Category: 2021
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What If…? – Season 1, Episode 4
I know I said that last week’s episode, “What If the World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?” was my new favorite episode of What If…?, but that’s no longer the case. “What If Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” continues the series’ fine tradition of clunky episode titles, but it delivers a compelling tale of love and loss that also actually involves the Watcher! You know, the omniscient narrator of the whole thing? He gets to actually do something! Kind of.
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What If…? – Season 1, Episode 3
In the comics, What If? stories don’t typically have happy endings. Sure, there are exceptions like “What If the Thing Had Continued to Mutate?” (What If? #37, 1983) where Ben Grimm ends the story back in his human body and his girlfriend regained her ability to see. But in that same issue, “What If the Beast Had Truly Become a Beast?” sees Hank McCoy get dropped off in the Savage Land–a jungle filled with dinosaurs–because he had lost all of his intelligence and humanity. The first two episodes of What If…? definitely had their sad moments, but things generally worked…
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What If…? – Season 1, Episode 2
Death is an inevitable part of life. We all ultimately die, and once you’re dead there will be a collection of “the lasts” left behind: the last conversation you had with someone; the last meal you had; and for actors, the last project they worked on. In honor of the life of Mr. Stan Lee, comic writer and creator of too many characters to name here, Captain Marvel opened not with the normal Marvel logo, but a memorial montage of him. And then there’s Chadwick Boseman, star of Black Panther who died one year ago of cancer. While Ma Rainey’s…
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The Suicide Squad (2021)
So my plan was to see The Suicide Squad in theaters. I had some friends lined up, we had the date all planned out, then a COVID scare dashed all our plans. This is the unfortunate world we live in, highlighted also in the fact that this fun movie is considered a box office bomb during its second week because a majority of people don’t feel safe in a theater yet. I’m not sure what movies are actually thriving right now, but maybe new metrics will be needed to judge movies during this post-pandemic pandemic. Where was I? Right, The…
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What If…? – Season 1, Episode 1
A few weeks have passed since Loki wrapped up, so it’s about time for a new Disney+ Marvel Cinematic Universe show! But the formula is getting changed up a bit; instead of a series that overtly builds up to another show or movie (like WandaVision setting up Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), What If…? is Marvel’s version of The Twilight Zone. Taking its premise from the comic series of the same name, What If…? does exactly what its title suggests, asking what if the characters and events you know deviated from what was “supposed” to happen? In this…
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The Green Knight (2021)
There’s a list of movies that I was excited to see before COVID hit and everything fell to shit, and The Green Knight was one such film. I can’t say that I’m a huge Arthurian legend nerd–I know the stuff covered on the animated Gargoyles series and that Sir Lancelot, the best knight ever who also fucks the king’s wife, was created by the French–but it’s been a passing interest. But add in a spooky atmosphere and I got hooked just by the trailer. And after what feels like years of waiting, it’s finally here, ready for me to watch…
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Fear Street: 1666 (2021)
I did it! I actually took the time to reread The Fear Street Saga books! And it’s a good thing I did, because the parallels between that trilogy of books and this trilogy of movies are… uh… Okay, so there’s next to no connection and I can’t get too excited about reading a novella written for teenagers, but still. Back to the topic on hand, Fear Street: 1666 ties all the threads from Fear Street: 1994 and Fear Street: 1978 together, revealing the truth behind all the bad things that happen in Shadyside. And I’m going to talk around that…
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Loki – Season 1, Episode 6
Starting this post off with a little PSA: We live in the age of immediate spoilers, and whether you like it or not, we sort of have to adjust to that. Back when Marvel Comics killed off Captain America, they infamously told news outlets before comic stores even opened to sell that particular comic. But don’t actively tag people in spoilers before you know that they’ve seen the media in question. As you can probably tell, I went into the season finale of Loki’s first season knowing that my theory from episode 5 was wrong. So let’s see how things…
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Fear Street: 1978 (2021)
Okay, so I didn’t actually reread The Fear Street Saga as I suggested I might while talking about Fear Street: 1994, the first in this trilogy of horror. I’m going to try again this weekend, but I make no promises. It’s not like it really matters anyway, since these films are more inspired by the Fear Street series, as evidenced by Sarah Fier being a central character in the films who isn’t in the books. With that out of the way, I do have something positive to report: my expectations for Fear Street: 1978 were pretty low, and this movie…
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Black Widow (2021)
I’ve been going back and forth on whether to just go full spoilers when talking about Black Widow, the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in two years. When I covered all the other movies earlier this year as part of MCU March, the assumption was that people had already seen those films so I gave a summary as a refresher then talked about all the plot points I wanted to talk about. But Black Widow comes out at a weird time, where on one hand people are cheering that COVID is finally over, while on the other the Delta variant…
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