More on 'M.O.D.O.C.' - May 26

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us get back talking about M.O.D.O.C. No, not the titular character, but rather the actual show, (though about the titular character too – sort of). As I was going over the characters’ trivia, I realized that yes, the character of ‘Angar’ appeared in one episode of AoS, and that the character of ‘Tenpins’ appeared – sort of – in one episode of Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’, but more importantly was that Patton Oswald, the man behind the M.O.D.O.C., (sorry), was also the man behind the various Koenigs that’d appeared in AoS over the years. Pause.

This got me thinking; I looked over the entire Marvel ‘Robot Chicken’ take, and realized that M.O.D.O.C. really was more than just Marvel’s take on ‘Robot Chicken’.

First, it is Disney/MCU’s challenge to Sony, whose ‘Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse’ introduced the concept of the multiverse in the Marvel-based movies and co. Yes, the upcoming ‘No Way Home’ and ‘Multiverse of Madness’ films, starring MCU’s Spiderman and Dr. Strange are also intent on dealing with the multiverse theory, (and then there’s mini-series of Loki’s adventures, aye?), but the ‘Robot Chicken’… I mean M.O.D.O.C., came first, testing the waters to see as to how Marvel’s fans will respond to the multiverse/alternate timelines theory. Given that M.OD.O.C.’s reviews are mainly positive, this looks like a win for Disney & Marvel. Good for them!

Secondly, it is Disney/MCU’s way of testing the waters regarding mutants and co.; Mr. Sinister of the X-Men franchise briefly appeared in one of M.O.D.O.C.’s episodes, and there were other X-Men references in the series’ episodes too. Basically, Disney & Marvel are not putting the X-Men and the other mutants away now that they bought FOX out in real life, but they are doing it slowly; Ralph from ‘WandaVision’ was especially a disappointment given that he had turned out to be literal dick joke instead.

Finally, M.O.D.O.C. tried to address some of the themes that were supposed to be discussed in AoS, (yes, we are going there again) – in particular the matter of family. In AoS, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were supposed to be more than just coworkers – they were supposed to be a family, as opposed to Hydra and its’ agents, that were anything but. Sadly, because AoS just couldn’t handle real life issues period, this approach went nowhere, or at least it was notably diminished; and as for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s victory over Hydra? It did happen, sort of, but in a very messy way, so by now MCU isn’t talking about either Hydra or S.H.I.E.L.D.; instead, we got S.W.O.R.D., (in ‘WandaVision’), and this is it. Huzzah!

Back to M.O.D.O.C.? This show’s titular character also had issues with family – as he had figured out, they were slowing him down from achieving his dream of a global utopia, (or something along those lines), because they were bringing out the best in him, and since we’re talking supervillain material here…yeah, that’s bad news. Therefore, by the S1 end, M.O.D.O.C. seems to have gotten rid of his wife and children and achieved his dream instead. Since this is only the first season of the show out of several, (one hopes), odds of him regretting his choice and turning it all around, (this show featured plenty of time travel already, you know), and even finding some sort of redemption in the future, are still fairly good. Where does it leave us?

…At M.O.D.O.C. son’s, (aka Lou) bar mitzvah, maybe? Now there was a piece of tone deafness. First, the mother of the family – Jodi – does not really look Jewish, and that is important, because in Jewish religion, if the mother is not Jewish, then neither is the child, not for all of the official priests and rabbis. This attitude has caused the Jews plenty of trouble, which brings us to the other point - HAMAS. Them fighting the Israelis again, for the first time in a while, marked the May of 2021 and while the Israelis claim that they won, officially it is more of a tie instead. So what?

You mean aside from the fact that M.O.D.O.C. has apparently given the global community the first Jewish super-villain? The latest Israeli-HAMAS fighting only given more kindling to the fire, but fortunately for the Israelis, in the current world order, their fighting with the HAMAS just isn’t that important: the U.S. is busy dealing with both RF and China while trying to win the EU back regardless of the damage that the Donald’s reign wrought over the U.S.-EU relations, and everyone else just doesn’t care. The U.S.S.R. was notably anti-Israel, but the RF doesn’t even pretend to be the U.S.S.R. anymore, so here M.O.D.O.C. got a lucky break, but do we have to associate Judaism with a comic-book super-villain, eh? …Anything else?

Well, there is the new ‘Eternals’ trailer that dropped down on May 25, 2021, but that is another story, so for now, this is it. See you all soon!

Venom II trailer - May 10

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then the trailer for the ‘Venom II: Let there be Carnage’ movie came out, so let us talk about it and the initial movie ‘Venom’ as well.

Where to begin? The initial ‘Venom’ movie, released back in 2018, was flawed. It had problems, and while I have enjoyed it, this enjoyment didn’t conceal the facts that ‘Venom-2018’ had been rewritten and remade a couple of times; it was more compact than the final 2 episodes of WV were, for comparison, but regardless, it lost characters at about ‘Riverdale’-level bad.

…Yes, I know that ‘Riverdale’ is not a part of the Marvel™ franchise, but it was still a good TV show premise that went bad in a hurry; by the S3 finale, I simply could not watch it, but we are talking about ‘Venom-2018’ here instead.

‘Venom-2018’ suffered from unnecessary character killage, from the fact that SUMC’s take on Ann Weying was to focus on Michelle Williams’ arse and legs; they are wonderful, of course, but somehow Ms. Weying comes across as having less personality than Dr. Skirth was, and the latter died in the movie, so that’s saying something. Yes, Ms. Weying was the She-Venom for one brief moment in the movie, but then she went back to normal… but now that ‘Venom II: Carnage’ is coming out later this year, (in theaters only, so says Sony), maybe she’ll get to reprise this role somehow? Pause.

Let’s be clear – yes, that is speculation: so far the trailer only showed us Eddie trying to live his life with Venom in it, (and that’s not easy), Cletus Kassidy getting obsessed with Eddie somehow (and who knows for what reason, because he’s crazy), Shriek (a villain and an ally of Carnage in the Marvel™ comics, cough), having a cameo in the trailer, there’re a bunch of other cameos in the trailer, including Mrs. Chen, who was kind of important in the original trailer, and this is it. We get the general feel of the upcoming movie; it will be all about Venom vs. Carnage, but nothing else. The showrunners have done their job well. What is next?

Hard to say. The trailer is exciting and it will be fun to watch the actual movie, but it looks as if Spider-Man himself will not be in it, or in SUMC, period. IGN, who is willing and able to work as a mouthpiece for various companies for money, has talked for about 4 minutes about how Venom has de-facto parted ways from the old Web-Head in the comics for a while now, so there is no reason as to why this cannot happen on the big screen either. Fair enough, and again, we need to get through Marvel’s M.O.D.O.C. the TV series first.

Yes, it has been confirmed that this series takes place on a ‘separate Earth’ yet again – Earth-1226, if my info is correct, so it is not a part of MCU. This means that whatever happens there, whoever gets depicted in it, (and we know from the trailer that it includes S.H.I.E.L.D. the organization and Tony Stark the Iron Man at least), it isn’t MCU canon, though it is some sort of canon all the same.

…Pause. Here I feel like bringing out that MCU canon is a tricky thing on its’ own – ‘Helstrom’, the previous Marvel series that were made by Hulu, just as ‘M.O.D.O.C.’ is, was supposedly a part of MCU, until it isn’t, and instead became its’ own separate universe, ‘Earth-TRN836’, so there’s that. You never know what and when everything will turn out in the world of Marvel™ & MCU. The Disney/SW merger is much more predictable; the second episode of ‘The Bad Batch’ has already featured a mixed-race family – so woke! All that is missing is an actual human/Twi’lek baby, and we will be all set! …In reality, interracial children are an even more complex issue than interracial couples are, especially by the standards of the American elite, so here Disney/SW is messing around with topics that is has no ideas about – again. At least now, they are avoiding everything that came during the SW Sequel Trilogy, and instead focusing on the space between SW movies 3 & 4 instead. Fair enough, and is there anything else left?

No, not this time, sadly. See you all soon instead!

Peloton and Co. - May 7

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just ask the Peloton™ team: they have only just recovered from their previous ad snafu, one that smelled of either sexism or of the Dark Mirror™ TV series, and now they got another scandal: apparently, children are getting into accidents over their treadmill equipment, and are getting hurt, maybe even seriously.

Listen, I don’t like Peloton™ as much as the next lazy guy, but even I have to admit that an indoor gym equipment isn’t necessarily child friendly, and as such, children – especially young ones – should be kept away from it, or at least – kept under supervision. This time, Peloton™ isn’t exactly at fault here, you know?

…On the other hand, we live in a world where endangered condors are trashing people’s homes, so all bets are off, actually. Let us try to talk about a less bizarre topic, i.e. the bad batch, the titular characters.

…No, I have no intention to talk about the series’ premiere in detail, let us just point out that the group’s villain, Crosshairs is…

No, let us try again. The Bad Batch themselves are a variant clone of the AoS’ team Bus from the get-go, just as the core characters of the ‘Blindspot’ TV series had been. Omega, of course, is the new Skye, while Crosshairs is Grant Ward, save that he is actually mind-controlled by some chip here, and thus has an out, (sort of): he was really made to do it and his mind isn’t entirely his own. It’s a thin excuse, but Ward didn’t have even this; actually, he never had anything, he hadn’t been fully damned nor fully redeemed, but we’re not talking about him; we’re talking about Crosshairs, who is also modelled after a Marvel comics’ character, a minor villain named William Cross, who is a master sniper and planner, who has slightly cybernetic modifications, but who wasn’t in S.H.I.E.L.D., but rather in CIA, before he went bad. He is also bad at hand-to-hand combat, and everything, (except for S.H.I.E.L.D. and CIA, primarily), applies to Crosshairs: the clone might be a Grant Ward variant mentally, but physically, he is more of a variant William Cross instead. The cross-pollination between Disney’s various franchises is proceeding apiece quite nicely.

This brings us to DC, and its’ ‘Justice Society: WWII’ film. Listen. The DC franchise is in the middle of a latest reboot, which began with the ‘Superman: Man of Tomorrow’ animated movie. This specific person plays an important role in this film too, even though in the promo videos it was more about the Flash and Wonder Woman instead, but so what? DC is trying to reinvent itself…cosmetically, while remaining same old same old on the inside: JS: WWII is a variant of the first Gal Gadot Wonder Woman movie, though there’s a nice homage to ‘Flash’ the 2014-onwards TV series too. You are free to watch it, but it is forgettable. Anything else?

Ah yes, the first season of ‘Jupiter’s Legacy’ is available to watch now. I have tried to follow the original comic series, and found them to be confused – just what exactly did they want to be? They tried to be original, but they did no better than Hasbro’s ‘G.I. Joe’ franchise, which struggles to be something more than another S.H.I.E.L.D. vs Hydra variant in an increasingly Marvel vs. DC comic world, and in this world, Marvel is increasingly driven and motivated by Disney, (cough), while DC is trying to figure out what it wants other than bigger sales of its’ own merchandise. Nice.

…Into this fray entered the ‘Jupiter’ comics, which tried to leave a mark, tried to be original, but somehow have largely vanished without a trace, until now, when they’ve resurfaced with a complete reboot from the original plotline, and-?

And nothing. Not unlike the abovementioned DC film, people will either enjoy the ‘Jupiter’ series, or not. There is nothing memorable or outstanding that gives them an advantage over the rest of their respective crowds, and so it is time to move on and to talk about something else.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!