S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Collision Course II' - July 12

‘Collision Course Part II’ is over. And?

First, the obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It can suck for many reasons; one of them is that you may have a mindset just cannot enjoy the present as it constantly remembers the future just lurking around the metaphorical bend; your life, and your time, start in the future, become present for a brief moment and then vanish in the distance of the past, of what-have-been, and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Well, nothing that is not stupid or illegal, anyhow. Where were we?

Sarge’s plans have failed, his crew, except for Snowflake, are dead, though given how AoS treats its’ guest stars, it’s only a matter of time until she’s dead one way or another. Moreover, agent Davis seems to have succumbed to something at the end of the episode, and since Izil doesn’t appear to be dead, (Hell, spoiler alert – she’s coming to Earth proper in the next week’s episode), odds are is that he had been infested by Izil’s alien space bats back on the space ship. On one hand, it is sad, Davis has grown on the audience, some, since his appearance in the S3 (or 4), but on the other…see Snowflake above. Odds of him and Kim dying as AoS S6 is coming to yet another climax are good, ‘good guys’ need to lose some people to make the show look real, or whatever. What next?

Well, there had been ‘Stranger Things’ S3, which introduced the Russian/Soviet threat into the mix, because of course it did. Modern incarnation of Russia, the Russian Federation, is trouble whatever way you look; the problem is that USA seems to be looking at it through some sort of a history lens full of Cold War semi-nostalgia, and it’s a wrong approach on top of everything else.

What is going on the RF? Putin worked in the KGB, in Eastern Germany; his training was oriented more outwards than inwards, and it shows: he works RF’s foreign policy very well, but what is going on in the country is something else, and that something is bad. However! Since US is also treating it as some sort of an inconvenience or a distraction, (not unlike how they are currently using Epstein, the bastard), Putin can get away with anything – for a while. Then, when his time is up, anything can happen; for example, ‘his people’ can rip him apart as they did with the Imposter in the 17^th century and scatter the pieces all over Moscow, as they did in the past. USA has its flaws, but it is very much a more civilized country than RF is, so USA! USA!

…On the other hand, Georgia (we’re talking the Caucasian country here, not the American state), has come out the loser here: it tried to provoke RF into something stupid, and all it did was cause civil unrest within itself, and sanctions from RF from without – and USA, alongside EU and the rest of the ‘Western world’ promptly ignored it, though it did appear worried that the civil unrest will cause their gay pride parade to be cancelled. RF’s oppression of the minorities is bad; the way that USA aggrandizes them to be used for profit (both private and governmental) is not better.

Back to ST S3? Not really. Aside from them Cold War feels, all it really has is a plot line out of an RPG, and we’re talking Dungeons & Dragons or its’ forgotten cousin, the d20 Modern, rather than Pathfinder/Starfinder. God knows why, but there it is. People seem to love it, but if so, more power to them; we played enough D&D 3.5 to have our fill of mind flayers, and hydra variants, and Demogorgon and his thralls to last us without going back to screens to watch ST instead of anything else…

This ‘anything else’ brings us to TLK 2019, and… it was uninspiring. Both the remade B&B and ‘Aladdin’ brought something new to the viewers; the remade ‘Dumbo’ might have even been too new judging the audiences’ reaction, but TLK 2019? Not new enough. It is the other way around, really.

The problem is that of all Disney movies it is the least anthropomorphic; Disney’s original ‘Jungle Book’ movie had humans to diversity the animal cast, while ‘Robin Hood’ was directly anthropomorphic; really, a direct ancestor to ‘Zootopia’. (And ‘Sing’, I suppose). If Disney tried to utilize the variant ‘Hamlet’ script it wouldn’t really be a problem, and not just because ‘Hamlet’ was about as historically accurate as ‘Robin Hood’ is, you know? However, TLK is about ordinary animals executing a human-level complexity script, and that is already problematic, since ‘Hamlet’ does not really fit African realities, (animal or otherwise), to begin with. When it comes to Marvel, or SW, or even human-based movies, such as TLM, ‘the Princess and the Frog’, and etc. that isn’t really a problem, because there’s only so much realism can be instilled into a world where people turn into animated candlesticks and clocks, beasts, and frogs, but TLK? It was also the most realistic Disney movie to begin with, since – no magic. Oh, Rafiki is clearly a shaman or a witch doctor of the world, but even in the original TLK, his magic was kind of subdued and subtle, especially by children’s standards, (just look at ST and what passes for magic there).

…And now remove the quirks of the old 90s animation, replace everything with the 2019’s computer wizardry, and suddenly you get… real life animals that talk in English (or whatever other language spoke in the countries where TLK 2019 is running), and also acting with human motivations – and it does not mesh. In Canada, the Mirvish theatre performs its’ version of TLK on a regular basis – and we are talking human actors acting on stage in real life, just dressed in various costumes. This works, because TLK characters are driven by human motivations; they are humans in animal skins, and making those ‘skins’ look like their real life counterparts doesn’t help. TLK 2019 is not a flop, but the 90s version was still the better one.

Back to AoS? Not really, it would be nice to think that Sarge and Snow have some sort of an evil Ward and Kara dynamic, but odds are that this was already done in S4 by LMD May and Coulson, so there is that. The show still doesn’t know what to do about Daisy and Deke; it is trying to put them together, but only half-heartedly; if Snowflake dies – when Snowflake dies – it should push their relationship further together, but we have no idea just how much do the actors want this to happen, and what is going on behind the scenes? (Other than Jeff/Deke apparently hating Iain/Fitz). We will just have to wait and see, I guess.

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

Mulan 2020 first trailer - July 7

Now you may ask – and what about the first trailer of the ‘Mulan’ 2020 remake? Since we have already mentioned the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ remake and ‘The Lion King’ remake is coming out later this month.

Firstly, the ‘Little Mermaid’ remake. There shouldn’t be a problem having an Afro-American actress being the titular character – as MCU’s ‘Spider-Man’ movies and Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ remake have shown, race is by no means a defining feature of a movie character, but! Then there was J-Ro’s ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’, remember it? Both Hermione and Rose Weasley were played by Afro-American (Afro-British?) characters, and it didn’t work; J-Ro herself has abandoned that aspect of her HP-verse and is currently playing with Newt Scamander and co.; true, both movies had POC as actors, but if you compare it to, say, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, then you notice that J-Ro’s movies are notably underwhelming in that department. For its’ part – and that is just as important – Disney’s remakes are at their best, when they follow close the original animated movies, with just some differences, as ‘Aladdin 2019’ and the previously aired ‘Beauty and the Beast’ remake showed. When differences are much greater, as they were in the ‘Dumbo’ remake, then Disney begins to have problems. So far, TLK seems to be like the original movie; TLM, judging by the trailers and teasers that we have seen – not so much, (though they were sketchy, fair enough), so we will have to wait and see. This brings us to ‘Mulan 2020’, only not.

First, there is also the honorable mention of the Ghostbusters remake; no, Disney did not make it, but it was a remake, and it failed. It was really quite ironic – there were all those people arguing pro and contra, if the gender-flip of the original Ghostbusters film was worthwhile – and then the movie flopped on its’ own merit, and that’s the end of that aspect of the Ghostbusters franchise, as opposed to, say, the comic crossover between them and TMNT, when the Shredder had killed some rival crimelord, and the latter’s restless spirit returned as a ghost, and TMNT had to team with the Ghostbusters, because their skills aren’t really effective against a ghost… the Ghostbusters’ franchise is working out quite well, thank you very much, movie flop or no flop.

This brings us to ‘Mulan 2020’, to TLK 2019, to TLM, and the abovementioned point – racial issues do not matter, plot matters. ‘Mulan 2020’ is rumored to be very much reworked from the original 90s’ animated feature, meaning that it might have problems in 2020 when it comes to the big screen. Those problems probably will not be exclusive to racial matters or cultural appropriation, but Disney may pretend that they are, as they tried to do with their SW films, and that now will be a bad idea: Disney/SW merger may end at the end of the SW9 movie…or rather, the current incarnation of SW franchise will. The merger itself will go on for a while, as the numerous SW comics are indicating: the juggernaut is intently trying to change the public opinion regarding the rebooted SW before the SW9 film comes out…with mixed success. Of course, Disney princesses as a whole have their own comic series already, but that is different – SW, proportionally, is a much more popular and more bought franchise out of the two… but let us wait first until TLK comes out later this month (July 2019) before we make any assumptions…

This is it for now; see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Collision Course I' - July 5

…And so, for better or worse, we are back with AoS. Real life being what it is, I can make no guarantees that we are going to make it through the S6 finale – did I mention that I hate my life and especially my family lately? Life itself isn’t so bad, every once in a while you get something unexpected, like an overly arrogant red-winged blackbird male singing almost in your face and almost not giving a fuck about you, but family is something else, something that is much harder to stomach even on a good day; and as for a bad one…

Yes, I am aware that that feeling is likely to be reciprocated – I just do not care. A man has to be honest at least on his own blog, so there is that, and if people have issues, that is tough. Now onto AoS?

…Honestly, I would rather rant some more, maybe even much more, about real life, about how there’s some shaman going across practically the entire Russian Federation on foot so that he could exorcise either a demon from Putin or Putin himself from Kremlin, (the two concepts are interchangeable, really), and how nothing similar in the U.S. regarding the Donald is taking place. The Russians’ claim of a socio-political stability in their country is fake, but they’re doing their best to uphold it anyhow…but the same is going on the U.S.A. – the media might be rocking the boat, the proletariat, (or the plebeians, if you want to go all ancient Roman empire instead), but the patricians, the elite? Yeah, they are about just as detached from the rest of their people as their Russian counterparts are – and that brings to AoS, sort of.

First, let us start with the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ remake of Disney, which will feature an Afro-American Ariel. People are divided about this already, but what matters to us is that it brings us to MCU’s Michelle Jones, who is based – partially – on the more traditional Mary Jane Watson, who, just like the 90s’ Ariel, is a Caucasian redhead, unlike MCU’s Michelle Jones, as played by Zendaya. There were many complaints about her playing the new MJ in MCU, but what do you know? People have accepted her, and they will accept the new Ariel too – Americans are good at this sort of thing; the problems of Disney with SW are not really about race or gender, and more about Disney & SW pissing off the original SW fan base from the beginning of their merger – but we have digressed.

One of the reasons as to why MCU is succeeding where the latest X-Man movie – for example – has failed, is because of interconnectivity: where ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ existed in a vacuum, not connected to any other X-Men films, not really, not even the ‘Apocalypse 2018’ film, ‘Far From Home’ is very much a part of MCU, properly connected with other MCU films, especially the ‘Iron Man’ movies, making ‘Far From Home’ a part of a team, metaphorically speaking. This gives ‘Far From Home’ a greater material range than ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ had, even though it wasn’t as bad as people claimed that it was – but we’re not talking about it anymore, we’re talking about AoS.

One of the plot lines of AoS’ S6 is that Sarge is really an AU version of Coulson who acts nothing like him, and does not really appear to care about his alter ego’s life – all he cares about his mission to stop Izil, aka the Beast. Leaving aside the fact that this is the most blatant material appropriation of BtVS and AtS, (but mostly BtVS S5 and Glory), this character is supposedly that Meso-American goddess, mostly of war and the like, but here she is utilizing the alien space bats that we have met in the past episodes already. Sarge is planning to stop her, no matter what is the cost, but what is the catch? People, i.e. the audience, no longer appear to care about AoS in large enough numbers, and what is more, the chemistry between the actors appears to be gone too, unless you are talking about FitzSimmons…but for the moment the FitzSimmons are separate from the rest of the crew, acting as an unwitting part of an alien Trojan horse of Izil. It sounds exciting, and yet it appears to have nothing in common with the rest of MCU; at least in S3 the writers did try to connect AoS with MCU, and Coulson’s appearance and (relatively minor) role on ‘Captain Marvel’ the movie was supposedly a similar effort too. Sadly, it does not appear to be working; Gregg’s new character is pointedly detached from Coulson, and AoS itself appears to be equally detached from the rest of MCU again, which is not good. MCU isn’t without its’ flaws, but it still is better, proportionally speaking, than AoS is – and that’s before we’re even talking about the reboot of Deke’s character, for example, or the complete lack of chemistry between Gregg and Chloe Bennett (Coulson and Daisy/Quake), Gregg and Wen. AoS really does not do couples anymore – there are the FitzSimmons, (who are the token couple on AoS these days, really – and to a lesser extent, on this episode, a comic relief), and also Mack and Yo-Yo. At least those two are back together again, yay!

Yes, we have talked how AoS is recycling, with the emphasis on re-cycling, its’ old material repeatedly, so it is a good thing that they are going for something completely new now. Sadly, this ‘newness’ got ruined by the disjointedness of the S6 instead. In S4 AoS showed that they can bring new material and not recycle old one – well, actually, they could do both – quite effectively. Here and now in S6 – not so much, which is a pity. Ah well, real life still has it worse.

…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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dark Phoenix proper - June 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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