Black Panther: Did It Suck

     Black Panther is out! Ever since the debut of the title character, Black Panther, in Captain America: Civil War we have been desperately wanting to see this movie. It has set really high expectations and Marvel has gone all out trying to make sure that this movie does not leave us disappointed. Not only that this will be Marvel's first superhero movie with a predominately black cast, with legendary black actors like Forest Whitaker and Angela Basset, as well as soon to be legends like Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, and Chadwick Boseman so the stakes are even higher. Now that we can finally see it, have they? Does Black Panther suck?
     Black Panther takes place sometime after Civil War and brings T'Challa to the forefront being the new king of Wakanda, a black utopia hidden away, in Africa after his father's death. As the newly crowned king, T'Challa is not only met with how he should govern Wakanda, but how and whether he should help other people in the world with Wakanda's vast resource of Vibranium, one of the hardest metals in the Marvel Universe which is responsible for Wakanda's technology which is vast beyond outside world. With Vibranium being a million times more than its weight in gold, you also have people that try to steal it which T'Challa and the previous king of Wakanda, T'Chaka has to put a stop to as well as keep Wakanda a secret from the outside world which is a big obstacle in the movie and crucial to the plot.
     This is more of an introduction to Wakanda where the movie mostly takes place. The movie's director Ryan Coogler, put in a ton of visuals in this movie. You had a ton of beautiful scenes from the astral plane scenes, to the scene of M'Baku, played by Winston Duke, in his throne room, to the costumes of the characters which were inspired by the beauty of Africa. Black Panther has all of the good qualities of a Marvel film: great fighting scenes and action with a little bit of funny all throughout the film to keep us entertained.
      It had all of that and more. Black Panther was a movie with purpose but it  had a ton of political aspects to it as well. It dealt with a lot of topics ranging from colonialism to afrofuturism, to name a few. The film also invokes a familiar history with MLK's pacifism with Malcolm X's black activism with the two protagonist and antagonist characters, T'Challa, played by Chadwich Boseman, and Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan. The protagonist and antagonist also draw inspiration to X-Men characters Charles Xavier and Magneto which too were based off of King and X. Jordan has even said that the interaction between his character and T'Challa's is reminiscent of not only King's and X's but Charles and Magneto as well while explaining his version of Killmonger for the film. Coogler has woven these topics into the plot so beautifully without it becoming too preachy and a much better job than Anthony and Joe Russo tried in Civil War. Another thing that was done beautifully was the acting.
     The acting was superb. The whole cast brought their A game. Of course you never get a dull moment with veterans like Bassett and Whitaker, but everyone else was what made Black Panther extraordinary. Bosewick was amazing playing T'Challa who was coming to terms with his father's death and into his own as the new king of Wakanda figuring out how he should rule the country. T'Challa while being the main character did take the back seat compared to other characters but that has more to do with how well the other cast did than Bosework's performance. If you can say who was the MVP of the movie, it would be a three-way tie between Michael B. Jordan, Florence Kumba, and Letitia Wright. Florence Kumba was magnificent playing badass woman warrior and T'Challa's right hand man, I mean woman, Okoye who ripped apart in every scene, as well as the bad guys, she was in. Wright was amazing playing the sassy, witty, and intelligent sister to T'Challa and head scientist, Shuri. Jordan did a great job playing ruthless villain Killmonger, who while motivated by hate, militarism, and good old fashion vengeance did have a tragic villain story which made him the monster he was.

Final Verdict
So, how did Black Panther faired? It was amazing! Not bad for Marvel's first black movie in the MCU. It brought us everything we needed. A great story. Amazing and beautifully written characters and it was more daring dealing with political issues more than Civil War attempted to do, and did it so while being two hours of fun! Black Panther has raised the bar on how every Marvel movie should be. It gets four out of five. Wakanda Forever!
   

New Super Mario Bros Movie: Second Time's a Charm?

    It's a go on a new Super Mario Movie. Earlier this year we have heard rumors that Nintendo is considering venturing back into Hollywood and giving us a brand new Mario Movie. They have officially announced that the rumors are true. They will be partnering will Illumination Studios, the same studios that gave us the Minions franchise.
      This time around they will be fronting the movie as they will be in charge of supervising the whole thing and gaming god Shigeru Miyamoto will be directing the movie himself. Nintendo is really taking charge to make sure that this thing goes off without a hitch, and they should.

     We all remember or better yet would like to forget the live action Super Mario Movie that came out years ago. How was it? Bob Hoskins who played Mario described his experience making the movie as "a fucking nightmare" He was spot on. It was a good idea on paper but the execution was hellish. The directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel were reportedly nightmarish and shooting was a big mess. It wasn't until the studios actually got in and removed the directors that they were to salvage what ever they could but it was all for nigh as the movie did horribly at the box office and gotten even worse reviews. The Super Mario Bros movie is infamously one of the worst video game movies of all time and that says a lot with the damage Uve Boll did. After the Mario Bross movie Bob-ombed, Nintendo has been very selective in what they can make movies and shows out of. Can Nintendo do better?
     Well, a promised by Tatsumi Kimishima, Nintendo would think of ideas outside of the box and think of ideas  to expand the company. Reconsidering opening up to making films out of their beloved franchises could be thinking outside the box and a good way to expand things.
      As far as the studio, Illumination being that they've made a hit franchise with Despicable Me and  Minions would mean that potential Mario movie would most likely be in good, if not great hands, and Nintendo is dead set on supervising on what direction the movie can go. They have learned the lessons in the past, like maybe not casting John Leguizamo a Luigi and are wiser when it comes to who they let play around with source material. However this raises a few problems. We know that Nintendo and Miyamoto can make great games. Movies are however a different fire-breathing bull turtle dinosaur(?) beast. Whether or not they can make a good movie will depend on them and it's all up in the air at this point.

New Boss New DCEU

     According to Variety we have a new DC Films president in charge of supervising the DCEU, Walter Hamada. Hamada will be replacing Jon Berg and Geoff Johns. It's not a big loss for Johns as he will be the new creative officer for DC Entertainment and help Hamada. Hamada will not only observe films in the DCEU continuity, but all comic book films as well.
       It is apparent that Hamada being in charge of the DC films is a response to how the entire DCEU is doing right now. It's not doing so well right now. Justice League is a box office failure, as of now, only raked in $652 million worldwide with a budget of $300 million compared to Marvel's Avengers who made $1.5 billion at the box office. And unless your movie was Wonder Woman it has been met with dissatisfaction from critics and fans alike. So what do you do when your cinematic universe is sinking faster than the Titanic? You try to keep it afloat. And making Hamada being the captain in charge of seeing the whole thing steer in the right direction might be a good idea.
      One of the problems with the films is that there isn't a clear and concise vision with most of the films. As evidence with how all over the place Batman v Superman was with its plot and how it was setting up the cinematic universe and how discombobulated Justice League was with how things were poorly fitting together, was the vision wasn't clear or at least wasn't executed properly under Berg and Johns. Hamada could be a better visionary or at least steer things in a good direction as he was responsible for the successes of It and The Conjuring franchise. Whether he can fix the DCEU is a big question and it will be hard work, but at this point it wouldn't hurt.

Is There an X-Men Reboot Coming?

     So if you haven't heard Disney has just struck a deal with Fox and is now the proud owners of most of their entertainment divisions. As of now Disney are the proud owners of Fox Entertainment, 20th Century Fox and other studios. But we're not here for that. We here for superheroes. If you are a Marvel fan this should excite as this means that Marvel has legal rights to the Fantastic Four and X-Men again. Since Marvel can use the properties again that means that we might be seeing the X-Men and Fantastic Four in the MCU, most importantly the X-Men.

Disney and Marvel have two options to bring the X-Men into the MCU. Marvel can keep things the way they are as the recent films, First Class all the way until Dark Phoenix, already serve as a soft reboot to the many X-men films that have came out in almost a couple of decades. The characters can somehow be shoehorned into later films in the MCU. But alas this will cause some problems. 

     There's a lot going on in the current X-Men movie continuity that can make the current franchise hard to fit. Even with Days of Future Past which was Fox's attempt to start anew and get rid of some of these continuity issues some are still a problem. I'm looking at you two Archangels, two Deadpools, and pretty much rest of the mess that wasn't fixed in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It would be much better and simpler just start things over. There are still some big problems with continuity.
     The other issue and reason for a reboot will be the actors themselves. You have some actors that have or are considering moving on from the franchise and retiring from their roles. Logan was Hugh Jackman's final swan song from the franchise with him playing Wolverine one last time after going back and forward on stating on whether he'll quit the role for years. With Logan being Jackman's exit, it might be hard to explain a new actor as Wolverine when we had Jackman digging his claws in the role for 11+ years. Jackman is not the only one as other actors in the franchise have or are deciding to leave after the filming is done as Jennifer Lawrence is another actor who has said that she is pretty much done playing Mystique or has until Dark Phoenix where she only came back to give her Mystique character a proper sendoff.
     So yeah, a reboot would seem to be the move that makes sense. It made much sense when Marvel made a deal with Sony and borrowed and gave us a brand new Spider-Man for Civil War and Spider-Man Homecoming instead of having Andrew Garfield put on the Spidey suit. Whatever the case they be hopefully it'll be a smooth choice that'll make X-fans happy, unlike Last Stand.

Justice League: Did It Suck?

Justice League is the latest film in the DCEU universe. If you have been keeping score DC's movie universe has been 2 for 1 as BvS kinda sucked and Suicide Squad was a bit of a mess. The only film that showed a glimmer of hope was Wonder Woman. This time around you have a few more heroes joining Batman and Wonder Woman are a few more heroes from DC to save the world and honestly save the entire DCEU. Will they do it or will this another point in the list of "you're doing movies wrong DC"? Oh, and Zack Snyder made this so, fun times?

So let 's get to the plot. There might be spoilers.

     It's up to Batman and Wonder Woman to recruit and form a league of heroes to stop an upcoming force that could doom us all. The main villain, Steppenwolf, a super evil badass warrior who everyone from Earth, Aquarians, Amazons, and just regular men had to stop uniting three companion cubes, oops I'm sorry, Mother Boxes is back to finish the job and prepare for the coming of Darkseid by using the three sequels worth of AllSparks from the Transformer movies, I mean Mother Boxes, to change the climate of Earth. Basically like what General Zod tried to do in Man of Steel, except more of a hellish apocalyptic wasteland. Sounds epic? Not really.
     The whole movie was lull. Very vanilla in a sea of bland snow. You had a build up, not much character buildup or honestly really good movie pacing, but an ok introduction to all of the heores and everyone getting together to prevent Steppenwolf from his plan and not having a proper trade off at the climax in the movie. The actual final showdown was anti epic and climatic in the most possible way. Again, you had all this build up to the final battle with Steppenwolf being all evil intergalactic badass that EVERYONE on Earth had to stop him from turning the planet to a wasteland the first time to being defeated by his own fear after being knocked around by Superman and Wonder Woman. It also hurts as the battles with Steppenwolf were more epic, especially that Amazon fight scene (God I miss watching Wonder Woman after this). As the polar opposite of how anticlimactic things got you're met with a pretty HUGE WTF.
     It wasn't all bad. You did get a bit of lightheartedness in a response to DC's plan to make everything all Dark and Gritty™. You did get a generous bit of comedy which was cute. The MVPs of the movie have to be Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, and Jason Momoa. Ezra had great comedic timing. Even though he was the comedic relief of the movie it wasn't annoying in any sense, which can happen alot in these movies. Ray Fisher's cyborg was the character the film decide to give a lot character growth which Fisher handled it well, compared to everyone else. Jason Momoa is basically Atlantis' answer to Wolverine and there's nothing wrong with that. For everyone else everyone did play their parts well. Warning if you loved Wonder Woman Diana, she's not here but who figured her to be. This is years later while she's used to being in man's world and Steve is dead. She can be a bit broody instead of Amazon Ariel in her solo movie. The Superman part was pretty good.

Final Verdict
     Honestly I feel like Justice League honestly doesn't know what movie it wanted to be. It tried to be comedic like Suicide Squad but didn't go all out like Suicide Squad did. It tried to be uplifting at times like Man of Steel and in some cases Wonder Woman but it just feels like lip service and half assed. Meanwhile Justice League trying to be everything it winds up not being much and boring. It doesn't help that it faced the same issues that Batman v Superman met with connecting everything. Batman v Superman gave you a lot of stuff going on as well as the main story. Justice League meanwhile didn't have much only having one big plot and still had trouble linking everything together or making things flow effortlessly. I like many people who saw Wonder Woman wanted to see DC and Warner Bros steer this universe into the right direction and had hope that after Wonder Woman that this would be the case. Like Tyra Banks we were rooting for you, Justice League, how dare you! Learn something from this DC. Hopefully letting Zack Snyder stick with Superman movies since that is the only part he got right, pretty much. Justice League gets 2 SuperFriends out of 5.

Is Super Mario Odyssey the Best Mario Game Ever?

     Super Mario Odyssey is out and holy goomba on a stick is it is awesome. This time Mario has to step out of the Mushroom Kingdom and brave a whole new world as he sets sail to rescue Princess Peach, again. It's no doubt that Odyssey is a great game with a ton of creativity in the many worlds Mario has to look for Power Moons in, new mechanics that spices up old traditional 3D Mario gameplay, and tons of stuff to explore in the many kingdoms, including secrets and easter eggs. With a ton of stuff to do and how great Odyssey looks and plays, you have to wonder is it the best Mario game ever?

     It is no doubt that Odyssey is modeled after past 3D Mario titles. Odyssey is the first open world Mario Game since Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario 64. The first Mario 3D title, Super Mario 64 is set the standard for ever 3D Mario game as its influence is not only calling back to the Mushroom Kingdom but to its exploration and gameplay as Mario is in these huge worlds looking for Power Moons which are the stars in the game, literally in the Mushroom Kingdom. While Mario 64 is the blueprint, Super Mario Sunshine is the biggest contributor to Odyssey's development.
       The goal in Odyssey's development seems to be to take things that were in both 64 and Sunshine and take it to newer heights like a P-Wing. Like Sunshine you do get traditional gameplay mixed in with a ton of puzzles elements, but Odessey takes thing and flip it on its head. The puzzles and puzzlier and funnier. What's also is on its head is Cappy which seems to be a huge step up than what FLUDD was in Sunshine. With Cappy, Mario is able to do all sorts of things from attacking enemies, using him to jump further, and possess enemies.

     If possessing enemies isn't enough then there are a ton of easter eggs and secrets in the game. Easter eggs and references isn't anything new to Mario games, especially the recent ones. Odyssey is however chock full of throwbacks to send you into a nostalgia coma for months. From almost everything in the Mushroom Kingdom (including Yoshi's house from Super Mario World) to Metro Kingdom referencing Mario's Jumpman days in Donkey Kong.
    Odyssey has up the ante in term of content and gameplay than its predecessors but is it a much better game than both? It's hard to make a definitive judgement as each Mario game have its charm. Odyssey is technically the better game, but it doesn't have the feel to it 64 exploring the castle grounds and the character that Sunshine had venturing Isle Defino. It is good that Odyssey does take things up a notch compared to 64 and Sunshine and it's great that it does those things without ruining classing 3D Mario gameplay.

What are your thoughts?

We Were Never Going Back To Kanto

     Sun and Moon came out during Pokemon's 20th Anniversary. With it's release we had a ton of call backs to the original Red and Blue games. We got to see a ton of generation 1 pokemon all throughout Alola along with Alolan forms of some of them, Alola, having its own variation of nugget bridge even re-enacting the time you had to fight trainers and a Team Rocket grunt at the end, and even fighting Red and Blue at Battle Tree. You even were treated a Machoke stomping the land flat in Sun and Moon's demo.
     So with all of these nods back to the gen 1 games, a trailer, a lot of fans were hopeful that with Sun and Moon's release we were going to take a journey back to the Kanto region a la Gold and Silver. Right? Wrong. Sun and Moon came out and it looks like *spoilers* the only one taking a trip to Kanto was Lillie in the game's ending. Ultra Moon and ultra Sun are on its way and Kanto journey hopefuls that wouldn't let the dream die got hopeful again with a screenshot where it looks like you would be back in Lt. Surge's gym and even Mega Sun and Mega Moon will be featuring Team Rocket grunts to name even more callbacks. Later it turns out it's just a new area in one of the towns in Alola. So, the dream died and people are sad that they won't be going back to the land that started it all. Should they?
     The only game that ever had you go back to a region from a previous game was Gold and Silver. And the only reason behind that was probably because Jhoto was a region literally across from Kanto. After Gold and Silver you only stayed in the current region and never went back to the previous one. You were treated however to some references to other regions and even some events that happened from past games. They've never broke away from this in the other generations so it wouldn't make sense to do it in this current generation even if it was the 20th anniversary. Nintendo and the Pokemon Company wants you to focus on Alola and there's nothing wrong with that.
     And even if they did decide to take you back to Kanto, it most likely wouldn't be the Kanto we all would remember. According to the timeline, yes there is a timeline, Sun and Moon takes place years after Red and Blue. Again, we see this now with Red and Blue being adults. We may not recognize towns and different places in Kanto if we ever went back. We may not even see the same characters and gym leaders. A lot has changed in Kanto during the events in Gold and Silver since we last been there three years ago. Cinnabar Island is gone, The Pokemon tower in Lavender town was changed from a spooky pokemon cemetery to not so spooky radio tower, and Blue and Janine took over gym leader duties in place of Koga and Giovanni (who is still on the run). It's maybe best to remember Kanto the way it was.