RageLite review - Thor: Ragnarok

After Catwoman, I need a bit of a palate cleanser, so let’s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Thor: Ragnarok.

Of the Avengers characters who’ve had multiple solo movies, Thor’s have undoubtedly been the weakest. Whilst Loki remained one of Marvel’s strongest villains, the films themselves often felt bland and boring. This was particularly the case with the Dark World, which ended up being quite a divisive movie.

It’s all change for Ragnarok though. Natalie Portman, who allegedly hated filming the Dark World, is gone, and once again, we have a new director, this time Taika Waititi. The overall style and tone from the first two movies is to get a massive overhaul, but I’ll leave that for the review portion. Waititi’s past experience is in comedy, with his directing credits including “What we do in the Shadows” and “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” neither of which I’ve seen but they’re both critical and commercial successes.

And the trend would continue here, Thor Ragnarok would go onto make $890m on its $180m budget and scoring a 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating with an average 7.52/10 and an 89% audience rating with a 4.2/5 average. All these figures exceed the previous Thor movies, but is it worth the reception, here’s my take

Marvel Month - Mini review: The Incredible Hulk

So, the Hulk. A classic Jekyll and Hyde story. You’d think there’s potential for great movies with that concept but with Aang Lee’s introspective but ultimately incredibly boring adaptation was a colossal failure and the less said about the Incredible Bulk the better. But neither of those are part of the Marvel cinematic universe, this is, despite the Hulk being played by Edward Norton in this movie and Mark Ruffalo in the others.

This movie was very much overshadowed by Iron Man, making only $260m on its $150m budget but that was enough and met Marvel’s expectations. Critics marked this with a 67% Rotten Tomatoes rating, only one film in the entire MCU has a lower rating than that, but we’ll get to that in due course, for now, here’s what I think.

4 issue test #36 - Champions

OK Marvel, we need to talk. In 2015 you did Secret Wars III, in 2016 you did Civil War II because the movie was coming out and in the wake of that, you’ve done a relaunch, only a year after the last one! Marvel Now (yet another recycled title) launched a few new titles with new creative teams. Unlike with DC Rebirth and the last Marvel relaunch, I’ve been more cautious picking new titles. There are only 2 I plan to cover. One is Jessica Jones (next week my friends) we also have Champions

And yes, it’s another title with the younger Avengers written by Mark Waid, who was less than impressive with his All New All Different Avengers title. But Waid still has some residual goodwill from Archie to allow me to give this a fair shot. Is it worth the read? Let’s take a look

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 2 episodes 6-10

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.