F4, 'Ironheart' +etc. - July 27

Disclaimer: real life sucks. First OO is gone, and then HH, so now king Hades has to call queen Persephone to help him deal with the double emergency. Now onto the F4-2025 movie?

Hard to say. RL was not idle recently and CB unleashed the host species of their upcoming to be resurrected giant moa species – the greater tinamou and the emu. Why? Because among the ratites, the tinamous are the closest relatives to the extinct moa, whereas the emu…

CB also proclaims that the emu is a close relative to the moa birds. It is not – the two ratite lineages were quite distant from each other. However, it is the biggest modern ratite (and modern bird overall) after the African ostriches, so it is reasonable to theorize that CB is going to ‘augment’ the emu DNA with that of the tinamous and see what happens. In case of the wolves, this strategy worked… supposedly. Lately the trio of Romus, Remulus and Khaleesi vanished from MM, you know? The point, however, is that for most people grey and dire wolves are just… wolves, they expect them to be externally similar to each other, so when they see… well, wolf puppies, they don’t really care just what kind of wolf puppies they are – if CB says that they’re dire wolf puppies, they’ll believe CB, period.

With the birds, it is more complex, especially with such a unique species as the South Island Giant Moa: physically, it is quite different from both the emu and the tinamous. Whether CB will augment an emu with tinamou genes, or vice versa, the result will not be a moa, even if CB will successful. What will It be, (and that is a big if), is another question…

In addition, yes, again, the emu is not the best candidate for a resurrected moa – the moa preferred to live in forests, and the emu lives on open plains instead. Even behaviourally, the potential new hybrid will not be like the original species. The cassowaries, who are the emu’s closest relatives, do live in the forests, but they are smaller than the emu, and much more aggressive. Naturally, CB will not have anything to do with them. What else?

Well, the F4 film. To me, it feels like a successful reworking of the 2000s F4 films, which worked. This puts ‘First Steps’ miles above the ‘Ironheart’ mini-series, which is forgotten already.

Why?

Because ‘First Steps’ is a soft reboot of sorts: it takes place in a completely different universe from ‘the sacred timeline’ with completely new characters – and it is a success. Now Disney/MCU can make more Marvel adventures in this universe with an occasional something or other taking place in the original MCU timeline as well.

‘Ironheart’, on the other hand, takes place in the MCU, just as Disney/MCU lose interest in it. ‘Ironheart’ is better than SW-2025, (but that is a low bar), but worse than 2024 ‘Kraven’. It is not a mash of two different movies, more like a failed case of having its’ cake and eating it too. ‘Ironheart’ fluctuates from being depended on Tony Stark and his legacy in the MCU world, to being completely detached from it. The cast, the crew, everyone else did not really know what they were doing, and they did not care about it either. The result? ‘Ironheart’ is almost forgotten by now, as is MCU itself by now – somewhat, but that is another story.

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

Snow White 2025 and D: BA - March 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and in this case, I mean that I have developed issues with my cell phone. At least the big dead rat is gone – hooray for small mercies. In other news, D: BA is back with two new episodes this week, so yuppie? Right?

Eh, the jury is still out here. In the episode 1x05 we re-met Yusuf Khan, who’s Kamala Khan’s father or elder brother, I don’t remember which one. Sigh. MM was swept under the rug when in RL Pakistan, (the homeland of the Khan family in MCU) helped the Taliban topple the pro-US government in Afghanistan, and the follow up ‘Marvels’ movie didn’t really go anywhere either. And in episode 1x06 Jack the Swordsman from ‘Hawkeye’ reappeared; in RL, the actor who played Hawkeye suffered a bad accident a while back, so it is unknown if Kate Bishop will return – so far there’s no sign of her in the ‘Thunderbolts’-related material, so there’s that.

Easter eggs aside, Disney/MCU is doing a good enough job of integrating the ‘Daredevil’-related characters into the overall MCU, (and Muse has appeared as one of the lesser-bads of the show, so extra kudos here), and overall this TV series is better than the 2025 Snow White film.

Listen, you know what a hack job is? Snow White 2025 is an example of this. When they were making it – and they took their time making it – Disney could’ve gone with a number of options; they narrowed them down to two: either a by the numbers re-make of the original 1937 film, or a more ‘upgraded’ version, where Snow White becomes either a Maid Marian or a Robin Hood character. Then, some higher-up in the Disney hierarchy had a bad brain, and the studio mashed both of these versions into one film.

Listen. In 2024, Sony has released its’ ‘Kraven’ film, and it was also a mash-up of two films, essentially: the first would have been about the childhood of Kraven, his brother, his (eventual) love interest and so on. The second would have been Kraven travelling the globe, killing various criminals, up to the Foreigner and the Rhino who by then had had enough of his own XP to give Kraven a proper challenge, (i.e. a lion fighting a rhino and realizing that he needs help winning this one, maybe?). Instead, we got a mash-up of both, and people believe that Sony’s Spider-Man related films are finished, most likely. Pause.

…‘Kraven’ is still a better film than Snow White 2025 is, because the former is a mash-up of two related films, and the latter is more disjointed: Sony at least tried to stitch its’ chimera up appropriately, and Disney didn’t. Instead, we got an almost unending barrage of bad PR from both RZ and GG, as well as the crap about the seven dwarves, the overall bad CGI and anything else that could, and did, go wrong. Given that the amount of money Disney invested into Snow White 2025 could have possibly bought the peace between RF and Ukraine – it was such a huge sum – this is just sad. However, this is real life for you, people. It just sucks.

This is it for now. See you all soon.

YFNSM, series premiere - Jan 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks; sometimes, it just sucks and nothing quite feels right or goes right, you know? Therefore, let us talk about the new ‘YFNSM’ show instead.

The show’s premiere – a double feature – started strong enough; we got to see Peter Parker in becoming the titular character and in action as the titular character; we saw some of his classmates, including Loomie Lincoln, who’s probably going to become a villain named Tombstone soon enough, and Nico Minoru, who is usually one of the Runaways instead, (remember the live-action series? They were not bad, especially the first two seasons, but that is unimportant); and more importantly, we met the Osborns – Norman, and his son Harry. They are important, because both would wear the mantle of the Green Goblin, Spider-Man’s archenemy, in this universe. Pause.

All of this is delivered/depicted in a style that feels like a vintage comic book series, which is also impressive, but, the fact is, that ‘YFNSM’ is yet another reset of the Spider-Man universe; everything is new in it – new faces, new redesigns for the old faces – and yet nothing stands out: Spider-Man has so many TV cartoon shows under his belt that so far this feels just one more face in the crowd.

The 2024 movie ‘Kraven’ about the titular foe of Spider-Man, on the other hand, was something new – so far, until 2024, Kraven never had a movie of his own, and was, indeed, often passed over in favor of other Spider-Man foes, such as the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. In the 2024 film, meanwhile, we saw Kraven, as well as other characters like the Rhino and Chameleon, and, well, meet them. Pause.

Kraven wasn’t a good movie; one of its’ problems was the mishandling of the plot. It was supposed to be a ‘hero’s journey’ sort of plot, such as it was in the other SUMC movies, and all of them have their own problems; in Kraven’s case, it was the timeskip – one moment we see the titular character in his youth just gaining his metaphorical footing, the next he is an adult and is already established himself in his world – but we don’t see it, and therefore we cannot relate to him, or accept his progress, because it isn’t there. Team Sony would have done better in making ‘Kraven’ a two-parter: first part is Kraven’s youth, and the second – his adulthood and dealing with the Rhino, (for example). Instead, team Sony compressed those two films into one, and failure was the result.

And yet, with ‘Kraven’ team Sony tried to do something fresh and new, while the ‘YFNSM’ TV series just give us another ‘life and times of Spider-Man’ package. There was a Spider-Man cartoon show on TV since the second half of the 20^th century, so up to now ‘YFNSM’ is not making any breakthroughs for Marvel™ - but maybe Marvel™ doesn’t need them right now? ‘Kraven’ was flawed, and AAA… well, we’ve discussed AAA at length during the 2024, and let us not start now – it’s done for the moment, hopefully…

In fact, for the moment, we are done, as the new Spider-Man show does not offer too much to discuss for the moment. (Proportionally, it is already better than AAA was). Therefore, for now, this is it. See you all soon.