Author: Shmee

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The Flash Finishes His First Run!

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Season one of The Flash is over, and it has been a great season!  I have to say, I thought it might loose its way in the middle of the season, but the it found its way back in the end.  It had one of the best end of season cliff hangers I have seen in a long time.  I am not sure how they are going to get out of that mess unless they get a little help from Supergirl.

It is clear the writers don’t have the same problem with killing people off that Marvel does.  Unlike Arrow though the deaths didn’t feel gratuitous, and they added weight to the story, but as we have seen that doesn’t mean they stay dead.  I mean they introduced the Lazarus Pits for crying out loud.  Death might have a hard time sticking in this universe.

I can’t wait to see what they have planned with season two, and how The Flash is going to interact with Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, and possibly Supergirl.  With this much of the DC universe revealed there are no limits on the storylines they can explore.  Who cares if the DC movies don’t turn out, because their TV has been excellent.

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Daredevil Is the Marvel Show Fans Have Been Wanting!

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I remember the excitement when Agents of SHEILD launched, but then I remember the waves of crushing disappointment fans felt when it wasn’t the superhero show they longed for.  To be fair I hear that Agents of SHEILD has found its footing, so I may need to binge watch it soon to catch up, but Daredevil was great from the start and mostly to its finish.  It had a gripping story of one man trying to make a difference, sure the man is a ninja, but one man none the less.  It makes me wonder why they didn’t start with this show in the first place.

I think why Daredevil succeeds while Agents struggled at first is that it is not tied as closely to the movies.  Sure there are nods to the films, and comments about some of the Avengers, but for the most part this is a smaller story and not something the events of the movies would affect at all.  It is too low level to even hit the Avengers radar.  It was refreshing to see a small scale superhero arch from Marvel when everything they have been doing lately was been so cataclysmic.   The worse thing that happens if Daredevil fails is the end to a portion of New York.  Not the world.  Even then it is forced gentrification not annihilation.   It is a much more intimate affair.

If I had any qualms about the show, it is that ended on somewhat of a down note for me, and not the rollicking high that it started on.  Still good, but not as great as the start.  It also reinforced that Marvel has a death (or lack there of) problem.  It doesn’t know how or when to pull the trigger, and the less we talk about the new Daredevil outfit the better.  Sure it looks a lot like the DC TV costumes, but those really aren’t great templates to work with, but much like the DC shows if they keep the quality up I can live with an ugly Daredevil jumpsuit.

I love what Marvel and Netflix did with this show, and now I am looking forward to AKA Jessica Jones even more.  If Marvel can keep their stories contained like they did in Daredevil, we should be in for quite a few treats as they lay out their next few Netflix shows, or at least until “The Man Without Fear” returns.

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Shmee Rides With Mad Max On Fury Road!

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I had the pleasure of watching Mad Max: Fury Road by George Miller over the weekend, and I have to say they just don’t make movies like that.  I was going to say ‘anymore’, but I am not sure that anyone has ever made a movie like that.  It was a non-stop chase scene in the middle of the desert with a bunch of crazy people.  Sure that is similar to Mad Max 2: Road Warrior, but no where near this scale  If you are not on the edge of your seat while watching this film, you were somehow not paying attention.

The plot is simple.  Mad Max (Tom Hardy) and Furiosa (Charlize Theron) take a bunch of supermodels for a drive in the middle of the wasteland.  Oh and they are being chased by just about every living person left on the planet.  While this road trip is happening, things are blowing up right good.

I am not sure there is much more to say about the story except for the fact if you like a lot of talking in your films you will be disappointed with Fury Road.  This movie goes for long stretches without any important dialog, and honestly I found it quite refreshing.  Movies are a visual art, so why not show me instead of telling me.  That is what this movie did.  It just kept showing me things, and wonderful things at that.

This is probably the best acted film out of the Mad Max series.  Tom Hardy was a great stand in for Mel Gibson, even if his Australian accent could use some work, and Nicholas Hoult brought a great deal of fun to this movie.  Though the real star of this movie is Charlize Theron.  She lived up to the name Furiosa.  Her unyielding character drove this movie forward more than any of the several hundred cars in it.  She is now my favorite pick to play Captain Marvel in the upcoming movie.

When I heard they were making a new Mad Max movie I think I audibly groaned.  I didn’t think that series had anything left to show me, but George Miller proved me wrong.  He had a lot left to show me, and I was glad to see it.  If you haven’t seen the other Mad Max movies, don’t let that stop your from seeing this one.  The movies were so influential that I am not sure any background would be nessicary.  If you want to see the craziest movie to come out in a long time it would be Mad Max: Fury Road!

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Marvel Is Going Too Far With Their Fox Feud!

Scarlet-Witch-and-QuicksilverThings between Marvel and Fox have gotten tense, if rumors are to be believed, but there has been some recent events to prove this.  In the new issue of Uncanny Avengers #4 we learn the new history of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver:  They aren’t mutants anymore, they are genetically engineered.  So their long history of being Magneto’s kids is now void.  Now there are two reasons for this: One it makes it hard on Fox to use Quicksilver in their X-Men movies because now he is not a mutant, and two in Marvel’s mind it makes it easier for people who are new to the comics to correlate the characters in the comics to the ones on screen.  That is garbage though.

The movies aren’t driving people to the comics, a good comic book sales number is a little over a hundred thousand, but most are in the tens of the thousands, so for the most part their isn’t any confusion, and just because Fox is making money off their characters and isn’t running to Marvel for help like Sony doesn’t mean they should start changing all of Fox’s good characters to non-mutants just to screw with them.  I mean where does that stop, “Oh it looks like Wolverine was really just a bioweapon created by the Canadian Government, so he is not an X-Man anymore!  Welcome to the Avengers!”

I get with the current movie deal Marvel had to create a new backstory for the Maximoff twins because they can’t use the word “Mutant” in relation to their characters, and that is hard to work with, but changing decades of backstory in the comic books is just kind of lame.  They at least could have just re-launched the characters as part of the Secret Wars event so that the old stories would have held up, but instead they chose a sloppy retcon.  I am not sure Disney’s hard lock on their comic books is going to end well, and I am starting to appreciate DC’s much more loose grip.