The Avengers RETRO-REVIEW

Image Courtesy www.ifanboy.com

Here it is:  the big one.  The Avengers is probably when most fans really started following the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  I know that for me The Avengers was the first time I figured out that all these superhero movies were connected.  Now, in my defense, I can’t have been the only one who saw the original Iron Man in theaters, left at the credits, didn’t see Nick Fury show up and namedrop the Avengers, and then didn’t bother to come back a couple months later to see the second Hulk movie in 5 years!  Needless to say, when I saw that The Avengers was coming, bought up the first 5 MCU movies, watched them all, and then went to see The Avengers 3 times, I was really kicking myself for not getting in on this thing sooner!

There’s a reason that The Avengers holds such a special place in the hearts of Marvel fans, comic book fans, Joss Whedon fans, and geekdom in general.  This was the first movie to prove that the standard comic book thing—taking a bunch of disparate characters from wildly different comic book genres and styles and putting them together—could actually work on the big screen.  This was the first movie to prove that you can build a coherent “cinematic universe” which encompasses a bunch of solo movies leading up to one big event team-up movie.  This was the one the movie that put Hollywood on notice:  comic books and universes are “in.”

Captain America: Civil War Follow-Up: Zemo

Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com

When I was originally putting together this series of articles, I intended to include Zemo in the previous article with “The Rest.”  However, as I considered further, I realized that there is so much more to talk about with regard to Zemo, particularly because I think he will come back to become a major player several years down the line in Phase 4.

After watching Captain America: Civil War, we now have a very good idea exactly where this thing is going to be going over the next few years as the MCU ramps up for the Infinity War in 2018 and 2019.  Each hero who appeared in Civil War received a satisfying arc, and at the end of the movie each of them had a definite trajectory of where their next appearances will come from.  However, the presumptive villain, Helmut Zemo, did not get to do quite as much in this movie as the heroes did—even if he did exactly as much as he needed to do!

Over the last four weeks, I talked about the members of the “Secret Avengers” and “Mighty Avengers,” as well as Captain America’s abandoned shield and the other heroes who do not fit into the other categories and a replacement Captain America.  This time around, I will talk about Zemo and how I think he fits into Marvel’s larger plans moving forward.

This is my last planned article for Captain America: Civil War; next week we’ll get into Daredevil season 2 and how it sets up future Netflix series.

The Civil War Conflict Has Been Built into the MCU All Along

Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com

Here we are, 4 weeks away from the wide release of Captain America: Civil War.  This movie has been hotly anticipated ever since Disney announced last year that the third Captain America movie would not have the subtitle “Serpent Society,” but instead would be titled Captain America: Civil War.  However, to think that the MCU Civil War has only been building for a couple of years would be to ignore the facts.  It’s not like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers just decided one day that they wanted to disagree about something, picked the Sokovia Accords, and duked it out.  No, this conflict over accountability vs. freedom has actually been built into the very DNA of the Marvel Cinematic Universe virtually since its inception.  You might say that these heroes were always destined to come into conflict, either with each other or with the government; the time and place was the only question left to be answered.

Frankly, this Civil War has been a long time coming.

All-New, All-Different Marvel: The Rest

Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com

 Marvel announced last year that they would be completely rebooting their universe following the Secret Wars/Battleworld event. As part of this reboot they are going to be focusing on some new and altered characters, particularly those whose TV and movie rights are owned by Marvel Studios. This is leading Marvel to focus its efforts on promoting the Inhumans while downplaying the mutants, as well as to the splitting up of the Fantastic Four, with Human Torch joining the Inhumans and the Thing joining the Guardians of the Galaxy. So because the All-New, All-Different Marvel is going all-in on Marvel Studios properties, I started to wonder if some of the other characters in the A-N, A-D Marvel might be getting a push for a future movie or TV appearance. As such, this series will look at all the characters in the All-New, All-Different Marvel lineup whose live-action rights are owned by either Marvel Studios or Sony and who have not appeared in a movie yet.

Some of these are characters I’ve written about in the past, so I will include links to those articles and only provide relatively brief summaries.

If there are any additional characters that you would like to see me cover in this series, let me know in the comments.

This is the last article I expect to write in this miniseries. In this one I’ll cover all the remaining characters owned by Marvel or Sony and which are getting their own titles in the All-New, All-Different Marvel lineup. If there’s one you expected to see but haven’t seen, check either of the team articles, linked at the bottom of the page. If you think I missed someone, let me know in the comments!

200th Post: National or State-Sponsored Marvel Heroes and the MCU

Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com

This is the 200^th article that I have published on my blog in right around 7½ months. Wow! A lot of blogs don’t last that long, and a lot of blogs don’t publish that much. I’d like to think that the reason I’ve kept this going so long is because I have interesting things to say, and the fact that there are people who check out my blog (35k+ views to-date) and like what I’m saying doesn’t hurt either! When I was looking at my publishing schedule, I saw that my 200^th article would be either the Expectations for tonight’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Review for it. Well, I didn’t publish anything on Sunday (I already talked about the most interesting thing for tonight’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. over the summer: Lash’s comic book history), meaning that #200 would be tomorrow’s review. At first I thought that would be appropriate; my first article was an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. review (“Aftershocks,” 2x11), so what better 200^th post than another review? However, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of writing a special article for my 200^th post. So here it is: my 200^th article!

This is something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while but didn’t think I had the facts for until now. I put a request on Reddit, and that generated some interest, so here are a lot of characters I knew about already or found in the course of my research, as well as some additional suggestions from a couple Redditers.

Have you noticed that there are a lot of Marvel heroes who seem to be the embodiment of their respective nations? Captain America is the first hero to come to mind; his outfit and shield are covered in American symbols which are only slightly-more-obviously-American than his character traits of loyalty, patriotism, and honor. However, Captain America is not the only Marvel hero to be very closely-associated with his or her nation and even depicted acting as an official agent of the nation.

Here are all the so-called “National Heroes” that I could find. This is a bit of a subjective list, as I was looking at a combination of criteria, primary among which is acting as an official “agent of the state” in some capacity. However, there are a couple who are not depicted as official agents but I would still consider to be representing the ideals and values of their nation—“personifying the nation,” if you will. At the end of the article I’m also going to answer the question: Is there any scenario where we could see these “national heroes” in the MCU?

All-New, All-Different Marvel: MCU Teams

Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com

Marvel announced last year that they would be completely rebooting their universe following the Secret Wars/Battleworld event.  As part of this reboot they are going to be focusing on some new and altered characters, particularly those whose TV and movie rights are owned by Marvel Studios.  This is leading Marvel to focus its efforts on promoting the Inhumans while downplaying the mutants, as well as to the splitting up of the Fantastic Four, with Human Torch joining the Inhumans and the Thing joining the Guardians of the Galaxy.  So because the All-New, All-Different Marvel is going all-in on Marvel Studios properties, I started to wonder if some of the other characters in the A-N, A-D Marvel might be getting a push for a future movie or TV appearance.  As such, this series will look at all the characters in the All-New, All-Different Marvel lineup whose live-action rights are owned by either Marvel Studios or Sony and who have not appeared in a movie yet.

Some of these are characters I’ve written about in the past, so I will include links to those articles and only provide relatively brief summaries.

If there are any additional characters that you would like to see me cover in this series, let me know in the comments.

This time around I will be talking about those teams which have an equivalent in the MCU or will appear shortly.  This time around there will be quite a few characters who have already appeared in the MCU or will appear soon, so I will just mention them by name.  For the purpose of this article I will be including the Ultimates as an Avengers team because they originated as the Ultimate Universe equivalent of the Avengers (however, this team is just borrowing its name from the Ultimate Universe team).  Also note that I am completely ignoring the X-Men teams because there is just no way for them to appear in the MCU at this time.

Quickie: Newly-Announced Movies Guess

Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com

This week Marvel Studios announced four new movies:  Ant-Man and The Wasp and 3 untitled movies in 2020.  I wasn’t going to do this at first, but I decided to write a quick post with my idea of what those three untitled movies will be, as well as what I think Ant-Man and The Wasp will be about.

Weekly MCU Review for 10/10

Another week, and more MCU news!  New York Comic-Con is this weekend, bringing with it a ton of new announcements and posters.  Put some ketchup on your eggs, and catch-up (*ducks*) on your Marvel news!

All-New, All-Different Marvel: Non-MCU Teams

Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com

Marvel announced last year that they would be completely rebooting their universe following the Secret Wars/Battleworld event.  As part of this reboot they are going to be focusing on some new and altered characters, particularly those whose TV and movie rights are owned by Marvel Studios.  This is leading Marvel to focus its efforts on promoting the Inhumans while downplaying the mutants, as well as to the splitting up of the Fantastic Four, with Human Torch joining the Inhumans and the Thing joining the Guardians of the Galaxy.  So because the All-New, All-Different Marvel is going all-in on Marvel Studios properties, I started to wonder if some of the other characters in the A-N, A-D Marvel might be getting a push for a future movie or TV appearance.  As such, this series will look at all the characters in the All-New, All-Different Marvel lineup whose live-action rights are owned by either Marvel Studios or Sony and who have not appeared in a movie yet.

Some of these are characters I’ve written about in the past, so I will include links to those articles and only provide relatively brief summaries.

If there are any additional characters that you would like to see me cover in this series, let me know in the comments.

This time I will be talking about the teams which do not have an equivalent in the MCU.