give a shit about
 

Billy Dee Williams

George Takei

William Shatner