There's this theory going round comics fandom, or so I'm told, which pretty much confirms everything I've been saying about the MCU for the last four years - with no heavyweight heroes everything else suffers. I have stated quite firmly that by 2030 Marvel will have brought back Captain America, Iron Man and the Black Widow - they might have been recast with new actors, but these iconic characters will return, because the MCU struggles without them. Hence why the MCU/Disney+ has made a few announcements recently that won't raise that many eyebrows.
This news - including the introduction of the Red Hulk and bringing Thunderbolt Ross back, despite William Hurt being dead, to become the Marvel character I know nothing about at all, is one of a number of things designed to bring back what the franchise has lost in the last 3 years (although I fail to see what this particular character brings to the party apart from a lot of Hulk stories I'm glad I never read).
Rumours also suggest Robert Downey Jr will be back - probably as an AI version of Tony Stark for the recently re-announced Armor Wars, which is no longer a TV series and now a full-on Iron Man film sequel and, of course, everybody and their brother has been pointing at Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman's two minute video telling us that Deadpool 3 will feature Jackman as Wolverine, yet again. Make no mistake, this is the MCU realising it's stopped working properly.
That said, while many fans (and MCU execs) reel from the dreadful reviews that the new Thor film and the She-Hulk series have got, maybe part of the problem is pinning hopes on things like this and allowing something as fantastic as Werewolf By Night slip under the radar. I've seen very little promotional material about this absolutely monstrous bit of hokum and that's a real tragedy.
Speaking of weres and wolves...
Werewolf By Night isn't the WBN I remembered as a kid (there ain't much left that is). Lead character Jack [Russell] is now Mexican rather than a rebellious blonde Yankee teenager and is covered in strange hieroglyphs. Gael Garcia Bernal plays him in a very peripheral, yet oddly central role for the entire 50 minute show.
With one exception, no one else in this one-off meant anything to me, although it did look like many of the supporting cast might be recognisable to some people. It starts as play on the old The Deadly Game idea, where hunters chase the marked 'prey' and whoever bags him wins the prize. The prize in this case is the Bloodstone - once owned by Ulysses Bloodstone [who first appeared in Marvel Presents #1 courtesy of John Warner, Mike Vosburg and Bob McLeod and in the next issue of the same comic with art by Sonny Trinidad. Any subsequent appearances passed me by] and originally promised to his daughter Elsa, but now up for grabs to any monster hunter because of some un-explained falling out between father and daughter.
This group of infamous monster hunters are tasked with retrieving the Bloodstone, now stuck to the hide of a nightmarish hell beast, but in reality it's more about all these monster hunters killing each other off first and that's where Jack and Elsa enter the picture. Jack is there for a different reason and Elsa is there because she wants the Bloodstone, as it is rightfully hers and she doesn't want any of the others to have it either, but she's not into all the killing. Jack isn't interested in the Bloodstone, he wants to free and save the monster who is being used as bait...
I have to admit to a genuine 'squee' moment when I realised that the 'monster' in question was actually the Man-Thing - a character who was both prominent to me in the 1970s and personal to me because it was the first Marvel comic book I started collecting from #1, so seeing 'Manny' or 'Ted' as he's now known, looking utterly splendid and doing what he does best - setting fire to scared people - was always going to make this A BIG WINNER in my house.
When we finally get to meet the Werewolf it's 35 minutes into a 50 minute show and we're not talking American Werewolf in London styled transformations, more an homage to both the genre this comes from - comics - and the werewolf WBN was always based on - Lon Chaney Jr's Wolfman. Jack saves the day, doesn't eat Elsa and disappears into the night, leaving Ms Bloodstone with the jewel and her mother to deal with. Fortunately, Elsa had been very kind to Ted earlier in the show, so he returned and burned the mother to a crisp - the end!
Except, there's an epilogue featuring Ted making Jack a cup of coffee as they camp out near the swamps and continue their quest to free kind monsters from human harm. It simply says we're heading for Legion of Monsters territory and that can't be a bad thing really given how compact and excellent this was and especially as they got all the special effects in this bang on. Man-Thing has never looked as good (at least not since Mike Ploog drew him).
As one friend said, 'It's just lovely.' And it is (despite being more violent than anything the MCU has ever done).
***
It seems I might have been wrong about some of my predictions for She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, such as the Hulk returning or it being any good. I have a friend who thinks this series has been delightful, I'm now of the opinion that this person simply likes or dislikes things other people think are shit or good to be different.
I'm kind of speechless about the season finale and that's not because I've jumped on the bandwagon of all the other haters out there, it's because the series, as a whole, was humourless rubbish with no real plot, no general direction and was full of half-arsed, barely recognisable supporting characters with no interest. It was not very good and anyone who tells you differently is a wind-up merchant.
The 4th wall twist - which isn't funny either - is that She-Hulk: Attorney At Law is a TV show in the MCU overseen by 'Kevin', who is depicted as an AI robot and is really in charge of the script-writing/plot of She-Hulk (and all other MCU product), it has supplied a ludicrous plot with a ridiculous ending which Jen doesn't agree with and it has no concept of how to rejuvenate or improve the show. Oddly enough and slightly ironically, this happens around the same time as the real Kevin Feige, who really is in charge. made some announcements in an attempt to try to rejuvenate the entire franchise and allay peoples fears that everything has lost its direction and they're just throwing shit at a fan. It's so Meta it's laughable but not in any positive ways at all.
This review is now almost as boring as the last seven episodes. I really expected something - in general - to happen, but even Bruce's unexpected return with son in tow felt manufactured, rushed and I expect we're going to see a film - probably for that slot in 2024 when the now delayed Blade was due - possibly called... Hulks (with at least four of the buggers crowding the screen).
Marvel has some big problems creatively and the trailers for Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever have done nothing to make me think they know how to solve those problems...
***
Before I leave Marvel alone for a few months, I saw recently there's an extended version of Spider-Man: No Way Home available! That's extra reasons for me to never watch this awful movie again.
***
While everything seemingly got turned to shit for Galadriel and the knights of Numenor in the penultimate episode of season one of Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, it was the Harfoots who felt the full force of just about everything despite would-be Gandalf rescuing the fruit trees, and that included pissing off wood elves by seemingly just existing.
This series has suffered from many viewers simply not caring about the characters; this is worldbuilding but without characters who you care about; they're all arrogant, pompous and self-interested, the attempt at Game of Thrones style politics doesn't seem to be able to click in the same way, maybe because there is already so much speculation and interpretation of all of Tolkien's works. Oh and the acting is woefully inadequate considering the money thrown at it.
Anyhow, the finale kicks off with the attempted twist that the stranger hitching along with the Harfoots might actually be Sauron and we don't shake that feeling until the real Sauron reveals himself in what could easily have been a twist had it not actually been signposting it, cleverly and without fanfare, since episode #1. The finale wasn't about battles as such - although there's a fair one between the man I think we can all call Gandalf and the triumvirate of unpleasantness attempting to turn him to the dark side.
It was borderline all right. It was very boring at times but it looked fabulous. That doesn't cut the mustard in television in 2022 and something has to change for the second season or this will go down as a colossal failure, whatever happens I really don't think I'll be bothering with it again.
***
A departure from my usual review fodder would be Simon Reeve's Americas which has been on BBC2 for the last 5 weeks, but also available on iPlayer as an entire entity. I'm aware this hardly falls into any of the categories I usually review, but we're big fans of Reeve and over the years we've turned each episode of his travelogue into a game - how many times will Simon say 'Bloody hell' each episode (it was 1-1 for this series; the wife guessed 2 in the first episode and I guessed 2 in the final one; not guessing the exact number wins no points) and occasionally 'flipping heck', if the mood takes us.
For those of you who've never seen his travelogues; Reeve travels around the world and each episode usually has him juxtaposition something impressive about a country with something scary, violent or unlawful and he often looks at the plight of the poorest or least advantageous in society. For every exotic animal or fabulous region he visits it's always counterbalanced by something rotten at the core.
I expect there will be another series of his adventures, but I also think he's pretty much been everywhere, so unless he starts to retrace his steps or go to the same places but different parts, I'm trying to make a list of places he hasn't been to and coming up relatively short. There was also something emotionally final about the last scenes as he rolled through Tierra Del Fuego, so we shall wait and see. If you've never seen it, you should; it's great documentary TV.
***
The Old Man has been some of best TV I've seen all year - a geriatric action series in the vein of Homeland but a lot less convoluted, but no less complicated. It has been full of plausible twists and implausible turns, but it has been a rollercoaster of a 7-part mini-series with both Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow ripping up the sets.
However, I'm really disappointed that it's going to have a second series. It really felt as though it was simply going to be a tight and taut 7-part thriller, but it soon became obvious halfway through episode 7 that we were not going to get a conclusion, despite all the cards now being on the table and all secrets revealed. Obviously, I'm now hoping that season 2 wraps it up and calls it a day, because I don't think this is something that has very long legs.
***
A quick mention for The Walking Dead. It's still there, slowly lurching towards an 'ending'.
***
House of the Dragon has come on leaps and bounds from its shaky start of looking like a desperate prequel. The episode before the penultimate episode was one of the grimmest in GOT history; not because it was violent or relentlessly horrible; it was just dark with the feeling of foreboding running through it like words in a stick of rock. Lots of false smile, horrific and horrified faces, failed politics and Machiavellian deceit revolving around Paddy Considine's final appearances.
The King is dead! Long live the... oh... ah... King? Alsiante - the queen - announces to her father Otto Hightower that Viscerys's last words were that Aegon should be king and not Rhaenyrs, who he had always said would be queen. This potboiler for the finale, sets in motion events that will, you feel, be quite catastrophic for one side of this merry dance.
Expect dragon versus dragon battles with Aemond possibly holding the key. But that will have to wait until next time. This has been a considerably more enjoyable series than it probably deserved to be because it has kept to a relatively singular narrative. I expect season two will be worth the wait.
***
Next time: The finale of House of the Dragon and the final outing for Jodie Whitaker as Doctor Who. Plus it might be time to catch up with things I've put off as we enter the barren period before Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment