Netflix Retrospective - Luke Cage Season 2 Episodes 3-4 - Wig Out/I Get Physical

Thanks to the heatwave and several other things going on in my life, it’s been a few weeks since I last talked Luke Cage, it isn’t for you though, so let’s dive right into…

RageLite review - Hotel Transylvania (A Strange Halloween 2)

A Hotel for monsters, a novel idea

Told again and again, for all to hear

Comedians notorious brought into the fray

For a comedy, light-hearted, make of that what you may

3 films have been made, all profitable too

But those that rated it highly were few

So how do they rank among the films I have seen?

Find out as we resume A Strange Halloween

Hotel Transylvania was an idea created by Todd Durham, a comedy writer mostly known for skits and sketches. He created a bible with various idea for characters, plots, theme park rides and such, and sold it to Sony, who saw $$$ in this project and green-lit it. And despite the films themselves getting mixed reception and making but not Disney levels of money at the box office, the franchise, as a whole, has been massively successful, making billions of dollars for Sony.

So, for the first 3 weeks of A Strange Halloween 2 (I’m gonna keep my Luke Cage reviews going for now) we’ll be looking at what goes on in this hotel of Horror. Let’s start with the first film.

Netflix Retrospective - Luke Cage Season 2 Episodes 1-2 - Soul Brother #1/Straighten it out

OK, time to look at the next series along the line with Netflix’s Marvel shows, which has now come to a close. I can’t say I’m disappointed or even surprised about this, but I will say that Luke Cage is the series I dreaded to watch the most. Luke Cage is a problematic character to write, he’s invulnerable to conventional ammunition, and super-strong to boot so harming him by conventional means is impossible. So season 1 took the liberty of creating super-bullets to harm him and having them start to show up everywhere, rather undermining the point. Season 2 also suffered from a weak villain as the show’s biggest asset was tossed aside too early. Still, it’s the show that introduced us to Misty Knight, the NMU’s biggest asset so it can’t all be bad, right? Well, let’s dig into Luke Cage s2 and take a look.

Ratchetrospective - Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters

There’s only one Ratchet and Clank Game I never covered during the original Ratchetrospective run, or during sequel month (or a rage review – like with Secret Agent Clank) and that’s Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters. It’s the first of the 2 games heralded by High Impact Games, a team that has previous games covered in Rage4Media reviews such is Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, and Secret Agent Clank. To its credit, Size Matters is better than both of those but we’ve got a way to go to explain why.

High Impact Games was made up of former Insomniac Games employees and were tasked to creating games for Sony’s handheld console of the time, the PSP. The problem is that Ratchet and Clank was a title designed for 2 analogue sticks and 8 buttons, and with the PSP you’re down to 1 analogue stick, and 6 buttons (they cheat to make a 7^th one) this is a problem in both Secret Agent Clank and The Lost Frontier as well.

But enough preamble, let’s take a look at Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters

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

#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.