Pop Culture is Dead to Me: The Umpire Strikes Back Again For the Second Time

Several months ago, I wrote an appraisal of the first bunch of Marvel Cinematic Universe films. I stopped my progress at Captain America: Civil War - essentially an Avengers film with a story wrapped around it. This has spoilers but I reckon I'm a fair way behind the rest of the people who are likely to read this, so please, no spoiling it for me in any comments.

Next up was Doctor Strange (recently shown on TV). I stated in the last blog I couldn't understand why they put Cumberpatch into an ill-fitting New York accent. My understanding was Strange was a Bostonian but would have been better suited to a Niles Crane kind of Mid-Atlantic accent. His squeaky Bronx-like lilt kind of allowed the pathos to die a little.

I thought it was me, but several people I've spoken to thought Doctor Strange was longer than its just under 2 hours. It certainly felt like it the first time round - not in a bad way. Watching it again it felt short, abridged in places and nowhere near as sophisticated as it felt originally. In fact, in many ways, it is a slight film based on a similar premise to Iron Fist without fists (although it does predate it by a decade or so). The casting of the ubiquitous weird looking androgynous female actor to play the Ancient One felt like it was done deliberately and the Time Stone being in the possession of a bunch of mystics, hidden in a cloak seemed to suit the rapidly advancing MAJOR plot running through all the films. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun film and fits in nicely; it just felt contrived and unoriginal - oddly. I'm not sure Doc Strange has ever been anything other than a good part player - his comic struggled for many years to sustain decent sales; it was all a bit weird for mainstream comic fans and probably not weird enough for its target audience - the film sat between that.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is in my opinion much better than the first film and also a load of shite. It was a story because of a story tale which felt like a lot of jolly wheezes strung together with a flimsy story draped over it. It managed to introduce, subtly, what's around the corner for the MCU while not really moving things along. The Guardians are like those blokes you sometimes see down the pub; at times they are the best company, but at others you just want to sit on your own or with some less exuberant people.

Second watch was better than the first - as it was with the first film - I just struggled a little with the team and found Ego to be both puzzling and nowhere near as menacing as he was originally portrayed in the comics. It also upsets my sense of original Marvel continuity when characters and things are introduced in 'comics' they didn't originally appear in... if you know what I mean? They do things to appease the likes of me, but it sometimes feels as though Marvel is addressing issues they know old fans will question or are different from comics continuity - this feels especially true of Guardians. I suppose when you have a wise-cracking raccoon and his sentient tree sidekick, you need to wrap a few other characters around them to try and squeeze a film sub-franchise out of it.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is in need of a explanation. Like Batman, I find Spider-Man just a little too much. The MCU without him (or the X-Men) was easy to live with (not so much not having the FF for reasons mentioned in the above paragraph). The first bunch of five movies were... okay. A couple were bearable, I never saw the last one - I caught ten minutes of it on TV a few weeks ago, it didn't make me want to go and watch it. For any comic fan growing up in the 1970s Spider-Man was everywhere. Batman in the 80s. Wolverine in the 90s; you kind of feel happier without them...

Homecoming is a film I enjoyed immensely and also found reminiscent of the first Iron Man film in that it almost felt like an anti-climax - in hindsight. The first Iron Man film is pretty lo-tech compared to what followed; a deliberate low key beginning because the sequels always have to be bigger and better. Despite this being technically the 6th Spider-Man film, it felt underwhelming in its action scenes and that actually helped the film. What I didn't like was how the period after the origin was handled or the fact that Aunt May was now some hotty rather than a wizened old woman. But I did like how Iron Man shoe-horned Spider-Man into the MCU and the development of their relationship. This film was too long by ½ an hour.

Thor: Ragnarok is a bit of a puzzle; it is both brilliant and utterly crass. Ridiculously funny and devastatingly brutal. History may well look back on it and declare it to be the best Marvel film ever; personally I think it's a load of fun with lots of problems and is one of the most disjointed, badly plotted, Marvel films so far. The tone of this film is wrong. It throws up villains capable of destroying a realm which has never looked as grand or impervious as it did in the first Thor film and tried to be a mix of Game of Thrones and Spinal Tap. Comedy gladiators meets Auschwitz with a big demon thrown in for good measure. Ultimately it is just a scene setter - a set up for the final Easter egg - the positioning of players in a bigger game. Was it me or did this film seem just a tad ... convenient?

Black Panther did wonders for multi-culturalism, the use of BAME actors and crew and is about as dull a film as I've ever seen come out of Marvel's studios. For all the brilliance of Wakanda it simply stank of privilege, power and isolationism and as for an action adventure film? Yawn... T'Challa makes Steve Rogers seem like a Vaudeville showman and his back-up crew of jazzy hiphop scientist sister, Walking Dead reject with shaved head and girlfriend who can kick butt against tattooed villain with a power trip was considerably less exciting than watching a Groot grow. There's going to be a second one. I can wait.

And then there was The Avengers: Infinity War where lots of things happened most of the time and then half the population of the universe were gone... It's an intense, full-on film jam-packed with plot holes, which I'm sure will be addressed in Endgame. Other than that, I need to watch it again (probably in the next few weeks) because so much happens.

Ant-Man and the Wasp was all about the post credit scene really. I understand why these films are made. It is amusing and some of the effects tickle the 6 year-old inside me, but they're like the comedy episode in your favourite TV drama - there's one every season to lighten the mood before a big revelation at the end. This film ticked all those boxes. Snap!

And that brings us to Captain Marvel and me as up-to-date as I can be, living in isolation. I won't see Endgame before the end of July at the earliest, so seeing this gave me the chance to see what the preamble to the big show was going to be like. I'd seen reviews expressed about the film, but I had been careful to avoid the main spoilers - not that there were any - so my enjoyment wasn't really impacted on that way.

It's rare I will sit through an entire Marvel movie without some conscious nod of approval, burst of laughter or exclamation of some kind of amaze or amusement. I think it happened with Black Panther (although I did bemoan the fact that Klaw was really poorly used and would have been a much 'better' villain) and when the main credits of Captain Marvel began I realised my only reaction was 'meh'.

Meh? It was a huge hit. Fans loved it.

My Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't the team you see in the cinema; mine was Charlie 27, Vance Astro, Yondo and the other crystal guy - they were the intergalactic heroes of Marvel's late 1960s...

Carol Danvers is Ms Marvel - a maligned and short-lived superhero series in the 1970s by Chris (X-Men) Claremont and John Buscema. It was ace and one of the last comics series I got rid of. It was a vitally important cog in the wheel of Marvel and so much was introduced in it that had bearing on the future of Marvel's comics universe.

Captain Marvel or Mar-Vell was a noble Cree warrior and rebel against his own race, who was also instrumental in the events of the future, but would eventually die of cancer in one of Marvel's best graphic novels - Jim Starlin's Death of Captain Marvel; seek it out; it's stunning (and Thanos is in it). Captain Marvel was also inextricably linked to, among others, the Incredible Hulk, although no Rick Jones exists in the current MCU. And I'm just scratching the surface, I can be really nerdy about this specific corner of the Marvel comics universe.

So, while there are elements of comics history in Captain Marvel, I thought it was an awful film. I mean really dreadful.

Let's start with that epilogue in Infinity War, the one where Nick Fury presses the pager. That's fine. I liked that idea. The one problem I had with it was if I'd been writing this or at least 'show running' it, Captain Marvel would have come out before Doctor Strange. I just find the idea of introducing a major character on the eve of the defining film in the series smacks of deus ex machina and a lack of imagination - so obviously Captain Marvel is not going to have the desired effect in Endgame or be as important as she is being made out to be, otherwise, you know... god in a machine.

As for the film... Brie Larsen wasn't awful, but I'm not sure she's a superhero actor. I found her glib, flippant and almost devoid of any character apart from slightly wise-ass. Nothing happened in that 2 hours that made me want to like Carol Danvers (the film version) and not since Black Panther did a Marvel film feel as staged and as deliberate. The mid-90s were rammed down your throat - look how primitive we were!

Let's get on with the plot/story... there was a story, I'm sure of it. Ace, never-give-up, wannabe fighter pilot Carol 'Avenger' Danvers can't fly combat missions in the late 1980s because she's a girl, so she can only fly top secret light speed missions with a scientist - natch! - until one day an alien craft blows them out of the sky. Carol then destroys the light speed engine and is imbued with the power of the Tesseract which makes her a super-powered bad ass. So the Cree kidnap her, wipe her memories away, turn her into one of their own elite fighting squad - because that always works out for the best - and set her against the evil, nasty, shapeshifting Skrulls, who are bad and evil and need wiping out. Stranded on her home planet and teaming up with a young Nick Fury, Carol discovers her true origins, defeats the bad guys she thought were good guys and returns the good guy who she thought were bad guys to a safer place. The end.

It's shit. Everything from the Blockbuster video store to Fury's eye felt so stage-managed it was unreal. The post credit scenes were both excellent, the first one felt really rushed though and pretty much blows a lot of theories out of the window as to when Captain Marvel will turn up in Endgame.

I have managed to avoid most Endgame spoilers; I am aware that some characters won't be coming back from this next film; although I'm not totally sure who they'll be. I have some nagging feelings about Endgame that I'll share on the understanding that I don't know and don't want to know until I see it.

The strongest feeling I have is that Spider-Man isn't going to be in it. I do know that time travel is involved; you don't have to be a genius to work that one out and I think Tony Stark is going to prevent Parker from following the path he does in Infinity War - maybe putting something in the suit that prevents him from reaching that floating disc. With the next film being a Spidey film, I don't think the MCU are allowed to overkill him that much.

I also expect the Hulk is going to be considerably different from the last time we saw him because he has been conspicuous by his absence in trailers. I expect they're going to get their arses kicked in the first half an hour or so, leading to 2 hours of time travel shenanigans around past Marvel films, altering the time line or preventing whatever happened from happening, before a final showdown with Thanos where people die and the world mourns its heroes.

I think Marvel has been clever in their use of the Hulk since the failures of the first (second) film, but I think they've missed an opportunity by not scheduling another film.

But all of that is to come in the months ahead. I have to avoid all the trailers for the new Spidey film now...

So, 22 films across 11 years and by and large the majority have been great fun - a worthy franchise in many ways. My biggest worry however is the disappearance of my sense of wonder. I accept I'm not the age range the people at Disney are aiming at, but I am the silver generation of comics; I represent the new grandfathers who can introduce their bunch of kids to the delights of comics and comicbook films. I'm not even sure I've got that excited about many of them; possibly the reason I was so disappointed by Captain Marvel was my sense of expectation was destroyed inside ten minutes. I'm trying to wrack my brains for the last Marvel film I genuinely got excited about? I don't feel a nerdy sense of ownership; I can live with the necessary changes to stories and history, in general I've been more than happy with how characters I was never fond of have become integral to everything and have excellent actors making them believable - it's why Captain America, Iron Man and Black Widow have been so powerful and important to theirs and others' stories. It's how they fit into a world of Thunder Gods, rampaging gamma monsters and universe-bending Titans.

The problem I'm having is I'm not even sure I'm enjoying them as much any more. Part of the reason I fell out of love with comicbooks was over exposure mixed with the realisation that I'd subscribed to a never ending story; like a drug I was hooked on reduced to a decreasingly lower quality, massively diluted. I go into each film hoping for something that blows me away and it doesn't really happen any more. Have I reached peak blockbuster movie? Is there just too much superheroness everywhere and not enough on the page, where it started?

To be fair, for me, the next Spider-Man film holds slightly more interest than the next Star Wars film. I just hope that the Marvel films success doesn't end up making them as meaningless to me as other film franchises I can't fathom.

***

Game of Thrones? Meh again. It was all right. Not everyone I disliked died and some I liked did. It was a reasonably satisfying conclusion if not a bit rushed. Like Brexit, not everybody was going to be happy with the conclusion.

Lucifer returned to Netflix with a 10-part series and yet another cliffhanger ending - ish. It kind of crossed the Moonlighting line in the penultimate scene of what was an entertaining, if a little rushed, series and one wonders if another series will happen. If so, I'm betting this season's hellish ending is soon brushed over and we return to crap murder of the week. It's great fun for all its faults.

Doom Patrol - watch it; just watch it. Series of the year.

Shameless US - Fiona left. I said she'd be better off gone and she finally went. It should have been the ending of the series because in a way it felt like the logical conclusion - pretty much back to how it originally started but totally different.

Next up - expectations to be dashed by Godzilla: King of Monsters. Or possibly Stranger Things crossed with a kaiju version of Strictly. I never knew Millie Bobby Brown was British; that rather blew me away (more than Captain Marvel, anyhow...)

The Boys which could be the nail in the superhero series coffin or take it somewhere new.

And catch up on the ½ dozen things we've procrastinated about over the last year: season 3 of Mr Robot and Daredevil and eventually Agents of SHIELD when I'm sure it won't spoil Endgame. That Good Omens looks like it should be great, so I expect it'll be awful - that kicks off on Friday.

The most important TV of the century so far is on BT Sport on Saturday night. I expect it will define the rest of my life or shatter it for the summer, at least...

Pop Culture is Dead to Me 5: Some Things and another Thing

It's time to wander through the trichome-lined walls of my brain once again as I open my occasional bag of opinions on current televisual and cinematic wassnames...

Indulge me. Sometimes I simply need to kick back and do something I used to do for a living - speculate about trivial bollocks. It doesn't happen very often - I fancy playing golf more often but I don't do that either - and I wondered if I still had it in me and if I haven't it might be fun to speculate...

Now the Disney/Marvel/Fox 'merger' has been finalised it means the return of certain properties into the MCU or Marvel Cinematic Universe. This means that (Disney) Marvel can now use the X-Men and all related characters and The Fantastic Four and (I believe) most of the related characters; this would include Dr Doom, Galactus, Silver Surfer, but probably not She-Hulk (I don't know why, I might be wrong, I watch so much shit on You Tube).

Historically, the FF were the start of the Marvel Universe, so in an attempt to introduce them into an extant MCU would possibly be a bit of stretch (if you'll pardon the pun); also the X-Men's existing (but soon to be defunct) universe is most definitely not part of the same universe that houses the Avengers; the X-characters are fundamental elements of their reality.

To confuse purists, the MCU has The Inhumans yet the FF was the comic the Inhumans were introduced in and the one I used to associate them with the most. The MCU can use the Peter Parker Spider-Man and related characters, but other characters belong to Sony (Venom, Black Cat, certain villains). The waters are already muddy without really adding to it by introducing new elements that simply can't be... new.

I expect at some point - it might have already been hinted at in Avengers: Endgame (but I haven't seen it so no spoilers) - where all these different realities will merge into one and it won't only change things, it'll allow back stories to be told, new origin films and return any heroes no longer in the films to return, as new-look.

This would have been longer but I wrote it before Captain Marvel came out and I figured several months later I should be as superficial as any good click bait...

There have been some standout TV shows this year, so far, many with a superhero tinge and rammed full of humour done in a way that works. The Umbrella Academy was unknown to me and it didn't do anything I thought it would. It's an exasperating series - without giving any spoilers away - that delivers more than enough to keep you hooked, but leaves just a little too much for a sequel which I'm not sure has been green lit yet. It's bloody awesome, but it leaves you with a shit load of questions.

The Tick opened his wings again and became more grand. The almost theatrical (as in stage) feel to the first series was replaced by something much bigger and bolder. There was the return of familiar jokes and it meandered its way through 10 episodes like a bull on acid in a cushion shop while introducing an entire Tick universe to ogle at. It is brilliantly absurd and I highly recommend it, but you need to see season #1 or #2 will make no sense at all.

Old favourites in our house are having a hard time in many ways; the latest season of The Walking Dead really feels rudderless and could soon become the 21st century's version of V. Remember that? By the time they got to the end, extras had stepped up to play lead characters, the main cast were like rats from a sinking ship. The series needs to die and in many ways so does the franchise. Fear the Walking Dead was better than its parent last season, but that's because it unshackled itself from the angst and got a bit black comedy. There is literally no future for these shows.

Game of Thrones is coming thundering to a conclusion and while I thoroughly enjoyed the later seasons for the spectacle alone. As a fan of the books, I know I'm never going to read them because it isn't going to finish, so this has been fun - after a fashion.
I'm puzzled by it and I don't think there will be resolution. I'm still none the wiser as to the motives of the Ice King or even who he was, really. The mystical side seems to have been underplayed to the point of it being a tedious side story that needed completion. The dragons do not appear to be much of an asset unless it's frying innocents and so many good characters have had their stories curtailed by the need for completion. This final season so far - I have one to watch - seems... convenient, almost an unjust finale. I have no idea what will happen, I don't think I care, I do think Jon Snow (err nerr, Jon Snerr) will go back to the North and that's as far as I'm going with my predictions. It's been too quick, shoddily written and kind of jumped the shark in odd ways.

Lucifer is back and looking far more lavish, with a bigger budget and the same cheap, tackiness I've grown to love about this utterly dreadful series. All ten fell last week on Netflix and reaction is positive. As for resolutions, part of me wants this to be it, even if they could really go for it and do something really weird. I also want someone, at some point, to point out that Lucifer might be the angel of death, but he was once simply an angel and a very important one at that. There's a great scene in the second episode of the new season where Chloe asks him how he could be who he was and he replies, 'It was my job.' The thing that makes Lucifer possibly one of the best crap TV shows for yonks is Tom Ellis; he is simply brilliant and this new series seems to have remembered the charm he had in the very first season, which gave the show its character.

As usual there are a stack of things we haven't got around to watching and things we're finally getting through now it's the summer. I sometimes wonder what my fellow TV nerd friends must think when they learn that I don't watch one of my all time favourite TV series as soon as I can - hey, I haven't seen Captain Marvel or Endgame yet and I'm avoiding most spoilers; I have ideas based on snatched headlines and if I can keep it that way... In many respects, we've embraced the box-set culture and as a result we have everything from Fleabag to last year's second season of Flowers to catch up on. Over the last couple of weeks, we've been working our way through season #9 of Shameless US. It has consistently been one of my favourite series since its second season and I know that it's been renewed for a tenth season. It has become a grower in the US and now has a huge following thanks to syndication.

This ninth series has felt like it's time to stop and the first cracks in the cast are showing. Every season, the character Lip has pretty much had the best stories; he has been one of the most likeable rogues TV has ever created and in the US version he sticks around and as a result he has really become the central character - flawed, brutally human, alcoholic at 20 and an absolute pillar of decency and he's driven this latest season. It has been good to see the two youngest finally get interesting stories, far more enjoyable has been Liam's travails than his whiny sister Debby. But the main reason for the decline has been the two main reasons for its success. Fiona and Frank Gallagher played by Emmy Rossum and William H Macy have dominated this show from the start, but as the years have gone on, the devilishly brilliant Chicago Frank Gallagher has slowly been morphing into his UK equivalent. He has had more and more outlandish stories in a series that seemed to only have one every year - one slightly inexplicable unlikely event - but now has him lurching from one comedy set-up to another. He has had his moments this year, oddly enough mainly with his daughter Fiona, two actors who are rarely seen in the same scene for the last few years. The best line in the series for years was when he told her at the bar, "The difference between us is simple, I'm a happy drunk, you're a mean drunk. You're just looking for a fight." As he watched his daughter finally descend down the path he chose many years before.

However, all of this is just a preamble...

I watched the 13th (of 15) episode of a new TV show on Saturday and for the following fifteen minutes or so I considered that it was possibly my favourite show on at the moment. It shouldn't be; in many ways it's slightly more ludicrous than the Umbrella Academy; it's definitely not The Tick, even if it out-weirds the Tick by a country mile; it is something of an enigma, especially for me and I think it might be one of the best things to hit the screens for a long time. It has problems, but I don't know if they are problems or just part of the journey...

I'm not a fan of DC TV series. I don't watch Gotham. I'm not into Arrow or Flash. I stopped watching DC-related shows with Smallville. Nothing I saw from the few episodes I've watched held any interest. So when Titans came along I simply ignored it and probably would anything else that came along. DC TV for me = meh.

You ever get that feeling? It's happened with music and books; where I've judged it by its cover or title or simply because... When I saw that DC was releasing a Doom Patrol series my initial reaction was meh. But when it was released, I was quick to get hold of it. I'd had a feeling that it was probably going to use the Grant Morrison template rather than the Arnold Drake one and while I'd never read an issue of that, despite being right in the middle of my comics period, the idea of it being weirder than average appealed to me.

Before I continue; people who watch Titans will have been introduced to the Doom Patrol in the fourth episode of that series. Forget that ever happened because this is not the group of individuals who appeared in that (and I can't understand why they did it that way and then changed it so much unless it's another Doom Patrol and this one exists in a reality where Titans don't...).

Doom Patrol loosely is:
Cliff Steele's brain encased in a robotic body. Cliff Steele was a boorish NASCAR driver and minor celebrity. He's voiced by Brendan Frazer, who, in the flashback scenes he's in is looking fat and oafish. Robotman is loud, tactless, bombastic and a little bit mad. His story is dealt with in an very interesting way, partly involving a rat gaining revenge.
Rita Farr - former B list Hollywood actress who was a bitch of a bitch is like the team's Margot Leadbetter. During the filming of a blockbuster, an accident means she has no control over her body and can simply turn into a puddle of ... well, her. She now has a degree of control, but is haunted by her past. She is Elastic Girl.
Larry Trainor is a closeted gay test pilot who has an accident that should have killed him but he walks away badly disfigured and connected to a negative energy being. Larry is also riddled with guilt about his own past and having to accept that the energy being is actually part of him.
Crazy Jane has 64 multiple personalities and it seems that every single one of them has a superpower, although that isn't clear and we've only seen a few on the surface. She's a blindingly brilliant character played by an actress who takes on each personality extremely well. Jane is possibly very, very powerful.

Then there's Dr Niles Caulder, their mentor - of sorts - and reason all of them were together. Caulder is really a man of mystery who appears to have several sides and has as many enemies as friends. He plays a big part in the series but is only in it for a few episodes because he's abducted by...
Mr Nobody is the chief antagonist, a devious, scheming manipulator with a fragmented body and mind who is also extremely powerful. He has been pulling the strings, in more ways than one, since the opening episode.
He was also the reason that a character who isn't on the Doom Patrol roster in comics was brought in (or was he?). Cyborg, from the Justice League feels like the only character that has been shoehorned into this series. From his debut in episode #2 to his complete ineffectiveness throughout the series, despite putting himself up as some paragon of virtue, may well have been a manipulation by Mr Nobody - but I think he's unwanted extras.

There are other characters: Willoughby Kipling - a chaos magician; Cyborg's dad Silas Stone, who has been made deliberately obtuse and potentially nasty, Flex Mentallo, the original Doom Patrol, The Bureau of Normalcy, Danny the Street, a donkey that vomits other dimensions, King Ezekiel of the cockroaches (literally), Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, the Beardhunter and enough weirdness to make you know with all your heart you aint in Kansas no more.

It is just totally wrong for a superhero series. It's definitely 18 rated in places; deals with issues you would never expect to see and it's hammed up to the eyeballs, yet it's quite brilliant. By the time you get to the 13th episode you will have become hooked or given up. My wife gave it one episode and decided it wasn't for her. I was almost ready to join her after the second because Cyborg was such a jarringly wrong presence (which might be key to why Mr Nobody doesn't want him there), but I stuck with it and it just got under my skin. It's like no other superhero series I know; especially one where the baddie essentially ignores the fourth wall.

Long may it stick around if it's as odd as it has been.

Anything else wasn't worth mentioning or I haven't seen it.