#73 - Heroes in Crisis (Part 3)

Oh goody, Heroes in Crisis, time to put this garbage to bed. Here’s a recap of what I’ve covered so far: A bloody massacre as occurred at the strange and stupidly run facility known as the Sanctuary, tapes that shouldn’t exist were leaked to Lois Lane and rather than giving essential evidence to the Justice League, she wrote an article.

Superman makes a statement to the press rather than actually looking for the killer. That honour goes to Booster gold, who after claiming innocence under the Lasso of truth, something I will not drop btw, is pursued by Harley Quinn and Batgirl who still think he’s the murderer for some reason. On his side is Ted Kord, who has donned his pre-new 52 appearance because Tom King and Jamie S Rich don’t know jack about DC continuity. And most of you are probably still wondering why I spent half my first review giving you the backstory of Wally West when he’s been dead the whole time. But don’t worry, answers will follow. Also, this is all that’s happened in 5 issues.

#72 - Heroes in Crisis (Part 2)

OK, we’re back to this, and there’s a lot to cover, so there isn’t gonna be a long preamble like last time

Previously on Heroes in Crisis: Writer Tom King destroyed the premise of his own story by starting with a massacre at a trauma centre known as the Sanctuary. Booster Gold and Harley Quinn fought, both blaming the other for said massacre. And that’s it.

Once again, trigger warning, I’m going to be describing offensive scenes and not all of them from Heroes in Crisis. Violence, death, suicide, mental health and sexual assault/rape may be covered in this review.

#71 - Heroes in Crisis (Part 1)

I was originally gonna wait on this one, but with my schedule originally there wasn’t gonna be another Rage Review until at least December, so I’m rectifying that now. Heroes in Crisis is the worst comic story I’ve ever read. I’ll make no bones about that, it’s worse than the stupid Mr Freeze retcons, worse than the revamped origins written by Scott Lobdell, worse than Felicia D Henderson’s Teen Titans rune, worse than Cry for Justice and its follow-up mini-series and worse than Secret Empire.

To understand exactly why this story p*sses me off, we need to examine a couple of mental health related issues, so trigger warning. This review, and the onecs that follow will discuss death and suicides in relation to mental health and how this story does all of it a complete disservice. Also, I’m not a doctor, most of my analysis is based on common sense and minor bits of research. If I make a mistake, please point it out to me, I do not want to be giving out inaccurate information.

                                                                                        

Before we begin we must also look at the story of Wally West, so many spoilers to follow. 

Praise4Media #57 - Avengers: Infinity War

It’s time, after a decade’s worth of buildup we begin the most ambitious crossover Marvel has ever put into film with Avengers: Infinity War

Infinity War is a movie adaptation of an event comic, not exactly the one it's named after but the concept in general. And not a personal, small story like Heroes in Crisis (come back next week for that) but a grand scale epic saga that brings together characters from across the universe. And it’s been building for a while, with the idea of infinity stones introduced properly in Thor: The Dark World (I know the tesseract predates, but this was the film where they were officially referred to as infinity stones) referenced in Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange and expanded on in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Thanos was introduced as early as the Avengers, making his official debut in Guardians of the Galaxy, where his two ‘daughters’ had become prominent characters. There’s usually build-up to event comics too. Infinite Crisis built off Identity Crisis, Day of Vengeance, The Omac Project, Villains United, pages of Justice League, Superman and Teen Titans and the Rann/Thanagar War. Secret Empire built off a crossover called Pleasant Hill, and the events of Captain America

The Infinity duo of films will draw off just about every film in the MCU but here are some important things you could do with knowing before jumping in.

The Time Stone is part of Doctor Strange’s Eye of Agamotto

The Space Stone/Tesseract was supposedly on Asgard when it was destroyed, we see Loki gaze upon it briefly when he was enacting the plan, and it's safe to assume he took it.

The Power Stone is on the Nova Corps home world of Xandar

The reality stone/Aether is with the Collector on N.O.W.H.E.R.E.

The Mind stone is currently in the head of the vision, he laments that he still doesn’t know what that is

During the events of Civil War, Thor and the Hulk were absent as Tony Stark, Rhodey, Vision and Spider-man fought against Captain America, the Scarlett Witch, Black Widow, Ant-man and Hawkeye, the latter half are now wanted fugitives, with Cap giving up his shield after his fight with Iron Man.

Black Panther had a role in Civil War but uncovered the manipulations and ultimately agreed to help Cap with Bucky Barnes. With help from his sister, Shuri, Bucky has recovered from his mental conditioning and is now living in Wakanda

With the people of Asgard having escaped the destruction of their home and heading to Earth, Thanos’ ship shows up right behind them.

With the departure of Joss Whedon after the hell that was working on Age of Ultron (I imagine working on Justice League was just as pleasant) the Russo Brothers have stepped up as director. They directed both Winter Soldier and Civil War, showing they have a good grasp of believable action and can handle a large cast with multiple plotlines.

Christopher Marcus and Stephen McFreely are writing the screenplay. They also have done a number of Marvel projects including all the Captain America films and Thor: The Dark World. Some of the best and worst of Marvel then.  But here it’s do or die time, so let’s take a look at Avengers: Infinity War.

Praise4Media #56 - Malibu Rescue

OK, so I was going to do a mini review of Inferno but it’s come off Netflix and I don’t have a copy so I’m gonna need an emergency backup. Something dumb but not insulting, relatively harmless but with enough characters that I have things to say about them and most important of all, it’s got to be short.

Sounds perfect.

Malibu Rescue is a Netflix attempt at a live action sitcom aimed at younger audience. Think Even Stevens or basically any Disney sitcom. They’ve released a season of 8 episodes, and man is it stupid, but today we’re gonna talk about the 1-hour Netflix film that kicks it off.

RageLite review - Star Trek Beyond

Captain’s Log: Star Date... I think we’re in August now, this is the voyage of the Starship Enterprise and the story of how when we explored the final frontier, we delivered a Box Office bomb.

Star Trek Beyond is the third and currently final instalment in the Star Trek reboot series. The series would still have a future in its series on streaming but the adventures of Captain Kirk would seem to be at an end for the moment, with Chris Pine becoming Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman, and somehow will be in its sequel despite being dead and all.

When it comes to the writers we’re out with the old and in the with the Simon Pegg, who has certainly written stuff before but is mostly well known for comedy. Doug Jung joins him and his experience is mostly in TV. JJ Abrams has stepped back into a producer’s role, with Justin Lin taking over as director.

Released in July 2016, just 2 months off the series’ 50^th anniversary, made on a $185m budget, the film underperformed, making just $314m at the box office. Having to compete with Ghostbusters, Jason Bourne, and Suicide Squad, 2/3 of which are terrible, and the other only slightly less terrible, didn’t help, attributing to a 63% drop in the box office on the second Friday, and lead to an estimated $50m loss for the studio.

The series continued to get critical praise, with an 85% Rotten Tomatoes rating and an 80% audience rating with averages 7/10 and 3.88/5 respectively. So, what happened here? Let’s take a look

Netflix Retrospective - Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 6 Episodes 5-7

Well, some major revelations happened in the last episodes, we have 3 more episodes of the season, let’s see how they capitalise on this.