Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Since Avengers: Age of Ultron came out on DVD, I got a chance to watch it again and I really wasn’t that impressed, sure it was a decent and exciting film but it felt bloated and there were times when the film dragged on and on. The major flaw is that everyone expected it to be a huge movie akin to the first Avengers film. Spoilers to follow.

The Avengers Assemble again, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Hawkeye and Black Widow are on a mission to attack a Hydra facility to retrieve Loki’s scepter. On this mission they are attacked by the Maximoff twins, Wanda (Scarlet Witch) and Pietro (Quicksiver), Wanda can manipulate minds and throw energy and Pietro can run fast. So the Avengers win the scepter and bring it back home with them. Tony Stark decides it would be a good idea to look into the scepter and he finds some artificial intelligence and Tony decides to “builds” Ultron, as a way to end the Avengers and to do so Ultron wants to kill the Avengers. Clearly Ultron is the bad guy, he takes the scepter and goes rogue, he attack the Avengers who were have a victory party for some reason. Ultron then recruits the twins to help him since Stark killed their parents. So the Avengers get into a fight with Ultron again and Wanda uses her mind manipulation skills and gives most of the Avengers visions. Many of these cause members to freak out and Hulk goes crazy and smashes some towns hurting people as well. This causes the world to start hating The Avengers so they go into hiding.

They enter into Hawkeye’s house and meet his wife and kids.  Nick Fury shows up and gives a pep talk about how they need to work together as a team to stop Ultron. While this is going on Ultron goes to a synthetic tissue printer that Dr. Cho who was at the victory party has and Ultron tries to make a perfect version of himself using the Mind Gem which was inside Loki’s Scepter but the Avengers attack before Ultron can upload himself completely into the body. and he loses the body, but captures Black Widow. During this Wanda sees a vision of Ultron destroying the world so they decide to join the Avengers. Having captured the body Tony Stark being the huge dick he is decides to upload JARVIS into the body as he was the thing that was preventing Ultron from getting any launch codes. This is Vision.  They win in the end and set up a new version of The Avengers (War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Falcon, with Captain America and Black Widow) Hawkeye goes back to his family, Thor goes back home, Tony goes somewhere and Hulk has taken off to space or someplace like that.

During the credits Thanos shows up and says he;ll have to do it himself and puts on an Infinity Gauntlet.

Now I think that the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe is something that you need to be caught up on for all the following movies since they all play off one another and build to things like the Avengers. If you want to see next year’s Captain America you have to see this movie and it sets up the divide that leads to the Civil War or something.  As for who has the best Quicksilver that goes to X-Men.

Daredevil

I finally made my way through the first season on Netflix and it is a good show. I didn’t see the movie when it came out with Ben Affleck so I have nothing to really compare to it. It was a well put together season unlike some other Marvel Cinematic Universe shows (Agents of SHIELD) which seem to get stuck due to the movies Daredevil is loosely connected to the Universe at this time. However I’ve read rumors that the Netflix shows might eventually make their way onto the big screen. Spoilers to follow

Daredevil is Matt Murdoch the son of a boxer who was blinded at a young age. Matt and his best friend Foggy Nelson are lawyers and have a law firm together. If you haven’t gotten around to watching the show sure you can wait until after the Avengers movie comes out, but you are missing an exciting show. So Matt lawyers by day and fights crime by night in Hell’s Kitchen, NY.  Matt and Foggy’s first case brings in Karen Page who becomes Matt and Foggy’s secretary. The first season is about the rise of Wilson Fisk (Kingpin) and Daredevil after the destruction of New York in the first Avengers movie. I wonder if we might see Kingpin in an upcoming Spider-man movie. This first Netflix\Marvel venture worked out well hopefully the other show do the same.

 

Big Hero 6 (2014)

In Big Hero 6,  Walt Disney’s film loosely inspired by the Marvel comic of the same name, we hit all the classic Disney notes we have a death near the beginning and then our hero aptly named Hiro, struggles to deal with the loss and eventually with the help of his friends he moves on and overcomes his own thoughts of worthlessness.

Spoilers to follow:

Hiro is a smart young teen in San Fransokyo, his parents died when he was little and Hiro and his brother Tadashi live with their aunt above her cafe. Hiro really wants nothing to do with the world and would be content if he could just build and fight robots all day long. Tadashi presses Hiro to join him at San Fransokyo Tech in the robotics department, he brings Hiro to show him what he’s been working on it is a home health robot Baymax and then tells Hiro that he has no chance at getting into the school  and this prompts Hiro to give it his all and get in. Tadashi tells him that if Hiro can come up with a good enough invention that impresses the head of the Robotics department, he can get in.

Hiro works long and hard on his project microbots which would revolutionize the world it impresses the head of the Robotics department and Hiro get invited to join or something, not sure how this college thing works in the movie. After Hiro’s presentation there is a fire and Tadashi runs in to rescue the head of the department but the explosion is to much and he dies. This leads Hiro into a deep depression and eventually to Baymax, who has been moved to Tadashi and Hiro’s room. Baymax tries to help Hiro over come his depression and gets him together with Tadashi’s friends from school.

Hiro believes that the only way to grieve is to get the guy who killed Tadashi and with the help of Tadashi;s friend he goes out and starts looking, but eventually runs into a man in a kabuki mask who has been manufacturing Hiro’s microbots. They form a misfit band of heroes and the all get super suits and special equipment, even Baymax is outfitted and upgraded to help out as well.  Will they catch Tadashi’s killer and find out who stole Hiro’s microbots. Go see the movie if you want to find out, and be sure to stick around for a post credit scene that features Stan Lee making his cameo.

It was a fun animated film and it won the Oscar for Best animated feature, along with countless other awards. I really like it since it was a light break from most of the other Superhero movies that have\are coming out are so dark that we sometimes miss the joy that we felt as children first reading the comics.  Was it the best animated feature that is highly debatable as How to Train Your Dragon 2 also picked up  a bunch of awards and some people still believe that The Lego movie was overlooked.

News Roundup

Movies: Marvel has worked out a deal with Sony so that Spider Man will now be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It looks like this will signal the end of Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. There is some speculation that this calls for another reboot of the series and many people around the internet are hoping that we don’t get another origin story for Peter Parker but we get Miles Morales instead. This would be a big change as Miles Morales would be the first major non white superhero and this is something that needs to happen as so far they have all been white.

Television: Yet another shake up in the Late Night world as Jon Stewart has announced that he will be leaving the Daily Show. Although this doesn’t mean the show is ending but it will be the end of an era since Stewart has hosted the show since 1999. There is not official last date for Jon’s last day but there is bound to be some extended farewell Jon event later this year. This seems logical for Stewart to leave this year since the next presidential election is in 2016 and although there will be some jockeying for the nomination this year the real meat of the election begins January 2016. Who will take over is the biggest question, will it be one of the correspondents like Samantha Bee, Jason Jones or Assif Mandvi or could John Oliver be brought back from HBO or will they pick someone not connected with the show in any way shape of form and perhaps a woman. We will have to wait and see what become of this transition.

Music: I stumbled upon this article about singing. The article argues that there is no such thing as tone deaf people as research out of Northwestern University suggests that singing is not a talent but rather a learned skill. The study compared three age groups (kindergarten, 6th grade, college aged) on singing accurately. The study showed improvement from kindergarten to 6th grade and then a decline in the college aged, and the results of the college aged were around the levels of kindergarten. This indicates some truth to the “use it or lose it” effect. Should music singing become one of those required electives in the future? With so many television shows about singing or featuring singing can we remove the stigma from singing as a society. Everyone should know how to sing and should be able to at least carry a tune.

 

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Days of Future Past is the lynchpin movie that is supposed to tie the original trilogy, the Wolverine movies and the reboot (First Class) together in one single timeline. They did a good job at this and it was a fun movie. I think one of the clever things that they did was that you didn’t have to see the old trilogy to follow the movie, you only really needed to see First Class since it is a sequel to that movie.

Days of Future Past begins in the future, Gigantic robots, know as Sentinels have been sent to exterminate all mutants and their human allies. Professor X and the other have an idea have Kitty Pryde can use her ability to send Wolverine’s consciousness back into the past in order to stop an assassination which was the catalyst for building the Sentinels.  So Wolverine is sent to 1973 and wakes up in his body and set off to find Professor X, Magneto and Mystique. There are some cool scenes here as Magneto is in a prison underneath the Pentagon and Professor X and Wolverine need some help to free him, they uses Quicksilver, who runs really fast to get Magneto out.  After this they travel to the Paris Peace Accords where Mystique is on a mission to kill the man behind the Sentinels. This doesn’t go well and it brings mutants to be revealed to society. After this “attack” Nixon feels that the Sentinel program is worth it and as they are being unveiled Magneto goes comes around and drops RFK stadium around the White House.  Here is where we begin to see things as they were in the original movie. One of the biggest things that the film did was basically revert everything that happened in the original trilogy since Cyclops and Jean Grey are both alive in the present when Wolverine wakes up.

I though they did a wonderful thing by skipping ten years from First Class as it meant that there is more that is simply left unsaid that you have to infer about what happened. Some elements would have made for an interesting film, like JFK being a mutant, and other mutants like those picked up from in Vietnam during the film were they a unit by themselves, how did that work? This film make me a little excited for X-Men: Apocalypse, which is set in the 1980s Bryan Singer has said that this film will focus on the origin of the mutants. It sounds interesting and I’ve read somewhere that they are working on a live action X-Men show that would be interesting, although I think that with the wide selection of superheroes based television shows on television currently or debuting soon there needs to be a point where they stop.

News Round Up

Sports: As per usual the off season is just starting  and the Washington Redskins have made a huge splash, and are once again looking to take home the off season banner once again. This is a brilliant development and the fans in Washington are sure to be thrilled with the upcoming announcement. The Redskins will have a GM, and one who is actually pretty good as well. Scot McColoughan it is said will be announced as the Redskins new GM. McColoughan was a pivotal figure in building the 49ers and Seahawks into what they are today, so will any luck he can do the same thing here in Washington, The Redskins have been without a good GM for a good long time, maybe all of Synder’s tenure as owner. This move signals hope for the future and there will be ever more good news coming soon as it has been reported that the Redskins are interviewing for new Defensive Coordinators.

Theatre: There was an interesting article up about High School Theater and Censorship. I found it to be an compelling read as I was involved in the drama program in high school and we did a wide variety of shows from the popular (Music Man and Our Town) to the lesser known (Once in a Lifetime and A Chorus Line), but time have changed. Sure when I did A Chorus Line, we toned it down a bit it wasn’t Tits and Ass but rather This and That, but the adult nature of the show was intact. My niece in now in high school and involved in the drama program as well and it seems at least with the musicals to have moved to a more younger appeal (Wizard of Oz, Once Upon a Mattress, Beauty and the Beast) it’s all cotton candy shows. There is hardly any deep though needed for these types of shows. Sure there could be some compelling musical done this year but it’s bound to be some other family friendly sugar coated look at the world. The article goes on about how censoring shows at the high school level is and perhaps always been done, but it seems to have gotten out of hand lately with the easy access to stories about censorship hitting the internet. They go on to wonder how we will be able to get new challenging works that will win Pulitzers.

Movies: The Ant-Man Trailer is out and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about Ant Man, but it look like it could be a good movie. I mean Marvel has made a bunch of decent movies lately and there haven’t been many stinkers, but who knows. This is the end of Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and there is bound to be some connection in the New Avengers movie. Which just so happens to have a new trailer coming out on Monday night during the National Championship Game between the Ducks and Buckeyes.

News Roundup

Space: There was a little problem that happened with the Antares Rocket as it lifted off from Wallops lsland. Now this was one of the commercial resupply missions that was going to the International Space Station. This is a shocking event, although no one was killed in the accident it still is a shocking development for American Space travel. Orbital Sciences will be investigating what went wrong and hopefully they can figure it out. This was the first failure that Orbital has experienced.

Movies: Marvel has gone out and has announced Phase three in their grand movie universe. This is nine movies open over three years, we get another Captain America, Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy with the additions of Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, and The Inhumans. These along with a two part Avengers movie, where Thanos will get all 6 infinity stones by the end of the first one and then the second one will have then all fighting against Thanos or something like that. The Captain American movie will be based/adapted from the Civil War story with Steve Rogers and Iron Man fighting about Superhero registration as the government of the world are going to want to control supers after the events of the upcoming Avengers movie.

 

News Roundup

Movies: Good thing I waited a day as Marvel has released a teaser for the next movie in their movie universe. Avengers: Age of Ultron comes out in May in the US. I’ve read that the teaser will be a part of the upcoming weeks broadcast of Agents of Shield, and I wonder if they will play any role in the movie.  It seems likely that there will be some build up on the show before the movie comes out and as the movie comes out that first week of May or something there will be some episodes dealing with the aftermath like we had with Thor 2 and Winter Solider.

College Athletics: The New York Times has an article about how at UNC athletes took fake classes. The student athletes were urged to take these classes in the African/African American Studies program as the classes really didn’t exist but were only there to help boost the grades of athletes and the athletic department would contact these teachers about what grades students needed to be eligable to play. As it happens these classes have been shut down since at least 2011. This is one of those things that everyone suspected took place on college campuses, the student athletes take easy classes as many of them are there for just a couple of years before making their way to play professionally, it also accounts for the “easy majors” that many have. Some individuals have suggested that colleges pay the athletes for the year or two that they need to stay in college so that they can be drafted in the NBA or NFL. Others have said why not make the sport something that they can major in.  I guess we will see what comes of this issue in the larger world of NCAA sports.

San Diego Comic Con 2014

The past couple of years it has seemed like Comic Con in San Diego has been a place where big announcement were made. Last year we had Batman v Superman announced and a lot of footage from upcoming movies. This year was a bit of a let down as the biggest thing people are talking about is Wonder Woman’s costume in Batman v Superman. Sure there was some teasers from upcoming movies like Ant-man, Avengers 2, and Batman v Superman. The biggest surprise to me was that they announced a sequel to Guardian of the Galaxy already before the movie comes out.

However this year seemed like it focused on television shows. With DC and Marvel both having success on television. Marvel’s got Agents of SHIELD which turned out to be a wonderful show this past year I for one like how it ties in with the movies, and it’s companion series Agent Carter. However there wasn’t a lot about their Netflix series which come out in 2015. Over at DC they have 4 new shows debuting this upcoming year on television along with the hugely popular Arrow. I believe some of the show debuted in San Diego this weekend (Gotham, Flash, Constantine) not sure how they went over as I will be waiting to judge them myself this fall. One of the biggest things that we learned television wise is that Ra’s al Guhl will be showing up on Arrow this season and characters from Arrow will be popping up in The Flash.

Captain American: Winter Solider (2014)

I am a huge fan of the Marvel films and the latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a splendid ride. I’ve always been a Marvel fan a long time growing up I watched the X-Men and the Spider-Man cartoons daily. The MCU has been a huge success for Marvel films and although it would be real cool if any Marvel character could pop up in one of these movies that seems next to impossible. Even the television series Agents of SHIELD has turned out to be a great show, although there have been some rocky episodes that just didn’t go anywhere it has really picked up in the second half of the season.  Please be warned spoilers are to follow.

The film begins two years after the events of The Avengers we find Steve Rodgers trying to make sense of his life in the 21st century and catching up on all the pop culture he’s missed (a cool side note the list is different in different regions of the world). Rodgers is still working for SHIELD and has teamed up with Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow). On one of their missions to free a boat that was hijacked by pirates, Captain learns about a secondary mission that Natasha has for Nick Fury. When they return Rosgers goes and confronts Fury about what all happened on the mission and Cap is informed of Operation Insight (three helicarriers which can be used in conjunction with satellites to eliminate threats before they happen)

Nick Fury is then attacked on his way across town by the Winter Solider, Fury escapes and makes it to Rodgers home where he wait. Cap arrives home and is informed by Fury that SHIELD has been compromised and give Rodgers the flash drive from the pirate ship to figure out what it’s about.  Then Nick Fury is shot and dies. Rodgers is questioned by Alexander Pierce about what Fury and Cap talked about before Fury was shot by the Winter Solider, Rodgers say that Fury’s last words were “Trust no one.” After this meeting Pierce names Rodgers a fugitive and orders that he be captured.

Captain and Black Widow evade being captured and discovers that HYDRA has been in SHIELD for a long time and HYDRA is now going to emerge once again. Rodgers enlists the help of his friend Sam Wilson and his FALCON jet pack for help taking down SHIELD. On the way they are attacked by the Winter Solider and while they are fighting Captain discovers that it’s Bucky his best friend who he thought was lost during a mission. The film has a great ending but that’s why you go and see a movie so that’s as far in the plot that I go.

One of the unique things that I really like with what they are doing with Marvel films is that with the television show Agents of SHIELD these things are happening concurrently so we have the whole larger that life story unfolding before our eyes. It seem very likely that it will be picked up for another season which would be great as it just seems that the story is about to unfold.

To recap, go see Captain America and remember to stay to the very end, it’s got two bonus scenes and check out Agents of SHIELD.