Daredevil Born Again Season One: Netflix Beats Disney

Disney continues one of the greatest superhero TV shows of all time.

So as many of you know, I believe that marvel is currently in a death spiral I think that a lot of the things that are coming out now were greenlit and shot years ago and so are unable for marvel to fix or turn around in a meaningful way. There are rumours surrounding this Daredevil series that production was shut down midway through and the whole thing was retooled. Upon watching it this seems evidently true, as the first free quarters of episodes feel like a different show now there are still some darker elements in these earlier episodes which were clearly added post the original episodes as we know they wanted to go for a legal comedy series originally. However, were the problem arises is that they have also kept in these more comedic lighter tone plot beats and they can clash horribly with the darker elements feeling schizophrenic. Take for example episode 5 it’s a bank robbery episode with broadly comedic themes and Kamala Khan’s Dad, who was accused of some heinous things in real life, is there providing comedic support. If you compare this to episode 4 wherein you got to see Muse killing people and draining them off their blood you get immediate whiplash.

Then you have the character assassination as Marvel is becoming known for with Matt, Charlie Cox, seemingly a punching bag for everyone else in the show. He goes from being a leading man who commanded respect in the Netflix run to being screamed at by a criminal for not getting him a lighter sentence, despite him being a repeat offender, and having the problems of the legal system hung around his neck. What does Matt do, does he tell the man don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time? No he takes it and says it is his fault as this series wants to make Matt as weak and subservient as possible. Couple this with Kingpin, Vincent D’Onofrio, who goes from a one man killing machine who ruled with an iron grip to someone who gets cheated on and then goes to couples counselling wherein he learns it was all his fault. After what Hawkeye and Echo did to Kingpin I thought the series couldn’t drag the character any further down, and yet it still managed to do it. It does do a little to bring him back by the end of the series but it is too little too late in my opinion.

Another curious choice is the fact that Matt doesn’t fully suit up and become Daredevil again until episode 6 of a 9 episode series with a massive amount of filler in those first few episodes, as it sets things up as though it is Game Of Thrones. However, the issue with this is not only is it boring but most of these things are then never executed upon or just don’t happen making all the set up feel extra annoying. Episode 5 ends with Matt being offered dinner at the Khan’s and yet that never happens.

They get rid of Karen, Deborah Ann Woll, and Foggy, Elden Hensen, and replace them with a new staff on legal characters for Matt to interact with none of which can hold a candle to Karen or Foggy, who they killed off only to bring back next season. Also Kingpin now has an entourage which are also annoying and serve little purpose, Michael Gandolfini in particular is terrible.

The central villain of the series Muse is killed off without much fuss so that they can have the real villain be Kingpin and his corrupt police force, which Daredevil could easily beat in an episode, but they need to draw it out in order for it to be more timely. As we all know who makes for the best comic book villain ah yes the police, we should defund them yes great idea. Stupid and dumb.

Overall, this is what I get for getting my hopes up about a Marvel project.

1/5

Pros.

There are a few cool moments

Cons.

These are promptly undermined by the destruction of Matt and Wilson as characters

Matt is treated like a joke on his own show

The ungodly amount of filler

The marriage counselling scenes with Kingpin

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Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man Season Season One Overview: Thank God For Sony

Summary

He has the super power kick, you want him as your neighbour.

The above is paraphrased lyrics from the trailer for this show. It doesn’t understand the character, he doesn’t have super powerful feet, and that it is generic and feels like it is doing stuff to kill time, you want him as your neighbour a superfluous lyric.

Honestly, I don’t know what is going on at Marvel animation first What If’s final season and now this. I think that there needs to be a culling at Marvel animation as something is clearly rotten. The same people who brought you duck sex have now race swapped most of the classic Spider-Man cast and for what reason? Because Coleman Dingo can’t possibly voice a white character.

Ignoring the race swap they also completely and I mean completely emasculate Harry Osbourn to a point, where you question if they aren’t setting him up to be the female love interest of season two. The character bastardisation feels like if I am being charitable people who have never read a Spider-Man comic before and don’t know these characters, but at worse this feels like a deliberate effort to lessen them.

Occasionally, here and there you get to see characters you actually want to see show up like Daredevil, voiced by Charlie Cox, these moments provide a nice if fleeting moment of respite before the mediocrity of the story and the objectionable nature of the race swaps comes back to drag you back into the gutter. There is a genuine question with this show as to why it is that a large percentage of the villains are white, and a large majority of the friendly characters/perceived as friendly aren’t.

Overall, thank God that Sony still has the rights to Spider-Man and long may that remain the case if this is what Disney would serve us.

1/5

Pros.

Some entertaining cameos

Cons.

It ruins various characters

It is poorly plotted

It tries too hard to be something it isn’t

The humour is grating

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Kraven The Hunter: One So Bad Not Even The Critics Could Pretend To Like It

Summary

With a whimper the SSU dies.

I think everyone could tell you that this film was going to bomb before it came out, it had disaster written all over it from its moment of announcement.

Sony needs to answer a very simple question, why do we need villain films without Spider-Man? The answer is we don’t.

This film once again is a villain origin story that tries to make the villain cool and likeable, as it is too afraid to have them be anything other than an anti-hero as who wants a true crime film that shows the rise of one of Spider-Man’s greatest foes and has him always be evil. No they have to be made into the good guy in some way even though that means the idea of them later banding together to form the Sinister Six to fight Spider-Man another good guy makes no sense at all.

The drugs must be in plentiful supply over at Sony for them to make such an unenforced error like this, or maybe they just don’t realise what audiences want. Remember gang Madame Web was a great film it only flopped as the critics hated it.

It also features other Spider-Man adjacent characters and messes with their origins and backgrounds too, as who watching this will care about the comics right.

Overall, a necessary death.

2/5

Pros.

It has some fun moments

The action is good

Cons.

It gets the source material wrong

It feels the need to make Kraven a hero

It is too long

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Creature Commandos Season 1 Overview: James Gunn’s Fragile Ego

Summary

The DCU is born.

Right from the off something about this series struck a bad chord with me. It’s taken me a while to really think about what’s wrong with it and be able to articulate that, here is my best attempt.

Firstly, this feels like a spin off of the Harley Quinn animated show, and by that I mean the humour is exactly the same, however, where that show allows its characters to have serious moments this shows allergic to that. Whenever there will be a tragic or sad moment the writer will feel the need to undercut with a quippy joke or some sort of absurdist visuals.

Secondly, and relating to the first point, each of the Creature Commandos has tragic back stories, and this is bad for two key reasons. Chiefly, it shows a lack of any genuine villains in the show, which is supposed to be about a team of villains going on missions, as well as a fear of anti-heroes and not having everyone be sympathetic. Moreover, these back stories are often quite depressing, so the show feels the need to overcompensate by having it side by side with the present timeline in which something absurd or silly will be happening in order to get away from the sadness. This cheapens it.

Thirdly, the humour as I’ve mentioned in my previous two points is really what ruins this show and runs through all of the criticism, It is juvenile, gross out, and often edgy for shock value. I don’t think I laughed once during the entire run of the show.

Fourthly, and perhaps worst of all, is the fact that one of the sub antagonists of the show are the Sons of Themyscira, who are portrayed as incel online nerds. Not only does this feel like screw the audience, but also feels like Gunn personally taking shots at his critics. This is potentially catastrophically bad as it shows that Gunn is a reactionary and shows how even mild criticism of him can find its way into his projects and affect them in a major way, hence he’ll get more of it. It also destroys any kind of confidence one may have in his upcoming Superman film, and you have already seem him coming out to attack haters on that and to respond to criticism. The Sons are of course horribly cringe and die off in humiliating ways in order for Gunn to own his critics.

Overall, it is nice to see a more mature tone and some of the ideas were good, but the humour, the lack of meaningful emotion and Gunn’s fragile attempt to own the haters all result in this being a damaging start for the DCU, and a red flag for this summers Superman. :

2/5

Pros.

The mature tone

A few good ideas

Cons.

The humour

The backstories

Gunn’s fragile ego

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What If Season Three Overview: Shut Down Marvel Animation

Summary

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

So before this series aired it was well known that What If was not coming back, yet did they think to have it go out on top? Oh no. What Marvel animation produced is one of worst things that Marvel Studios has ever dumped onto Disney Plus in disgrace.

Where to start, maybe with the fact that none of the characters you know and want to see are shown here, no Iron Man, no Scarlett Witch, no Cap, but hey you do get popular Phase 4/5 characters like Agatha, Shang Chi and Kate Bishop, remember them? Worse yet rather than show us what if scenarios based on characters we like they decide to give us all new characters that mean nothing to us, Howard the Duck and Darcy have a kid, yes casual bestiality in an MCU show, and she is an important character later in the season. I bet you can hardly contain your excitement.

To break it down episode by episode so you can get a flavour of what is just so bad about the season, the first episode reads as a kid copying off their more successful friend in this case Marvel Animation stealing ideas wholesale from Pacific Rim and Godzilla. The second is an old Hollywood pat on the back with Agatha, one of the least popular characters in the MCU. The third tries to be a spy thriller sort of affair with Winter Soldier and Red Guardian yet reads more as how much can David Harbour embarrass himself in twenty minutes. The fourth is the infamous duck sex. The fifth features a Riri Williams the bargain basement Iron Man clone with multiple failed comics runs to her name. The sixth is an old west adventure with Shang Chi and Kate Bishop, who have about as much chemistry as two neighbours who have had a bitter blood feud for twenty years. The seventh is a Captain Carter and her new characters adventure across the multiverse, this is probably the best episode though that doesn’t mean its good, it sets up an interesting finale and has Storm so those memberberies are present.

The finale takes anything good about episode seven and defecates all over it and serves it up to you on a bed of middle fingers, it is about twenty minutes of Captain Carter and co punching the watchers until she finally kills herself at the end. The death of Captain Carter should have felt like something she was the show’s most important creation and yet it just felt like you had twenty minutes of your time wasted, they could have done so much with this and taken the finale in a number of ways and yet they just didn’t.

Overall, this leaves a bad taste in my mouth after a year of questionable Marvel offerings with worse yet to come. Personally I believe the age of Marvel Studios is well and truly over and I don’t think they can come back, I think it is over.

0/5

Pros.

There is nothing redeemable about it

Cons.

They seem allergic to using popular characters

The finale is terrible

The casual bestiality

It isn’t entertaining

You feel nothing

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Venom The Last Dance: Going Down Dancing

Summary

Venom goes out with a bang.

I liked this more than Let There Be Carnage in a number of ways, I thought the Eddie, Tom Hardy, and Venom relationship was better here and felt less clawing with the humour. You do believe the bond between the two and in the end when it looks like Venom dies you do feel that emotional gut punch.

I also liked seeing Knull, Andy Serkis, and the threat posed by him. I know Venom isn’t really dead but I would genuinely like a fourth film where Venom has to rally the SSU Avengers and get them together with a Spider-person in order to fight Knull. It would be a spectacle not on the level of Endgame but certainly on the level of Days Of Future Past.

I think the human villain played by Baron Mordo, is a bit one note and week. I would argue that Chiwetel Ejiofor is wasted in the role, and that his character is not given much in terms of character, he hates symbiotes and then he doesn’t. Its very night and day and reeks of a bad script.

Overall, a slight sad ending that sets up genuinely interesting things for the future.

3/5

Pros.

Eddie and Venom

The emotion

Knull

Cons.

The human villain

A weak script

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Agatha Episode One and Two Review: Disney And Its Need To Push Sexual Themes Onto Kids

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Agatha, Kathryn Hahn, tries to get her mojo back.

The marketing for this show was awful, rather than treat it as a show in its own right or talk about how it is going to advance the MCU we instead got lots of comments about how gay the show is, as though that is some mark of quality and that gay shows cannot be bad no matter what. It is silly.

With that in mind I went into the first two episodes expecting the preaching to start from the off, however, the message was not laid on as thick as I was expecting it to be, and if you can ignore the red carpet stuff then the show is perfectly fine. During its first two episodes it never really justified why it needs to exist, is it just because people liked the song, or that she is vaguely Wanda, Elizabeth Olsen, related? As it stands now it is a forgettable side piece of MCU content that you can skip.

The only major thing I had an issue with was the nude scene. So there is a scene in these opening episodes where Agatha is nude and as she is she is being checked out by a little girl. Once again we come back to Disney and its odd relationship with pushing sex onto kids, the kid could have just been innocently playing and not done anything however the big smile on their face and how they struggle against their father as he tries to cover their eyes shows that she wants to look. Again had it been an older teen then that’s one thing but this was a younger kid and it just feels like Disney living up to their horrible reputation for this sort of thing.

Overall, it is fine with some questionable moments, especially the one with the kid.

2/5

Pros.

It is mind numbing

Aubrey Plaza is good in it

Cons.

The weird child thing

It doesn’t need to exist

It is slow

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What If Season 2 Overview

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

What If is back and boy is it a downgrade.

So before we get into the overview lets talk about the basic conceit of the show. It is what if stories based on films in the MCU, it is not new stories that have no basis in the films at all. Yet this season introduces us to a character that has never been in a film or tv show before and centres a whole episode around her.

Moreover, it continues to use characters like Captain Carter, Haley Atwell, and evil but reformed Doctor Strange, Benidict Cumberbatch, rather than focus on new films or tv shows from the MCU. I have no issues with Carter or Strange but I find that I want to watch one off episodes not recurring narratives, that I thought was against the conceit.

I think this show started out with good ideas for what if stories and then slowly over time lost its way, like the wider MCU, and became boring and predictable and not at all like the wacky and out there what ifs we had all been expecting it to be.

Overall, I don’t think we need a season 3

2/5

Some good moments

It is watchable

Cons.

It introduces new characters and breaks the conceit

It is boring

It is repetitive

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X-Men 97: A Blast From The Past

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

When scraping the bottom of the barrel what is there to do but move on to the next decade.

At first when I saw Disney were resurrecting this old and beloved series I thought to myself this would be little more than a cynical effort in brand exploitation. However, upon watching it I found there to be a lot of elements to like, in many senses this series felt like an X-Men comic book come to life. A number of iconic X-Men moments where depicted in the series for the first time and they were done justice to.

Personally the nostalgia factor was not there during my time with the show as whilst I grew up on X-Men cartoons for me it was Evolution that was my go to X-Men fix.

Something that hampered my enjoyment of the show was how it would jump around in structure, in one episode we would follow the main team but in the next a side story. To me this felt disjointed and often killed excitement I may have had between episodes.

Another thing that somewhat affected the series for me was its allegiance to current year identity politics. We had characters that were non binary, and I am no Morph expert but I do not believe the character was called this in the comics as this is a modern term. As such I believe it was included to tick a box which is the cheapest and laziest form of representation. The series also focuses heavily on the characters feelings towards Wolverine which as a side character this felt odd. The Scott and Jean relationship of which is central to the X-Men lore got less screen time and plot consideration, this could only be done in a tokenistic effort to show diversity on to appease bluehead people online.

Overall, whilst it was nice to see classic X-Men moments on the screen for the first time it was undercut by a need to appease identity politics and the structural issues with the episodes which I found jarring.

3/5

Pros.

Classic moments

A number of good action set pieces

Some fun to be hard

Cons.

Identity politics

Odd pacing and structure

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Deadpool and Wolverine: A Missed Opportunity?

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds is back.

Buckle up friends this will be a long one. Everybody knows the terrible state the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in over the last few years, is because of this and because of the importance of mutants in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I went into this film with incredibly high expectations. Is it also because of this that I left feeling disappointed.

Now the film did have a lot of positive aspects and things to enjoy and this review is coming from a place of someone who cares deeply about the characters, however, it is because of that care that it will be a negative review. Though it was nice to see Wade back on the big screen and treating us to some more blood and gore than we usually do in the MCU, the issues arise as a matter of tone. Deadpool is obviously a comedic character, and has a number of laugh out loud jokes in the film, but there were a number of times I was hoping that the film would take itself seriously, because it needed those moments, yet didn’t. Considering the multiverse stakes of this film and the fact that it has a very heavy emotional arc for Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, it needed those serious moments to truly do it justice and to have heart, yet whenever we get close to one of these moments it is ruined by some forced joke.

I know the creatives are very excited to be in the MCU, however it does feel at times like there’s a little bit of disrespect towards the Fox X-Men universe. For example, take the opening sequence that spoils the end of Logan by having Deadpool desecrate his corpse in order to kill a bunch of people. Now at other points in the film Logan is treated with respect, however, this opening feels like it takes away from that. You could have done something equally as cool and gory using a different montage that wouldn’t have taken away from the most impactful film of the fox X-Men universe.

In terms of cameos this film goes a little over the top at times to a point where you feel like saying okay please no more fan service. Some of the cameos are cheer worthy, such as the return of X-23, Dafne Keen, who I am very glad to see with Wolverine and Deadpool at the end of the film. Some of the cameos are bad such as Channing Tatum finally getting to be Gambit yet feeling like a cosplayer rather than the character himself, he needed longer hair and to be less muscular. And some are massive missed opportunities such as the Deadpool Corps, what should have been an epic moment was just a throw away fight scene.

Another thing that I thought was questionable about the film was how much of it cantered around concepts from the Loki TV show, now this was a popular show but it was not one that will be watched by the whole audience of who would show up for a new Deadpool film. There were many many references made to Loki over the course of the film, and it just seemed an odd decision to base such a big film around events from a Disney + show. I did enjoy the Void return of some of the best Fox characters such as Aaron Stanford’s Pyro and Chris Evans’ Human Torch. However, by far the best character that appears in the Void is Cassandra Nova, Emma Corrin. Corrin clearly is having a lot of fun here and I have never seen her in anything before, at least not that I can remember, but she sure leaves an impression here. Corrin’s villainous character is both menacing and also at times quite funny and likeable, in the truest sense they are a three dimensional character.

In terms of performances Reynolds is much the same as we’ve seen him in the previous two Deadpool films, however there is an earnest side here that is new and which offers the character so new dimensions. Though I must say in contrast to that Wolverine, whom I have wanted to see in the MCU for a long time, has no new ground to cover, we have seen old defeated Wolverine before, in Logan, and whilst it’s nice to see him in the costume for the first time it still feels like there is no new depths of the character explored here. I would like to see, at some point in the future, Wolverine in a teacher role helping a new generation of mutants find their place in the MCU, this would be a new aspect of the character that hasn’t been explored before in any great depth on screen.

The final act of the film is somewhat disappointing, after the Deadpool Corps fight, which features Blake Lively as Ladypool which I liked, you then get Deadpool’s universe saved and all of the surviving characters staying in it. Now for me where this lets down is the fact that I wanted all of the Deadpool characters to end the film in 616, I wanted the film to end with them all entering into a portal together and arriving in the MCU proper whereas now they still feel distant, they are MCU adjacent but they’re not in it and I think that was something the film should have done. I understand that all the worlds will be brought together for battle world, however it just feels a bit of a bait and switch.

Another thing I don’t understand and that’s strange about the film is the fact that Deadpool can clearly travel between dimensions as he takes a 616 based Avengers job interview, yet then later when talking to the TVA doesn’t seem to know much about the multiverse only about time and space. This just doesn’t make sense to me, as okay if the character can just hop between dimensions then it really makes no sense that they were not in the 616 timeline in the end. Moreover, I would have liked to have seen Wolverine to go the Xavier’s school on the Deadpool universe and have him settle there at the end of the film, I thought it would have been a nice moment of hopeful optimism for the character. Yet the film ends on a joke about Chris Evan’s Johnny Storm swearing, yes I rolled my eyes at that too.

Overall, a good and enjoyable film with some great moments but ultimately one that is disappointing and without substance at times.

3.5/5

Pros.

Wolverine is back

X-23

Ladypool

It is nice to see the Fox characters go out with a bang

Cons.

It doesn’t end in the 616

It is afraid to have more serious moments and sometimes ruins good emotional moments with a bad joke

It wastes the Deadpool crops

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