WandaVision 'Fourth Wall' - Feb 22

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us go to the adventures of the Great Wandini and her husband! Pause.

First, my apologies for the rant in my previous/last blog entry - it was completely redundant and unnecessary; already, Gina Carano has teamed up with Benjamin Shapiro to continue to battle Disney, cough. She has landed on her feet, so don’t despair – she will continue to yap historical idiocies for many years to come – but none of them were justification enough to have her fired from the Disney/SW franchise – but we digress.

Back over at the Disney/MCU franchise, last week’s episode of WV, ‘the fourth wall’, revealed that it was Agatha all along, and the entire fan network was abuzz over the last 3 days about this epiphany.

Yes, people were entertaining the possibility of Agnes being Agatha Harkness – well, MCU’s version of the witch – since the show is beginning, (and even before), but the confirmation was still very impressive and nicely executed… so what?

Well, here is the thing – there is no problem with Agatha being WV’s main villain, especially since the director Tyler Hayward does not appear to be going anywhere, especially into the Hex. He plans to nuke it, but the WV ep 1x08 promo mentioned that someone named Richards is involved, and that could mean that we might be getting the Fantastic Four started in the MCU…or that we’ll be meeting Nathaniel Richards, who is an MCU villain, known as Kang the Conqueror and Lord Immortus among other monikers. In the last incarnation, he tangled with Wanda and Vision in the comics, and it is know that Kang will be appearing in the upcoming ‘Ant-Man’ film, (however slow it will get there), so why not have him here in WV?..

Back to Agatha, it is a strong possibility that she is the main villain here – she has claimed to kill Sparky the dog, among other things. That is quite important, as in MCU’s AoS, killing dogs was an important part of being Hydra, and who’s to say that this Agatha isn’t a part of Hydra…or a part of a Hydra’s experiment? Her powers, the coloration aside, manifest in a similar manner to Wanda’s… and the issue of colors is kind of important in WV; here, though, I want to point out that Agatha’s colors aren’t black, but purple, and purple just isn’t quite the similarly evil color as black is, so who knows? Agatha is a trickster, who works best behind the scenes, as opposed to direct confrontations, but then again, so does Loki, so yes, Agatha may be Loki to Wanda’s Thor; will she die, as Loki did in the ‘Infinity War’ movie remains to be seemed, and is she evil or merely bad? The jury is still out on this one.

Elsewhere… Wanda seems to be suffering from some version of a hangover, as things begin to fall apart within her pocket world. Actually, her pocket world is beginning to fall apart, and it is a strong fan theory that Wanda here is something of a puppet herself, manipulated by Agatha, (as the latter claims, but Agatha herself seems to be more mischievous than evil here), or by Mephisto, or by Nightmare, or by Richards – the possibilities are numerous. …Director Hayward, however, is far down to the end of the line – he seems to be more interested in Vision, (cough, the mysterious project Cataract), and he probably is some sort of a mini-bad in this series, but this is where Monica comes in, or will come in.

More precisely, we are getting back to the colors. Wanda’s powers are scarlet, Agatha’s are purple, and Monica’s – Lt. Trouble’s – are blue. Well, white and blue, (as they had been back in the ep 1x03), but my point stands – Monica, Wanda and Agatha are forming a trinity of some sort.

Let me elaborate. Does anyone remember the “Wizard of Oz’ movie? No, not the original movie about Dorothy Gale and her adventures in the Land of Oz, but a much more modern ‘prequel’, which depicts the adventures of the titular ‘wizard’, and his encounters and relationship with the three witches of Oz, who were the good witch, (white color theme), the wicked witch of the East, (black color theme), and the wicked witch of the West, (red color theme turned green from envy and evil). Pause.

No, I do not know if the scriptwriters for MCU’s WV have looked at the ‘Wizard of Oz’ movie for inspiration, but there are some feels from the Oz franchise in this streaming series, not to mention that the witches’ covens are often depicted having three members in fiction, (such as the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ series), and it can also be noted that Agatha – for her own selfish reasons, no doubt – did prevent Wanda and Monica from coming to blows at the episode’s end. Yes, undoubtedly, Wanda will not be grateful for this now that she knows that it has been Agatha all along, but if she and Monica did begin to duke it out in the streets, Wanda’s fall from grace would have been much faster and evident than it will be. Agatha just does not want to be a full villain, it seems, no matter what. Anything else?

Well, director Hayward’s values are actually zeitgeist: ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ show was supposed to be aired before WV, laying the groundwork of a different MCU, one where superheroes, (such as the Avengers, cough, the CA: CW movie), are on the cusp of being outlawed; director Hayward is just trying to get on with that program, when Wanda crushed his base, and took-off with Vision to Westview…and we’re missing something crucial here, and it would be nice if the next two episodes of WV filled-in the gap, maybe Agatha can help? Darcy already did her part with Vision…

…Yes, this exposition dump of Darcy and Vision was not too fun to follow – and even Vision agreed, as he took off, leaving Darcy behind in their burrowed van. Poor Darcy! Also, her journey into the Hex kind of conflicts with Monica’s – if Monica’s DNA changed so much through her journeys through the Hex-walls, then what about Darcy? Yes, this Disney/MCU playing fast and loose with its’ own politics, but it feels as if Darcy is getting the short end of the stick here... or are we talking about post-AoS Gifted here? It would be good to know!

However, Pietro – speaking of knowledge – probably will not be a key to the multiverse here. Remember, MCU-wise, WV is taking place at the same time as the ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ movie does. In that film, if anyone forgot, Mysterio tried to set-up the concept of the multiverse as a red herring, and failed in the end. Here, I think, will be something similar; why?

Because Sony had utilized the multiverse concept with their ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse’ movie first, and it did so quite successfully! Disney/MCU conflicted with Sony after the ‘Far From Home’ proved to be very successful, and lost. Since then, I believe, they have been trying to starve Sony into submission by trying to turn Sony’s Spider-verse into something more or less second-rate, (as the Spider-Man movies had been pre the CA: CW film), while avoiding any direct confrontations over copyrights, which may include the concept of a multiverse. Disney doesn’t care for controversies anymore, especially in real life, (cough, Gina Carano, cough), so they’ll probably fiddle with the concept of the multiverse, (among other things), for as long as they can, until they win, (in which case they’ll embrace it), or they lose, (which might happen – but then they’ll drop the concept of the multiverse as if it was a hot potato, period). They will try to swing their viewers/fans for as much cash as they can during the process, of course – but that is another story.

In addition, what about the upcoming Doctor Strange film, the ‘Multiverse of Madness’? Between the Sony conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney/MCU had plenty of both time and motivation to rethink their strategy, especially about their phase 4, as we can see now – WV was supposed to air after ‘The Winter Soldier and the Falcon’, and now it is being aired before, so who knows what the future will bring?..

For now, though, this is it. Wanda and Vision seem to be on the cusp of something serious, Monica is about to get her superhero stripes, Agatha is about to launch her masterplan, (presumably), and poor Jimmy and Darcy are about to get the short end of the stick. It is a mixed bag, put otherwise, and it is very fun to watch.

See you all soon! 

WandaVision: Program - Feb 1

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Well, it works, but it also sucks. Hooray for WandaVision, then? Kind of sort of, so let us talk about it.

Firstly, I must admit, for me the WV show was spoiled a bit beforehand…by ‘Bliss’. In this instance, ‘Bliss’ is an upcoming 2021 film about a man, (played by Owen Wilson), whose life is in a disarray, until he meets a beautiful woman, (played by Salma Hayek), who tries to convince him that he lives in artificial simulation. Cough. Bliss is released on Feb 5, 2021, and already some similarities to WV are obvious, even though info about it, (it is being released by Amazon studios), is scarce. Even though, judging by the trailer, it is evident that Salma’s character – Isabel – is morally ambiguous, (though neither outright good nor evil at this point), and that Owen’s character – Greg – will have to make a choice, a life with Isabel or a life with his daughter. Pause.

Yeah, at this point WV and ‘Bliss’ appear to be diverging – yes, Wanda is wearing pants in this relationship, (remember the episode 1x02?), just as Isabel seems to be the woman in charge in ‘Bliss’, but so far there’s no evidence of Vision having to make a choice just as Greg is going to do in ‘Bliss’, but on the other hand, as we have seen in the episode 1x04 Vision might be dead.

…Ok, Vision is a synthezoid, so I am not quite certain that the terms ‘alive’ and ‘dead’ may be properly applicable to him, but Disney & MCU make the rules, and when we last saw him Vision appeared to be technically dead, or offline, rather than alive and/or online instead. Where does this leave us?

Well, within MCU – roughly in the same time period that went down during the second Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, aka ‘Far From Home’. Apparently, while everyone’s neighbourhood’s friendliest manly-bug fought abroad in Europe, back in the good old U.S. of A. the brave men and women of S.W.O.R.D. are dealing with Wanda & Vision…pause again.

Here I am calling out that while in the Marvel comics S.W.O.R.D. is essentially S.H.I.E.L.D. in space, (slash space CIA, if you care), in MCU S.W.O.R.D. appears to be S.H.I.E.L.D., period, regardless of whatever it is that Nick Fury is doing in space, (as shown in the abovementioned ‘Far From Home’ film, remember?). Since the AoS finale showed S.H.I.E.L.D. getting back on its’ feet, why the reinvented S.W.O.R.D.? Sigh…

My take is that after its’ extended 7-season run, AoS had overstayed its’ finale; I’m betting that it was supposed to be no more than 3 seasons long, (as Disney shows tends to be), and by ‘more than’ doubling its’ length, AoS got stretched too thin; the finale, with everyone, (even Deke Shaw?) getting their piece of happy ending, was taken from the initial 3-season plan and it didn’t really mesh with the actual show; plus, as we have talked before, the cast, (and the crew?) of AoS might’ve overstayed their welcome and had had their fill of AoS, of MCU, of each other, and so on, so now S.H.I.E.L.D. just ain’t coming back, even though right now, with WV, the situation is perfect for its’ return. Instead, we got a not-quite-necessary S.H.I.E.L.D. clone…and a full roster of AoS – and Marvel - characters that are not coming back, most likely, no matter how many accolades were sung about Chloe Bennett’s Daisy/Quake, for example, and her relationship with Daniel Sousa. Back to WV?

Well, as we know, ‘Program’ wasn’t really about the titular characters at all; rather, we got reintroduced to such old MCU characters as Darcy Lewis – now a doctor of science, agent Jimmy Woo of FBI, and Monica Rambeau, formerly Lieutenant Trouble, and now all grown up. The WV episode 1x03 showed us the latter confronting Wanda ‘The Scarlet Witch’ Maximoff and being kicked out of Westview; the episode 1x04 showed us the same event – and several others – from the outsider’s P.O.V., which is very different…from what we have seen in WV so far. Otherwise, MCU’s S.W.O.R.D. is both a clone of the old MCU’s S.H.I.E.L.D., and WV itself is turning from stranger waters to the ones that are more familiar.

To elaborate, ever since MCU’s ‘Spider-Man 2: Far From Home’, people commented that MCU tended to become familiar, and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man’s story was very similar to Tony Stark’s – it’s ‘a Hero’s Journey’ cliché, nothing more, nothing less. Yes, clichés work for a reason, (and they become clichés for a reason), but… Here, in WV, we got titular characters being an unfamiliar setting – a sitcom comedy – doing atypical characters – comedy characters – but slowly they’re beginning to move into something that is much more familiar by Marvel’s standards in this case – there’s some sort of a phantom menace – maybe Hydra, maybe Mephisto or one of his minions, maybe some leftover from Thanos or Ultron or whatever – that is harassing civilians, and the brave people of S.H.I.E.L.D. – er, S.W.O.R.D. – rise to meet the challenge. Wanda’s conflict with Monica is not too different from the conflict Steve developed with Tony…eventually…with the main deviation being…not the gender issue, but the fact that Wanda has the actual chops to become a proper villain instead.

No, seriously, think about it: when Wanda was introduced in MCU, she worked for Ultron, who was a proper villain. It was Pietro who had his big redemption/self-sacrifice moment in A: AoU, and not Wanda. Instead, it were Wanda’s actions in the CA: CW film that instigated the movie’s titular civil war, and I believe that it was Wanda who sent the first blow in that film’s big fight in the German airport. Even in the A: E film Wanda was shown in a rather dark light, a fight with Thanos or not, so there is no reason as to why Wanda’s cannot do a proper Anakin Skywalker and go full Darth Vader in WV. How will Vision handle this, and is it really Vision with Wanda in Westview at all, has to be revealed yet.

As for the new twins – Billy and Tommy – we have talked about them when we discussed the episode 1x03, and so far, there is no new information about them either. So far, they are just lying there in their cribs…and if anything happens to them, Wanda will go full house of M…only she supposedly already did some time between ‘Endgame’ and the events in WV, so again, more details are needed before we make any more conclusions about as to what is going on in WV, (aside from the obvious).

Therefore, for now, this is it. See you all soon!

WandaVision: Color - Jan 25

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Therefore, let us try to talk about WV the TV series instead.

First, yes, a big shout-out to the upcoming ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ movie trailer. After months, if not years of waiting, it was worth the wait, showing the titular titans duking it out across the world, with Godzilla getting the worst of it… in the trailer. How will the movie play out is another issue, but the trailer was certainly very enjoyable. Now onto WV?

Here is the thing. Already ‘Now in Color’ was examined under the metaphorical microscope and examined tightly. The most important topics of ‘Color’ were Wanda’s pregnancy and birth, and the official confirmation that ‘Geraldine’ is Monica Rambeau, aka Photon, so let us start with them.

…The pregnancy and birth themselves were done in a rather light-hearted, airy style – i.e., unlike the first two episodes, ‘Color’ was not just colorful, but pointedly sunny, light-colored, (pardon the tautology), and light-hearted, whereas the first two episodes were, obviously, black and white, (aside from the occasional splash of red, cough), aka chiaroscuro, creating a rather stolid, if not a downright static, atmosphere within the series. Now, with ‘Color’ we got color, and right now, it is of a pale and/or bright variety… as opposed to, for example, the birth of Hope on X: WP back in the 90s.

Not unlike ‘Kong vs. Godzilla’, X: WP deserves a more expanded mention if only because Xena/Lucy Lawless briefly appeared on MCU’s AoS in S2. Despite her name, Hope was Gabrielle’s daughter from a demon-god Dahak, (in RL, the name belongs to an apocalyptic dragon from the Zoroastrian religion), who was one of the main villains on the show (and also on H: TLJ) for a while, before Hercules killed him, (if I remember correctly), while Xena and Gabrielle were able to eventually slay both Hope and Hope’s son, the first of the supposed Seven Destroyers, a chupacabra-like monster… The point here is that Gabrielle’s pregnancy and Hope’s birth were shown in a pointedly ominous style, complete with a placid-looking goat, which is an indirect reference to the ‘Great Adversary’, cough – and nothing like this was shown on WV; instead, we got butterflies and a stork coming to life.

…Whether or not the butterflies are a reference to a Marvel’s character I have no idea: the name slash moniker ‘Butterfly’ belongs to about 10 of them, and I do not know enough Marvel to decide as to which one. What I want to point out here is the stork – we have talked about storks in the past, about completely non-Marvel-related topics, (remember?), and one of the stork-related themes was, and is, its’ association with bringing children, and how it – we’re talking about the ‘common’ white stork, Ciconia ciconia – is a ‘positive’, ‘solar’, ‘life-bringing’ bird, (especially in the European and Russian folklore). Put otherwise, Wanda’s pregnancy and the birth of her twins appears to be a positive event, at least for the MCU. And-?

And I got nothing, actually. Here, the world of MCU is colliding with RL – the Disney/Marvel PR are making WV and its’ events A Big Deal, but in reality? Neither Wiccan nor Speed, (the twins in the series), aren’t that big of a deal in the Marvel comics; Wiccan, at least, appears on a regular basis in them…because he is one of Marvel’s official same-sex characters, which is A Big Deal…just for reasons that we won’t talk about here and now…but Speed? He does not appear in Marvel comics at all lately, (though yes, due to COVID-19, following Marvel comics has become rather tricky for some people; real life sucks, cough). Where were we?

Ah yes, ‘Geraldine’. The 1x03 episode established that she’s an agent of S.W.O.R.D., (probably), and showed her helping Vision and co. with Wanda’s delivery, thus laying the groundwork for a potential friendship, if not comradery, between the two women, (cough, future Avengers, cough). Sadly, given how Wanda ejected ‘Geraldine’ from the pocket universe, the two women have a long way to go just yet, if they’re to succeed in becoming friends, or at least comrades…which is no way certain in MCU, let’s be fair…but there’s something for that, for now.

However, before anything will happen in the future episodes of WV, we must still discuss… no, not ‘Geraldine’s’ ejection into the world out of the pocket universe, and yes, it is a pointedly and a purposefully sharp contrast with the world inside the pocket: it is dark, it is night, and it might be raining; plus, we don’t know anything about Monica’s position and status in S.W.O.R.D.; and then, there’s Hydra…

Now that deserves face slap, and no mistake. Disney & MCU just cannot make-up their mind about this evil organization: it was supposed to be done and gone by the AoS’ S3 finale dash CA: CW movie; Zemo, (who will be coming back as one of the main characters in ‘The Winter Soldier & The Falcon’ series), says that Hydra is done flat out loud.

…And then AoS’ S4 happened and Hydra came back, and the titular characters continued to lock horns with it on a regular basis; it would be nice to assume that they have stopped Hydra for good in their final season, but given how the AoS’ concluding scenes seem to be a remastered version of a very different AoS, anything is possible.

On a more serious note, it seems that Hydra is just too convenient and easy a villain slash organization for Disney/MCU to stop using, as last week’s ‘Hydra Soak’ shows – already there are fan theories that Hydra is behind Wanda’s pocket universe, rather than Mephisto is, for example. If that happens… I got nothing just more proof that not just AoS, but also the rest of MCU keeps on recycling and reviving their own old ideas, rather than bringing in more original ones, from the comics, i.e. the ‘House of M’. …Without mutants being an established presence in MCU, ‘House of M’ does not work anyhow, so I confess that I am observing with some curiosity as to how the events in WV will continue to develop…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Lady & Tramp 2019 - Nov 12

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In the ‘Canadian’ edition, this was demonstrated by Don Cherry, who was fired after he was carried away and said some distinctively politically incorrect & unsanctioned statements on the sports’ channel.

Here are the facts: as far as I can remember, Mr. Cherry was spouting this anti-immigrant bull-crap since the 1990s, and no one did anything about him. That said, under Mr. Trudeau’s leadership, the Canadian government changed its’ views on immigration, especially that of POCs, but there are plenty of Europeans also still coming to Canada, i.e. Ukrainians and the like. As the numbers of ‘new’ immigrants and their immediate descendants continues to grow and to accumulate, Mr. Cherry’s statements grow increasingly politically tone-deaf, and so he was given the old heave-ho, aka the boot. Will he be missed? I have no idea, but aside from his ‘political deafness’ the fact is that a sports’ channel isn’t the most appropriate place to discuss socio-political issues that aren’t related to sports at all, either.

No, seriously, Mr. Cherry did not even try to pretend that his rant is sports-related – he just vented his spleen, his own personal opinion, on his job. Seriously, man – get an online blog and do just that, rather than confuse it with your work. No wonder than he got fired – he is either politically incorrect and unprofessional, or old and marasmatic, (chronologically and biologically speaking). People are trying to pretend that this is an end of an epoch, but in reality, it is anything but – merely an old man, who either took his privilege too far, or who had simply lost ‘it’. Onwards to the TV shows?

…No, let us talk about a Disney+ movie – the 2019 remake of ‘Lady and the Tramp’. Unlike TLK-2019, Disney did not put this remake into theaters, but rather – into its’ own new and personal streaming service, aka Disney+. Yay?

Well, certainly ‘yay’ on a certain level – on some level, L&T-2019 is better than TLK-2019, in no small part because it does use real-life animals, (at least some times), and only adds CGI-facial features to them when it is necessary, rather than uses precise and accurate, (realistically authentic?) CGI models as they did in TLK-2019.

Of course, the difference is understandable: proportionally, domestic dogs, (used in L&T-2019) are much more trainable than the African lions and similar animals are, but regardless, it kind of makes TLK-2019 even more redundant, unnecessary and etc., when compared to L&T-2019 – honestly, what was Disney trying to prove with it? When ‘Dumbo’ was remade, for example, it was really remade – we’re talking about a different movie entirely from the old one, (which was good, because the original ‘Dumbo’ didn’t age well at all – just as Canada’s Don Cherry didn’t), whereas TLK-2019 wasn’t, not really: it was the same movie just with some cosmetic changes.

True, you can say the same thing about L&T-2019 – it is the same movie that was made in the 20^th century, but with some cosmetic changes – i.e., in the original film, it were some live beavers (from a zoo) that freed Lady from her muzzle, whereas in the 2019 version, it is a beaver statue in the park; or in case of the cats, in the original film, they were Siamese, (and also racial stereotypes, let’s be honest), while in 2019 they’re more like hairless Sphinxes, or some similar breed, (still creepy as Hell though), instead. Disney does know political correctness, it seems, but then we come to the human aspect and this is where things took a strange turn, as IGN noted on its’ own review of the movie.

I’m not the biggest fan of IGN these days – it seems to be at least partially paid by various movie companies to review its’ movies and give them ‘the right’ reviews; in a not-too-distant past someone was actually fired from IGN for given a ‘wrong’ review, but here we’re not talking about the ‘quality’ of reviews, but more about their content, what they’re talking about, and in case of the L&T 2019-reboot, it is the fact that Lady’s owners, are an interracial couple. Considering that L&T took place in the first half of the 20^th century or so, when interracial relationships and marriages were illegal in some countries and states, this is simply an anachronism – and also a case of ‘wokeness’ done wrong, not unlike as to how it happened back in ‘Dark Phoenix-2019’, (remember, the Mystique-Xavier interaction scene? Yeesh), only more blatantly so. This is nothing new for Disney, of course – for example, the current ‘Spider-Men’ films try to match up the Anglo-American Spidey with ‘people of color’ – Elizabeth Toomes, (herself a daughter of an Anglo-American father and an Afro-American mother) in ‘Homecoming’, and MJ herself in ‘Far From Home’ – but because these movies are good movies and are set in modern times, rather than in the past, unlike a ‘King Arthur’ or a ‘Robin Hood’ movie, this works.

Again, in real life, there are several aspects to the interracial issue, especially in North America. In Canada, I have seen plenty of interracial couples – on bus stops and in buses, in stores and on streets, and so on – and no one cares. Even Don Cherry seems to have issue not with the interracial aspect of immigration; rather he is rejecting all immigrants outright, by claiming that they are not true Canadians, but are rather taking advantage of them and Canada itself as a whole. This… is clearly the case of the horseradish that is as bitter as the bitter radish is, but while we seem to be splitting hairs between the rotten apples, it seems that Hollywood has gone the other way around, and lumped this current stage of social affairs with the past.

…The current state of casual interracial affairs has taken years, if not decades to develop, and both U.S. and Canada underwent a lot of hard effort to reach it. By comparison, in the time set in L&T, both the original and the remake, this effort – aka the integration – was not even in the works, though it must be acknowledged that it is there, sort of: we’re talking about a relationship between a ‘posh’ Lady and a ‘street-smart’ but ‘poor’ Tramp: a social interaction slash integration… minus the racial angle. In the 2019 remake, Disney tried to take this one-step further, to the modern level, but because the movie is still set in the past, it does not really work. God knows why, the movie is primarily about dogs, rather than people, they could’ve just set it in modern times and then an interracial human couple would’ve seen perfectly natural, but there you are, a genuine social anachronism in a Disney movie, one that not even IGN couldn’t ignore.

This brings us to the upcoming Sam & Bucky ‘Captain America’ Disney+ show, again because of the entire interracial issues in the USA. From what we were told, Sam & Bucky will not have it easy by transitioning to the new Cap – on one hand, MCU’s version of Zemo is coming back, complete with his trademark purple mask now, (but keep in mind, that in MCU he isn’t supposed to be Hydra, unlike in the comics), and on the other, we’re going to get introduced to MCU version of John Walker, the US agent. He is supposed to be one of those Captain America variants done wrong, who is violent and prejudiced and evil and so forth. I remember a comic arc when Cap encountered this sort of a character – it was Nuke. That comic arc was set in the so-called ‘Ultimate Universe’ (Earth-1610 if anyone cares), and so Nuke was Frank Simpson rather than William Simpson… as he is known in MCU. In MCU, Nuke/William Simpson was part of Netflix’s ‘Defenders’, but it does not mean that he could not appear in its’ other parts, (especially since his part in JJ was not that big, actually), but instead we are getting John Walker/US agent in Sam & Bucky. Fun.

…Rounding out the cast is MCU’s version of Sharon Carter, (agent 13), who, for a while, was supposedly a love interest for Steve Rogers, but sometime after the CA: CW film she just vanished from MCU. It will be interesting to see as for how long she will stick around this time. Anything else?

…Well, people are beginning to compare the conclusion of MLP: FIM series to MCU’s AoS, claiming that both shows used plot twists and turns incorrectly, but they are wrong. Rather, MLP: FIM is Hasbro’s answer to HBO’s GoT, as both were great and long-lasting shows that did more poorly in their finales, as both were about gone and done officially and for good, while pissing-off the fans in the process. …But it does not matter! They are over! Only not! They are still around! Hasbro is already talking about the G5 ponies, while HBO is already working on the Targaryen family saga, as presented by one George Martin, so yay, really. Pause.

We have steered far off course, and it is time for us to take a break. This is it for now, see you all soon, (hopefully).

Spider-Man cancelled? - Aug 20

Real life sucks, and in this particular instance it does so because ‘Spider-Man’ is cancelled… wait, what?

I did not expect to return to my blog so soon, but the truth is that this is big news – Sony and Disney/MCU have come to blows at last, and Spider-Man is the biggest loser out of this fight.

On one hand, this is not too surprising: ever since our friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler appeared in the CA: CW movie, it was because of a Sony & Disney/MCU compromise, with neither side being too happy about it. Disney/MCU does not like Sony, and it is reciprocated. For a while – i.e., until now, late August 2019 – the two sides have maintained some sort of a truce, and then ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ came out into theatres, and it was a success, including in a financial manner – and it was also one of the few movies of the summer 2019 that Disney wasn’t in charge of, and didn’t get the better deal. Therefore, they moved forwards and demanded a more 50/50 cut from Sony, and when the latter refused, the partnership broke up. Now what?

There are not a lot of options, especially from an external P.O.V. Disney/MCU is the bigger juggernaut out of the two, and they are big enough to weather the fall-out if Spider-Man is gone.

…Here is the thing. Disney-Marvel MCU is, well, a marvel, working like clockwork, especially when compared to DCEU proper. As Comic-Con 2019 revealed, Disney/MCU have phase 4 all mapped out and are ready to proceed in 2020 with the Black Widow movie and onwards. The catch is that Spider-Man’s character is clearly an important lynchpin in the upcoming phase 4, as the ‘Far From Home’ movie has set him up: in his final battle against Mysterio, he takes on both Thor’s and Captain America’s characteristics, let alone the Iron Man’s – as the Iron Man’s heir, he may be the one to assemble the next version of the Avengers, and if he isn’t in MCU anymore, it makes ‘Far From Home’ a big fat red herring, and an unintentional one at that. As the ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ movie has shown, unintentional humor, red herrings and etc., are bad – ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ in particular is probably the worst X-Men movie ever—but we digress.

Can Disney/MCU make its’ phase four without Spider-Man…period? Yes, but odds are that it will be reminiscent of AoS from the second half of S2 onwards, and in a bad way. AoS constantly re-set and rebooted its characters, changed its’ script, and went around in torturous circles; if it wasn’t Marvel’s main toehold in the world of live-action TV, it would probably have never made it to S6/7, as it did. And now that Disney/Marvel is coming into live-action TV full steam, with Falcon and Bucky adventures, and Wanda and Loki adventures, and what else have you, AoS is quietly being shut down, in summer 2020, the end.

…But AoS is not MCU, and for a while, (especially in S3-4), it was almost a separate universe from the latter, and what it can make work, does not mean that MCU can. If MCU has to change its phase 4 from the plot where Peter/Spider-Man assembles the next Avengers in a post ‘Far From Home’ movie, to the one where there’s no Spider-Man per se, and someone else does his job, and ‘Far From Home’ just vanishes as water in the Sahara desert does, yeah, it’ll be a bigger loss for Disney/MCU than submitting to Sony’s demands – on par with Disney/SW alienating and fracturing its’ fanbase since the beginning…but that is another story.

Put more succinctly, it all comes down to money. Disney is greedy and does its’ best to make as much money for itself as possible. It is very good at doing that, but sometimes it fails – i.e., the ‘Solo’ movie only made millions of money, rather than billions, as Disney/SW had expected – and so they proclaimed that the SW9 movie will be their last movie for a while… and then that statement disappeared, rumors of more SW movies came forth, (though they have also dissipated by now), and also for a while, people were bombarded by SW comics, (though to what effect is debatable). Disney can do subtle and it doesn’t back down without a fight from anything, but in Spider-Man’s case, it isn’t dealing with public in general, or a specific fanbase in particular, but with Sony, which is its’ equal, in a lesser sort of way. Sony knows exactly what it is dealing with, and is not bowing down to the Mouse anytime soon. It knows that it has the advantage – if Disney/MCU decides that it is done with Spider-Man, then it is in a very uncomfortable position, (while Spider-Man can always re-surface in Sony’s own live-action universe, cough team up with Venom to defeat Carnage cough), as it will have to reboot and reforge its’ phase 4…and if it doesn’t, it will have to keep on the wall-crawler on Sony’s terms, so Sony wins again! Facing off with the Disney/MCU juggernaut, Sony became a smart fighter, so there!

…Unfortunately, it leaves us, as well as Tom Holland and his follow ‘Spider-Man’ (the franchise) co-stars hanging in the balance, as it is still not quite known if they will continue working with Disney/MCU in the future or not. Considering that we recently learned that Holland’s movie with Daisy Ridley (aka Rey from the Disney/SW universe) was deemed unsellable, tough break for him again, but that is real life. It sucks. Good luck to Disney and its’ associates: it seems that even nigh all-powerful juggernauts can be defeated on occasion, especially if their opponents are smart and know to hit it where it hurts – in the money.

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

Spider-Man: Far From Home - July 2

Let us begin July 2019 by stating the obvious: real life sucks. This time I honest-to-goodness missed AoS because we had guests and because someone just has to be a socialite and cannot keep their mouth shut until 11:30 in the evening. Yes, the guests are at fault too – they just had to play along, didn’t they, because of grown-up social obligations or whatever other rot parents shove down their children’s minds and metaphorical throats as they are growing-up – man, but do I hate real live sometimes. …Yes, I got my closure with the garter snakes and the American toads in my park, though the leopard frogs continue to mock me – but their turn will come, believe it!

As for ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ the movie… it is everything that ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was not: it is solid, it has gravity, it has a realistic plot (for a comic-book movie), and even continuity. Its’ characters are well-rounded and three-dimensional, and the story itself takes place in a larger universe and doesn’t feel disconnected as ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was.

No, really, you know what one of the sins of ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was? It was disconnected from the rest of its’ world; in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Jean was being set-up as the Phoenix in a very different manner from what we’ve seen in the 2019 film, with very different villains from the D’Bari that we had there. In the comics, Jean the Phoenix went ‘dark’ because of the Hellfire club and their manipulation of it – and something of that place could be seen in the actual 2019 movie, but somehow, for some reason, ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’, scrapped everything of substance from its’ plot, and instead left its’ audience feeling disappointed and empty-hearted. Yes, ‘Venom 2018’ had something similar, but ‘Venom 2018’ itself is the beginning of a new Marvel universe – namely, Earth-TRN688, so the situation is different from ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ after all.

…Right, now, where were we? Ah yes, ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’. In many ways, this is still a typical MCU movie – there are twists a-plenty, (but unlike, say, AoS, they work), and the villain dies at the end of it, which is what has happened to Mysterio, (but not his crew).

Let us start with Mysterio – by choosing him to be the villain of the current Spider-Man movie, MCU from the start cast doubt on the entire Marvel multiverse appearing in the MCU theory. It is possible that it will appear for real in the future films, but in this movie? Mysterio was blowing smoke up Fury’s ass all along.

Pause. Yes, as the final scene showed, Fury had had some tricks up his own sleeve – he’s that amazing – but until that happened everyone in the audience was wandering just what was going on down in the film, and JG’s Mysterio didn’t fail yet delivered everything that you expected Mysterio from the comics, and the TV cartoons, to be. He is a master of illusion, of deception; he is also a sociopath who does not hesitate to kill children to prevent the truth from coming out, (and yes, this is what a sociopath should be like, AoS! You did a crummy job with Ward and Palamas regardless from what angle you are coming from), and in the end, even if he’s mortally wounded, he still tries to kill Peter first. The douche.

Peter himself, now, is the hero of the movie, and not just because he’s the titular character, (sorry you Miles Morales’ fans, no Kid Arachnid in this movie!), but because the main movie storyline is about him as he is growing into the hero that Tony Stark had set him to be, regardless of all of Fury’s doubts, cough.

…Yeah, that thing with Fury at the end? People already are wondering if we are looking at a Skrull invasion next or what. Considering that MCU has already cast Kree as the wicked aliens here on one hand, and ‘Captain Marvel’ (the movie, though the titular character herself helps too), showed that the Skrulls in this Marvel universe aren’t so evil, so, no invasion?

…Or maybe there will be a Kree invasion instead, who knows? Between Ronan the Accuser, the AoS S5, and everything else in between, Kree have a very bad rep in MCU, so…let us get back to humans and their romance. There is Peter and MJ, there is his aunt and Happy, and there is Ned and Betty. The last are largely a foil to Peter and MJ, and May and Happy seem to be breaking up at the end of the movie…

Just OT: what is up with the Parkers? It’d been noticed for a while now, that aunt May is getting steadily younger in those films, from an old lady in the original trilogy (and the 90s cartoon series), to MCU’s current version; as Peter is calling her by her first name (and what the fuck is up with that), one cannot help but to think that those two act like an elder sister and a younger brother (or like a pair of cousins at most) than an aunt and a nephew; what’s the logic here?

On a more serious note, did anyone notice that Mysterio seemed to be advocating RL fake news in MCU? Yes, his and Spider-Man’s confrontation in this universe seemed to be about truth vs. lies, reality vs. illusion slash appearance, but the point is that remember that ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ got dragged through the metaphorical mud because it supposedly tried to be woke, (i.e. Mystique’s confrontation with Xavier post the space rescue)? How’s SM2’s take on fake news is better, worse, or different from that? Yes, ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ is an inferior film to this one, but ‘woke-ness’ has nothing to do with it, unlike hypocrisy…

Yes, Mysterio seems to be getting the last laugh even though he’s really dead now, (but then again, not only is it hard to tell with him, there’s also the case of Loki, who was also decisively dead in ‘Infinity War’, until he was equally not in ‘Endgame’, so there’s that), by revealing Spider-Man’s true identity to the world, which brought J. Jonah Jameson back into the fold, so fans are ecstatic about that; the movie’s titular hero, not so much. It will be interesting to see how Peter handles Jonah this time around; maybe he will get his friend Miles Morales to stand-in as the ‘real’ Spider-Man? Cough. ‘Spider-Verse’ was an amazing movie in its’ own right, though all the color blips and the fancy depictions of characters, action/fight scenes, etc. sometimes were visually overwhelming in my opinion, but this brings us to ‘Sony’.

…Not only the latest MIB movie borrow the actors of Thor and Valkyrie, and the plot from AoS, but their titular concept is also borrowed from the current Spider-Man movie: International vs. Far From Home. Yeah, no wonder that the current MIB film is getting shuffled into various hellholes and whatever; the relationship between Sony and Disney had never been too easy even before the CA: CW film, when this incarnation of Peter appeared in this Marvel universe, and we can only wonder just what will happen between Sony and Disney next.

Anything else? Michelle remains an original character and not an Afro-American Mary Jane clone – she is not happy swinging with her new boyfriend, (she and Peter did finally hook up in London, England. As opposed to London, Ontario, Canada, for example). Still, hopefully that she and Peter will remain a stable couple, because the two of them work very well together, (though their characters appear to have been reworked, some, since the ‘Homecoming’ movie). Go team PM, I say!

…For now, though, this is it. We are behind on our AoS reviews, and given what my life is right now, odds are that we will remain behind – such is reality in which we live in. MCU’s latest movie, though, is great, because it is not, well, real, but has plenty of everything – parody, drama, teen angst, humor, romance – you name it. Good luck watching this film in movie theatres too.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

The Gifted: oMens - Feb 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes you can manage. Now, onto ‘the Gifted’. It is done for its’ second season. Yay!

What can be said about the S2 finale? There was a lot of action and fighting in it, but…

But it was spread unequally – unlike, say, AoS, ‘the Gifted’ had to work on a more limited budget, especially when it came to CGI effects, and it showed. John’s fight with the Purifiers was the first and the most low-key…and what was with his ethnic make-up? Yes, John Proudstar/Thunderbird is a Native American character, but somehow, the S2 finale – ‘oMens’ – made it feel less Native American and more like Street Fighter of some sort. John looked authentic here, but also ridiculous…but hey, he made his peace with the Morlocks’ leader, who helped John defeat Jace and the Purifiers. Yay?

Well, yes – now the Morlocks’ leader, as well as the Morlocks in general, seem to have become more proactive than how they’ve been in the past, so that’s good for the mutant-kind, since in the last scenes of ‘oMens’ Marcos and co. admit that they are the Mutant Underground these days literally. However, Jace is still around – John had not killed him because of his inner goodness – but Reed is gone, his powers blew him and Reeva and Reeva’s penthouse HQ up. Remind me, what is the official U.S. stance on suicide bombers and the suicide bomber stereotype? Subverting it in ‘the Gifted’ took guts.

This brings us to the next point – the fight of Marcos, Lorna and Caitlin against Reeva’s mercenaries. It was impressive. It also used a lot of stock footage and out-of-camera actions because reasons. Budget reasons. The way that the Inner Circle’s invisible assassin died was one of the least impressive scenes in the episode – that guy was more incompetent than he appeared to be: he already been captured by the Mutant Underground once, and now the Mutant Underground – in the person of Mrs. Strucker – had killed him. The building explosion was nice though.

This brings us to the other big building takedown of the episode – Lauren & Andy’s destruction of the Sentinel Services’ HQ. Technically speaking, the sentinels are evil – remember S1 – but still, the way that the Strucker siblings are forgiven is something else. The way that AoS had dealt with Grant and Kara was bad, but the manner in which all the deaths’ that the siblings have caused are dismissed, is just as bad. Yes, Esme and her sisters had been mentally dominating them all along, but so had Hydra in regards to Bucky in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ movie, and it still caused a rift between Steve and Tony in ‘Captain America: Civil War’, with the rest of the Avengers piling on. Now, in part it was because Tony likes Steve, Steve likes Bucky, neither man handled their feelings very well, and the rest of the Avengers piled on because they were bored…while claiming that it was all about the Sokovia Accords instead. What has come out of them, BTW? …But another part of it was because brainwashed Bucky killed Tony’s parents, and Steve just wants to let him go. That did not go well, especially at the last quarter of the movie…and on the other hand, we have the Strucker parents and friends dismissing and forgiving Andy and Lauren using precisely that excuse – they were not themselves. And then they went and had a fight with Reeva’s mercenaries – they took out the Frosts by then – and Reed died.

…Some people have suggested to me that initially Reeva’s character was somehow related to the Struckers because Reed and Reeva sound somewhat similarly. Maybe, but this sort of reasoning is better applied to AoS – ‘the Gifted’ is knitted together more tightly and has done less restructuring of itself, especially in the past, so…

So ‘oMens’ exposed the flaws and the compensations of ‘the Gifted’. On one hand, it has a small, tight cast that works marvellously together and generates plenty of drama and interactions. On the other, it makes scenes with numerous people dicey, because it does not have enough of recurring characters – most of them are episodic instead, so when they are killed off there is no investment into them from the viewers. Yes, this makes a death of a main character – i.e. Reed or Reeva – only more poignant, but on the other hand, the Purifier that Reed killed last week was Ted, Jace’s Man Friday, and as we wrote before, no one, not even Jace, seemed to care that Ted is gone, aka dead.

Back to Jace? Again, as we had written, he is no Ward with whom AoS’ scriptwriters played, making him good or bad, depending on how they wanted him without any respect for his character, the other characters, or the audience. Jace is more consistent, but he is diminished because he has fewer lines these days and his role on ‘the Gifted’ has also shrunk.

Again, the strength of ‘the Gifted’ lies in the actors and their acting – the plot, and the script – itself can be very thin indeed, so when the actors cannot properly act, the show suffers, because unlike AoS it cannot really go for cool special effects or epic fights: John’s fight with the Purifiers showed that in particular: for an angry mutant-hating mob they certainly acted nobly (cough) attacking John one at a time… and it’s doubtful that they even wanted to gun him down at all… That line of Jace – ‘kill me’ – came completely out of the left field, and unlike AoS, ‘the Gifted’ do not swing this sort of curveball very well.

So, what happens next? S2 of ‘the Gifted’ is done, and we are back to waiting – both for ‘the Gifted’ S3 (if it happens) and for C&D in April 2019. Until then, see you all soon!

MCU, Pathfinder, & d20 - Sep 6

…With all the Marvel-related excitement surrounding the return of the ‘Iron Fist’ Netflix series, we decides to watch ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ movie as well, and-

And nothing, or rather – something. The movie certainly calls out Hydra as being the Nazis’ scientific branch or a part of it, but something like that. This means that the fraction of the Marvel fans who claimed that Hydra was Nazi was more in the right than the one who claimed that it wasn’t, it was just evil (and maybe fascist as well), but-

But frankly, the entire CA: TFA film has a notable undercurrent of pulp fiction in it, where the brave heroes would go forth and smite the evil Nazis with some good old-fashioned fisticuffs and similar things. Please excuse me, but how does that fit with historical accuracy? Once I read a love novel online where Menelaus, (from the Iliad, husband of Helen) fell in love with Miriam, the sister of Moses, and things derived from historical (literary, but still) accuracy very quickly. MCU and the rest of the Marvel franchise amount to the same thing. They didn’t exactly care about historical accuracy, they went for the Nazis because they were convenient (and because the original Captain America comic was something of a pro-USA propaganda piece), and then-

And then, or rather – now, the social situation changed, both abroad and in the US, and the old values do not quite match with the new ones anymore. Plenty of people thought that while Hydra was evil, it was not Nazi, and if MCU itself said that it was, then who cared? Not enough people, that is who, and they were right. If you are going for fiction, then do not be surprised if fan fiction – the fiction of your fans – goes in a different direction, especially if the canon became established well-enough for a sufficient number of people not to care anymore. Canon can be reinforced, but not on fan fiction level, as the ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ play showed: Hermione became an Afro-Brit, plenty of people were angry at that, Rowling defended this transformation firmly enough…and that’s it. HPCC was not a flop as the rebooted ‘Ghostbusters’ were, for comparison, but only because the actors’ acting was that good; these days, HP transformed into Fantastic Beasts/FB, and in the first movie? Almost all of the main characters were Anglo-American, or at least – of a European, rather than of Asian or African descent; only the president of the MACUSA was Afro-American…can we say ‘token character’ here? And yet no one made a stink about it, and so far, most of the main characters in the upcoming second FB film also appear to be Anglo-American too. J. Ro can be politically correct, but if it does not bring enough dividends, she does not have to be, it seems. (Kind of like Rick Riordan and his novels, remember?)

Where were we? Right, MCU and Hydra and pulp fiction. Also – Disney. With SW, Disney began to alienate the old fan base, purposefully or otherwise, by rebooting the SW universe entirely, and retiring everything else into the ‘Star Wars: Legends’ reservation. As a result…well, we have talked about the current result of that approach; in the Marvel merger, Disney seemed to have done something different. In the CA: CW movie, which we discussed in the past, MCU declared that Hydra was gone, (and made Zemo not part of it, but rather an independent agent), but then there was AoS…

Let us check the facts: in CA: CW film, Hydra is supposed to be gone; in AoS S3 Hydra was supposed to be defeated at last via the cooperation of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the US forces, represented by Glenn Talbot; and in AoS S5 Hydra was shown to be doing just fine and going strong and while S.H.I.E.L.D. did set it back, it mostly had to deal with various aliens and Talbot, who became the local Graviton instead, (a super-villain). So is Hydra gone or not? Apparently not, it seems.

Where does it leave MCU? Looking stupid, as apparently Captain America and co. don’t know what they are talking about; actually, in A: IW film, Red Skull is back, so Hydra may be returning to the Marvel movies again for real, and-

And this is more like J Ro, who plays fast and loose with canon; it isn’t alienation, as Disney did with the SW fan base, (and for no good reason), it’s more like… fracturing and factionism. The Marvel fan base is arguing – whether Hydra is Nazi or just evil; whether Grant Ward was evil or not; whether Cap or Tony – and Disney/Marvel is not reining them in; in fact, it seemed to encourage the Cap vs. Tony debate as CA: CW movie was coming out, and now…

Yes, MCU does not really have any tools for reining fans it and probably it did not want to; yes, this is still better than the straightforward alienation of Disney/SW, but still, considering the online debates, arguments and fights regarding the MCU topics, they still earn a cringe. The fracturing did not do any favors for AoS, (or AC), as its’ numbers have sunk. Odds are, the upcoming 2019 AoS S6 will be something of a reboot with an updated cast…and a new plotline; plus, with only 13 episodes as opposed to 22, AoS will have to change, as the old strategies won’t work so well anymore. Even back in S4, some of the AoS resolutions felt rushed, and that was actually a good season…

Anything else? Well, on the subject of Nazis and pulp fiction…we are probably getting back into the d20 Modern campaigns. Yes, Pathfinder doesn’t seem to be abandoning its’ old layout straightaway as the new ‘Runelords’ campaign path seems to indicate, but we aren’t so excited about it either; the first Pathfinder adventure path that we did play was the ‘Shattered Star’ one, and it was also heavily connected to the Runelords; did we enjoy it? Sort of, but not enough, to go back to the beginning. Therefore, rather, we are probably going to go down the d20 Modern path, because while D&D 3.5 is similar to Pathfinder in the layout, d20 Modern is similar in approach.

Let us elaborate. From the ‘Complete Warrior’ onwards, D&D 3.5 invested very heavily into various prestige classes – the ronin, the beast lord, the blightlord, the ashworm dragoon and so on. By contrast, Pathfinder was much more restrained with its’ prestige classes, which gave new, different options to the base classes (aka the barbarian, the rogue, the fighter, etc.), which otherwise were quite straightforward, (though yes, different feats, spells, domain powers and so on did give them differences). Later on, in ‘Unearthed Arcana’, D&D 3.5 tried to give variant abilities to the base classes instead – and in Pathfinder, we have the archetypes, that gave different abilities to the base classes, while d20 modern we have the so-called talent trees that give the base heroes various talents, allowing the players to create very different PCs following the same guidelines. In place of prestige classes, d20 Modern had advanced classes, which were more tailored to various base classes than D&D 3.5 prestige classes did. And while, yes, they were also different from what Pathfinder did, d20 Modern featured such prestige classes as the musketeer, the mesmerist, the spiritualist and so on – classes that we also encounter in the Pathfinder.

That is not to say that Pathfinder is truly similar to d20 Modern – it has plenty of differences too, but still, the family relationship is visible. So yeah, for now we may be making our own adventures in the d20 Modern world, but who knows…

This is it for now; see you all soon!

Ant-Man and the Wasp - July 8

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ movie premiered this month. Wow! It was great.

It was very clever, too. Whenever you talk about MCU and its’ problems regarding the various TV series, (and also online/streaming/torrent series), you may forget that its’ movies are something else, very masterful. This does not mean that they are flawless – when the ‘Black Panther’ came out in February 2018, it was revealed to have its’ own issues, and so does ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’: already there are critics who complain about this or that problem – usually an ‘ableist problem’ – in the movie. Fair enough.

However, what we are paying attention to is that the ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ are separate from the A:IW film; in fact, the movie takes place chronologically before the A:IW film and remains separate from the rest of MCU; in the initial ‘Ant-Man’ movie there was a scene where the titular character fought the Falcon (Sam Wilson) as something of a prequel to CA:CW film, (in which the Ant-Man fought on the side of Cap, rather than Tony), as well as a tie-in. Nothing like that here; yes the Ant family gets affected very severely by Thanos’ titanic finger snap, yet because the Ant-Man ends up trapped in the Quantum realm, (or the Quantum zone, whatever the proper canon name is), it is unlikely that he will be a part of the fourth Avengers’ movie either, because now he has to escape it on his own, and that will take time.

In the previous film, mind, Yellowjacket (Darren Cross) was trapped in the Quantum realm already, so maybe in the next film Scott will encounter Yellowjacket there…just to escape the Quantum realm; right now, Scott just isn’t experienced and powerful enough to do it on his own. It is just as possible, of course, that Ghost and Goliath and the remainder of his friends will do it from ‘this side’, so we’ll have to wait and see as to what the next Ant-Man film will deliver, but!

But the fact that Ghost did not die during the duration of the film, (and neither did Sonny, FYI), marks another notable break from the MCU movie traditions, where villains died, (even Loki did, sob), at the end of each movie. Thanos did not die, but he is Thanos, and besides – the fourth Avengers movie is coming forth eventually, so he will probably die then instead. The Red Skull is back, but so far, he remained below the radar, so there is no indication of the role he will play in the future MCU installments. Killmonger was sang accolades to by the various critics, but he still died, so he is off the table, for now. But Ghost is alive, and unlike Sonny, she has her own ideas and knowledge about the Quantum realm, so now maybe she will play a role in the next, future movie, and that is a notable deviation from the pre-established MCU canon – in the movies, AoS, Netflix series and so forth. (Cough Black Mariah Cough). Go, MCU – you have made several breakthroughs here without anyone apparently realizing it!

Pause. Ghost’s fate was the first breakthrough, and the second-?

Back to the Ant-Man and the Quantum realm. By staying in the Quantum realm, the Ant-Man will avoid being drafted, (or re-drafted) by the Avengers to go onto their Happy Thanos Hunt, and as such his adventures will continue to present a separate plot line that regardless follows the main plot of MCU, all of its’ phases, so to speak. MCU tried to do so in AoS, by making it the supplement show to its’ movies, but it didn’t work – from the second half of S2 onwards, (or maybe even from the very beginning, the very first season), AoS went all over the place in regards to its’ own plot and script, so now, this second attempt, via movies, is much better! Anything else?

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ is a fun movie. Maybe it is not very deep, the ‘Black Panther’ film got a different reception from it, but this is okay. People are enjoying it, and this is still miles better than ‘Solo’, the Disney hybrid with SW rather than Marvel. Go team Marvel/Disney!

Oh, and one another thing. There’s no particular political correctness in it, (though the ‘Screen Junkies’ on YouTube claimed that Luis, introduced in the first ‘Ant-Man’ movie was the first Latino-American character in MCU, and now he’s also back), unlike, well, ‘C&D’, which recently aired a clip where Ty is getting beat-up by several of his Anglo-American classmates…

Another pause. Here is the thing. Ever since the Donald became the president, the various media-related companies, organizations, etc., grew increasingly stringent because ever since his election as such, they were shown the actual limits of their power over the American society – and they do not like it. They do not like it, and ever since the 45^th presidential election, they have done their best to prove that this is not so, they are the top power in the U.S. society – but they are not. All of their attempts to prove otherwise ultimately fail, but in the process of these failures they are making the American society ever worse – and ‘C&D’, (remember how Marvel™ has distinctively distanced itself from this duo now?), is one of their attempts. Fine, yes, ‘C&D’ is trying to reveal the ulcers of the modern society, both gender and racial inequality. Fine. How do C & D, Ty & Dy, fix it? ‘C&D’ has already spent about half of its first season just setting them up – setting all of the characters up, and by now many of them are still cardboard clichés, in one way or another; they may make most of their villains heterosexual Anglo-American men, but how does that make real life America a better place? Rather, ‘C&D’ and similar TV shows are provoking further conflicts, all the way up to potential pogroms, (regardless of color of both sides)… ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ movie avoids all of that, so congratulations to them for it too. The movie does have people of color in it, including Ghost herself, but while they are not in the main roles – not yet – neither are they diminished, not really. Go, team Marvel™, again! No wonder it seems to disassociate itself from ‘C&D’… Good for Marvel™, it seems…

Well, this is it for now; see you all soon!

PS: Here is a choral angel with a broken soul template, from Pathfinder Bestiaries. How does it look?

BROKEN SOUL CHORAL CR 8

XP 2,400

NE Small outsider (angel, evil, extraplanar)

Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect evil; Perception +16

Aura protective aura

DEFENSE

AC 19, touch 14, flat-footed 16 (+3 Dex, +9 natural, +1 size)

hp 116 (8d10+72)

Fort +6, Ref +9, Will +9; +4 vs. poison, +4 resistance vs. evil

DR 5/-; Immune acid, cold, petrification; Resist electricity 10, fire 10, sonic 5; SR 17

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft., fly 50 ft. (good)

Melee slam +10 (1d3+1)

Ranged piercing hymn +12 touch (4d6 sonic plus deafened)

Special Attacks agonized wail (DC 19), baleful gaze (DC 19), countersong, harmonize, torturous touch (DC 19)

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 8th; concentration +11)

Constant—detect evil

At will—aid, ghost sound (DC 13), dispel evil (DC 18), dispel magic, invisibility (self only), plane shift (self only), remove curse, remove disease, remove fear

3/day—cure moderate wounds, sculpt sound (DC 16), sound burst (DC 15)

STATISTICS

Str 13, Dex 16, Con 21, Int 16, Wis 14, Cha 17

Base Atk +8; CMB +8; CMD 21

Feats Alertness, Diehard (B), Endurance (B), Great Fortitude, Improved Initiative, Toughness

Skills Acrobatics +14, Diplomacy +14, Escape Artist +11, Fly +20, Knowledge (planes) +14, Knowledge (religion) +14, Perception +16, Perform (sing) +14, Sense Motive +16

Languages Celestial, Draconic, Infernal; truespeech

ECOLOGY

Environment any good-aligned planes

Organization solo, duet, or Ensemble (3-8)

Treasure standard

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Countersong (Su) A choral can attempt a Perform (sing) check to counter magic effects that depend on sound. This ability functions as the bard ability of the same name.

Harmonize (Sp) When chorals work together, they can use their complementary voices to create mystical harmonies. Two or more chorals within 60 feet of one another can use calm emotions or heroism as a spell-like ability, four or more chorals can use shout, and six or more chorals can use greater heroism or holy word. Only the choral that actually casts the spell-like ability in question must take a standard action to achieve this effect—the other chorals need only take swift actions during the same round.

Piercing Hymn (Su) As a standard action, a choral can launch a concentrated blast of sonic energy from its mouth as a ranged touch attack. This attack has a range of 90 feet with no range increment and deals 4d6 points of sonic damage. Any creature struck by a piercing hymn must succeed at a DC 17 Fortitude save or be deafened for 1d4 minutes. The save DC is Charisma-based.