Tag Archives: superhero

Dark Phoenix review

15 Saturday Jun 2019

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Oh yeah… the X-Men… I remember the X-Men…

by Thom Yee

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Dark Phoenix images courtesy of 20th Century Fox

I hate X-Men: Apocalypse.

I hate its little face. I hate its guts. And I hate the way it ruined the X-Men franchise.

Though to be fair, X-Men: The Last Stand did that first.

And that’s really the story of the X-Men on the big screen: Generally okay movies ruined by a few bad installments. For every couple of decent ones — X-Men and X-Men 2 — and even some good or great ones — X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past — there’s an X-Men: The Last Stand or X-Men: Apocalypse to set things back and screw everything up for those that try to follow them. Even the Wolverine and Deadpool movies were both almost tanked before they could start by X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

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Avengers: Endgame review

04 Saturday May 2019

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Finally!  Something to avenge!

by Thom Yee

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Avengers:  Endgame images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

I know what it’s like.  To want so desperately not to, but to know it as an inevitability.  Dread it.  Run from it.  But always arriving at the same conclusion:  You hate people.  But don’t worry.  So do I.  And honestly, I think… no, I know that if I had had the chance, I would get rid of half of them too.  At least that many.  Starting with the people who won’t shut up in movie theatres.  Because it’s precisely that type of person, one with no regard for those around them and the injustices they inflict on others, that led to the type of hatred I felt for people while watching Avengers:  Endgame.  I suppose, though, when it comes to something like Endgame, that, like Thanos’ mad scheme to kill half the universe, getting mad at awful people is ultimately little more than a game of numbers — combine the release of one of the most anticipated movies of our age with the longest running time ever for a superhero movie and attending that movie on its very first day of release and of course the odds heavily favour that at least one idiot would have to come to my showing and not be able to keep his mouth shut.  And that he would have friends.  Anticipation + Time + Overstimulation + People = Catastrophe. Continue reading →

Shazam! review

20 Saturday Apr 2019

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Hmm… more strip club scenes than I was expecting

by Thom Yee

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Shazam! images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

One of the more peculiar things you may have noticed if you’ve paid much attention to Hollywood movies releases is how often two very similarly themed movies come out in the same year, often jammed right up next to each other so closely that you can’t help but take note. It happened with Armageddon and Deep Impact, both about giant meteors on a collision course with the Earth, when they each arrived in 1998; it happened again later that year when DreamWorks’ Antz released little more than a month ahead of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life; it happened with Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige in 2006, a movie that made everyone forget that The Illusionist was also a pretty good movie about magicians that year; and it happened in 2013 when the President was in danger and could only be saved by a snarky action man in both Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down.  Continue reading →

Captain Marvel review

16 Saturday Mar 2019

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Back in my day, Captain Marvel was just a big red cheese, and I don’t remember no one complainin’!

by Thom Yee

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Captain Marvel images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

It might not seem like it from the outside, but Captain Marvel is just about the weirdest damn superhero to talk about.  At least for me she is.  See, I’m a lifelong comicbook nerd, even to this day, but I’m also a ‘90s kid, and if you were a ‘90s comicbook nerd kid like I was, then Captain Marvel, at least the Marvel Comics version, is basically a character who didn’t exist.  See, in the ‘90s, Captain Marvel was one of only two things:  1) The DC Comics teen superhero who yelled SHAZAM! and got powers just like Superman’s; or 2) The Marvel Comics superhero with cosmic powers who had been dead for a long, long, long time.  Like early ‘80s long ago.  And in either case, neither was a very big deal.  And in both cases they were men. Continue reading →

Aquaman review

23 Saturday Feb 2019

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Imperius rex?

by Thom Yee

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Aquaman images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Ask any of us comicbook fans, any of us REAL comicbook fans, whether or not we’re happy that there are so many superhero movies right now and most of us will tell you that of course it’s something that makes us happy.  It’s great.  It’s great that the things we like are now so popular.  Ask any of us fans if we’re surprised that they’re so popular, though, and most of us will probably say that yes, we’re also very surprised.  And it’s not that we’re surprised to see normal, everyday people getting into the same kinds of stories we’ve been reading about for most of our lives, it’s just kind of shocking to us that we could ever get here.  The superhero movie age we live in right now is truly astonishing, a promised land of sorts, and the type of thing we comicbook people had imagined might happen in some other reality but thought could never happen in this one.

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Glass review

26 Saturday Jan 2019

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Glass?  Who gives a sh*t about glass?!?

by Thom Yee

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Glass images courtesy of Universal Pictures

I don’t think there’s a movie director working today who’s as openly criticized as M. Night Shyamalan.  Mmmaybe George Lucas.  But he only counts if you consider his last few projects actual movies.  Most people don’t.  Shyamalan, on the other hand, has continued to produce a wide ranging body of work ever since he made his big debut with The Sixth Sense back in 1999, and, like another product of the ‘90s, The Simpsons, by now most people look back at what Shyamalan’s done and see that, despite a very strong, groundbreaking, world-defining start, there’s probably been more good than bad that’s come from the man overall. Continue reading →

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse review

19 Saturday Jan 2019

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Miles Morales > Tom Holland > Andrew Garfield > Tobey Maguire

by Thom Yee

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Spider-Man:  Into the Spider-Verse images courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing

The theory of the multiverse suggests that there exists different universes parallel to our own.  In at least one interpretation of the theory, the number of parallels continues to stretch out and grow into infinity.  That means that there’s a universe where you, the reader of this purported review, and I, the writer of it, have not only met, but I may even have killed you in that universe (in fact, I probably would have killed you in most of them if we’re being honest; it’s just a personal flaw I have, a hair-trigger temper matched with a dedication to violence that I’m sure would transcend most universal barriers).  But, with the concept of infinite parallel universes in mind, there are probably a lot of worlds in which I may have saved you from death as well (probably not the other way around, though; again, a lack of being saved is something I feel is probably close to a universal constant given my innate resistance to receiving help).  And then, extrapolating with infinity in mind even further, all of that saving I could be doing in all of those other worlds could be with the aid of superpowers.  I might have been bitten by a radioactive spider and not died from radiation poisoning [or my fear of spiders] but instead gained the proportionate strength(s) of a spider in one.  Or I might share a telepathic link with a radioactive spider with whom I co-pilot a bio-mechanical spider suit in another.  Or I might even be some sort of totemic spider spirit who imbues my chosen champions with the greatest virtues of the spider in another still.  Or maybe you are instead.  Or something.  Or something else.  Or something else still.  Ad infinitum. Continue reading →

Daredevil season 3 review

15 Saturday Dec 2018

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We’re in the Endgame now

by Thom Yee

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Daredevil images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Netflix

Colin Farrell.

In spite of what others might insist, comicbooks have a great potential for meaning and depth and sometimes even occasional transcendence if met by a receptive audience.  They’re just like any other storytelling medium in that way.  Despite their often garish outer trappings, comicbooks aren’t inherently stupid or immature; not nearly as stupid and immature as the dismissive attitudes that would suggest they must be are anyway.  Like most other stories, comicbook stories tend to speak to the broader thoughts and universal themes we all recognize simply as part of being human.  Superman relates to concepts of power, divinity, and the notion of the foreigner finding their way in a strange new land.  Batman represents a different kind of power, acknowledging our darkest motivations meeting our greatest hopes, no matter how unattainable those hopes might be and how bad they may be for us.  Spider-Man is an everyman, facing the same troubles we all do, but, having learned an important lesson in power and responsibility, is an everyman who uses his gifts as selflessly as possible despite everything it costs him.  Some comicbook characters, though… some of them are just straight-up murderers.  Gifted with exotic murder powers.  Designed by murder artisans who work exclusively in the medium of murder.  Characters like Bullseye, whose power, basically, is to pick anything up and throw it at you, unerringly, in a way that kills you.  He’s our new bad guy in this season of Daredevil.  This time he doesn’t suck.

Not like this guy. Continue reading →