Tag: Incredible Hulk

Avenge Winterfell! Conjuring Analogues (and Making Bets) Amongst the Thrones/MCU Survivors

Posted on by Eric
Avenge Winterfell
GoT Cast Photo Property of Entertainment Weekly

NOTE: Let it here be affirmed on this date of publication – 4/24/2019 – that all predictions made as part of the folly below were offered with absolutely no advance notice of how the respective battles in “Game of Thrones” and “Avengers: Endgame” might or did play out this weekend, and are the intellectual property of the author insofar as they might, with the full benefit of hindsight, be worthy of nonstop ridicule, or, assuming pigs fly, reluctant praise from the smarter marks among ye. Enjoy the shows, all. ‘Tis a heady time to be a geek.

Dear occasional reader/confused tourist,

In case the rock you’ve been hiding under is wired for neither cable nor internet, the (as of press time) upcoming final weekend of April marks the happy, if terrifying, convergence of the two arguably most popular ongoing properties in all modern pop culture, HBO’s armies + dragons + zombies medieval fantasy phenomenon Game of Thrones and the 21-blockbuster (and counting) Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) of quirky, quippy, cooperative superheroes. The following mash-up post operates under the questionable assumption that, in spite of, ahem, Stark surface differences, there is considerable common ground between not just the franchises’ respective fan bases but the two creative behemoths themselves, in terms of characters, motivations, and high, high stakes, and seeks to explore and exploit them for the amusement of its author and entertainment of its readers. Mostly the former. Continue reading “Avenge Winterfell! Conjuring Analogues (and Making Bets) Amongst the Thrones/MCU Survivors” →

Movie review: “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017)

Posted on by Eric

thor rag splash

“It sounds like you had a pretty special and intimate relationship with this hammer, and that losing it was almost comparable to losing a loved one.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

There was once a time, closer to the dawn of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), that Thor, the fabled and since repackaged Norse God of Thunder, was the only game in town when it came to magical superheroes. Despite his devil-may-care exterior, Tony Stark was, of course, deeply, almost painfully, human, and had the whole irresponsible billionaire industrialist/incorrigible playboy angle down cold to boot. Bruce Banner, also human, was a brilliant scientist with unfortunate, pronounced anger issues and extremely bad luck. Steve Rogers, the career Army man and milk commercial in human form, started out as an anthropomorphic pipecleaner before governmentally sanctioned experiments neatly replaced his general mousiness with elite combat skills and infallible resolve, and his unimpressive sinew with muscles upon muscles. Humans, all, regardless of their own various performance-enhancing origins or regimens, somehow keeping not only acquaintances but pace with a literal deity. Continue reading “Movie review: “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017)” →

Movie review: “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015)

Posted on by Eric

age of ultron

“Does anybody remember when I put a missile through a portal, in New York City? We were standing right under it. We’re the Avengers. We can bust weapons dealers the whole doo-da-day, but how do we cope with something like that?”

“Together.”

“We’ll lose.”

“We’ll do that together too.”

Whereas comic book superheroes and heroines have a long-standing, time-tested, free-swinging tradition of either brokering guest appearances in one another’s pages or, occasionally, full-on intramural team collaborations against a common enemy and/or towards a common goal, superhero movies have generally operated in hermetically sealed bubbles all their own, using house money and fighting the simplest, most obvious threats. Marvel’s decision, circa 2006, to revamp its existing film studio into something more robust and thus shepherd its own projects, independent of the sort of uninformed, high level meddling that helped turn promising sequels like Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand into underwhelming, overstuffed disappointments, or worse, didn’t immediately signal a seismic shift in the superhero game, though it did strike most observers as a pretty good idea. Little could anyone then have truly realized the scope of Marvel’s master plan Continue reading “Movie review: “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015)” →