shadowkat: (Looking Outwards - Tessa)
I owe you a Fantastic Four: First Steps review, don't I?


The Fantastic Four, often abbreviated as FF, is a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The team debuted in The Fantastic Four #1 (cover-dated November 1961), helping usher in a new level of realism in the medium. It was the first superhero team created by artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby and editor/co-scripter Stan Lee, and through this title the "Marvel method" style of production came into prominence.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Four



This is a film that I was admittedly very much on the fence about seeing. I've not seen a Marvel film or a superhero film in theaters since...roughly, I can't remember? I think the last one was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. III? I'd gotten a tad burned out on the genre. And so many of the films felt repetitive. And well, it's the Fantastic Four - and I've always been ambivalent of the comics and the team. I read a few here and there, curiosity and well, I'm an X-men comics fan since roughly college, and there's cross-overs. But I wouldn't call myself anything approaching a fan or expert? So I went into this with mixed feelings, low expectations, and for the most part blind. I hadn't really seen the trailers and I knew very little about the film - outside of who the villains were, who the cast was, and that it was retro-futuristic 1960s from the posters, whatever that meant.



The film, directed by Matt Shackman, and written by Josh Fredman, Eric Peterson, and Jeff Kaplan - is among the tighter of the genre entries to date (and believe it or not shorter). Clocking in at just under two hours. The plot clicked along, it had just the right amount of suspense, and emotional gravitas for this genre. It wasn't overly predictable, nor convoluted. It did a good job of setting up both its world and the characters without inundating us with too much unnecessary exposition, and it was fun. There was in short, no huge information dump, yet at the same time - it introduced the story to those who may never have read a comic or seen a Marvel flick or television series (a rarity for Marvel). It also had an almost childlike innocence to it - which is true of the early 1960s comics and 1970-80s superhero flicks - which some may find silly, but I oddly enough found refreshing? It may just be that I'm tired of dark grim films and content, the world can be depressing enough all on its own. In some respects this film reminded me of another era - the films released in the 1940s and in the 1960s, films depicting a better world, where problems can be solved with a smattering of cool science and cooperation, a kind of cartoon escapism.
vague spoilers and mainly just cut for length - what works, why it works, why it's better than all the previous efforts, and why you should see it. )

Overall, the film is worth a watch, particularly on a big screen and in a good theater. And well, if you are an MCU, Marvel or most importantly? A Fantastic Four fan? I'm certain there's a few of you out there?
shadowkat: (Default)
A couple of things that have zip to do with the meme.

Spoke with Mother. Apparently her church is requiring her to do a virtual background check to see if she complies - in order for her to sing in her church's choir. And she can't get it to say she complies.
our conversation regarding this insanity... )

Oh, and I saw Fantastic Four : First Steps - which was excellent. It was everything I wanted in a superhero Fantastic Four film and then some. I've been lucky - I've only been to the movies twice in the last three years, and both films I loved to pieces (the other one was Oppenheimer).

***

Below is an insanely long MCU (Marvel Cinema Universe) franchise list - television and films, meme. Similar to the Star Wars and Star Trek memes, but longer. I thought about making it even longer by adding all the films that were adapted from Marvel Comics by other studios, such as Across the Spiderverse, and well all the X-men films, but chose not to, because the list is long enough on its own. There are lot of Superhero films and television shows out there. If they stopped making them tomorrow? We would not be deprived. (Not to worry - they won't.)

I take no credit for this monstrosity, I snagged it from colls, thank you colls for doing it.

insanely long MCU superhero film list )
shadowkat: (Default)
Somewhat depressed today, been feeling lonely and depressed lately - kind of like that Adele song? My Little Love? Except I don't have kids. Read more... )

Random tidbits:

1. Kevin Feige announced today that yes, the MCU plans on recasting all of the X-men, and Tony Stark and Steve Rogers down the road. Probably around 2027, after Secret Wars.

He made some good points. Why not? It's not like they haven't recast James Bond, Doctor Who, Captain Kirk, Spock, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman - multiple times.

Superhero films/comics have a lot in common daytime soap operas and insanely long-running television serials/film franchises - in that the following often happens, and their audience/readers are used to it and tend to shrug it off or hand-wave it:
Read more... )

That said... I find this disconcerting: Read more... )

I've mixed feelings? Read more... )

What do you think? Assuming there's anyone out there reading this that's still into the MCU films and the Marvel comics. I honestly can't tell. [Note: If you aren't into it? Or it's not your thing? I really don't need to know, silence remains golden on that front.]

2. Malcolm Jamal-Warner, who played Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, has died at the age of 54.

"Per The Associated Press, Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Department confirmed that Warner died on Sunday in a drowning accident while on vacation with his family at a beach along the country's Caribbean coast. He was pulled into a current. Fellow beachgoers tried to rescue him, but first responders from Costa Rica's Red Cross were unable to revive him."

Go Here

I'm thrown by the folks who are dying that are younger than me. This is the second one in a few weeks. The first was Julian McMahon of cancer.

3. On a more positive note? I attended a Zoom presentation of my agency's new climate protection toy today. Read more... )

Here's a link to the MTA's Climate Resilience Program

And a link to the newly proposed high speed train: GO HERE.

4. Went on a walk around Battery Park at lunch today, and saw a man holding a large yellow python, also a man playing a kind of old style string instrument (he was playing AULD LANG SYNE) and took pictures of flowers and buildings.

Man holding huge python - behind the cut for the snake adverse:

really big yellow snake )

Man playing weird instrument:

weird instrument )

Slabs of a WWII War Memorial amid the greenery.

see memorial )

And finally...a field of corn flowers in NYC:

shadowkat: (Default)
Some of my old posts on this thing are cringe-inducing. (I'd gotten into the habit of calling my mother "momster" because for some reason or other it amused me at the time? I want to go back and smack myself.)

Anyhow, slept a good portion of the day, because I didn't get to sleep until 1 am last night, and woke up at 7 am. So I was tired. Partly from the work week, etc. And partly from lack of sleep the night before. As a result, I passed out in my arm chair while attempting to archive around 10:30 am and woke up around 1PM. I did have banana chestnut flour pancakes in there - which is probably why I crashed. Pancakes also put me to sleep for some reason or other. I only have them on the weekends, and only once.

My brother is insanely healthy - he had granola, fruit and yogurt for breakfast and that was big enough that he skipped lunch. Also he worked out - lifting clothing bags, and gardening. No wonder he's 6'5 and 175 pounds.

Church tried to call me regarding Dad (I know because their names popped up on my television set - I didn't want to talk to them, so ignored the calls). Actually it may have been to get a pledge. Either way, I didn't want to deal with them. Did talk to mother and Wales, though.

Binge watched Ms Marvel which I'd given up on, but was told that there was a great spoiler in the finale. So, I decided to give it another chance. I'm glad I did, unlike Moon Knight and Loki - it actually improves with latter episodes. Moon Knight kind of fell apart at the end of the series - when it jumped into "Legion" psycho-babble territory. (That trope got old after Legion, and only worked in Legion S1). Loki had the same problem - it kind of got defused towards the end, and convoluted. Ms. Marvel for the most part doesn't fall into those traps.

Also, it surprised me. I've seen a lot of these things, and honestly thought it was going down the whole annoyingly repetitive Spiderman/Flash/Naomi/Stargirl/Supergirl route. But it didn't. Instead, it veered completely away from the "superhero" vs. "supervillain" crap, and delved into Pakistani and Persian history and mythos. It also has a great line by Nakiti: "Five weeks on the Greeks, and only five minutes on Persia. The Oppressors always get all the time. Typical."

Agreed. It was my difficulty with history and how it's taught in the American School System in the US. The focus is on European history, and the emphasis on how great the Europeans were - they weren't, they were assholes and pretty much deserved all the blow-back they've received in the 20th and 21st Centuries as a result of their collective actions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Asian cultures or Eastern Cultures, along with African get short shrift. Why? The Europeans are writing the history books at the moment.

The main focus of Ms. Marvel is on the Pakistani heritage, and her family and friends, the super-powers are kind of secondary, which is a nice change of pace. It was kind of like that in the comics as well, although being comics, there was a bit more focus on the super-powers.

I'm on the fence on how the super-powers were relayed in the series. Although I think it worked better - than what they did in the comics, which was a bit too similar to Mr. Fantastic, also may not have been conveyed as well in live action. This was a cheaper F/X treatment than what the comics would have demanded.

My only quibbles with the series are:
Read more... )

What I liked was pretty much everything else. The back story into Ishtar, and how Ms. Marvel manages to save the life of her grandmother, and meets both great grandparents was rather moving. I also liked her relationships with her mother, grandmother, father, and friend Nakiti. Those worked. I wanted a bit more with Bruno, who felt a little too much like the cliche geeky fanboy best friend with a crush on the hero. He does however serve a purpose to the plot, and was a bit more than a plot device, also they make him wickedly smart, which helps.

The final two scenes - the one before the fun credits, and the one directly behind them are worth the wait.

spoilers on those two scenes )

Overall, a good series.

**

Off to bed or something.
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