A: IW - March 19

The new ‘Infinity War’ trailer came out. And?

And, first of all, let me be frank: real life sucks. SH has died earlier this month, and it sucks. It sucks even worse than the toad story, the end. I was never the biggest fan of SH, so I cannot really sing accolades about his genius and character, I leave it for the others, and just acknowledge this fact. It sucks, and the science community has lost one of its’ pillars, the end. Back to MCU?

Well, why not? The A: IW trailers so far show a very impressive movie, save the question of what is going on with the Black Widow? ScarJo is showing her character in some sort of a forest green getup, with distinctly blonde hair. Considering that the Black Widow is one of MCU’s iconic characters, this sort of liberty just…does not make sense. Maybe being a blonde is some sort of a disguise? We will have to wait and see.

On the topic of movies, the new ‘Tomb Raider’ (TR) film came out. Frankly, it looks like an inferior hybrid of the TR movies and the first Angelina Jolie TR film – and the movie in question was better, even though it was not the best movie that AJ has starred in, but she did make a convincing LC…while AV, the star actress of the new TR movie made a semi-convincing depiction of AJ playing LC. Yay. Anything else?

Not really. Some people have pointed out to me that since gravitonium is making a comeback, and then it may be only a matter of time, until Dr. Hall, who was swallowed by the mineral in question, comes back as well. Maybe. I admit, I am giving AoS a chance – it seems to be fixing itself…again, so I will not criticize it too much too often. Let us wait until this Friday to see as to what will happen on it next, (outside of Fitz confronting his evil twin, that is).

…Well, I guess that this is it for now. See you all soon.

S.H.I.E.L.D., Prudentia - March 17

This week, S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be getting back on track, and – back in the past. CyberTek is back, as is gravitonium – this time for real. General Hale seems to have it, though, and Coulson and his team were lucky to get a single piece that the woman left behind – but Mack was able to capture one of her LMDs/battle-bots/etc. in one piece, so Yo-Yo is getting her some new arms, and we’ll probably see her have a more active role in the upcoming AoS episodes again.

…That isn’t any surprise, AoS did try to substitute her, but so far, neither agent Piper nor agent Davis are playing an active role in the show, (their third friend, agent Prince, seems to have been killed by AIDA during the last episodes of S4 after all). They were to fix the plotholes, just as the new secondary character, who appeared in this episode: an old friend of Mack, who had never been mentioned before, and will probably never appear again in the future…but.

But, AoS is trying to fix itself up – again. The semi-sealed rift to the ‘fear dimension’ or whatever continues to manifest the agents’ worst fears; this episode, it was Deke’s turn, as the man saw his mother killed again by a Kree warrior with his glaive/naginata/etc., and it shocked him – but it seems to make him realize that maybe the FitzSimmons are related to him…only general Hale’s current aide has already discovered Deke’s potential parents, so – now what? We will have to wait and see how it develops.

Werner von Strucker is back too, and he has teamed up with Ruby Hale (and the Absorbing Man?) to take down her mother, and – beyond. He is apparently insane now, so – why not? Ruby is setting herself up to be an anti-Daisy of some sort, so a retinue of some sort is in order for her, and as for her resentment towards her mother…yes, it was sensed since she was introduced, so it is not exactly surprising either.

…Ruby’s character is further undercut by the fact that Daisy/Skye has a new boyfriend every season or so – Ward, Hunter, (in the first half of S2), Campbell, (especially in S3), Reyes/the Ghost Rider in S4, and now, maybe, Deke, since he seems to be becoming more of a team member of AoS. Guess Daisy has to have someone to be her potential special someone…and Robbie is not coming back, while Deathlok is also gone – his actor did his obligatory appearance in this season, and is done with AoS, at least for now. And?

And nothing. AoS continues to emanate strong S2 vibes, (especially the first half, pre-Puerto Rico), save that Blood and Palicki are not appearing, they are done, it seems. Is this a good thing? Not everyone liked them, especially after the S2 finale, but enough people did, and their disappearance post mid-S3 did cause some of AoS numbers to drop, to be sure. Since then, AoS tried to make do with temporary characters that usually appear in one episode and then vanish, as the new guy did this episode. Who did fail to appear, though, is Dr. Hall, MCU’s version of Graviton, but maybe we will see him in the future episodes, since AoS is returning to its’ roots and all? The show still seems to be disrespecting its’ characters, i.e. Noah is gone, saving May, Fitz, and the rest of the agents from the beacon-bomb, and was he mentioned ever since? Nope. Just as Victoria Hand never was mentioned, (until the Framework S4), since Grant Ward has killed her in S1…

Anything else? No, not really. True, AoS seems to be cleaning up its’ act, at least in regards to the ‘fear dimension’, (really?), but otherwise, there is no great breakthrough - it is solid, reliable, predictable. Now we must wait and see if it will work.

That is it for this time, see you all soon!

AFO - Elephant vs. Rhinoceros

And now that most of the non-AoS Marvel™-related events are behind us at the moment, let us go back to AFO. True, we have gone over most of them through the years, but we have saved the best for last, really. Let us talk about the ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’ episode.

What sets it apart? Firstly, the quality of CGI. It was always very good in the AFO episodes (for its time), but somehow in ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’, the CGI was especially well done. Good!

Secondly, (technical aspects are important, but for us, they are not that important) is the fact that both combatants in this episode were herbivores and unlike some other episodes, (such as the ‘Jaguar vs. anaconda’), this scenario – an elephant fighting a rhino – is rooted in real life.

Now let us be rational – the ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’ episode is atypical, but it is not unique; AFO did feature two other unusual contestants: the walrus in the ‘Polar Bear vs. Walrus’ episode and the hippopotamus in the ‘Hippopotamus vs. Bull Shark’ episode, and both times the oddballs won. Why?

…Because as it had been discussed in the past, carnivores tend to be built along similar lines; a bear, (either brown or polar, it does not matter) is only distantly related to a tiger, but their skeletal structures are similar. The stoat (ermine, long-tailed weasel, etc.), the bear and the sea lion are related, but they live different lifestyles, and yet their skulls are similar, because they evolved towards the same goal: to feed on other animals. There are plenty of differences – the sea lion specializes in slippery fish, the bear is more of an omnivore, etc. – but the similarities are present as well – and this brings us to the elephant and the rhinoceros.

…Actually, no. This brings us to all of the ‘pachyderms’ – the elephant, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus. When they were first discovered by the Europeans, the latter had never seen anything like that in Europe, and so, when they began to scientifically classify them, (as opposed to, say, kill them in gladiatorial battles), they put them together as ‘the pachyderms’, the ‘thick-skinned animals’. At the modern times, this term is not so much incorrect, as it is outdated – the ‘pachyderms’ aren’t really related to each other at all, they are much more distant from each other than a tiger and a bear are, comparatively speaking – the rhinoceros is a perissodactyl, an odd-toed hoofed mammal, a cousin to the horse, zebra, wild donkey (and the tapir, which looks kind of like a caricature elephant, and is something of a pachyderm by itself), the hippopotamus is an artiodactyl, an even-toed hoofed mammal, but a peculiar one – it is the most reminiscent of the shared ancestor of both even-toed hoofed mammals and the cetaceans, and the elephant is a proboscidean, a paenungulate, whose closest relatives are the sea cows, the dugong and the manatees, (which physically resembles whales and dolphins instead), and the hyrax, a strange little mammal that looks more like a rodent, (and is the size of one). I.e., the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the elephant are the results of three different lineages that led to the same goal: a large, even mega-large, herbivore that towers over the competition…literally. The hippopotamus went sideways by becoming ‘the water horse’, a semi-aquatic animal that lives mostly at the river’s edge, getting the best of the both worlds…while its’ only living cousin, the pygmy hippopotamus, is a much smaller animal that is active mostly at night, and while the two species do share the biological family, they aren’t very close relatives either.

The rhinoceros’ situation is similar – the five surviving rhinoceros species belong to four different families, (though the Sumatran rhinoceros might have died out by now, sad), and…

And they behave differently, the African species are much more terrestrial than the Asian ones are, because there are no hippopotamus species in Asia, and its’ niche there is vacant.

…Okay, there is the Malaysian tapir species, but it is not a widespread species, (though neither are the Sumatran and the Javan rhinoceroses), so it doesn’t come into conflict with its’ rhinoceros cousins, so let’s put it aside. Basically, all of the ‘pachyderms’ tend to lean towards an aquatic lifestyle, both the prehistoric elephants and rhinoceroses have hippopotamus-like species in their family tree; the modern African elephants (two species) and rhinoceroses (also two species) are the most terrestrial of them all, and the ones that had evolved in more extreme conditions, food-wise: there is proportionally less food in the African savanna than it is in the Asian jungle.

…Yes, one of the African elephant species lives in the African jungle, and it is smaller than its’ bush cousin is – and that was the elephant featured on AFO. The rhinoceros featured there was also the biggest modern rhinoceros – the white rhinoceros, as opposed to the black rhinoceros, which lives not in the savanna, but in scrubland, and feeds on leaves, rather than grasses. It is slightly smaller than the white rhinoceros is, but is about 45% lighter instead, and that is important, because in the elephant-rhinoceros-hippopotamus world, size, weight and strength are intertwined: the bigger an animal is, the heavier and stronger it is; the fights of the ‘pachyderms’ have no finesse, just massive damage inflicted on the combatants…literally and directly. The elephant, the rhinoceros and hippopotamus represent three different linages occupying the same niche, and so they function along the same lines, with some different details. The hippopotamus is aquatic, while the elephant towers over its competition, proportionally, it is more gracile than the rhinoceros or the hippopotamus are. And?

And the elephant is proportionally stronger than either the rhinoceros or the hippopotamus are. In a world where brute strength is one of the key factors, this makes the elephant the top herbivore in Africa (and Asia), and as such, it dominates its’ nearest rivals, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus by a wide margin, and thus its’ victory on AFO was justified.

…That is it for this installment, see you all next time!

Jessica Jones, S2 - March 12

…While AoS is going the same way that it always went, let us mention ‘Jessica Jones’ (JJ) for a change. This show released its’ second season last week. And?

And some things have become obvious about JJ, so let us talk about them. Firstly, as far as superheroes go, (especially Marvel™ ones), the titular heroine is… a Vampire Slayer, more precisely – Faith the Vampire Slayer, who appeared in the 3^rd season of BtVS onwards. (She appears on AtS too). Both Faith and Jessica tend to be crude, abrupt, have issues with booze and drugs, and are morally shady – Faith moreso than Jessica, because Jessica was forced into darkness by Killgrave, (who’s a different villain from Black Panther’s Killmonger, BTW), but both Faith and Jessica have to struggle with their inner darkness, while trying to be heroes (heroines), however reluctantly… why?

Because being villains (villainesses) is worse for them. Neither Faith nor Jessica asked to be heroine, but they became…someone special all the same; Faith because Kendra (the previous Vampire Slayer) died (at the BtVS S2 finale), Jessica because of an accident in her childhood, but get them they did, and the powers…are basically the same – super-human strength, speed, dexterity, etc. Jessica is a Vampire Slayer in a world without any vampires (or other supernatural monsters)-

Yes, fine, MCU does have vampires, starting with Count Dracula; back in February, when the discussion about Black Panther and his movie was at its’ peak, it was mentioned that some of the first Marvel movies were about Blade, a vampire hunter (and half-vampire himself), a movie series that concluded with Blade killing Dracula himself – and what is worth noting is both the titular character played by an Afro-American actor, Wesley Snipes and that the movies’ format was similar to the modern MCU movies, which included the feature of all the villains dying in every movie, so that new ones would appear in the next – and this brings us back to JJ. And MCU’s villains.

For a while, a lot of noise was made about Black Panther’s Killmonger, how he was different from the earlier MCU villains. That is debatable, but what matters to us now is that regardless of these differences, Killmonger still died at the end of the movie, just as the other MCU villains tend to, (except for Loki), so the movie formula is still the same, regardless of Killmonger’s own differences from the rest of MCU’s villains, (whatever they are) – and then we got JJ the series.

In JJ S1 Killgrave was a different sort of evildoer from Killmonger, or Wilson Fisk, or Madame Gao, etc., but just like the rest of them, he was defeated (and killed) all the same, following a formula that is not very different from MCU movies, or AoS, or even BtVS. In S2 JJ did something different – there was no concrete villain, what we had instead was something that some people call a dark mirror – an evil (well, eviller) counterpart to the titular heroine, and it was her mother.  

Folks on IGN and similar sites/YouTube channels have already discussed about how the ‘villains’ of JJ S2 weren’t really evil, more like morally shady, just as Jessica was. AoS too has played with this concept, especially in the first seasons, but they handled it very badly, and the show has never regained its’ initial highs. JJ did it better, both in regards to the villains themselves and how the titular character – the heroine of the show – dealt with them. Spoiler alert: when it came to her mother, JJ needed help from her girl Friday at the end, she just needed help period. What is next for her?

She is going to try to live a more normal life…and we know that it is not going to work simply because she is one-fourth of the Defenders™, without her, there is no team. (Plus on ‘Defenders’ S1 she had some chemistry with Daredevil, so yeah). Since Disney & Netflix showed no sign of changing the Defenders™ formula, JJ’s foray into a more normal life will not succeed, and she’ll be back to being a hero or a villain, (the dead Killgrave isn’t helping things any, and remember the First Evil from BtVS S7? This is so its’ M.O. that it is not funny), or she will succeed…and lose her super-powers instead, because this is how this sort of narrative works.

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

S.H.I.E.L.D., Real Deal - March 11

AoS have reached their 100^th episode this week, ‘The Real Deal’. Throughout the week, they were releasing all sorts of ‘Top Ten’ clips; between that and the cameo images of the various monsters faced by the agents in the previous seasons, one could expect that ‘The Real Deal’ will be some sort of a flashback episode, where the agents would relive their worst experiences and console each other, and emerge from this impromptu group therapy session as a better team. Instead, ‘The Real Deal’ got to be mostly about Phil. Let us elaborate?

By accident or design, ‘Blindspot’ has also released a special episode that evening, where agent Patterson got trapped in her own mind via some sort of a groundhog day effect and was still able to solve the tattoo mystery of the week – but the main focus of that ‘Blindspot’ episode had been character development, primarily Patterson’s, but the same went for the rest of the cast too. In ‘The Real Deal’…

In ‘The Real Deal’ most of the episode had been about Coulson and how he dealt with the fact that he was dying – again – as he did in the very first ‘Avengers’ movie and with the fear monster, embodied in the more human form of Deathlok – (apparently this was his obligatory visit for this season. Go him)! The only question there is why Coulson did not shoot him from the start – it was evident that this wasn’t the real Deathlok – and just went on to seal the rift, probably caused by the exploded beacon from the previous episode. Noah – another chromaton or whatever – did die saving the agents, (especially Fitz and May) from the explosion, but this was not addressed even once, was he that perfunctory? It is anyone’s guess, but-

But instead of some jubilee episode that AoS was setting it up, ‘The Real Deal’ felt more like a mess: there was the rift with the fear monster that just wanted to kill everyone, there was the FitzSimmons wedding, which, while lovely, came completely unexpectedly and felt decisively tagged-on, and then there was the Deke Shaw storyline. Seriously, what is his place on the show? Is he the new rookie and potentially Daisy’s love interest (at least for the season)?  Sometimes he acts rather how Lance Hunter did in S2 and Lincoln did in S3, other times he is more of just the comic relief, a man displaced in time and surprisingly immature. Coulson gave him his trademark dark shades, but only because he had to, not because Deke asked him to: in the first story arc of S5, Deke’s strength came from the fact that he wasn’t a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., he helped because he wanted to, and was his own person. Now, he is mostly a clown; he may beсome more important in the future episodes, but not in this one. AoS may be integrating Deke into the S.H.I.E.L.D. for real, but it is not doing a very good job of that plotline all the same. We will just have to wait and see what will happen to Deke and S.H.I.E.L.D. in the next episodes, now that General Hale and her team are on their tracks.

Back to Coulson? More like back to the flashbacks. The fear monster was precisely that – a monster that just walked around and did its best to kill people, no real motivation, no humanity, no nothing. Fitz – or Simmons – spouted some sort of a sci-fi sounding explanation behind it, but it did not matter: the monsters – Lash, Hive, the LMDs, the xenomorphs – they didn’t do anything, they just…were scary, physically scary, and whenever they got shot, they just collapsed into dust. They were fakes, illusions, and here the AoS clearly decided to invest into visual effects rather than substance: the framework version of Fitz, for example, was not physically scary, but he was still terrifyingly evil in the dark side. But did we see him in ‘The Real Deal’? No.

…Of course, ‘Blindspot’ had its’ own issues in this week’s episode; for some reason, the run-of-the-mill villain of the week – general Patrick Mulroney – became Patterson’s nemesis in her mind and the two actually had fighting face-down. Possibly, Patterson’s actress wanted to show off her skills and develop her character further – but it worked. Dr. Borden, one of Sandstorm’s villains, is also returning to the show; ‘Blindspot’s’ S3 has its own issues, mostly about where it wants to go and how it wants to change, but it is still a very good show, much better and coherent than AoS is – even without the sci-fi trappings, and as Patterson’s groundhog day scenario showed, they can do more than just realism, and without any flashy special effects, and yes, this brings us back to AoS.

When it came to their 100^th episode, AoS did something not unlike what it did in S3 with ‘The Fallen Agent’ story arc – it overwhelmed the audience with its promos and ads to the point that it failed to deliver the expectations, plus there was the potential bait-and-switch. The result? ‘The Real Deal’ did better than the AoS episode before it, but still less well than the episode before that. We will just have to wait and see what will AoS – and ‘Blindspot’, and so on – do next.

That is it for this week; see you all soon!

Blindspot - March 6

…Sometimes, real life outright sucks, and then there people like that American toad that got featured on NG and similar sites: it literally lost its’ head!

…No, really, sometime during the last winter hibernation this toad lost most of its face, and head, and skull. I am not sure if it been euthanized or not, but if it did, it would be a good thing, really. After all, could you survive without most of your head, face, skull, brain, etc.? A toad did, so these days, whenever I think that real life sucks, (and it does), I also remember the toad, and realize that it can always be worse, on top of everything else, you could become a sideshow attraction – the amazing live headless toad/etc. – due to some infection, most likely.

And in other news, I would like to talk briefly about last week’s ‘Blindspot’ episode, which was centered about some device, code-named ‘Nergal’. The name does belong to a god, though he is better known not as a god of pestilence, but of war and of death, but he does has pestilence in his portfolio, so here ‘Blindspot’ did go true, (though why is it trying to imitate AoS in S3 is anyone’s guess, and is another thing altogether), whereas the device’s device/logo of the sphinx…

Well, firstly, it shows the lack (or fatigue?) of imagination that begins to manifest in ‘Blindspot’ S3. The last time anything got designated as ‘a device’ was on a Pathfinder™ RPG session, when the GM was too lazy to give the McGuffin (that everyone was going for as the game’s ultimate conclusion) a proper name. Here, in last week’s ‘Blindspot’ episode, I got the same feeling.

Moreover, as for the sphinx,…it was not a ‘proper’ sphinx, but some sort of a sphinx-shedu bastard. The shedu was a creature similar to the Greco-Egyptian sphinx, but from the Mesopotamian mythology and it was a humanoid-bull, rather than a humanoid-lion hybrid. The humanoid-lion hybrid of the Mesopotamians was called a lamassu instead… So?

So it is weird as to why did team ‘Blindspot’ got the three confused. Couldn’t they just been satisfied with the traditional Greek or Egyptian sphinx? If not, there are other cultures that used sphinxes, including India and Southeast Asia countries. Instead, we got some sort of a sphinx-shedu hybrid, and who knows why?

…This is it for the moment; we will talk later this week…hopefully. (Though yeah, the poor toad had it worse).

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Comfort' - March 3

And so, S.H.I.E.L.D. is back. Real life being what it is, I cannot make guarantees that I will be able to follow in the upcoming weeks because of real life reasons, but I got to see this one, ‘…comforts of home’, so let me warn you – spoilers ahead. Got it? Now we continue.

…Yo-Yo loses both of her hands. Yes, this is a variation of the past episodes – the S2 finale, when Coulson lost one of his hands because of the bastardized Terrigenesis mist, and the S3 finale, when she got shot repeatedly and had to sit the actual final showdown with Hive and his Primitives, (when Lincoln got blown up alongside Hive by a nuke, and Luke Mitchell left AoS for ‘Blindspot’)… Basically, this is another rehash of the former AoS episodes…and seasons: somehow, after all of the adventures, the intrepid septet has arrived pretty much at the S2 beginning, save that this time instead of Grant or Tripp they have had Mack – and Yo-Yo, until Ruby, Dove Cameron’s character, cut off both of her arms with a chakram. Why? Because she is a psychotic assassin for her mother, General Hale, who plans to bring down S.H.I.E.L.D. with a team of her own, and for that reason, she has recruited Carl Creel, who is a villain once more. Go team Hydra!

…Oh wait, General Hale does not seem to have any Hydra symbolism associated with her; maybe she is just evil. That said, Carl Creel has entered the MCU as a minion of Whitehall and Bakshi, in the S2 premiere special, so it probably is not too surprising that he will become another one once more. Hydra or no Hydra – and there were signs that it was returning to AoS’ corner of MCU even outside of the framework back in S4 – he and S.H.I.E.L.D. are in for another rerun, and with Daisy’s powers still on the fritz, the Department is on the defensive, again.

Let us pause and recount for a second. Yo-Yo is down – until the FitzSimmons build her new hands or something, she will not be of any use in a field. Daisy’s powers are still blocked by a device of Kasius, and the FitzSimmons had not had yet a chance to try and extract it, so she is back to the S1-S2 seasons’ version of Skye, as she has shown, when she got Deke out of the brig.

This is worthwhile mentioning because, on one hand, Deke has come to the present alongside the ‘last’ agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. …so this means that we probably will not see the Ghost Rider/Robbie Reyes any time soon, (played by Gabriel Luna), and – the character of Yo-Yo, (played by NCB) is also down for the count. Hm. Piper Vasquez from S4 is back though, playing some sort of an ambiguous character, caught between S.H.I.E.L.D. and General Hale’s forces. Yeah, we have been there before, so we will have to wait and see just what AoS will do with her…unless it is a simple substitution switch: Piper for Yo-Yo. AoS before, (in S2 – Mack for Tripp), did this sort of character change, so it is not off the table either.

As for Deke…it’s anyone’s guess as to why AoS decided against bringing the Ghost Rider back, but, frankly, for a while Daisy went through various boyfriends/love interests every season, and maybe she still is, so let us hope first that Deke doesn’t die for real at S5 finale, (or before that), but…Coulson is dying, apparently, so does that mean that Clark Gregg has had enough of AoS and MCU and is leaving? If so, then maybe Jeff Ward, (who plays Deke Shaw), will stay on AoS as a part of a regular cast, but this has happened to Palicki & Blood (Morse & Hunter), and now there’s no sign of them.

No, seriously – there is no sign of Lance and Bobbi, of young Robin and her mother, even though the agents are back at the Lighthouse. Guess Palicki & Blood had enough of MCU after their show, ‘Marvel’s Most Wanted’ failed to launch and instead got assimilated into AoS. Just what is going at AoS behind the scenes?

…Finally, Coulson’s prosthetic arm has also taken a downgrade with all the space travel and is apparently back down to doing only what a regular flesh-and-blood limb can do. Why? It’s anyone’s guess, though it’s very likely that this is because of real life budget issues – all the space and aliens and their actors’ make-up and what-not cost AoS/MCU enough so that Gregg’s character, as well as Bennett’s, are down to being depicted as regular humans, (albeit trained agent ones), and NCB’s character – Yo-Yo – is also down for the count in a very intense way, and instead we got agent Piper, (played by someone else), who’s a regular human as well. (At least she was back in S4, since then yes, things could have changed). Now what?

Now we will get to see the jubilee 100^th episode next week – if real life permits. AoS has done some clear structural, well, restructure, rearrangement, if you will, and is now ready to deliver. We will just have to wait and see what the next episode will bring us.

Until then – see you soon, (hopefully).