S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Inescapable' - June 21

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I try to catch a garter snake in our local park – it gets away, I try to catch an American toad – same story, and the leopard frogs in the park’s swamps are mocking me, I say! So I turn to the world of fiction, and what do I get? ‘Men In Black: International’, where Thor and Valkyrie – I mean, Henry ‘H’ and Molly ‘M’ get to save planet Earth from Hive. The fuck?!

No, this is exactly what is going on: Hive in MIB4 (let us call this move that here) may be depicted differently from how it did on MCU’s AoS, but its’ M.O. is the same, its respective roles on AoS and MIB4 are practically the same, and this incarnation of MIB (the titular organization, not the movie), is essentially the good old S.H.I.E.L.D. of MCU, just, again, depicted somewhat differently – just enough to avoid copyright infringement issues.

Now, let us be completely honest – on one hand, MIB4 did have some references to Marvel™, especially Henry-H’s connection to Marvel’s™ Thor, and on the other, MCU itself is known by now to remake the comic characters, but, uh, the MIB franchise isn’t part of Disney/MCU, not now, so their appropriation of AoS isn’t kosher, I bet. So far, I have not heard anyone calling the MIB team on this, but judging by how the – commotion regarding MIB4 is dying down, (unlike the ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ film, which has its’ own share of problems, but regardless), I am guessing that someone did. Someone was not happy, and called the people in the MIB franchise out, and now the odds of the MIB franchise returning anytime soon are not very good – a long-term long show is better.

As for the MIB4 movie itself…listen. The first movie was especially a cop-buddy film, not unlike another movie series starring Will Smith, ‘Bad Boys’. It worked, mostly because Will and Ian had amazing chemistry together, as odd as that was. So, a second movie – a reboot of the first one – was made, and then a third, which was more of the same, with time travel and further elaboration of the J & K’s relationship, and then it took a rest. Now, along comes MIB4, which is not really a space cop movie, unlike the first three films, but more of a spy thriller, though less ‘James Bond’, and more ‘Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ and ‘Get Smart’. Both were TV series about spies belonging in paramilitary organizations fighting other, more evil organizations, cough – yeah, one can see how AoS could get unintentionally conflated into the mix…but that epiphany doesn’t make anything better.

…On a different note, both ‘Get Smart’ and ‘Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ got to be rebooted and rebranded from TV series into movies, but unlike, say, ‘Godzilla 1998’ or even ‘MIB’ in question – in case of ‘Godzilla’, the animated TV series (lasting for at least 2 series) were much more popular than the movie was, while in case of ‘MIB’, set after the initial film…and one of their episodes had almost the same plot as MIB3 movie did, so there’s that.

Back to MIB4 film proper? As flawed as it was, but between it and the last season of Netflix’s JJ show, I did skip last week’s AoS episode, and as for this week’s episode – ‘Inescapable’ – it was meh. It was focused on the FitzSimmons on one hand, and introduced plenty of exposition regarding the FitzSimmons pre-show history, (in a manner of speaking), and also the audience got to fill-in the gaps between S5 and 6. It was a well-balanced episode – it had drama, action, horror, romance and humor equally balanced – but is it enough? Judging by the numbers of the previous S6 episodes – not so much. AoS has become established well-enough among its’ fan base that the latter don’t need it anymore – they can ‘play’ with its’ characters to their hearts’ desires without being concerned about canon anymore. It’s harsh and unfair, but that’s real life for you, sometimes it’s just unfair and there isn’t anything you can do, other than to try again to catch that mocking leopard frog!..

Ahem. This is it for now. See you all soon!

Dark Phoenix proper - June 8

Obligatory disclaimer of this blog: real life sucks. As for the ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ movie proper… it works. That is all there is to it.

Here is the fact – the previous ‘Phoenix’ movie version worked too, and I actually liked it better than this one. People are already talking about how even CGI of the 2019 movie was lackluster, and I have to agree – the previous version, where Magneto even took a certain bridge flying through the air, was better, especially given how CGI had improved from then till now. By modern standards, especially after ‘Infinity War’, and ‘Endgame’, and even ‘King of Monsters’, (which is a monster movie, and not a Marvel-related one, but we are talking about CGI here in general), ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ is an underdog, in a bad way.

…Yes, if we are talking about Marvel, people are already pointing out how the CM movie has undercut ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ in a bad way – again. As the previous X-Men movie – ‘Apocalypse’ – showed, Jean Grey was already the Phoenix, so what was with that space cloud shite? ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ had been reworked from the very beginning, but it was better in the first act, so the reworks were not so glaring.

Then again, we have the D’bari – the aliens of this movie. In the Marvel comics, they were, well, alien plant people that hated humanity after the Phoenix destroyed the sun to fuel her powers. They didn’t have any shapeshifting powers, and though one of them – Vuk, who was a female in this 2019 movie and played by Jessica Chastain – became something of a villain known as the Starhammer – they never became shapeshifters, ever. That was more of a Skrull thing, I bet.

…Of course, movies have remade and restructured comic elements, Marvel more so than DC, but on that note, unlike those movies, the X-Men films were de-facto set in ‘our’ world, with just mutants added for extra flavor – nothing more was necessary. Yes, the ‘Logan’ (Old Man Logan) film also had cyborgs…but, apparently, it was set in a world apart from the other X-Men movies – Earth 17315, while the rest of the films took place either on Earth-10005, or on Earth-TRN414. Seriously, FOX’s take on the mutant world was a mess, and that is before you factor in ‘the Gifted’, and ‘Legion’, and anything else that FOX threw forth mutant-related. However – and that is the point – it always was an ‘ordinary’ world, just with mutants in it. No aliens or extradimensional elementals or what else have you required. Yes, ‘the Gifted’ ended with the show’s heroes following Blink somewhere, even though she was dressed as some sort of an alien space princess – but ‘the Gifted’ got cancelled before we could learn as to what was up with that, so that state of affairs is nullified.

And now we have ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ that has outright aliens in it and their alien-ness did not do anything to further the film. In the trailers and clips, Jessica Chastain’s character looked more like a subdued version of Emma Frost/the White Queen than an alien and she acted similar to Emma Frost in the comics, too.

…It should be noted that there was already an Emma Frost in the X-Men movies, but we are talking about the old Earth-10005 world, not this TRN414 one, so there was no reason as to why her character could not have gotten a reboot. In addition, this version of the White Queen was not really a telepath – she could turn into living diamond, (something that the main basic White Queen versions also can), but she never had any mental powers. There was also an Emma in the ‘Wolverine Origins’ film, but it was a different Emma, a Silverfox rather than Frost, sister to the movie version of the Silver Fox character… Where were we? Oh yes, that Emma has also died in that movie, so Earth-TRN414 was still decisively Emma Frost-free, so why not have her and the rest of the Hellfire Club instead of aliens in ‘Dark Phoenix’? (As they were in the comics and in the 1990s X-Men cartoon series)?

Well yes, the Hellfire Club seems to have some problems of its own – mainly an identity crisis. These days, especially on TV, (whether real life action series as ‘the Gifted’ or various cartoons), it is referred as the Inner Circle club or something similar instead. That isn’t the problem, the problem on ‘the Gifted’ was that the show was kind of understaffed, but they still managed the best they could, and it was proportionally just as good a TV series as ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was a movie, so there!..

This, I suppose, brings, us to Mystique. No, it is not regarding her comment about the X-Men being the ‘-Women’ instead, that just was something of a SJW-fail in my opinion. The thing is that Mystique has never really been an X-Man, and while sometimes she was a frenemy of theirs, as Magneto was, other times she was an outright enemy, as when she worked for Apocalypse, (as she did in the 1990s cartoon). When she became an X-Man in the ‘First Class’ movie…it kind of left me rubbing my hand and wondering – ‘now why would they do that’? If they needed a mutant shapeshifter, why not bring Morph – but we digress.

The problem with ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was that it was re-written, that that re-write clearly was clumsily done, and that there were strong traces of Disney/Marvel behind this re-write. (Something similar went down with ‘the Gifted’ in S2 also, but since the show is cancelled, it does not matter anymore). The Earth-10005 movies were always very different from the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, with a darker, less colorful, more Gothic feel to them. The Earth-TRN414 films too were different, with various historical ‘flavorings’ to them, from the Caribbean Crisis onwards. The ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ film lacks that element, especially in the second half of it. FOX wanted to make ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ different from the CM film? Then it certainly took a wrong strategy, or went in the wrong direction, to do so!

What else to say? Real life sucks, as it was said in the disclaimer. The ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ film is slightly better than that, but only slightly. The fact that it comes on the coattails of the latest Avengers films does not help, but most of its problems are its’ own design, and sadly, it will likely to be remembered as CM’s poorer cousin, unlike the previous Phoenix film, which, at least, was its own movie. (Let us not even get started on the agelessness of the characters – let us just assume that mutants do not age as regular people do, and leave it at that).

…This is it for now, see you all soon!

'Dark Phoenix', C&D, and etc - June 6

…Let us not talk about the ‘Dark Phoenix’ movie for now. The original ‘X-Men: Last Stand’ film was decent enough, but plenty of people have hated it all the same. There is no reason as to why ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ should be any different, but I here want to talk about something else – namely, C&D. Just as the actors from AoS had appeared at the premiere of CM the movie, so has Emma Lahana, from C&D, appeared at the premiere of ‘Dark Phoenix’; and-?

Firstly, it makes the contrast between ‘Dark Phoenix’ and CM look even more in CM’s favor. Ms. Lahana gushed enthusiastically about ‘being a part of the Marvel family’, or ‘the MCU family’, or whatever, but keep in mind that Ms. Lahana is a very talented actress, as she has shown in C&D S2: although they looked, well, identical, both Brigid and Mayhem have come across as two very different people – without the use of CGI, or any special effects, or whatever. Just different clothing…and a lot of acting skill. Ergo, how could you tell that Ms. Lahana wasn’t acting here, acting all happy and etc. about ‘being a part of the Marvel family’? When you got talent, you got talent, and when it is a great acting talent, then you are a great actor, well – actress, but in real life trusting you can be kind of tricky, I reckon.

That said, Ms. Lahana was apparently the only ‘outsider’, MCU or otherwise, who had appeared at the ‘Dark Phoenix’ premiere – and CM has Simmons (Mack) and NCB (Yo-Yo), Ward (Deke) and Wen (Melinda). That is 4 people from AoS as opposed to C&D’s only one, though that’s a great one, no doubt about it. However, many people are already pointing out that the ‘Dark Phoenix’ clearly had some issues regarding MCU on one hand, and that it had to reshoot its’ second half to make itself different from CM, which brings us back to MCU. Whatever is going, or was going, or will be going behind the scenes between Disney and FOX merger, it clearly was not as clear-cut as Disney, FOX, and mass media, want you to believe, but that is real life for you.

On the other hand, there is Netflix. No, not because the second season of C&D made a direct reference to Luke Cage the Marvel character – it was in the penultimate episode of S2 or the one before that – it lasted for about a minute and was kind of blurry; blink and you miss it – but rather about the upcoming final season of JJ that is coming to Netflix, as a part of an original series. In this season, the titular heroine is coming against a man named Gregory Salinger. In the comics, he’s a Deadpool-related villain, (yes, that Deadpool), but clearly in MCU, which is an entirely different Marvel ‘Earth’, he’s going to be a completely different character from what he is in the comics – and Disney cannot really do anything about it or the entire JJ S3. Go Netflix, stick it to the man!

…As for the ‘Dark Phoenix’ movie in general? We will talk about that at another time, preferably after it becomes available to a wider slice of populace than just the movie critics. Until then – see you soon!