Praise4Media #66 - Avengers: Endgame

We finally come to the payoff to 12 years of Marvel films with Avengers: Endgame

Avengers Infinity War was a massive hit for Marvel, breaking the $2bn mark for the first time, Endgame would surpass it to become the highest grossing film ever, beating out Avatar (though still didn’t beat The Force Awakens in the US) and thank god that era’s over. It was a hell of an investment for Disney but one that paid off nicely, showing how far Superhero movies have come in the last 20 years.

And much with the rest of Marvel films, it was critically successful, 94% on Rotten Tomatoes with 8.42/10 average.

OK, this film is just over 3 hours long, the longest film I’ve done up to now is Batman v Superman’s extended cut and I don’t really desire to do a frame-by-frame plot dump for the opening hour. I’m gonna use this particular film to try something a little new. So, whilst this review may end up being on the shorter side because of this, I am looking to see if this is a worthwhile change because with all the changes going on at the moment, it’s getting tougher to motivate myself to do these anymore.

RageLite review - Ant-man and the Wasp

Ant-man was one of Marvel’s more modest hits when it was released back in 2015, making around $520m on around $120m budget. A sequel was ultimately inevitable and Marvel did increase the budget for it, putting it around $190m. Peyton Reed is back directing but we have an all knew writing team including Chris McKenna, who wrote the Lego Batman movie and Spider-man: Homecoming, Erik Summers, who also worked on Homecoming and the previously reviewed Jumanji sequel, Andrew Barrer, who’s last work was on the 2014 film Haunt, Gabriel Ferrari, who was producer of Haunt, and Paul Rudd himself, who had helped write the screenplay for the original Ant-man.

The film had the blessing/curse of being released between Infinity War and Endgame, anticipation was high, and turnout was OK, it made around $620m, again a modest success for Marvel. Critically it did well, an 88% Rotten Tomatoes rating but with an average of only 6.97/10, Audiences gave it a 76% rating with an average 3.76/5. How did I find it? Let’s take a look

Marvel Month - Mini Review - Ant-man

Being the first movie to follow up an Avengers movie is a big deal, Iron Man 3 rode the Avengers Wave and grossed over $1bn, despite not being as big a critical hit as a lot of previous movies. Ant-man wasn’t as big a hit, but it was another Marvel gamble. With $142m in its budget, it managed to gross $512m, whilst on the lower end of Marvel movies, it was enough to be considered a success and green-light a sequel. Critically, it’s well liked with an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

So why am I not exactly excited on this one… well, let’s take a look.

Sequel Month - Mini Review - Captain America: Civil War

It's sequel month

Captain America: Civil War came out in May 2016 and did what Batman v Superman didn’t do, get critical acclaim whilst making over $1bn in the box office. So, here to analyse why, is me, about a year after everyone else.

I know I haven’t reviewed Winter Soldier but this is essentially an Avengers movie with Cap in a more leading role, so I’m counting it as a sequel to Age of Ultron which I reviewed last year.

This might be a little different to my other reviews in that contains no plot summary of such, it will bring up certain plot details so spoilers will still follow. 

4 issue Test #19 - The Astonishing Ant-man

Time I looked into another All New All Different Marvel Title. What’s that? I did one just 2 weeks ago, well get used to it, there’s plenty more on the way.

Scott Lang, AKA Ant-man, former criminal trying to find right in the eyes of the world, and particularly his daughter, since she was the reason he resorted to crime in the first place. She became a superhero briefly, and also died and came back to life, just like him… Yeah, it’s comic books. What’s in store for our hero now? Let’s take a look.

TV Retrospective: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 2 episodes 1-5

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was renewed for a second season, but we’re starting to look into the Disney era of Marvel so let’s throw in as many characters as possible into this.

But with well enough written stories that isn’t necessarily a problem. Christopher Yost is still on the writing team and most of his work in animation is pretty good (Thor: The Dark World, we’ll get to maybe)

We’ve had a few hints of coming stories: the Kree, the Masters of Evil still being out there, the Skrulls, Kang’s warning etc.

So what does season 2 have to offer? let’s take a look

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 1 episodes 21-26

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 1 episodes 16-20 review

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 1 episodes 11-15

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 1 episode 6-10

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 1 episodes 1-5

With Avengers: Age of Ultron having come out only a few months back, it’s time I think to look at the Avengers cartoon

NO NOT THAT PIECE OF SH*T (Season 2 review coming when season 2 is done)

No, for this retrospective we’ll be looking at the full and complete run of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

Because of the long season lengths and the fact that I have other shows I want to do retrospectives on I will do each series in 5 parts (so 10 overall) so let’s dive into the first 5 episodes of the series.

Guilty Pleasures #15 - Ultimate Avengers 2

When it comes to direct to DVD flicks, DC is leaps ahead of Marvel. Whilst DC has had its slip-ups (JL: War and Son of Batman being notable examples), Marvel haven’t really had much success. But these are a few I’d recommend as only a casual Marvel comics reader

Doctor Strange: a nice introduction to the sorcerer supreme with great moments for the character as he overcomes adversity to become the sorcerer supreme. There’s debate about the addition to his back story and I think it adds depth and emotional weight to the character. People very rarely are jackasses just for the sake of it.

The Hulk vs Series: Both Hulk vs Wolverine and Hulk vs Thor are very fun romps within the Wolverine/Hulk universe, with Deadpool appearing as part of the weapon X squad in the Wolverine one (voiced by Nolan North)

And that’s about it. There are a couple of decent ones I’ll cover in future Guilty Pleasure reviews, but those are the two that stand out to me. (Thor: Tales of Asgard and Young Avengers are in the line-up for some-when)

We also have the following which I’ll cover briefly

The Invincible Iron Man – Largely forgettable

Iron Man: Rise of the technovore – confusing

Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes united – Childish

Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United – Childish

Planet Hulk – Decent-ish

But today, I’m doing Ultimate Avengers 2. In 2000 Marvel began the launch of the ‘Ultimate Universe’ imprint. It was a way of establishing characters without being hampered by decades of continuity, hopefully attracting new readers in the process.

It started with Ultimate Spider-man, still the most popular of the series (although it got a new titular character after the supposed Death of Spider-man) then Ultimate Fantastic 4 and X-men. But the Ultimate version of the Avengers came out initially in mini-series called Ultimates (1, 2 and 3) it was the original Ultimates book that drew the inspiration for Ultimate Avengers. (Given the synopsis from Wikipedia, it follows most of the story (minus the wife abuse storyline for Hank) folding in the Hulk plot within the Chitauri invasion plot) it was a decent success that a sequel was made, Ultimate Avengers 2

Unlike the original, Ultimate Avengers 2 is a unique story, it does not follow the plot-line of Ultimates 2, at all (largely because it hadn’t been fully written yet) and we have tagline: Rise of the Black Panther. Black Panther is a criminally underrated character in Marvel. I’d go into his origin, but this is more or less the subject of the movie.

For this review, bare two things in mind: 1) I haven’t rewatched Ultimate Avengers for this, so don’t expect me to latch onto continuity errors between films. And 2) the only Ultimates book I’ve ever read is the Avengers vs New Ultimates: Death of Spider-man tie-in book

With that out of the way, let’s dig in: