In superhero projects, the hero helps out the world or the community because they feel like since they have the power to help out, that it’s their responsibility to do so. Even though it might be dangerous path to go down, if the hero has the ability to save humanity while tip toing the line of morals, they should do that.
This segways me to my views on X-Men Days of Future Past. First of all, it was an incredible movie, one of my favorite superhero movies of all time, however, I do see one change that could’ve solved the problems of the movie within the first few minutes of it.
The movie takes place in the future where a group of robots called Sentinels are programmed with one purpose, eliminate all mutants. After they completed their mission, they started targeting humans that might contain the mutant gene, and then that snowballed into a total imprisonment of humanity.
The surviving mutants have been running from the Sentinels, and every time they are caught by them, Kitty Pride sends back a mutant’s consciousness into the past a week or so to warn the mutants of the coming attack so they can keep on running.
The surviving mutants come up with the plan to send Logan’s consciousness decades into the past to stop the creation of the Sentinels, thus saving the future from them. Logans awakens in the past and searches for a young Charles Xavier to explain why he’s here and they assemble a team to go save the future.
Now to my moral dilemma. Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to send Logan to maybe back in time to the first or second movie instead? In the past, the young Xavier refused to use his powers and was a drunken hermit for Logan to fix. In the first or second movies, Xavier’s powers are at their peak and he could’ve used the machine Cerebro to connect to the minds of every person in the Sentinel program and stopped it from happening.
Yes, Xavier entering the minds of potentially hundreds of people and influencing their decisions is crossing the line, but do the ends justify the means? If you have the ability to save all of humanity by compromising your morals for a moment, is that worth it?
I remember a time when movies were fun without being overly stupid. Where even movies with serious plots found time for comedy and silly movies had serious moments. Violent Night is action packed, but not overbearing, funny without being cringy, but most importantly fun
The plot is very simple. A group of highly trained mercenaries attempt to rob a rich family during their Christmas party. Santa, who is depressed about how the true meaning of Christmas is dying, is in the middle of delivering presents when the robbery happens. From the trailer, this looked like John Wick in a Santa Clause outfit and for most of the movie it’s the opposite, but when Santa finds the Christmas spirit again and taps into his Viking Heritage, he goes on a killing spree, brutally killing all the mercenaries with a sledgehammer and with Christmas Magic.
Was this an Oscar winning movie? No. Was it one of the most entertaining movies of the year, that didn’t try to shove a political message down my throat? Absolutely yes. David Harbour, who played Santa Clause, wants to see this made into a series where Santa goes against other mythical creatures like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
So if you’re looking for a movie that makes you laugh, fills your blood lust and makes you feel something, then check out Violent Night.
Netflix has no right messing with my soul like this. The clip they show look like a silly show about a child who lives alone in an apartment complex who does random shenanigans. Seems like a fun show to watch where you can turn your brain off and relax. Then episode 3 comes around and you find out that Kotaro’s mother is dead, her life insurance is how he affords the apartment, but he’s not told she’s dead and its from a generous donor, and he has a restraining order against his abusive father. 0-100 very fast. Thank God its only 10 episodes and doesn’t look like its being renewed for a second season.
The rest of the show is sadly an attack on the soul. You find out Kotaro spent a lot of time homeless and was eating tissues and leaves to survive. Kotaro does help his neighbors out with their problems.
Karino, an artist, Kotaro helps learn deadlines and responsibilities. Tamaru, he helps repair the relationship with his son. And Akitomo, he helps her run away from her abusive boyfriend. The show’s goal is to show people what really matters in life. Love and family.
Kotaro and Karino have a good father and son relationship. Karino becomes one of the best father figures in anime I’ve ever seen and in the final episode, hides a terrible secret from Kotaro. That his mom is dead. He gives Kotaro hope that they might one day meet and makes sure he will protect him from his abusive father and his past.
The show is highly rewarding, but incredibly sad. One of those shows where you cry in the end, but it’s a happy cry, because you know Kotaro will never be alone or unhappy again. And maybe that’s why I’m glad the show might not continue. We don’t need 10 seasons of him getting better. We can watch the final credits roll and know its going to work out for him. That he will get the love from his neighbors that blood relative could never give him. And maybe that’s the best kind of ending.
On par with the rest of the writing of Phase 4 of the MCU, Wakanda Forever wanted to put a callback to a previous, better written, movie and just change it up hoping nobody would notice the absolute ridiculousness of it. The scene I’m talking about is Shuri sparing Namor in the final battle. The setup was similar situation to Civil War, where her brother T’Challa spared Zemo in the end and essentially made peace with him, to an extent.
Now let’s take a look at why T’Challa’s act of mercy made more sense. In Civil War, Zemo came up with the plan to take the Avengers apart because he was upset that they caused the death of his family in Age of Ultron. He planted a bomb during a massive political meeting and framed Bucky for the blast. In the collateral damage, King T’Chaka was killed.
Afterwards, T’Challa sought revenge on Zemo and even paired up with Iron Man and others to ensure that. T’Challa finally got Zemo alone and you can clearly see he’s moments away from killing this man, the only reason he didn’t was because he let Zemo monologue. The movie does a fantastic job of showing T’Challa’s face as Zemo explained how his family died. You can see the man seething for the beginning of it and then he looks down, almost ashamed that he wanted revenge on a man who has lost everything. I consider this scene the greatest acting performance of the late Chadwick Bosman’s career and he was even blurred out for most of it and the rest he stood there silent.
This wasn’t a personal attack on Wakanda, on T’Challa or King T’Chaka. As bluntly put, it was simply collateral damage and Zemo even apologizes to T’Challa for his actions before trying to kill himself. T’Challa didn’t kill Zemo for that simple fact. And it wasn’t worth it. He didn’t kill Zemo, but he didn’t let him escape either, why? Because it was the right thing to do.
Now take Wakanda Forever. When Namor killed Queen Ramonda, it wasn’t by accident. He MEANT to kill her. He stabbed the glass with his spear with her on the other end. It didn’t break and you can see the frustration on his face. Then he throws some water grenades at her and she drowns.
Shuri then wants to get revenger on Namor. She defeats him, puts a spear to his neck and then she steals T’Challa’s line about vengeance has consumed you line and she doesn’t kill him. Shuri spares his life and even offers peace between the two nations in the hopes to working towards a better future.
T’Challa spared Zemo because his father’s death was a product of collateral damage and grief.
Shuri spared Namor after he waged war against the surface world and Wakanda, tried to drown it and tried to kill her mother twice and succeeding.
It is hilarious to think that these two scenes are seen as similar by fans. Shuri sparing Namor wasn’t an act of mercy, but one of stupidity alone. Namor is one of the most powerful beings we’ve seen in the Marvel world, a man whose strength and abilities can even rival those of Ronan, Hela and even Thanos. Namor even tried to kill Shuri by stabbing her through the stomach with his spear. The only reason he walked away was because he thought she was dead and not of mercy. This man does not deserve mercy in the slightest.
Zemo was sitting on a rock when T’Challa approached him, moments away from killing himself. He didn’t attack T’Challa, he didn’t try to escape, he was just sitting there ready to end it all. And it was after T’Challa heard Zemo’s backstory and his apology, that T’Challa deemed it the right thing to do to spare him so he can face justice for his actions.
The writing in Marvel has taken a massive step back and the writers are so desperate to make something good that they are taking previous scenes and butchering them. Some people say its “fan service”, but I see it as laziness. and you could’ve achieved the same result by having Namor “accidentally” be the cause of Queen Ramonda death. Maybe he attacked a plane that crashed into the tower killer her. Maybe he was holding a water grenade and it came loose and into the tower, and still drowning her. Whatever the way, accidentally killing a Queen is a better arch for redemption than trying to flat out kill her.
Marvel, why are you terrible at everything now? Spider-Man 3 did revenge and redemption so much better and that movie came out God knows how long ago. Recycling similar story arches is just lazy and you can’t even do it right anymore.
Everything that Marvel did right died when Tony Stark snapped his fingers. No Way Home was the brightest part of Phase 4, even though it was essentially Member Berries the Movie. Not saying that Marvel can’t find success recycling previous story arches and reinventing old characters, but if you’re not going to bother to put in the work and remember why these characters were great to begin with, then what’s the point.
Wakanda Forever is thankfully the final product of the disastrous Phase 4 of the MCU. I only hope since most upcoming Marvel products are being massively delayed, that the studio has heard our complaints and is trying to reinvent themselves, plan their stories out and do right by the fans who have watched these movies for over a decade.
I feel like its a fiar question. How does a group of survivors make a dent against a fully automated killing force that doesnt get tired and knows no mery?
With Johnny Depp cutting ties with Disney forever, I highly doubt we’ll see him in a Marvel movie. DC should take advantage of this by immediately firing Amber Heard (yes, I made the case to keep her in a previous video, but that was before the trial) and cast Depp in a role. My first choice for Depp would be Green Arrow, mainly because of his facial hair, but I think the perfect role would be Jason Blood.
Blood, and his counterpart Etrigan, aren’t the first character’s fans name when ranking their favorite superheroes, but Blood and Etrigan are a very interesting duo. I think DC, and Marvel alike, shouldn’t be focused on the bread-and-butter characters, but trying to make others in their universe work on the big screen.
Maybe a great time to introduce Blood into the DCEU would be during the rumored Zatanna movie. DC is starting to explore the supernatural with Doctor Fate and Constantine, so having Blood have some kind of a cameo in the movie makes sense. I would be ok with total tease of Etrigan, where we see the aftermath of a fight, a bunch of guards are torn to pieces and we see a slight glimmer of Etrigan as he is engulfed into flames and Blood emerges.
What do you think about Johnny Depp joining DC and who would you like to see him play?
Better Call Saul might be one of the best shows of the decade. Sadly, the show is in its advertised final season, and I think they are rushing things. With 7 episodes left, there is a lot to get through. At this point, Jimmy hasn’t even gotten his “Cathedral of Justice,” and Jimmy didn’t meet Walter or Jesse yet.
I imagine the series will end with Kim dying tragically and Saul being put in some kind of witness protection or on the run somehow. At the start of some of the seasons, we see Jimmy working in a mall, trying to lay low. I remember a line from Breaking Bad where Mike alludes to something bad that happened to Jimmy, but we never got an answer.
So now we are in the middle of a war between Gus and Salamanca, which I imagine that’s how Kim would be killed. We never really got a time frame on how long Jimmy had his practice in Breaking Bad, but it must’ve been long enough to go through a few seasons of Breaking Bad.
With only a few episodes left we have to finish the war, Kim’s death, Jimmy’s law firm, the arrest of Jimmy, AND the time jump into the future with some kind of ending there. That’s a lot to show in such a small amount of time.
Better Call Saul is one of the best-written shows in a while, but the writers have a massive undertaking to finish this show as strong as how it started. What do you guys think of Better Call Saul, and how do you predict it’ll end?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t think certain things get leaked without a reason. Disney has announced they have a woman kissing woman scene in the new Buzz Lightyear movie. Many people think this is in response to a new bill proposed by Ron DeSantis, banning schools from teaching about sexual orientation until after 3rd grade. The bill is now being trolled as an anti-gay bill and Disney is mad about that.
Now all of a sudden, it is leaked that the same sex kissing scene will be in the movie…after apparently being cut from the movie. My issue is why is a kiss the most talked about thing in this movie? I haven’t heard a single thing about the plot, any secret cameos or anything important.
The same thing happened before the movie the Eternals came out. In that movie, there was a man kissing another man for a second and that was all the internet was talking about. I didn’t read anything about how this movie tied into the MCU, nothing about the after-credit scenes, nothing about anything of value except the kiss. And Disney blamed the low box office numbers and bad reviews on that kiss.
Is Disney already writing the narrative of why Lightyear is going to fail? Are they going to go with the Liberal 3 (catchphrase pending), that the hate is from homophobic, misogynist, white supremacists? Or is the hate going to be well deserved because the movie might be poorly written?
I don’t expect this movie to crush the box office records by any means. The creation of Disney+ makes me ok with waiting for the movie to come to streaming for the included price. I think the only Marvel movie I saw in theaters in the last few years was No Way Home because it wasn’t going to be on Disney+. So why would I pay extra to see the movie in theaters of pay a Disney+ premium price to watch a movie that I can just wait a few months to see for no extra cost?
More importantly, will the Chinese release have this same sex kiss in it? Disney has kowtowed to China many times over the past few years. Making Finn smaller on the Chinese Star Wars poster and putting Black Panther in a mask in the movie poster didn’t really scream China really like black people. The Eternals didn’t have a release in China because of the same sex kiss. China is a massive part of Disney’s profits, so it’ll be interesting to see what the new Disney direction will be without China’s influence.
Do you agree with my theory that Disney is pushing the narrative? Do you think Lightyear will fail in the box office?
After “the slap” Will Smith’s career is in jeopardy. Smith has already resigned from the Academy Awards (whatever that means) and will be facing legal charges from Chris Rock in the coming weeks. Apparently, Bad Boys 4 and his upcoming on Netflix are on pause for the moment.
My prediction is that Smith is going to check himself into some kind of rehab for a bit. His family will be completely silent on the incident. Smith will plead not guilty to any Rock lawsuits and get it dropped to no jail time, some rehab and a big damages settlement. Rock already had hecklers at his comedy special shortly after the Oscars so he can easily say this incident has impacted his career.
The real truth is that Smith doesn’t care about his actions, he cares about his punishment and that’s why he’s getting a jump start on his redemption path. Right now, he and his wife are working on his apology to the world. He’s going to donate a big portion of his next movie paycheck to some kind of abusers group.
In a few years, people won’t forget about the slap, but Smith’s career will be just fine. His agent will start casting him in big ensemble movies where Smith can be a supporting actor and the movie won’t be boycotted. Smith will go back to roots and act in cool stuff and not Oscar winning movies that nobody will ever see or heard existed.
But where do you see Will Smith’s career going forward?
World War Joe 