Week of Review - Needful Things (1993)

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One of the odd things about Stephen King’s work is that he’s arguably one of the most successful literary authors to dip his toes in the realm of continuity.  If you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, what I mean by continuity is the idea that characters, events, and elements of a world are consistent across multiple stories that aren’t necessary sequels to each other.  Marvel Studios has more or less made their bread and butter with continuity, trusting that story elements like SHIELD or the Infinity Stones can appear in Thor 2 or Incredible Hulk and audiences will know and accept these films as being in the same universe.  

This has long been the case in comic books but it’s rare in literary circles, mainly because connected books tend to just be sequels but that’s definitely not the case with King.  He’s concocted a vast web of interconnecting books that are in no way framed as sequels to each other, mainly through shared geography of fictional Maine towns.  Stories like IT, Tommyknockers, The Dead Zone, Stand By Me, Shawshank Redemption, Cujo all take place in the same fictional Maine county with its core being the town of Castle Rock, and in 1993 Castle Rock finally got its starring horror movie story in Needful Things.

Brie Larson Cast as Captain Marvel

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Edited by Robert Beach

As we enter our 8^th year of Marvel-dominated blockbusters and news cycles, the tide is slowly turning into the house of the Avengers built. This particular ball got rolling a few years ago after Avengers became a bonafide hit and definitively closed out phase 1. It turned out phase 2 was just going to be more of the same with some space characters thrown in.  

The big trend of the moment has become a majorly increased demand to see greater representation and diversity from Marvel studios seemingly unstoppable hit-making machine. This particular campaign has only gotten more intense over the past three years. Stuff like Jessica Jones proved a major hit while Marvel’s Dr. Strange and Iron Fist incurred ire over their whitewashing and cultural appropriation.  

This year, Marvel seems poised to turn things around with Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther emerging as the breakout character of Captain America: Civil War, and Luke Cage poised to be the next big Netflix hit.  Now, in the wake of San Diego Comic Con, Marvel takes their next big leap forward with the announcement that their first lead woman superhero, Captain Marvel, will be played by Brie Larson.

 

Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Defenders Trailer Breakdowns

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Edited by Robert Beach

As the saga of Marvel Studios continues, the story of their Netflix offshoot has slowly become a production unto itself. Launching in 2015 with the blockbuster Daredevil series, then following it up with the even better Jessica Jones show in the fall, Marvel’s Netflix shows have become their own little universe. 

The inter-continuity of New York street-level super crime has forged the shows into their own phase 1. Heck, there's multiple dangling plot threads supporting super people who could be their own stars like Punisher, Elektra, and Nuke. 

Now, Marvel Netflix is looking to premiere another three shows over the next year and a half starting with Luke Cage this September, followed by Iron Fist in spring of 2017, and culminating in the massive team-up show Defenders in fall of next year. With all that in the cards, Netflix has now released a triple threat of teasers for each of its new shows. Let’s take a look. 

Film Land - How Do You Solve a Problem Like Thor?

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Edited by Robert Beach

I have a lot of tangents that develop as I do these articles, and one of the most prominent ones has become “how do you solve a problem like Thor?” It’s a question that’s hung around Marvel’s neck like a dead weight ever since 2013 when Thor: The Dark World’s derailment came to a crushing finale. Thor's mighty sequel hammer lost to Hunger Games: Catching Fire at the box office. 

Overall, it’s easy to see how Thor ended up on the fringes of Marvel’s slate. The first Thor was a refreshing and fun fantasy comedy. It served as the world’s introduction to Marvel’s cosmic mythology and acted as the most child-friendly Marvel superhero production. 

Since then, Guardians of the Galaxy has come in as the new face of Marvel cosmic, and the Studio has reclaimed (Editor's Note: joint custody) the rights to Spider-Man to make it their kid-friendly franchise. Even Thor’s possible role as a mystics and magic franchise is teetering now that Dr. Strange and Iron Fist are on the way.  

It also doesn’t help that Chris Hemsworth has proved himself the least versatile of the main Marvel actors. With all that looming overhead, I still ask "how do you solve a problem like Thor?" And the answer from Thor: Ragnarok seems to be this: just make it a Hulk movie. 

Film Land - Has Marvel Lost Faith in Dr. Strange?

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Edited by Robert Beach

At the time of writing, we are about three months out of from Marvel’s next film entry and possible first major failure Dr. Strange. I don’t make that failure claim lightly either. Despite being three months from release, this film has gotten shockingly little fanfare or production push, especially in comparison to other Marvel releases. This might be a response to the relative dead zone Marvel is releasing the movie in. 

Their previous November release was Thor: The Dark World, which was released against Hunger Games: Catching Fire and got completely crushed by it. With Dr. Strange, Marvel has set it up with no competition in a time of the year notoriously free of blockbusters, to the point where even bad movies like Spectre can make a killing. Even still, there’s a "specter" of doubt that hangs over Dr. Strange. I’m starting to wonder whether or not Marvel expects the film to be bad. 

1st Dr. Strange Images

So, I guess it’s about time to talk about Dr. Strange.  Honestly I’ve been kind of mixed on this whole project since the beginning, and I say that as one of the few genuine Dr. Strange fans.  I know a lot of folks are getting into the sorcerer supreme now thanks to the publicity of the film production but I’ve actually been a big fan of his since before the MCU got started and even I was pretty skeptical about a Dr. Strange movie.  The main reason for this is just that not every character or comic can work across several mediums. 

There are some comics that just only work as comics, the same way there are TV shows or books that could only work and be as resonant as they are in one particular medium.  It also didn’t help that I’m not really a Benedict Cumberbatch fan.  Now we’ve got our first look at him in costume along with some interesting concept art sketches and…while, I’m still not convinced this is going to work it certainly looks more interesting than it did before.

 

Ryan Coogler Directing Black Panther

So, the first major comic book adaptation news story of 2016 is officially here with the announcement that Ryan Coogler will be directing Black Panther for Marvel Studios.  This is one of those announcements that’s been in the post for a long time but it’s nice to finally have official confirmation on it.  Black Panther has been lingering over Marvel’s phase 3 schedule alongside Captain Marvel ever since they both got bumped from the 2017 spot by the new Spider-Man movie so getting some kind of information on it is thoroughly welcome.  At the same time it’s great to see Marvel pursuing an African American director for the film, especially an up and coming talent like Ryan Coogler. 

Coogler may be new but so far he’s shown amazing directorial skill mixed with a consummate and confident sense of vision that makes him feel like an old pro.  His twin success, Fruitvale Station and Creed, have helped make him a serious name in both critical circles and with audiences so throwing him the reigns to a big budget Marvel superhero film feels like the next natural step in his evolution as a filmmaker.  However, Black Panther isn’t just a big budget superhero film, it’s an adaptation of the most important black superhero of all time and possibly the biggest mark for diversity in this genre since Blade.

Jessica Jones: All Trailers & Photos

So, we are officially one week away from the premiere of Marvel/Netflix second venture of the year as well as this year’s second, solo female led Marvel production: Jessica Jones.  As the premiere rumbles towards us there’s been a steady drip of teasers, trailers, photos and more so I’ve compiled everything we know about the show so far in one easy spot.  This will cover all of the important photos and trailers you might need to watch and break them down to get an overall sense of the tone and content we’re going to be getting from Marvel’s big Thanksgiving release.  So, let’s talk about Jessica Jones. 

Jessica Jones Netflix Show Details & Logo

Edited by Robert Beach

Marvel’s new Netflix show Jessica Jones has finally made some tangible progress with a premiere date slotted for October and this spiffy new logo debuting. We’ve also started getting some detail as to the focus of the show and how it will adapt the groundbreaking Alias comics where Jessica Jones first appeared. For those of you who’ve never heard of Jessica Jones or Alias, her story is that she’s a woman with super powers who acted as a low-level superhero for a time before retiring to the role of superhero private investigator after a traumatic experience when she had her mind enslaved by the villainous Purple Man. The mind enslavement stuff was part of what made Alias a groundbreaking work in the early 2000s and walked hand-in-hand with author Brian Michael Bendis’ other popular early superhero comic Powers, which was itself turned into a PlayStation Network streaming show. 

The crux of the matter was Jessica Jones was raped by Purple Man using his mind-control abilities, and the experienced cause her to leave superhero life but still bring justice simply as herself, no secret identities required. It was an important work then and still is now given it’s an instance of rape in comics where it's actually used well and not just for cheap shock value. Though the attack itself doesn’t take place during the series, it hovers over the proceedings in a non-intrusive manner as Alias balanced a tone between harsh grittiness and some lighter tones. As for the show Jessica Jones, let’s take a look at what we know: 

Gambit Casting Breakdown

Next year is going to bring a lot of big changes to the X-Men franchise.  For the most part this strikes me as being for the best; the X-Men franchise has been more or less running in place since X2 with a major emphasis on the less.  Despite this series lasting for well over a decade the visual emphasis is still on black leather plastic, Wolverine is still king of the party, and the X-Men’s whole existence is still solely defined by fighting to protect a populous that hates them.  It bugs me because so much of that is just the drabbest iteration of these characters.  Hence why I’m really welcoming the changes that will come with X-Men: Apocalypse.  The costumes are imaginative and vibrant, the conflict vast and not just rehashing previous tensions, and it marks the beginning of the end for Wolverine’s role in the franchise.  However, with the series most recognizable actor and character finally bowing out of the spotlight Fox needs a new face for the franchise going forward.  That’s where Channing Tatum’s Gambit comes in. 

Devil Dinosaur, Clone Saga, & Marvel's Future

So the numbers are officially in and Jurassic World has beaten Avengers as the third highest grossing film of all time, earning it a sequel that will go head-to-head with Avengers: Infinity War part 1.  This marks yet another major defeat for Marvel who’ve shaped up to have a pretty bad year all around.  Age of Ultron has been subsumed in the wake of hits like Furious 7 and Jurassic World with more competition coming this fall between Spectre and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  What’s more Ant-Man hasn’t shown a lot of audience interest and critically it’s only served to raise a lot of problematic issues with the Marvel universe as a whole.  The only Marvel projects that seem to really be gelling with audiences these days are episodic in nature, stuff like the major interest in Agent Carter, Agents of SHIELD finally finding a major audience, and Daredevil ending up a major cultural hit.  What does all this mean for Marvel going forward?  Could we be seeing the end of Marvel Studios?

Ranking Marvel Phase 2

With the release of Ant-Man we celebrate the conclusion of Marvel’s Phase 2.  A shorter event than phase 1 by about a year, Marvel’s second phase stretched from Iron Man 3 in 2013 all the way up to Ant-Man this year and included 6 Marvel movies including plenty of blockbuster installments and a few less than spectacular numbers.  To celebrate this conclusion and to cap off the 9 month wait till Captain America: Civil War let’s rank the Phase 2 Marvel films from least to best. 

Ant-Man Box Office, Small is Bountiful

Welcome to Would You Like To Know More, a new category of post where I deal with geek news.  In these articles I’ll be relaying news stories, expanding on announcements and events, explaining obscure nerdy news, and speculating on what’s to come.  With all that said let’s talk about Ant-Man’s box office returns. 

So, the opening returns are in on Ant-Man and while the film is making solid bank and managed to take the #1 spot from Minions it is coming in a bit bellow predictions and has had one of the weakest openings of any Marvel studios film.  Audience reaction seems to be pretty evenly spread across the spectrum with some people like myself really liking the film while others have at best found it forgettably enjoyable and at worst emblematic of Marvel’s bigger issues with diverse representation in their films.  However, Ant-Man’s role in the ongoing ‘Marvel Problem’ is a discussion for a different blog post, for right now I want to talk about the impact of Ant-Man’s more modest success might have on how Marvel produces films and the future of these characters.