Monday, April 30, 2018

Avengers: Infinity War - Did It Suck?


     Marvel's biggest movie is here! By biggest, I mean just that as it is the largest cast featuring everyone and their momma who has been a major player in the Marvel cinematic universe ever since it has begun. We've been literally front and center in theaters watching Marvel connect the dots and set everything up for the events in this movie. With all the major Marvel players in this movie, will it truly be the epic superhero movie experience Marvel wants to boast that it is or are we looking at Justice League 2.0? Will Avengers: Infinity War suck?
     So, the whole plot of the movie is Thanos, who's appearance in the Marvel movie have been here and there building up to this moment, is after six power stones which if he does have all six he will destroy half of all life in the universe. It's up to practically everyone who's been in every movie in the MCU to stop them. Epic, right? It was totally epic in every sense. Epic fights, epic heroic moments, and in the case of both Chrises, Evans and Hemsworth, epic beards. So the movie is basically the superhero version of American Graffiti... Wait, some of you may not get that. It's the superhero version of Pulp Fiction in that most of the movie is pretty much everyone breaking off in different group like the second half of a Scooby Doo episode and doing different sub plots in order to stop Thanos.
     Everything is woven beautiful in the sense that it's almost like watching mini movies of each Marvel film. You would not think that Marvel would successfully mix the episodic aspect of movies like Black Panther and Guardians with the continuing drama-ness of Captain America and Thor but they did it well. When the Guardians of the Galaxy show up you get straight up comedy, which matching them up with Thor and Hemsworth's comedic presence was genius. You got the same chemistry Spider-Man and Iron Man had together in Homecoming. And that and the stuff you usually got in your standard Captain America/Avengers movie. Everything melds well together and everyone plays their part well, they had all 10+ years to do that so no shock.
     Along with all the epicness of the movie you get a lot of drama. Oh, boy do you get a ton of it. From Thanos' backstory and his interaction with Gamora. The movie's highlight was the substory of Gamora and Thanos. Not much has backstory has been done to Gamora in the Guardian films but they are brought out in the forefront with her being warlord daddy's little girl. As for Thanos, this film is another continuation of the simpathetic villian, like Killmonger in Black Panther and Vulture in Homecoming to name a few, who is doing some pretty bad things for their version of the greater good. This time killing half the universe to throw things into balance instead of doing all of this to get bf points with Death like in the comics.
     You're gonna need tissues for this movie. From Gamora's backstory and connection to Thanos, the relationship with Scarlet Witch and Vision, and probably the most emotional part of the movie: the ending. The ending had balls. I'm not going to spoil it for you but it's true, some heroes do not make it. It wasn't your standard superhero endings that even though something tragic happened it gives you a message of hope.

Final Verdict
     So, did Avengers: Infinity War suck? NOPE! As Marvel's big superhero movie starring everybody it did not. It was more like a celebration of all the movies that Marvel has done in the past years all blended together smoothly. You have all the custom movie tricks and the cookie cutterness of Marvel movies, but they don't seem so cookie cuttery. You get all the good, and then some. The ending was a big bonus as it gives you a bit of intelligence that was needed. As shocking and sad as it was it was beautiful and genius, leaving you wanting to know how will not only the MCU will deal with all that happened but what Marvel themselves will do to fix it. How do I rate it? It gets 4 infinity stones out of five.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Should We Be Worried About the Spyro Reignited Trilogy?


     Nostalgia has hit us hard like a tsunami this week. We're getting a Spyro game. Not a brand new game, but a remaster anyway. There was an apparent leak that revealed that Toys for Bob was going to give Spyro the remaster treatment, just like Crash Bandicoot and the N. Sane Trilogy, and now everything has been confirmed. We will be getting the new, yet old, Spyro Reignited Trilogy this September, if it doesn't get delayed. It will be published by Activision who published the remastered Crash games and if that doesn't get you running down memory lane like it's an marathon on your childhood, Tom Kenney who voiced a majority of the old Spyro games will reprise his role as Spyro for the entire remaster.
      So for the millennials out there Spyro was platformer that came out during the golden era of 3D platformer games like Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, Super Mario 64, and another series that we've gotten the remaster treatment Crash Bandicoot. With this remaster everything should be cool right? Right?
       I'm sure lot of people had their nostalgia goggles as soon as they heard the news and thought back to days playing the game when they were young and how awesome the game was back then. I'm not saying that the series suck, it did everything but suck. I'm saying that maybe the gameplay could come off as a bit dated as in most cases things do not hold up as time passes. Things may not be as awesome as we remembered it and time has a funny way to make us aware of that by showing us how outdated things can be.
     We've seen this with Yooka-Laylee. Yooka-Laylee isn't what you call an old game, but Playtonic, the studio who developed the game, treated as a spiritual sequel to the popular Banjo-Kazooie series and got us all in the nostalgia feels.We were partially disappointed as we were treated to old and dated gameplay that gave the game a stale taste.
     Luckily this wasn't the case when remade Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy where Vicarious Visions did much more than just give the first three Crash games a facelift with updated graphics. They tweaked gameplay mechanics a bit that made it a bit more challenging and felt new. Hopefully that is what Toys for Bob has in mind for remastering the Spyro games as well.

What are your thoughts?