Supergirl: Toxic Femininity

Summary: Superman’s cousin puts down the bottle, more like moves with it, and actually does something.

Maybe having your lead saying how men don’t own women’s bodies, when no one said they did, then insulting those offended on the grounds of their gender and religion, then changing the canon of a character to say she’s Bi and then finally saying the films better as it doesn’t centre men, isn’t a great way to market a film, as the terrible preview numbers show.

Kara is deeply unlikeable, she is very much the human embodiment of the damaged tattoo from the forehead of Jared Leto’s Joker. She drinks, she’s sad, she’s unpleasant to those around her, as God forbid she doesn’t take out her mental issues on other people. The message of this film is that that is okay behaviour as you can be good but not nice, which is a self defeating morally bankrupt principle. The film thinks this is showing her as a damaged character, with the journey being to show how she becomes more connected to people. However, the film tries to make her seem cool in her broken state glorifying her entitled and bratty behaviour.

Superman is in this, as more than just a target for dog urine, as Gunn and co really respect the character, herein he plays the concerned mother hen constantly checking in, usually to be met with derision or a well actually from Kara.

Of course the film likens being a bride to slavery, by having the villain literally kidnapping women and turning them not into sex slaves as is the case with most human trafficking, but rather brides. The message here is clear, marriage is bad and a prison for women. It is also entirely unoriginal as Mad Max Fury Road did a similar thing about ten years ago.

Lobo gets less screen time than you imagine and serves really to be red meat to throw to the male fans who Alcock has alienated so completely. He’s maybe on screen for a total of 5 minutes.

The focus on Krypto once again shows the weakness of the Gunn verse as it does not seem to be able to stand without having a cute dog to try and guilt butts into seats. This shows a weakness in storytelling. The actual journey of healing if you want to view it like that shows off the toxicity of Kara’s damaged personality and even when she does something good it quickly becomes self centered once again.

Overall, there is a reason that Clayface is having it’s premium formats reconsidered, this feels like edgy Tumblr fanfic from about 2 decades ago.

0.5/5

Pros.

It’s not a 3 hour slog

Cons.

Kara is unlikable

The journey feels incomplete by the end

You’ve seen it before

Lobo is barely in it

It feels like it’s for edgy girls circa 2009

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Punisher One More Kill: A Fear of Gareth Ennis

Summary: The MCU tried to adapt Welcome Back, Frank and does what it always does.

This is why the MCU can’t make a Blade film, sometimes people just want to see badass characters being badass, not processing trauma, not having a crying, just being cool. You’re making a comic book film/made for streaming one shot, for God sake.

The first half of this is Frank being sad, the amount of time wasted herein becomes more and more noticeable later.

The second half tries to give the people what they want but then just abruptly ends with no how do you do, to maybe be picked up in Spiderman Brand New Day.

John Wick understands the badass factor, Mortal Kombat understands the badass factor, the MCU is allergic.

Plus as has been memed heavily since there is a God awful CGI shot of Frank falling, wherein they swap the stuntman’s face with John’s and my my it looks terrible.

Overall, it’s about twenty minutes of goodness wrapped in 30 minutes of disappointment.

Pros.

Some cool Punisher action

It leaves you wanting more of the good bits

Cons

The sad Frank sequences

The ending

The CGI

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Cinema Issue: TDS And The Boys

Straight off the bat the Boys isn’t anything like the fantastic graphic novel in any way, that was the first sign of things to come. The graphic novel had something to say this show is the safety most made by committee thing ever.

However, the thing that really began the terminal decline of the boys was when Eric Kripke decided to make it about his dislike of Trump. Homelander in the comics was never supposed to be a stand in for Trump, yet in the TV show it is pretty damn clear. Every week a old political event from serval years ago is trotted out, now done by Homelander, with the writing going you should be outraged.

The more and more the show has felt the need to fight the culture war the worse it has got. At least in the beginning they hit both sides but as the show went on it just went one way.

Even the fans that cheered on every Trump parallel and thought oh it was so timely are starting to call it out. A one trick pony becomes clear to everyone in the end . The final season so far is hated by many fans as they are starting to see it for what it is.

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Cinema Issues The Death Of DC

In this edition of Cinema Issues we will be discussing the state of DC, in terms of films and tv shows.

When the new Gunn lead DC was announced immediately after the previous DCEU failed attempts were made to win fans back however it has been a series of large scale mistakes that have hurt this universe to the point where it could be rebooted once again in the near future.

Firstly, announcing the slate so far in advance was an error, it made it look like they were trying to copy Marvel it also allowed everyone to see each time they missed a deadline for a film and then that to influence the narrative. As was the case with the Authority.

Secondly the focus on characters has been wrong, of you wanted to do something interesting you could have focused on characters that had not been adapted before. However they went straight for Superman, it appeared they were going for all the old favourites, however, then they neglected to make a Batman film.

Thirdly the new universe is inherently confusing. As certain elements of the old DCEU carry over it becomes unclear what is canon and what isn’t. What is the fate of Blue Beetle?

Fourthly is the fact that James Gunn is the wrong man for the job. He does odd ball well, he could have been good for a Creature Commandos or Doom Patrol, but Superman? He just didn’t get it, and the film underperformed. There is also the ego issue, Gunn seems to have developed megalomania, he named the Justice Gang after his own initials, he debated taking on a Stan Lee like role in the DCEU, he got himself animated into the Creature Commandos logo and he puts his wife in everything. The DCUs fascination with Krypto who here is based on Gunn’s own dog is just another example.

Finally you have the fact it has already gone negative. Think about the MCU at its peak, did it attack the audience and call them names? No that came later as the cracks emerged. We are a TV series and a film into Gunn’s DCU and we already have stars attacking fans with Milly Alcock deciding to consistently bad mouth men.

Supergirl does not look like it will do well, Lanterns has already angered fans by viewing the Green part of the name as dumb, and Clayface who the hell cares.

The DCU has half its hull missing and is sinking, what we are seeing now is the final attempts to save the doomed ship.

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Daredevil Born Again Season 2 Overview: It Got Worse

So the TV show brings back Jessica Jones a fan favourite character, but why not Luke Cage because he is a deadbeat father who is out of the country working for the CIA, he shows up in the last few minutes after all the fighting is over no doubt to be emasculated next season.

The reason why Muse was barely in the show last season before being killed off was because they wanted to have Daredevil’s girlfriend take over the mantle and become a female version of the character, who was in one issue of a comic once.

Matt is overshadowed in his own show by the crime stopping adventures of Karen Page, at the end of the series he goes to jail despite being a force for good, so that next season they can give someone else the mantel of Daredevil whilst he’s gone, perhaps Electra.

The decision to not feature the Punisher this season at all, but have Dex essential serve the same purpose is a choice and and a weird one at that.

Finally having Kingpin be exiled after all he has done is ridiculous, people have died as a result of him, yet Daredevil pleds with the crowd to let him leave. It’s just dumb. It’s suicidal empathy.

As you can guess it’s bad the first half of the season was bad and this somehow got worse. Overall since the first episode of season 1 of Born Again it has been rapidly running down hill.

0.5/5

Pros.

The new White Tiger

Cons.

It makes Daredevil a background character

The writing makes no sense

Characters who should be there aren’t

It feels sanitised

How they handle Luke Cage

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Daredevil Born Again Mid Season Breakdown: Stop Hitting It It’s Already Dead

So we defended Born Again season one when people said it was trying to be anti Trump and comment on current events, we said people were reading into it. However, at this point in the season it seems we were wrong.

Whether it is Kingpin’s red tie that he likes to wear, or the I.C.E-esque raids that are being sent in to look for Superheros in various parts of New York it is very clear they are trying to do social commentary. Daredevil is a fictional show set in a fictional world, no one wants Trump’s bad narratives in the show.

Moreover, whilst it is nice to see Jessica Jones back, we are big Krysten Ritter fans here,we wish she was given more to do. At the moment she is just there to provide sarcastic colour commentary.

Another point that is becoming increasingly clear is that this isn’t really a Daredevil show it is every other characters show and Daredevil is just sort of kind of there as well. They really are making Matt take a back seat throughout the whole of the season so far.

We won’t score this as we’ll wait for the whole season to be out for that, but at this mid season sort of point the second season doesn’t not look like it’s heading anywhere good.

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Cinema Issues: Marvel Doubles Down On Slop

So Daredevil has been sidelined in his own show. Certain members of the cast have already come out to disparage and name call the audience.

The Punisher will be a lot less brutal and almost comedic in Brand New Day

And Peter Parker is second fiddle to the community within Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man.

Can you feel that the last vestige of a brand are dying.

So the head of Marvel TV has been taking, and boy has he shown he shouldn’t be in a job. He has renewed Wonder Man for season 2, because of DEI , or maybe because it was given a two season order but this is despite the fact it was the least watched Disney + show. More people watched Echo. He claims it’s because people loved the show the numbers don’t reflect that.

Then in terms of Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man he said it is about a community telling a community tale. We’re sorry we thought it was a Spider-Man show. Also which community only has white people as villains outside of Peter and feels the need to have every single race and ethnicity ticked off on a list.

They have renewed Marvel Zombies for a season 2, that was a show we were excited for before it just became a girl boss show and a way for them to continue to include Riri despite the God awful ratings for that show.

Marvel’s efforts with Disney + have been what’s taken the brand from the heights of End Game to where we are now. Yes they made some bad films, but by and large it has been the terrible Disney + shows that have inflicted the mortal blows on the brand.

Last year the MCU released 3 films, Captain Falcon the Brave New World, The Thunderbolts, which we liked, and Fantastic Four. All of them lost money. As for Disney + you had Daredevil which was met with collective disappointment, except from us though season 2 has taken us there as well, Iron Heart, Wonder Man, Eyes of Wakanda, Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, and Marvel Zombie non of which had any cultural staying power. Pandering hard to the black community and to women, who don’t traditionally watch a lot of superhero fare doesn’t appear to be giving them the audience they want.

Never fear when in doubt just keep doing the same thing and expect different results, the definition of insanity. Born Again season leans into overt left wing messaging and relegates Daredevil, they green light season two of Wonder Man despite the terrible ratings, Punisher, a character fans actually liked is neutered.

At this point I think Doomsday will be big but nowhere near the levels of Infinity War or End Game not even close. I think years of alienating the audience calling fans toxic, and making the projects you want to make rather than what audiences ask for has come around to bite. They did it to themselves.

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Peacemaker Season Two: The Orgy Scene Shows Why Gunn Should Have Stayed Cancelled

Summary

Peacemaker, John Cena, is back and if the prolonged orgy sequence in the first episode is anything to go off James Gunn is indulging all of his questionable tastes.

So I really enjoyed the first season of Peacemaker and thought that it was funny and irreverent, however, that was several years ago and tastes change. What I thought whilst watching this season was that it felt like it was written by a group of teenagers on Reddit. It had a deep sense of immaturity and as though it was just doing things for the shock value of it rather than because they made sense narratively.

Moreover, the whole idea of multiverses has proven universally unpopular across the board, so why Gunn thought to wove that thread into the second season is a little beyond me. The multiverse angle I suppose allows them to fix things from the previous DCEU and reset things going forward, but it still feels like a cheap trick.

The message, the broader progressive sort of call and response, also feels a lot stronger this time around. It is more overt here and it was pretty overt in the first season. In many ways this project feels like Gunn unchained and if it proves anything it is that he needs caging. There is a reason that the Guardians’ films are his best and that is due to the fact that he had oversight and was not allowed to have all the Guardians have an orgy together at the start of the second film.

Overall, James Gunn needs to step away creatively from these films and tv shows, as he is going to run the new DCU into the ground before it has even begun.

1.5/5

Pros.

A few funny lines

Hardcourt, Jennifer Holland, is still excellent

Cons.

The message

The need to be shocking and vulgar

The writing is far more lazy and simplistic

It has pacing issues

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Eyes Of Wakanda: Ryan Coogler Seems To Hate Black People

Summary

We get to find out more about the wonderful citizenry of Wakanda.

I am starting to wonder if Ryan Coogler is secretly a white supremacist, both this and Iron Heart are so chocked-full of harmful Black stereotypes that it certainly points that way.

In this mini series we learnt that Wakanda interferes constantly in the outside world, despite hiding its existence from its African neighbours and allows them to starve. Moreover, despite Shuri’s line in Black Panther about the white man being a coloniser, here we see that exiles from Wakanda, then go on to do just that. So everyone is the coloniser?

Why do they do this? They do it to protect their artefacts which they hide away and lock in a vault as they are much too powerful for anyone to use, even though they were invented for a reason. This all ends when a girlboss YASS Quueen of future Wakanda shows up in the last episode to tell the silly men that the artifacts don’t matter and that they need to stop hording them and stop hiding from the outside world. Meaning all the murder, all the working with bad people so you can steal your artefacts back from them whilst ignoring what they are doing to those around them, was for nothing.

It also made Michael B Jordan’s line in the first film about the African artifacts in the British Museum sound hollow and be out of touch with the new Wakandan philosophy on artefact hording.

There is also a female Asian Iron Fist for some reason and she mops the floor with multiple highly trained Wakandan soldiers with ease.

Overall, I want Marvel to go away.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is unintentionally funny sometimes

Cons.

The stereotypes

The moral messaging behind it

It makes the films actively worse

It doesn’t need to exist

There are no memorable new characters

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Superman: Soy Boy Savior

Summary

James Gunn’s Superman arrives, but is it enough to save the DCU.

So for the purpose of this review we’ll try and keep politics out of it, after Sean Gunn really tried to centre it around that, and we’ll leave off any references to Man Of Steel, with one quick addendum to say that adjusted for inflation Man Of Steel made more on its opening domestic weekend.

The film itself is pretty meh. I went into it with low expectations, the marketing had done a horrible job of making the film look stupid, goofy and far too present day, and whilst there are elements of that in this to be sure I think the film managed to exceed by rock bottom expectations.

There were a few good Superman comic esque moments mainly in the third act that made me smile, and a number of funny lines. However, Superman is not the Guardians of The Galaxy and the humour quickly becomes clawing. There are perfectly good scenes that could stand on their own, but then they’ll force in a joke to make you retch a little bit and ruin the scene.

Moreover, the weakening of Superman is a little too on the nose for me. Previous Superman films have kept him macho and powerful whilst also showing his good nature and down to earth personality, look at Smallville. However, here they go out of their way to make him more effeminate and soft, whilst this could be argued to just be how modern Hollywood views masculinity, or an attempt to make him more sympathetic during the sequence where he is basically cancelled is unclear, but it does become noticeable for all the wrong reasons, including but not limited to the use of therapy speak.

The final thing to note is that this is a James Gunn vanity project of that you can have no doubt, and whilst I like him as a director I do think it gets a bit irritating as the film progresses. We already know Krypto was based off Gunn’s own dog, and that his wife and brother are in the film, but then when you look at the cast you see that it is stacked with Gunn’s personal friends as well as the aforementioned cancelling storyline being reflective of Gunn’s own experiences to a degree. When you think about this in totality it starts to become a bit sickening.

Overall, fairly mid-range.

2.5/5

Pros.

A few good moments

The third act is better than the other two

It world builds

Cons.

Clarke and Lois

They make Superman weak

How this is a Gunn vanity project

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