Ow! My chi!

by Thom Yee

Iron Fist images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Netflix

Did you guys know Iron Fist came out? I feel like if I wasn’t actively keeping up with this stuff, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Anyway, Iron Fist is just the latest in Marvel’s series of prestige-format Netflix shows focused on the more human side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that began with Daredevil in 2015 before giving us Jessica Jones later that year and Luke Cage just last fall. Though the mandate for the Marvel Netflix shows has been to focus on more grounded stories in the MCU (at least in comparison to the movies), they’ve gradually but definitely moved more and more towards the fantastic. Continue reading →

I see these kids now with “Christmas” printed on their shirts. Pfft. Now Luke Cage, he’s a man that can teach you how to say “Sweet Christmas”!

by Thom Yee

Luke Cage images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Netflix

It’s been two shows, three seasons, and, really, only about a year and a half since this little Netflix corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) first started with the adventures of a blind lawyer doing his best (i.e., violence) to clean up Hell’s Kitchen, and in that time a lot has changed in the shared Marvel Universe. Tony Stark’s overzealous efforts to protect the world led to the destruction of a small Eastern European country, Inhumans are (apparently) popping up all over the place, and superhumans have been forced to register with the world’s’ governments and submit to their approval. But you wouldn’t know any of that if you’ve stuck exclusively to the Marvel Netflix shows and their focus on the street-level stories of the MCU, and with Luke Cage, the third and latest of them, things have started to get a little… funky. Continue reading →

Further proof that ninjas make everything better

by Thom Yee

Daredevil images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios and Netflix

Even in the superhero golden age that we’re now living in (though, admittedly, this precise moment is a bit of an extreme valley, right after Batman v Superman and right before Civil War), the state of broadcast superhero television is still a little disappointing. With the mediocrity of shows like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. typifying the space, it’s fallen to the Berlanti-verse group of superhero television series (so named after their producer Greg Berlanti) to headline the genre, but even its best show, The Flash, doesn’t showcase the genre’s potential on a regular basis. It’s a likable, occasionally ambitious, and incredibly sincere show, but it’s still far too often a sloppy mess that usually only pulls itself together at its key moments while spending the rest of the season meandering until reaching its various finish lines. I mean, I love The Flash, but it’s not exactly a show that trades in depth or complexity or adult themes like Breaking Bad or Mad Men, and with all of this past season’s broadcast superhero TV shows — ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter; WB’s Arrow, Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow; CBS’s Supergirl, NBC’s Heroes, and Fox’s Gotham — past, at, or near their seasonal (or series) conclusions, that’s not a trend that’s likely to end very soon.

And then there’s Netflix. Continue reading →

Anyone ever heard of earplugs?

by Thom Yee

Jessica Jones images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Netflix

People ask me all the time, they ask me, “Thom, when’s this whole… superhero thing gonna end?” Well… they ask me that after the considerable time they’ve been forced to spend with me and after I’ve finally lightened up enough to let them practice a bit of their own free will.

After they’re pummeled to the point of submission by a group of my various bodyguards and henchmen for such impudence — the impudence of suggesting that superhero movies will go away and the impudence of speaking to me as if I owed them (or anybody) an answer — I tell them the same thing I tell myself:

Superheroes will never end!

Continue reading →

Here Comes… Daredevil, The Show Without Network Censorship!

by Thom Yee

Daredevil images courtesy of Marvel Television and ABC Studios.

Ben Affleck.

For the last few years, I could recall a Daredevil movie as something that once happened, but apparently I’d so divested myself of any specific memories of it that I’d forgotten that Daredevil was once played by Ben Affleck. In one way or another, I think about and talk about superhero movies almost all of the time, even in the absence of appropriate social cues to do so and even in the presence of social norms suggesting to do otherwise, but even at the height of the Ben Affleck-is-the-new-Batman hysteria, I still failed to remember that Ben Affleck had been our one and only onscreen Man Without Fear.

And I supported the Affleck-Batman casting.

And I saw that Daredevil movie.

Continue reading →