Tag: comics

Why do I feel like Venom is going to suck?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No seriously, that’s not meant to be a rhetorical question.  Aside from knowing that a Venom film was in the works and that it was going to star Tom Hardy, and seeing a single picture of what Venom was going to look like, I couldn’t help but have this feeling that Venom was on the fast track to becoming an automatic stinker.

Really, I’ve got no basis at all to really believe that this movie is going to be bad, but I just can’t help but assume that this movie is going to blow.  A little bit of cursory research about the film only justifies the belief, like finding out that it’s most certainly NOT a Marvel Studios film, but a Sony Pictures production, which we all know how good their last few things have turned out. 

Furthermore, as a result of Sony having already forfeited the rights to Spider-Man, really makes me wonder how a stand-alone Venom film could even come to fruition, considering the fact that the entire basis for the Venom character is basically Spider-Man’s dark side manifested through symbiosis.  Or, it’s the same Venom that was once bonded to both Tobey Maguire Spider-Man and then Topher Grace Venom, and they’re going to do away with Eddie Brock outright.  But either of those are still terrible ideas, and just feeds into the thought that Venom is doomed before it even comes out.

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Netflix’s greatest accomplishment

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

They made Iron Fist cool.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those nerds who automatically assume Iron Fist to be the worst show out of the Netflix Marvel Comics Universe solely because it’s about Iron Fist, one of the lamest heroes in the history of Marvel Comics.  Frankly, I thought season one wasn’t terrible, and I maintain my unpopular stance that it was stronger than either season of Jessica Jones. 

In the grand spectrum of the Netflix MCU, both are still at the bottom of the barrel in comparison to Daredevil, Luke Cage and the Punisher, but we all know that they all had to exist and be created in order for there to even be a The Defenders in the first place.  But if you ask me, Iron Fist stands above Jessica Jones, and it’s not really that much of a contest.

But I just finished season 2 of Iron Fist, and my general reaction isn’t one of relief that I ground through it and that I’m up-to-date on Netflix MCU programming (like I did after Jessica Jones S2), but one of a general satisfaction, and reason to be optimistic that the series could continue in a positive direction in the upcoming season(s) that I genuinely hope come to existence someday.

Frankly, unending kudos go to Netflix, the writers and the showrunners for taking such a weak property and molding and shaping a halfway decent program out of it.  It was undoubtedly better than the first season, and the performances from the crew were all pretty decent in their capacities.  I can’t say that I really followed the comics at all, but from what I understand the season has been a somewhat fair portrayal of source materials while seeming fresh enough to adapt to live performances.

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Cloak & Dagger is obviously Marvel’s C-squad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to pretend like I’ve ever read any of the comics, but given the track record of decent television shows, I looked forward to Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, and figured I could figure out what was going on from just the show with no prior familiarity of them from comic books.

However, there were some red flags for me that I kind of knew of going into the show, and although I did make it through the first season, I have to say that I’m not really that impressed as a whole, and if I had to rank the show it is a definitive last place behind most all other Marvel television shows out there.

For starters, the show aired on the Freeform network.  I didn’t even know that that network even still existed; I knew it did at one point, because there must’ve been one show that I saw while channel surfing in the past when I used to have cable television, but for the most part, it’s a no-name cable channel, and it should have been some sort of indication of the quality of the programming, even if it did have the Marvel name printed in front of it.

Going blind into this show worked against me in this instance, because I lacked any “Oh! That’s so-and-so” moments that tended to keep me engaged and interested in just about any other Marvel property show previously seen.  That being said, the first two episodes of the show were a complete slog, and I was wholly uninterested in the characters and plot. 

I stopped watching after the first two episodes, citing a poor mood to be watching new television, and told myself to give it one more episode before giving it the Legion treatment AKA walking away before feeling like I’m wasting my time.  The third episode was on the verge of making me throw in the towel, but then the plot started to get interesting in the final eight minutes of the episode, which saved it from abandonment, and then the fourth episode finally started to get somewhere and kept it watchable.  But with a ten-episode season, it literally takes 40% of the season for it to become watchable.

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Unpopular opinion: Jessica Jones is a weak show

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yes, I have seen Iron Fist.  Yes, I agree that Danny Rand is a bitch and a square simultaneously.  But when the day is over, after finishing the second season of Netflix’s Jessica Jones, I can still say that I found Iron Fist to be the more enjoyable show.

Granted, this is like debating on Pizza Hut or Papa John’s over who’s the worst pizza, and both shows sit at the bottom of the barrel in my opinion when it comes to Netflix’s ever expanding library of Marvel properties set primarily in Manhattan.  But for reasons I can’t comprehend, Jessica Jones always seems to have this pass that the majority of the populous I ever speak with in regards to these shows always seems to think that it’s such a fantastic show.

I get that it’s a show with a strong female lead created by a crew with primarily females in key roles, so I understand the importance of the show from that standpoint, but from just the sheer storytelling and enjoyment factor, I just don’t see it.

The main takeaway I had after I finished the last episode of season 2 of Jessica Jones was it was a season with an objective of deconstructing all of the characters in the series, and presumptuously setting up for a third season that hasn’t even been confirmed yet.  I will say that I do think it was better than the first season, which literally reset three times, versus the actually linear singular plot of season 2, but again, that’s another comparison of two low-grade things.  I walk away from Jessica Jones S2 with feelings of unsatisfied disappointment, little excitement for another season, and a general loathing of the Trish Walker character.

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I’d vote for that

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So it’s been a little bit of time since the rise and fall of Renaissance, Georgia, ironically before it even got to be risen officially.  It’s actually been quiet since then, which means the twisted local government is either plotting their next attempt to deceive the people and roll something out without any of their representation, or perhaps they’re busy watching Netflix instead.  Either way, with the failure that was Renaissance, the name of the area remains the cold and callous sounding “South Fulton.”

And unless you’ve been living under a rock, Black Panther-mania has taken over the world for this hot second, and few people in the world can actually say anything bad about the ground and record-breaking film.  Needless to say, all things Black Panther has been on the tips of everyone’s tongues this week, as just about everyone in the world is still seeking out tickets and trying to go see the film for the first, or third times.

I saw this “joke” pop up on my old neighborhood’s Nextdoor account, and my first thought was “too easy.”  A city in the Metro area that’s like ~80% black wanting to call themselves “Wakanda?”  You don’t say!

But then I thought about how alternatives would have been shit like “Renaissance” or “Atlanta Heights” or something else shitty, and suddenly Wakanda doesn’t seem like such a bad option.  Not only is it ironically funny if it were officially in place, I have to imagine that just about every person who’s seen Black Panther at this point would be completely on board with it, thus eliminating the whole “you can’t change shit without us the people” conflict would be out of the equation.

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Thoughts on Black Panther

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When mythical gf and I got to the theater and took our seats, they happened to be like in the third row and way off to the left.  Granted, theaters have come a long way to where it’s not nearly as bad closer up front than it used to be, and we had seats angled to face the screen that also reclined, so it could easily have been way worse, but there was a brief moment where I thought that it might’ve been preferable had we waited just a little bit and gotten more direct facing seats.

However, the following morning, I kept hearing from every interested movie goer that they couldn’t find a single theater that had any available tickets left for any reasonable showtime of Black Panther.  Showings were being shown as sold out just about everywhere across the Metro Atlanta area, and suddenly getting to see the movie when we saw the movie didn’t seem like such a bad thing after all.

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts about Black Panther, and to cut to the chase, none of them are at all bad.  Full disclosure, I’ve never really been a fan of the comic book, and I’ve always held Black Panther on the tier of Marvel superheroes like Thor and Daredevil but still above shit like Iron Fist or Quasar, as properties that I knew existed, I knew their place in the Marvel Universe, but I just didn’t really give a shit about.  I liked X-Men the most, enjoyed singular properties like Iron Man and Spider-Man, and I’d been on and off with properties like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. 

Needless to say, the prospect of a Black Panther film wasn’t something that excited me much when I heard about it, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe had made me capable of enjoying properties I was lukewarm about like Thor and Ant-Man, so it was also safe to be optimistic about a stand-alone Black Panther, especially with the exciting manner in which he was introduced in Captain America: Civil War.

I think it goes without saying that no single Marvel film has had the magnitude of hype that Black Panther has had, and there’s very obvious reasons of why such was the case, given the tumultuous social climate we live in today in the 2010s.  One of the challenges that I had during the hype, arrival, viewing and post-thinking of the film was creating separation between the film itself and everything that the film stood for in modern society.

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