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Superman of the People

Last weekend was opening weekend for a movie I had been anticipating for quite some time – Superman. From the day the first teaser dropped and they so expertly wove a variation on the old theme music into a series of images that told us nothing while simultaneously peaking our interest… I was pumped.

I watched this multiple times in a row and hyper analyzed every frame when it came out. The casting looked great, and they clearly wanted to appeal to old fans of the comic. There were a few full trailers that came out after this, and each one got me more excited than the last while only somewhat giving us an idea of the actual plot. They evoked the right emotions while spoiling nothing.

Fast forward to a little nonbinary nerd celebrating their day (happy belated nonbinary day everyone!) while finally getting to watch the movie they had anticipated for what seemed like ages. The reviews were all great (minus the people crying it was too woke) so I knew I was in for a treat.

Here’s where the actual spoilers for the movie come in, so pause here if you haven’t seen it yet and come back when you have.

logo for James Gunn’s Superman movie

The movie starts with the theme playing and the old Superman design appearing, which immediately got me in my feels. We then get a brief bit of text appearing on screen explaining the history we need to know about the character in this universe. I am super grateful to them for doing it this way and not making me sit through yet another origin story.

Cut to a scene we got in the teaser, of Superman having just lost a fight and having to be dragged home by bestest boy Krypto. In general the scenes from the trailer all mostly happen at the top of the movie, which I also really liked that choice.

I won’t do a play by play of the whole film, but I will dive a little bit more into what I loved and what I can see some people nitpicking over. First, the likes! I loved the casting for starters. Everyone was the perfect choice for their roles. I also love that black Perry Mason seems to just be canon now. I’ve seen it in a few iterations at this point. Personally I don’t think skin color matters for that character, as long as you nail the personality down. You don’t get a ton of Perry in this movie, but the scenes you do get really captured his spirit. I also almost said out loud “that is a perfect representation of Cat Grant” but held back since I was in public. I can’t wait to rewatch this at home and really get into it.

Next, let’s talk about it being too “woke”. There are aspects of the movie that can perfectly be layered over our current discussion about immigration right now, but does that make it “woke”? In my opinion, the folks who are complaining about this are simply realizing that they are more similar to the villains of these stories than the heroes. Comic books have always been about standing up for justice and protecting the little guy. Sorry if you’re just noticing now that you worship an actual supervillain (Elon Musk) and lost some of your humanity along the way. Superman gives a fantastic speech towards the end of the movie where he calls Lex out on what it means to be human and how he would be better off if he saw that for himself rather than being jealous of Superman. But other than that, the movie doesn’t beat you over the head with its message, and if you were uncomfortable that might be a you problem.

Now for the possible nitpicks. If you’re a comic book fan, you might notice that they change the origin of Ultraman. I personally am not bothered by this, but my knowledge of the character is also weak to be fair. The one teeny thing I could nitpick on is the appearance of Supergirl at the end of the film. My ears perked up when Superman mentions his cousin, but I don’t love making her a party girl. Again, my knowledge of the character isn’t as good as the core cast (Superman, Lois, Jimmy, and Lex) but I feel like she’s supposed to be more mature than that. Hopefully her own movie gives her more depth.

Despite the teeniest of complaints at the end, I overall thoroughly enjoyed the movie and would give it a solid 4.8 out of 5 stars. I would go see it in theaters again (which is rare for me) if it weren’t for the fact that I’m saving my money to go see Fantastic Four later this month. I highly recommend going to see Superman in theaters, and the sooner the better. It’s the little dose of goodness and hope we could use in these dark times.

Superman flying up with the words "look up" to his right

Year of the Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker

Beware: the following is a deep dive into the movie, and as such has a ton of spoilers. There’s also some talk about Dragon Age Inquisition, mostly character stuff involving Cassandra. And one mention of DA2, but it gives away the ending and I wouldn’t want that to be ruined for you. You have been warned!

Dawn of the Seeker takes place in 9:22 Dragon and gives us a look at Cassandra’s backstory. In the opening scene you see her take out a dragon pretty much by herself. Why can’t she do that in the video game?? (I do use her in my dragon hunting party because of her background as a dragon hunter in this movie).

The bulk of the movie is about a young mage (Avexis), some blood mages who are interested in her and a possible conspiracy within the chantry. Cassandra gets accidentally swept up in everything and it becomes her mission to protect Avexis. She teams up with a mage, Galyan, to rescue Avexis from the blood mages. According to the wiki, Galyan is a representative of the rebel mages at the Temple of Sacred Ashes and dies when the Breach occurs. If you romance Cassandra, she also mentions him as the only other person she’s been in a romantic relationship with. I’ve never done her romance, but I do have plans to do what I’m calling a “Chantry run” where I romance the more religious characters in the games. She’s going to be my DAI romance for that run.

Along the way we also get a glimpse into Cassandra’s past where she tells a story about blood mages killing members of her family, and that is why she hates mages so much. We’ve seen her distrust of mages in DAI, so that stays true throughout her life (even if she maybe romances the mage she’s traveling with in this movie at some point). I guess one cute mage can’t undo years of trauma and hate.

It turns out the Knight Commander is the secret mole working with the blood mages. Because we’ve never seen a Knight Commander secretly be the bad guy in this universe… (Martel walked so Meredeth could run). He might have murdered the High Seeker, but he was still a boring human when he did it. What, didn’t want to become a lyrium monster and attack an entire town for your cause?

The evil monologue reveals that they’re using Avexis to get her to control dragons to attack the Chantry and the Divine, Beatrix III. Ok, that’s more like it. There’s got to be a big final conflict that puts all the people you’re supposed to be protecting in danger, or are you really villaining enough?

Cassandra gets to solo kill some more dragons, and I’m only a little turned on. Gosh she’s a badass. She might take awhile to warm up to you in the games, but once she does, she becomes one of my favorite companions. She also looks damn good in the Divine armor in Trespasser, if you go that route.

With the dragons and Knight Enchanter dealt with, all that’s left is Head Blood Mage.

Bad guy: I wanted to create a world ruled by mages!

Me: you could have just moved to Tevinter

And then he turned into a Rage Demon and we had to kill him.

The events of this movie earn Cassandra the position of the Right Hand of the Divine. It’s cool seeing this big part of her backstory play out. That title means a lot to her, based on conversations in DAI. And clearly she does a good enough job that she keeps it through multiple Divines, as she is still in that role when Justinia takes over. I’d be curious to see more of her relationship with Justinia in the early days. I’d also love to see more of her with Galyon. The wiki hints at their relationship, but what did that look like? And how did it end? Was his role with the rebel mages what put a rift between them? I have so many questions.

That concludes this look into Dawn of the Seeker. If you’d like to watch the movie for yourself, it’s available on Crunchyroll. Up next, is the Penny Arcade Dragon Age Origins prequel comic and then we’re finally starting Dragon Age Origins! The Leliana’s Song DLC is first, and it will be a first playthrough for me. I can’t wait to dive into this game with my new knowledge.

Doctor Strange: Musings of the Multiverse

This should go without saying, but this will have lots of spoilers for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. You have been warned!

I know a lot of people who have some opinions about the new Doctor Strange movie, but I am here to tell you I loved it. At first I was concerned about how short the runtime was, but they managed to pack a lot into those two hours. I think my only complaint is you kinda get thrown right into things, but it’s a very minor complaint that I’m not all that mad about. Otherwise it was a great story with a rollercoaster of emotions. I wish Wanda/Scarlet Witch wasn’t the main antagonist and/or that her story didn’t end the way it did, but we’ll get there.

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in Marvel Studios’ DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

First of all, with how quickly and often Dr Strange was asked “are you happy?” I knew that was going to come into play at some point in the movie. For a second when he and the Christine from the other universe (sorry I cannot remember numbers other than we are confirmed 616) were talking about “I wish you could see where I’m from, it’s beautiful” that one of them would be going with the other, but Strange knows he has more work to do, and I think he’s become content with that by the end of the movie.

Now about that other universe Christine was from – I (and a good portion of the theater) cheered seeing the Illuminati slowly introduce themselves. In a few short moments we got to see Black Bolt, Captain Marvel, Captain Carter, Reed Richards, and Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Professor Charles Xavier with the classic 90s X-Men theme playing during his entrance. My nerd heart sings!

If that weren’t good enough, we also got to see Clea make an appearance during the after credits scene, teasing a visit to the Dark Dimension? I’m really looking forward to seeing where the universe takes Strange, especially if it lets him move on from Christine and we see him and Clea more.

Now let’s talk about Sam Raimi. He’s one of my favorite directors of all time. If you never saw Evil Dead, do yourself a favor and fix that right now.

Go on. I’ll wait.

Seriously though, there were quite a few moments where Raimi’s signature really shined through. The best examples are the cameos – Bruce Campbell as Pizza Poppa and The Classic (the Oldsmobile Delta that is in almost every movie of his). It’s become a game with me to spot the car as an easter egg. And of course it’s fun seeing Bruce Campbell pop up in random small roles. Almost like back in the old Marvels days where we’d wait to see where Stan Lee would appear.

Finally, let’s talk about the actual story. We got a look at how Wanda is coping after the events of WandaVision. (Spoiler: she’s doing poorly). I’m happy she’s got a moment of clarity and redemption, but I have mixed feelings about her final moments in the movie. It’s poetic to see the space we mistook for a tomb become her actual tomb, but I also would rather see her get to move on and be happy rather than sacrifice herself to protect the world from her potential for chaos and catastrophe. And yes, people have pointed out to me that we never saw a body so she might not be dead, but it felt like her story was concluding there.

Overall I continue to be excited about what the MCU potentially has coming up. My big question after the movie ended was the potential for a Young Avengers in our future. I originally figured Wanda’s kids would be involved. True, the multiverse versions of them exist, but how much are they going to be featured versus our universe? I guess that’s something else I’m curious about is how much we’ll be visiting other universes now that we confirmed their existence. That is one way we might see Wanda again. I think we’re definitely going to see more of America Chavez, and her power is teleporting amongst the universes. Whatever happens, I’m excited for the MCU to get weird and make some bold choices in the future.

What about you? What are you most excited about? Is it the Fantastic Four becoming part of our universe finally? Or maybe getting to finally add some mutants to the mix? Let me know in the comments below.

The Interview: A review and commentary on digital media

I’m sure we all remember the big news surrounding “The Interview” and how it got pulled from theaters because of a terrorist threat. The movie was eventually given a digital release and is now currently available on Netflix Instant. I originally had no desire to see the movie. I was mildly curious but didn’t care enough to go to the theater or rent the DVD when it came out. Having instant access to it, however, I decided to give it a try. Worse case scenario the movie sucks and I turn it off if I get bored.

To say my expectations were low would be an understatement. True, Seth Rogen is funny enough, but the premise of the movie seemed so incredibly stupid I didn’t want to waste my time with it. I mean, I like movies that are stupid in a funny way, but that is not how the trailers presented this one to me. Boy was I surprised…

“The Interview” turned out to be a surprisingly funny and thoroughly enjoyable comedy experience. Yeah it’s about two guys trying to kill the North Korean leader, but there’s so much more to it than that. The character development was stronger than I would’ve imagined, and the actual jokes were honest to god funny.

I laughed.

A lot.

At this stupid movie that I had very low hopes of grabbing my attention or amusing me. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe sometimes you need to let go of expectations and see what happens.

Now, if “The Interview” had been given a more traditional release it might have done okay in theaters, but I doubt it would’ve done great. Plaster it all over the Internet though, and now you have something. I know the terrorist threats attached to it definitely gave them some buzz, and there are even some who believe this was all planned for just such a purpose. Regardless of what you believe, I think movies like this in general would do better if they skipped the theater and just got released online. With how expensive movies have gotten, it’s no surprise that people have started saving the trip to the theater for the big blockbusters. I know the last time I went was probably the last Thor movie to come out, and I don’t remember the last time I went for anything other than an action movie. It’s not that i don’t like comedies. I just usually save them for home viewing. Maybe I’m in the minority on this one but I definitely enjoyed being able to watch “The Interview” while it was still relevant and not two years later when it finally made it to the top of my Netflix queue. If more movies did it like this then I would be one happy movie consumer. I might not want to pay $15 to see a movie in theaters, but I’ll pay half that to watch it instantly at home. The experience of theater-going has changed. Why not change with it?

Trilogy Syndrome

I know I’m behind the times, but I just watched Taken 2, saw they were planning a third one, and had a few thoughts about the movie industry. (I also had the secondary thought of how I hadn’t posted in a week and this would make a good filler piece… so enjoy the fluff).

My real thoughts on Taken were as follows:

1) It wasn’t as good as the first one, but also wasn’t as bad as people claimed. This tends to happen to me a lot with sequels. I almost never hate them as much as everyone else, with the exception of The Dark Knight Rises because fuck you for completely diverging from the comic book and making Bane such a joke. I get so irrationally angry about that movie that every time I see it on tv (which is a lot these days) I yell at my boyfriend to just keep moving and no one will get hurt.

2) My second thought about Taken 2 was that it felt like a good way to end the series. You had two better-than-average movies. Leave it at that…. But no, we can’t because we have to make everything into a trilogy these days. Now, usually what happens is the first movie is great, the second one is terrible, and the third one picks back up to be on par (or close to) what the first one brought us. There’s another possibility though, and I’ve seen it a lot more recently than before. Lately what I’m seeing is movies start off great, so execs decide they should turn this into a trilogy and make buckets of cash off it. The second movie will probably be almost as good as the first, but rarely ends up being the masterpiece the original was. The exception that immediately comes to mind is The Dark Knight, because not only were the story and action excellent, but Heath Ledger gave a better performance than anyone could have possibly imagined coming from a superhero movie. The third movie in a trilogy, however, is rarely memorable as anything other than a waste of time. I think Taken is going to follow this formula. The first one was great, and the second one was pretty good, but the third one will most likely end up taking a great concept and making it feel old and used up.

Who knows, maybe I’m wrong. I honestly wasn’t sure how they would make a sequel to Taken work, but I think they did a fair job. I just don’t see how they continue from here without boring us. Hopefully they say “challenge excepted” and it turns out to be a great film, instead of a waste of time.