Movie Reviews - Fantastic Four (2015)

Uuuggghhhhh.

Movie Reviews - Avengers: Age of Ultron (SPOILERS)

Nothing, nothing, will ever recapture what made Avengers so great. It wasn't Citizen Cain or anything, but before Avengers, no one anywhere believed 100% that a crossover story like this could be done, that stars from multiple series of films could come together as supporting players in a new story and work so well together. Afterward, no one anywhere believed anymore that they couldn't. It was a groundbreaking, triumphant study of the strength of human perseverance, driven by great writing that made the villain as likeable as the heroes. Avengers: Age of Ultron was a little different.

A little Something Awesome - A Brand New Avengers 2 Trailer!

So yeah, I', not going to make any more excuses. Updates will resume soon full force. In the mean time, here is the third trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron!

Anyway, enjoy! And come back later for another Something Awesome.

Random Awesome

So this is the first of the guaranteed short Wednesday updates. It's a little late (I almost forgot that I had a thing after work today). It's a bit random, as there are a few things that I want to talk about, but mostly I want to talk about the awesome that was Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. last night. It was the season (mid-season?) finale, and it was great. Joss has once again created human characters who we can't not care about, and who are awesome but still do dumb, stupid human things. It was great.

Let me put it this way: The first season of the show was good. It started really strong with the premier, but petered out a bit until about mid way, and then just blew you away repeatedly with big reveals and bigger action pretty much every episode, tying into Captain America: The Winter Soldier, up until the big action finale. Then season two rolled around, and it was just as big right from the start, stayed amped up, and then last night, in the finale, it went bigger than it ever has before. A main character was killed and the entire character dynamic of another was changed forever, and plot threads were left unresolved completely for future use.

Mind = blown.

Seriously, anyone who isn't watching this show needs to. Now.

Also, here is a new trailer that you may not have seen that I think is pretty sweet looking, and a couple of my own toy review videos. Check them out, and comment below!

 

  

Movie Reviews - Big Hero 6

I don't enjoy math, and I don't see the point of it a lot of the time, but even I understand that sometimes the simple application of addition can improve a product or situation exponentially. This movie, which I saw the local premier of earlier tonight, embodies this statement. This movie is almost entirely made up of seemingly unrelated things added together to create something better. Marvel Comics plus Disney Animation Studios equals a brilliant new medium for telling great stories to a broader audience. San Francisco plus Tokyo equals a vibrant, visually interesting story setting. A moving story of dealing with loss plus a really action packed, fun, and funny superhero origin equals Big Hero 6.

 

A Little Something Awesome - Age of Ultron First Trailer!!!

So the first teaser for Avengers 2: Age of Ultron dropped yesterday, and it is GLORIOUS!

Enough said, watch it, and come back later for another Something Awesome.

 

Something Awesome #34 - Movie Reviews - Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United

Not to long ago, Marvel Animation Studios released an animated movie that promised to introduce a new, high tech form of animation that combined CG and cell shading, unite two popular heroes in an original story, and tie into the then-recent Avengers film. That movie was called Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes United. I panned it, saying that it was advertised as a tie in to The Avengers only as a cash grab, that it was poorly written with lame humor, and that the animation still seemed unfinished. I don't really remember how I rated it, but I remember that I rated it low. For these reasons, I avoided the second movie in this series like the plague, and after finally getting up the courage to view it, I wish I'd done so sooner, because I actually really enjoyed it.

Something Awesome #32 - Movie Reviews - Guardians of the Galaxy

As a fan of Marvel Comics, science fiction and fantasy, even I find it surprising that I actually know very little about the Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah I have a peripheral knowledge of them, enough to know a bit about the various incarnations of the team, the power sets of the characters, and to love Rocket the Raccoon and Groot. Enough to know at the time of its announcement that this movie would have a tough release if the marketing weren't handled perfectly. Well, it was, selling the truly unusual concept of a man, a green girl, a giant covered in red tattoos, a raccoon, and a tree coming together and becoming super heroes on par with the Avengers to the general public. Thanks to its brilliant marketing campaign, the idea of this movie has hooked even the more down to earth Marvel movie fan and helped to expand what they will accept as film entertainment. It also taught me something. Well, two things actually: that Karen Gillan is hot even bald and with robot parts, and the Guardians of the Galaxy are even more awesome than I thought.

Something Awesome #28 - Movie Reviews - X-Men: Days of Future Past

I just got back from my first ever midnight showing of a movie, and what a movie to see as your first midnight showing. What a movie. I could sum up Days of Future Past in one word: awesome. In fact, I kind of want to end the review there. Awesome, score out of ten, done, because this movie just needs to be seen to be believed, but I'm not that kind of reviewer. Just understand that I don't want to spoil this movie for all of you. For once the trailers for this movie didn't give the entire plot away. For this reason, a lot of what I say here will be pretty vague, as the spoiler-y stuff that I put into these reviews is usually stuff that can be figured out from the trailers and therefor not really spoilers at all.

Something Awesome #26 - Movie Review - The Amazing Spider-Man 2

So it has been a while since I wrote a true Something Awesome, and while I did want to write one on Captain America: The Winter Soldier back when it was just out, that fell into the black hole of time when my login wasn't working (it isn't reliably working now, but I'll take what I can get), and at this point there isn't anything left to be said about that movie. Heck, I don't know if there is anything left to say about this  movie, but I love Spider-Man and its characters (when they're done right), and one way or another my thoughts and opinions on this movie will be put to text. In a way, I'm glad that my first full length Something Awesome in so long will be on something that I care so much about.

Movie Reviews - Ironman and Hulk: Heroes United

I usually enjoy the stuff that comes out of the Marvel Animation Studio, even if I think that the Marvel live action films, and the DC animated films are typically much better. The films to be released through the Marvel Animation Studio are typically good, but not really great. Their best, I think, was Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow, which is the only one of the films that I was anxious to own after seeing it online. It was great, based on a handful of comic stories about an alternate future where Ultron conquers the world. In fact, Marvel Animation Studio seems to be most in its element when they are adapting a storyline from the comics. Both of their Ultimate Avengers titles were rather above average, even if they were based on the Ultimate Universe version of the story, which I am just one step above full-on detesting. Understanding this, maybe this movie would have been better had it been a direct adaptation of a comic story as well, rather than an amalgamation of one and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically The Avengers movie. The reasons why I think this movie is an absolute stinker (spoiler: I didn't like it, now you don't have to read the rest if you don't want to) are pretty numerous, so I'll be breaking this down by category.

Movie Reviews - Thor: The Dark World

I was one of the few moviegoers who not only really enjoyed the first Thor movie, but thought it was right up there with the rest or its Marvel movie counterparts, including Iron Man. Sure it was simple and predictable, but so was Iron Man in many ways. Did anyone watching that movie not know who the villain was after ten minutes, really? In terms of predictable movies, yeah Thor was moreso, and Thor: The Dark World followed in the footsteps of its predecessor in that regard. There was literally nothing in this movie which surprised me. Nothing. This doesn't mean, however, that I didn't really love seeing these very predictable things happening on screen (bar one or two, but we aren't supposed to like those).

TV Reviews - Marvel's Avengers Assemble

I've said before that I love cartoons. Based on the cartoons I've talked about here before, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out that I also like superhero stories, and like everyone I've been mostly impressed with the recent live action Marvel Comics movies. So based on the evidence, it can't be hard to conclude that I was a fan of the recent cartoon series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Also, because I'm sentimental as all getout, you can probably figure that I wasn't very excited when EMHs was cancelled in favor of a new Avengers cartoon meant to more closely resemble the Ultimate Spider-Man series that currently wastes thirty to sixty minutes of good airtime every Sunday morning on Disney XD (Glob, I hate that show). Well, kiddies, it turns out that the two part premier episode of Avengers Assemble is up online, and I've found the time to check it out. Short story: it's pretty good. Long story: well, keep reading because it gets pretty complicated.

Toy Reviews - MU West Coast Avengers 3-Pack

Movie Review - Iron Man 3

So I went to see Iron Man 3 this past Sunday. Love it or hate it, pretty much everyone is talking about it, saying either it was the best of the trilogy, the worst, or just meh. Since everyone else has something to say about the movie, I thought that I'd get my two cents in. Now originally I'd planned to give my first thoughts, but I found that really hard to do. This movie just needed thought about, so I decided to take a couple of days and do just that.