Wolverine: The Long Night

At the suggestion of a friend, I downloaded "Wolverine: The Long Night" from iTunes. Although billed as a "podcast", this was like an old school radio drama.

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect. After getting through all ten episodes, each averaging about thirty minutes a piece, I can give an honest opinion.

I was surprised at how much I liked it. It is a very well produced radio drama. It has moody music in the right places, it has good sound design in that they mimic when people are across the room and good sound effects.

I thought the setting of Alaska was a perfect backdrop for this particular story. Wolverine in the wilderness or being that stranger in a sleepy town is definitely on brand. He is the guy that is trying to mind his own business, but gets drawn into events because he is a hero.

I also liked the methodical pace of the story telling and the mystery that unfolded. It wasn't too fantastical and none of the other X-Men make an appearance here.

For the most part, I thought the cast was very good. The only person I had a problem with was Richard Armitage as Logan/Wolverine. I understand that you wanted to get a name, but he was not the right fit at all. Years of X-Men cartoons, video games, etc. have me prepared to accept a different voice (Steve Blum) for Wolverine. He should be gruff. Armitage tried, but he does not pull it off. Instead, he just comes off sounding like a dude. If it wasn't for people addressing him as Logan, within the dialogue, I would not have been able to pick out his voice from everyone else.

Hugh Jackman was able to pull it off, but Armitage could not. It's disheartening when the star of the radio play is the one you like the least.

Maybe his time was expensive, so he really doesn't have a whole lot of lines. You barely get much out of him in the first half of this story.

I'm glad I gave this a shot. It was well worth my time and I would recommend it to anyone else that wanted to have something on while they drive. You better believe I'm counting it as a book that was read on Good Reads!

Kevin's Panels in Tremendousness

Welcome again, dear readers. Join me as we celebrate another entry into my Panels in Tremendousness. We have a real treat this time. You've come here before, so you know the deal. If not, here's the deal because I should know better than to assume things. I'm going to show a panel that is completely out of context, but on it's face it's pretty funny. If you DON'T find it funny, then why are we even friends!?! Sorry, I digress. This gem is from Marvel Team-Up #110.

The only reason I wear glasses is because my perceptions have been dazzled ONE TOO MANY TIMES!

Look, comic books in the seventies/eighties had a real penchant for goofy dialogue combined with stating the obvious. In case you couldn't tell, Dazzler is the one shooting the light beams. You know how I know? Not because I own and read the comic smart ass. It's because I speak Marvel. The bad guys specific choice of words key you in. How many times have YOU talked about having your perceptions dazzled? By the DAZZLER!? Never! So maybe you don't know what these guys are going through.

However, let's address how even in a comic book, what a weird thing to say. I guess, "Ahhh! My eyes!" was too low brow. The writers felt they needed to spice it up a bit.

Also, there is an important life lesson here folks. Find you someone who dazzles your perceptions every time you walk into a room. That's why I married my wife. (I really hope she saw that. Otherwise I am wasting some of my best lines in front of people.)

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Now that I've seen Spider-Man: Far From Home twice, as per the usual, I feel like I can fully talk about it. Thankfully, the viewings were only a few days apart, so I still have some hot takes left in me.

I want to warn you, there WILL be spoilers.

I loved this movie. I did like Homecoming more, but this one is still really good. It picks up on the threads left in the wake of Avengers: End Game.

One of the questions I had with fellow nerds was, what will the world be like for all those people that have come back from the Thanos snap. Thankfully this movie tackles that within the first ten minutes of this movie. Their handling of it made me not question it anymore and hopefully we don't have to hear any more about it.

Before I go any further, let me just shout this from the mountain tops. Tom Holland is far and away the best Peter Parker/Spider-Man that we've gotten. There is no questioning this. End of discussion.

He carries these movies and he is exactly like you would imagine a teenager with super powers would be. Awkward, clumsy and trying to figure out who he is. In this movie though, he is more tortured in that he is dealing with the death of his mentor/father figure in Tony Stark while also trying to navigate the life of a typical teenager. Layer that in with his crushing feeling of responsibility that leads him to think of others before himself and he is a guy that you always root for.

His "man in the chair", Ned is still great in this movie. He is the comedic sidekick that this movie needs to keep things light. He also gets a little bit to do. I also think that Zendaya should get more credit for the job she has done as MJ. Her awkwardness makes every scene, but also makes her a match for Peter and I love that. I say this because if you see her in other stuff, she is not like this, so that is a testament to the job she pulls off here.

I am all about the teen drama, so I loved watching all these characters bounce off each other. Seeing love triangles form and fall. Watching unexpected love blossom. All of this is a lot of fun without feeling trashy. While I am on the subject, I'm glad that they have kept everyone in high school and didn't feel the need to make them grown ups in subsequent films.

Can I also say how amazing it is that we live in a world where freakin' MYSTERIO is in a big budget Spider-Man? With a very great, modern take on his classic costume. He still has the fishbowl head. Jake Gyllenhal really commits to this guy and I can't think of anyone that is able to elevate what is traditionally a goofy character. We've had the Vulture, Scorpion (to a lesser degree), the Shocker and now Mysterio. They are slowly building their way to the Sinister Six and I hope that gets realized in about two movies from now.

Speaking of Mysterio, while I thought his motivation was a tad flimsy, I liked that they really leaned into it. For a while there, I was getting flashbacks to Iron Man 3. Like a good villain, he truly believes in what he is doing, even if it is a tad mustache-twirly. Also, credit to this movie to really pull from the past to show the people that joined in with Mysterio and why they are here.

All in all, this movie was a lot of fun. We get Sam Jackson back as Nick Fury and he is at his most Sam Jacksony-ish. You know what I mean. We get a lot more of Happy (Jon Faverau) and he definitely adds to the movie. He is not the absent dad like he was in the first one. Now he feels fondly for Peter, if he is also after Aunt May. There were a lot of good comedy beats. This movie may have dialed up the drama, but it also dialed up the comedy to keep in step.

Last but not least, we get an appearance from J.K. Simmons reprising his role as J. Jonah Jameson! This proves again that he is perfectly cast. I would love for him to appear more in the next movie. He is too perfect. We haven't had the public hating on Spider-Man like in the comics and I think by the end of this movie, they have set it up to be just that.

In the end, the trailers made this seem more epic than it was with these huge "monsters" that Peter faces. I'm glad at the end of it all, it is still him fighting a regular dude. Keeping Spider-Man more street level after the Avengers movies is a great idea.

This was a worthy successor to Spider-Man: Homecoming and I hope we at least get one more Spider-Man movie, if not more with this cast.

High recommendation from me to go see this film. Stay for after the credits. THAT I won't spoil for you.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix

I finally saw X-Men: Dark Phoenix a few nights ago. I figured if I don't write this post now after sleeping on it for a few days, I'll never write it. I'm not going to sit here and waste your time talking about how big an X-Men fan I've been or any of that background info I normally start these with. I'm going to just jump right in. Also, there will be SPOILERS. You've been warned.

Before I go into my reasons why, this movie is bad. Not dumpster fire bad like I was expecting, but it was definitely bad. After the movie ended, my wife made note of my exasperated sigh. When I think about how many X-Men movies we've had, this movie makes me spectacularly sad. In my eyes, we have had way more bad X-Men movies than good ones. If I take away X-Men universe films (Wolverines and Deadpools), we are left with an underwhelming bunch. This movie marks the seventh in the mainline X-Men movies. I can say I legitimately loved two of them. After this movie, that count remained at two.

After X-Men: Apocalypse, I thought I had read that Jennifer Lawerence, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were done with these movies. Imagine my surprise when they all came back for this. The money must have been real good. I think especially egregious was Lawerence, because I don't think she liked having to go through all that makeup. The three of them are good actors, but I feel like they were sleepwalking in this movie.

Let me get more specific on my dislikes in this movie. What made X-Men: First Class so great was the friendship between Xavier and Magneto. McAvoy and Fassbender had a chemistry that made you believe this relationship. Then in these last few movies, they go out of their way to have them at odds from afar, occasionally sharing the screen together. Surprise, surprise, you don't see them together a lot in this movie either. It is such a waste. So that leaves Sophie Turner as Jean Grey to carry this movie. The last movie was her first appearance, so to say this movie doesn't earn this storyline is an understatement. For her evil turn to work, you have to be invested in her to feel some kind of emotional impact.

For any casual comic book fan, the words "Dark Phoenix" tell you all you need to know on what is going to happen. Unlike X-Men 3, they at least introduce a cosmic entity as the Phoenix. However, they did it all in the most clunky way possible. I think this is another apt description for this movie, it is klunky.

This movie introduces some ideas, but don't follow up on them. For instance, at the beginning of the movie, they are beloved. The world has accepted them, everyone loves them and dresses like them. Professor X has a freaking bat-phone (with an X) that the president of the United States uses to reach out to him. Then Jean Grey happens and the world turns on the X-Men real quick. All of a sudden there are talks of concentration camps and sending the mutants there. Right here is where they could have done some real exploring. They could have shown the horrors of this and how rounding up people because they look a certain way is wrong. In this climate, it could have hit home. Instead it's an afterthought and swept away. Magneto/Xavier are all about helping mutants, so the fact they spend time fighting each other and not THAT is a problem.

Our main bad guys, other than Jean Grey, are a bunch of basically nameless/faceless aliens who are shape shifters. I realized this movie was made either before or after Captain Marvel, but Captain Marvel showed what a threat shape shifters could be that are living among us. This movie shows them and then practically ignores them. Having them act as mutants and systematically destroy the good will they have built up is another idea that would have been great to see. The X-Men work best when the world fears and hates them. Instead, these villains are as one note as it gets. They want the power that destroyed their planet to...destroy others I guess? I don't even know why Jessica Chastain was here. Maybe she owed someone something, a la this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiZRJjfiQdM

All of the X-Men that appear here are stripped down to their power set. We know nothing about Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Storm based on the few movies they have been in. Yet they are thrust into being the main team. You add Mystique, Beast and Quicksilver to this motley band and it is a line up that would feel weird even in the comics. Quicksilver has proven to be the best character the past few movies in the way they use his power set. Here he gets taken out early and we don't see him again. Speaking of previous movies, remember we had Psylocke right? Yeah, she isn't in this movie. Going back to my previous point, Storm is illustrates the idea the most. She is resorted to shooting a lot of lighting and maybe a cold wind here and there. The actress was doing her best with an African accent, but since she didn't have that many lines we don't hear it. These movies have yet to get Storm right. Nightcrawler, a character who also has a compelling background is just the guy that can teleport. Then there is Cyclops. Dude shoots lasers and he's in a relationship with Jean Grey. That's about all you get of him.

Instead we get into Jean's backstory, which as I mentioned before, other than knowing this movie revolves around an old X-Men storyline, there was no particular reason it HAD to be her. They want to impress me, have the Phoenix force go into someone else. Take Xavier for example. How big of a twist would it be if he were the main antagonist in this movie. The father turning on his children? Now that would have been gold. Other than getting to look mad, this movie didn't do Sophie Turner any favors. I also want to add that it is a cop out to say that the Phoenix made Jean Grey bad. When you find out what Xavier did, she had a justifiable reason to be pissed. You can't paint it away with a deus ex machina brush.

What makes me love the Marvel movies, but also hate on this movie is fight choreography. The fight scenes in this movie were boring. Having Xavier an active participant in the fights, cheapens them. Also, watching X-Men fighting nothing bad guys doesn't help. With all these power sets, we should have seen a lot more from these guys. Instead this is super hero 101 fare and the Avengers movies show that you can have fight scenes with real tension. I didn't care what happened to anyone here.

Speaking of caring about what happened, there was one major death in this movie. I already told you'd there would be spoilers, so read on at your own risk. So anyways, they kill Mystique and it happens pretty early on. You just knew Jean Grey would have to kill someone to prove that the stakes were risen. When it happened to Mystique, I surprisingly felt nothing. I feel like it was forecast pretty heavily and the way that handled it didn't really help much. I thought that she would have been the first of many. They made it seem like Magneto and Xavier would be next, but the movie didn't have the courage to go through with it like they should've. That would have given this movie a lot more emotional weight, which turns out it desperately needed. Losing all three of those would have been something.

Now let's get to Magneto real quick. It seems like every movie he goes from bad guy to good guy or vice versa. He was a compelling character in X-Men: First Class. Since then, he's the guy you bring in to propel the story along and help raise the stakes. What is he going to do this time? Who knows? Let's watch and find out! Four movies in, it's tired. It is a complete waste of Fassbender.

While I still have another stop on the complain train, I also want to mention how annoying it is that both Beast and Mystique have this penchant for returning to a more "human" form a lot. I get it. The actors want their faces to be seen and not be hidden behind tons of makeup. At some point though, you are playing a character and we don't have to see your face. We know it is you under there. From a story perspective, it's also dumb. Some of your tension as a mutant is lost when you can change back and forth at will. There's other mutants that can't. This important facet of X-Men lore in general is ignored when they do that. Not all of them can hide in plain site and it's disingenuous that they can. They are normal around each other, but go to their mutant selves in public? What??

I swear I am almost done. I didn't realize I had so much in me. I really hate that these movies don't respect their own timeline. It has been a problem across all the movies. They want to be cute and have the X-Men in each time period. If you do that, Xavier, Magneto and Beast should at least LOOK older. They look the same after thirty years in this time line. This may be my most nitpicky of nitpicks, but I can't ever let this one go.

Finally, it's a bummer to not be able to see some cool cameos of other X-Men. At least to my eyes, the only one that mattered was an appearance of Dazzler. I'll ignore that she was in her disco getup in the 90's. Oh wait, I DIDN'T ignore it. Look, I'm not perfect!

I ended up saying a lot more about this movie than I had intended. Was it therapeutic for me? Absolutely. Now I can move on with my life. Now that Disney owns this franchise, I can only hope for good things in the future. It certainly can't get much worse. Please don't do like I do and spend money on this. Go see something else. I'm doing YOU a favor.