Author: Bert Ehrmann

Dangerous Universe has been Bert’s web playground since 1998 when personal web sites were a rarity rather than the norm.

Direct Beam Comms #126

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Are TV season finales important now with streaming series? They still are somewhat important for shows that air on network or cable channels, even if people still watch those shows time-delayed on their DVR. But for streaming services, since viewers can watch the shows at their own pace, be it binging an entire season the night it premiers, doling out one episode a week at a time or even waiting months/years to start watching, no one is watching the finales at the same time. And while I love streaming series I feel a bit of a loss for shows that air there.

Stranger Things
Stranger Things

Let’s look a Stranger Things. The second season of that show premiered on October 24 of last year at midnight Pacific. By the time I was checking the news sites that morning there were already in-depth reviews for a good chunk of the season. And by the end of the day many sites had posted reviews of the finale. So, before most people even had a chance to start watching Stranger Things there were a few people already discussing the finale. I’d guess that by the end of the premiere weekend a good percentage of Stranger Things fans too had binged through the show and were done too.

But for people like me who were watching one episode a week it meant we weren’t finishing until sometime in late November/early December. And by that time most of the talk about the show was done. When I’d talk with friends who’d already binged the show I was met with, “Oh yeah, I think I remember that. It was so long ago… I’m not sure.”

So that collective discussion pop-culture fans used to have about shows mostly isn’t happening for streaming series since everyone’s finishing at different times. For a show like Stranger Things that debuted around Halloween I’d say talk about it online was pretty much over by the end of November.

Shows like Stranger Things don’t so much as have a finale as they do a spectacular, exciting launch and then after a few weeks they pretty much just go away from public consciousness. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, it’s just the reality of modern-day TV watching.

Westworld

Still, shared experience finales aren’t totally dead. Series that run on network or cable platforms air on a week-to-week basis. A show like Westworld can debut at the start of October and since viewers can’t binge it until the season’s complete they have to watch it week-to-week. So, as the first season of Westworld started winding down towards the end of November there was still excitement about the show online with viewers spending the week dissecting each episode and having theories about where the story was going and how things were going to end.

I know that for most people binging is the preferred way to watch TV. If you’re enjoying something why stop, why not plow through the story and find out how it ends? Which is true, but to me I’d rather savor the story for as long as possible. I think binging a show means you’re not catching the details, you’re not paying attention to what’s all happening and you don’t have time to digest what’s all going on in the story. You’re just going as fast as possible to make it to the end like a race car driver.

And it makes the finales of the shows less and less important. How can they be important when some people will be watching them a few hours after the series premiered while others might not be seeing it for months?

Comics

Robotech Archives: Macross Saga Volume 1

Robotech Archives: Macross Saga Volume 1
Robotech Archives: Macross Saga Volume 1

Titan Comics is set to republish the collection of Robotech comic books that originally ran in the 1980s and 1990s starting with Robotech Archives: Macross Saga Volume 1. Covering the first third of the Marcoss series originally published by First Comics, these editions are a, shall we say, “maybe buy” for me. I’m a huge fan of all things Robotech and I collected some of the original Robotech comics when I was a kid. I say “maybe buy” since I’m not sure if the comics are any good or not? I’m worried that I wouldn’t be buying the collection to read, but for the nostalgia factor alone and they’d just be another thing taking up room on a shelf somewhere.

Not that I haven’t done that many times before with many other things!

Movies

Ant Man and The Wasp trailer

Teen Titans GO! To the Movies trailer

The Reading List

Cool Movie Posters of the Week

Posters of the Week

Captain Deadpool? Nah, just Deadpool

CategoriesFeature, MoviesPosted on

To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of actor Ryan Reynolds. For whatever reason I’ve just never cared for him and tend to skip movies he stars in at the theater. Sometimes this pays off like with the dreadful Green Lantern but sometimes it almost “bites me in the butt” like with Deadpool. I very nearly didn’t go see this hilarious, raunchy superhero comedy that’s got a ton of heart when it came out in 2016 and only happened to go one night when I tagged-along with some friends. And while I hold that I still won’t go see any Ryan Reynolds movies in the theater, the one caveat to that rule is, “Unless he’s starring in a Deadpool film.”

Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool
Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool

In Deadpool, Reynolds plays Wade Wilson aka Deadpool, an ex-military mercenary who meets the girl of his dreams Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) and then soon after finds out he has inoperable cancer. But, since this is a superhero movie and not a romantic comedy, Wilson goes off to get an experimental treatment to try and cure his disease. This treatment works but has some side-effects like making him look a bit like Freddy Kruger in addition to giving him super-regenerative powers. Shoot him and he heals, cut off a hand and it’ll grows back.

Angry that he’s lost the girl of his dreams Wilson vows to hunt down those who gave him the treatment while at the same time trying to introduce his new Kruger face to Vanessa.

I think the reason that Deadpool works is that it’s highly quotable, the action is completely over-the-top and it sends up the last decade of superhero movies in a fun way. Whereas most superhero movies are at least outwardly family friendly, Deadpool is not. It’s R-rated, there’s gore, nudity and lots of swearing. While in most superhero movies the heroes are out to save the world from some menace, in Deadpool Wilson’s just trying to get his girl back.

Zazie Beetz as Domino
Zazie Beetz as Domino

Ironically, for being R-rated Deadpool is probably a teenagers ideal superhero. Wade’s fearless since no one can really hurt him and he always has the right thing to say. It also helps that his girlfriend is drop-dead gorgeous.

In many ways Deadpool is more villain than hero. He doesn’t have any problems with causing accidents on major highways or bringing down a gigantic construction site when he does battles with the bad guys. If in other films the superheroes take pains to establish that their fight is about to take place in an abandoned part of the city, then one of the major fights in Deadpool takes place on a busy freeway with cars crashing, body parts being severed and villains going “splat” on highway signs.

Because of the huge success of Deadpool, the movie reportedly cost less than $60 million to make yet earned back something like $780 million at the box office, comes Deadpool 2.

This time Deadpool’s out to save a kid (Julian Dennison) with superpowers whom superhero from the future Cable (Josh Brolin) is out to eliminate. But Deadpool’s got help from both Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebran) and Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic) from the first movie along with a new X-Force including Domnio (Zazie Beetz), Bedlam (Terry Crews), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan) and fan-favorite from the trailer alone regular-guy Peter (Rob Delaney).

Josh Brolin as Cable
Josh Brolin as Cable

Ironically, when the character of Deadpool first appeared in the pages of New Mutants back in 1991 no one cared too much about him. He was just another 1990s style super-powered killing machine of which there were loads of. Back then, everyone was too concerned with picking up a copy of the comic with the first appearance of Cable than anything Deadpool was in since Cable was the most popular Marvel character of the early 1990s.

Now things have changed, so much so that, if the amount of t-shirts I see people wearing is any indication, Deadpool is one of the most popular superhero characters out there while poor Cable is lucky to land a guest-starring role in a movie of a character he first helped introduce some 27 years ago.

I guess there are worse fates, just ask Howard the Duck.