Tag: alita battle angel

Direct Beam Comms #155

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, MoviesPosted on

The bad guys are the best part

Are superheroes boring? I only ask because it seems as if the most interesting superhero movies and TV shows being made aren’t about heroes, but anti-heroes these days.

Recently, Venom, who is the nemesis of Spider-Man, was a hit at the box office while bad-guy Thanos stole the show in Avengers: Infinity War. The biggest pain in the @ss to the X-Men, Deadpool, is the most successful movie film series FOX has going right now while Punisher, the antihero of the TV series Daredevil, was successful enough to be spun out into his own series.

Boy scouts are boring

I think part of this trend is that we’ve had ten years of superhero movies and we know what the hero’s going to do. It’s no surprise that in Infinity War Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) fought to stop Thanos in his evil quest. And the same goes for Captain America (Chris Evans) who’s the world’s oldest Boy Scout who’s biggest change from his last movie was that he grew a beard. But the bad guy of the piece Thanos (Josh Brolin) is another story entirely. He’s a blank slate of sorts and is unpredictable. And because of this his character is interesting while the heroes have grown a bit stale and complacent.

Even if he’s trying to kill half the universe.

Bullseye disguised as Daredevil

The same goes for the latest season of Daredevil on Netflix. Not to knock the regular cast, but the best part of the series this season are the two villains with the return of Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) and new baddy Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). I think it’s because we’ve “lived” with the heroes of Daredevil for three seasons and we know what they’re going to do. Matt is going to be dour and Karen is going to be intense and Foggy is going to be grouchy. But what will Kingpin and Bullseye do next? Who knows, and that’s exciting.

Look no further than the Deadpool movies for more of this. The most unpredictable character in cinema these days might be Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) who does things like chopping off limbs and murdering people while making wise-cracks to the audience. These are all things we could never see either Iron Man or Captain America doing and I think that’s why those two characters feel old and stodgy while Deadpool feels fresh and new, even with all the bloody, gruesome killing.

I think the people behind the Marvel movies sensed this and created an anti-hero team of their own, Guardians of the Galaxy. Lead by Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War while both Iron Man and Captain America were lining up to do battle with Thanos, the only reason the Guardians got involved in anything was because they were answering a distress call but weren’t planning a rescue but were planning on stealing the ship of the people who sent out the call.

Actually, Guardians of the Galaxy are more good than bad. If the Guardians aren’t anti-heroes, then they’re superhero adjacent which is still pretty interesting.

In fact, the same goes for the most recent Venom movie. In the comics the title character is a guy out to literally kill Spider-Man, not minding if he has to “off” a few regular civilians to get the job done. But in the movie version as played by Tom Hardy, he’s crusading journalist who’s trying to stop the Venom symbiote from hurting people, and eventually the two end up joining together (haha) in order to do some good.

Harley Quinn

Crazy hot

One thing I do find fascinating is that while audiences have begun turning towards movies with anti-heroes for their entertainment, I’ve never seen an outright villain be the lead of a movie, with one exception — Suicide Squad.

This DC movie that’s about jailed villains who are forced together to go on a suicidal mission is the only superhero movie I can think of where the leads are, as Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), puts it, “…the bad guys.”

While they might be “bad guys” they’re doing good as they’re forced to work with the government to go in and rescue someone from a demon-infested city.

I can only imagine that more and more anti-heroes will be introduced to the box office as the sheen begins to wear off on the outright heroes. And that’s not a bad thing, change is good.

Movies

Alita: Battle Angel trailer

What To Watch This Week

Ralph Breaks the Internet
Ralph Breaks the Internet

Monday

Based on the novel by John Le Carré, the mini-series The Little Drummer Girl is set to air over three nights starting tonight on AMC.

Tuesday

The theatrical hit of late summer Mission: Impossible – Fallout is available on digital download today.

Wednesday

Several movies are set to premiere on Wednesday this week, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. First up is a new version of the well-worn story of Robin Hood and second is an animated sequel to Wreck it Ralph with Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Friday

The latest season of Mystery Science Theater is available on Netflix today.

Saturday

Insomniac Theater — very early Saturday morning TCM is airing two of the craziest, and that’s saying a lot, movies from the 1980s with the E.T. rip-off Mac and Me from 1988 and the completely bizarre and rarely seen The Garbage Pail Kids Movie from 1987. Coincidently, Mac and Me will be the focus of one of the episodes of MST3K.

Saturday afternoon TCM is set to air the 1958 Steve McQueen classic The Blob.

The Reading List

Cool TV Posters of the Week

  • The Orville poster
    The Orville poster
  • The Passage poster
    The Passage poster

Direct Beam Comms #138

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

Fall Movie Preview

The fall movie season is a bit of an oddity these days. Ever since the movie studios found out they could make billions off of superheroes and Star Wars, first the spring movie season started filling up with movies that would feel more at home during the summer, then the winter season as well. But the fall season has been relatively untouched with these kinds of movies as that was always the time of year that films were released with higher expectations than making wheelbarrows full of money, these were Oscar hopeful movies. While there are still a lot of movies due out that have Academy Awards on their minds this fall, there’s quite a few as well that feel more like summer blockbusters than award winners.

The Predator – September, 14

The Predator
The Predator

What was originally due out this summer before being pushed to the fall, the third film in the Predator franchise, unless you count those awful Aliens vs Predator movies of a few years ago and who wants to do that!? The Predator marks the return of Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to the sci-fi genera. Black co-starred as Hawkins and did some on-set rewriting on the first film. The Predator looks to move the action from the jungles of Central America in Predator and Los Angeles in Predator 2 to a rain-soaked little town where the only thing standing between the population and total destruction are a rag-tag team of special forces soldiers being carted off to prison.

Venom – October, 5

Venom
Venom

There’s some confusion with this one. Starring Tom Hardy, technically Venom takes place in the same film universe as the fan-favorite Spider-Man: Homecoming movie, except if reports are to be believed out of the San Diego Comic-Con your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man won’t be making an appearance in this one. And it almost seems as if Sony is positioning Venom, who’s been the nemesis of Spider-Man in the comics for 30 years now and even appeared in Spider-Man 3, to be more an anti-hero than a villain. Think Punisher rather than Ultron and that sounds more in-line with this new movie version of the character.

Halloween – October, 19

Halloween (2018)
Halloween (2018)

This latest version of Halloween will be the TENTH sequel to the original film and will bring back Jamie Lee Curtis in the Laurie Strode role she originated in the first film and has reprised on and off the last 40 years. This new Halloween reportedly ignores everything after Halloween II (1981) — though how can anyone ignore that ear-worm of a song “ten more days ’til Halloween” from Halloween III: Season of the Witch?

The Girl in the Spider’s Web – November, 9

The 2011 film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was supposed to be the first of a series of movies taken from the novels of Stieg Larsson directed by David Fincher and starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig. But for whatever reason it was decided to cast aside that creative team and start anew this time with director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) and co-stars Claire Foy and Sverrir Gudnason in the Mara/Daniel roles respectively.

Maybe Fincher’s vision for the Dragon Tattoo sequels was too intense since the movie did decently enough at the box office for something not starring super-heroes?

Alita: Battle Angel trailer

TV

Freaks and Geeks

Freaks and Geeks
Freaks and Geeks

Recently, I caught a documentary about the TV series Freaks and Geeks and had some memories of my own to share of this gem of a show.

  • I remember when Freaks and Geeks premiered it was difficult to see new episodes. NBC seemed to either air a lot of repeats or they moved the show around a lot to different timeslots.
  • I remember that the episode “Kim Kelly is My Friend” was controversial for its time and didn’t run in my area during the series original run.
  • In fact, I didn’t see all of the episodes of Freaks and Geeks until Fox Family reran the series in 2000 as there were a few episodes including “Kim Kelly is My Friend” that never aired on NBC.
  • When Fox Family began rerunning Freaks and Geeks and premiering unaired episodes I started recording the show on my EyeTV which was a device that allowed you to record a cable signal to your computer and save shows as MPGs. While I’m pretty sure I recorded the entire run this way, I’m also pretty sure I never watched them other than maybe the one time since the files it produced them were small and SD cable grainy too.
  • In 2003 or 2004 Shout! Factory promoted a DVD set of the entire series, urging people to preorder the set since this might be their only chance to own this, then, forgotten series on home media. Of course I ponied up something like $120 for the set.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #105

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Happy!

Based on the comic series of the same name by writer Grant Morrison and illustrator Darick Robertson, Happy! on SyFy follows ex-cop turned hitman Nick Sax (Christopher Meloni) who during a hit is shot, has a heart attack and starts seeing a small, purple cartoon-like flying horse named Happy (Patton Oswald). Happy’s an imaginary friend to a little girl who’s been kidnapped, and Nick in a near-death state is somehow able to see Happy when no one else can.

It’s an interesting concept, unfortunately Happy! isn’t a very good show.

The first episode is so overstuffed with story from an evil Santa Claus, the kidnapping, four mafia brothers out to get Nick, a secret password that’s somehow tied to the real evil-rulers of the world… there’s so much going on here there’s hardly a through-line in Happy!. It doesn’t help matters that things are so over the top in terms of colors, action, gore and character behavior that nothing’s believable yet Happy! is set in what looks to be our world.

What Happy! reminds me the most of is the AMC series Preacher in terms of tone, story and over-the-top-ness. And I didn’t think Preacher worked as a series and I don’t think Happy! does either.

What really sucks is this is the second terrible series to come out of SyFy this year, the other being Blood Drive. I’m not sure if the person picking the shows at SyFy has really bad taste or it’s overall bad luck, but so far the new genera friendly SyFy doesn’t look all that much different from the old SyFy of a few years ago.

The Orville – first season

I honesty didn’t think I was going to like the FOX series The Orville too much when I first heard about it last summer. I’ve never been a huge fan of series creator/star Seth Macfarlane and the whole vibe promos for the series were giving off — a goofy sort of Galaxy Quest — didn’t look that interesting either. But because I watch a lot of new shows, and because The Orville was the first of the new shows to debut last season, I checked out the first episode.

And I didn’t hate it.

I actually kind’a liked it. As the first season has progressed some episodes have worked more than others, but all in all I’d say that The Orville was a lot more good than bad and it quickly became one of my favorites of the season.

About the ship of the same name commanded by Ed Mercer (Macfarlane), who, along with Commander Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki), Security Chief Alara Kitan (Halston Sage), Navigator Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes) and others explore the galaxy in the distant future. Which has been done many times before in shows from Star Trek to Babylon 5 and everything in between. But what I think differentiates The Orville from other modern day similar series like the newest Star Trek: Discovery or even The Expanse is that whereas those two series follow the modern model of telling realistic, and often depressing, stories told over the course of an entire season if not series. The Orville harkens back to the shows of old where each episode is mostly self-contained and there isn’t a season-long story and everything’s positive.

Which I usually don’t enjoy. I like my TV series to be telling complex, interweaving stories over the course of many episodes thank you very much. But for whatever reason with The Orville, be it the humor, the strong characters, the acting, the writing, the whatever… I haven’t missed the whole season-long story here and I think The Orville is a stronger show for it.

If anything, The Orville is a love-letter, or really probably MacFarlane’s personal love-letter, to the original Star Trek series. Where the reason for exploration is a noble one and the crew of the Orville head off into deep space only wanting to gain knowledge and an understanding of alien species and cultures even if it means putting their lives on the line. But what’s different and new here is that The Orville is a funny series too.

Some of the humor started of a bit broad and unrealistic — I’m thinking of a scene in the pilot episode where Malloy and Mercer ride in a shuttle to the Orville as Malloy drinks a beer and the two argue about it. It’s more cartoonish humor than coming from reality. But over the course of the season things have settled down a bit and while there’s still comedic moments they don’t come off as weirdly as that scene did in the pilot.

Unfortunately, I think that scene in particular turned a few people off to the show. When The Orville first premiered there was almost a stampede of online commenters who damned the show which I thought was very unfair. With similar series like Star Trek there’s always been the idea that the first season is a write-off. The creators of those shows spend that first season finding their footing and it’s not until the second season that those series start to come into their own and show promise. Which makes me wonder why people were so fast to damn The Orville when if it were called Star Trek: The Orville instead fans would probably be more willing to give the show more of a benefit of the doubt than they did here?

I adore Star Trek: The Next Generation but the first season of that series was pretty atrocious. Last summer I went through and watched much of the first season again and enjoyed a handful of episodes. A handful. Much of the first season of that show feels like an attempt at recreating the original Star Trek series again in the 1980s and most of it doesn’t work. However, whereas a handful of episodes of the first season of TNG work, I’d say that just a handful of episodes from the first season of The Orville didn’t work. And even the ones that didn’t were interesting for all sorts of reasons.

Altered Carbon TV spot

Comics

X-Men Epic Collection: Mutant Genesis

Travel back to the dark and mysterious age that was the early 1990s when the hottest comic books on the market were titles from The X-Men universe. Collected here in X-Men Epic Collection: Mutant Genesis are loads of comics written and illustrated by some of the biggest talent on the market back in the early 1990s including Jim Lee, Andy Kubert, Chris Claremont and Whilce Portacio. Now I’m not sure if these comics have aged well in the intervening quarter of a century since I haven’t read them since they were first released, but if you’re interested in what comics were like “back in the day” you could do much worse than checking out this collection.

From Marvel:

The end of an era for the X-Men! The original team, now called X-Factor, takes center stage when Proteus returns from the grave. But when Apocalypse strikes, infecting Cyclops’ son Nathan with a deadly virus, Cyclops must make a bitter sacrifice! And the current X-Men return to Earth to find that Professor X’s old foe the Shadow King has risen — and taken over Muir Island! It will take X-Factor and the X-Men’s combined strength to triumph — and when the dust clears, the two teams will become one! An uncanny new era begins as the reunited X-Men go back to basics — beginning with a deadly confrontation with Magneto and his fanatical Acolytes!

Movies

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

You thought they’d never go back to the island, BUT YOU WERE WRONG! They always go back!

7 Days in Entebbe

Alita: Battle Angel

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie Posters of the Week