Thor! Again! But not really!

One of my original blog posts was a look at the movie Thor, which I liked but felt was not as good as it could have been.  Recently, however, I managed to pick up a copy of the Thor video game for the Nintendo DS and decided to see how its story manages to interact with the movie's story, and find out where it ranks on the list of "mostly terrible video game/movie collaborations."

Seriously, a way for me to know that I shouldn't pick up a video game is to hear the words "based on the movie" anywhere in the synopsis.  The only ones that really got it right for a long time were some of the Disney-based video games (Aladdin and The Lion King come readily to mind), a single James Bond-based game (Goldeneye), and one of the most underrated games of all time for the PC (Blade Runner).

...man, Blade Runner.  I've gotta dig that game out and do a post on it, because not enough people know about how awesome it is.

Where was I?  Oh, right.  In recent years this trend of most games based on movies being terrible has changed, no longer simply being a cheap way to slap a character likeness on a standard "jump the platforms" game or first person shooter.  The world certainly doesn't need more of some of the worst games ever.  Now a game might still be a rip-off of another popular game, but they'll at least design the world and controls around what you have...for the most part.

This might get wordy.

Did you all know that the opening to Back to the Future spoils a scene that happens at the end? A minute into the first movie, the camera is panning over all the different clocks that Doc Brown has set up. What most people probably notice but completely ignore is the following clock:


See the little guy danging there from the minute hand of the clock? The guy dressed exactly like how Doc Brown is dressed at the climatic scene of the movie? Yeah. Time travel, eh?

Actually, background objects lead me to my real topic. More often than not, your average movie or tv show completely forgets about the background of the plot. I don't mean the set pieces, which are often greatly detailed and undoubtedly very expensive, but the details within the background are often overlooked. The objects, the sounds, and even the people frequently move in and out of a scene with no greater purpose than to keep you from realizing that the story's extremely two-dimensional, and nobody has anything to do other than wait for two people to fall in love or defeat the bad guys.

In really bad movies and tv shows, they also includes the costars.

Let's look at a movie I just saw that has an interesting take on background characters: Thor.

Having just seen the movie, I'm still torn about whether or not it was a "good" movie. Did I walk away feeling like I got my seven dollars worth? Sure. It was certainly more value than the ten dollars I spent on nachos-minus-cheese and some Junior Mints. Was it fun? In its way, yes. Would I have done some things differently? Yes, and almost all of it involves the backup characters. I'm ignoring Thor because, really, what do you need from his character? Big guy, blond hair, hits things with a hammer, learns humility. It's not complex.

Spoilers follow, but I'll try to keep them as minimal as possible.

(When it comes to SHIELD, I think less is more. Having them around wasn't really necessary to the story, and seemed to just be a way of waving a banner saying 'COMING SOON! THE AVENGERS!')

Let's start with the biggest backup character: Dr. Jane Foster, played by Natalie Portman. Now, I've never been the biggest fan of Natalie Portman, but that's possibly just hard feelings from the new Star Wars episodes. To be fair, she isn't a bad actress, but here the character felt...off. And I'll admit, I'm puzzled why the felt the need to take a character who was an actual nurse-later-doctor and turn her into a physicist. How hard would it have been to write the script so she plays the doctor who initially treats Thor after his arrival? You want her to be upset at the "big, bad government" then have them be the people who take her medical records, not her science notes.

Honestly, watching the movie, the romance felt tacked on, and maybe that's what's bothering me about her character. I will admit that these are attractive actors playing attractive people (okay, an attractive person and a god), but Foster fell for Thor pretty quickly in my humble opinion.

Imagine the following scenario instead:

What if, instead of Thor becoming the fixture of Jane Foster's world, we swap it around. This is his guide in this world to educate him not just on location, but culture. He needs Jane a lot more than Jane needs him. Jane tolerates him because a) she feels a strange sense of responsibility for this giant galoot who follows her around, and b) somewhere under that barbaric behavior she keeps spying hints of the nobility and romanticism underneath. Thor always speaks kindly and gently to children and women, he appreciates the majesty of a thunderstorm even if he needs to be dragged inside to watch from a window, and the things from our world unknown to him (medicine, art, nature) he takes in like a child, amazed at the wonders "mortals" have achieved. Then, once Thor reclaims his power and glory and she's able to see him in all his majesty, then you have her start to admit to herself she has a crush on the big guy, NOT when he's still in the running for "most likely to find a way to dent his head in a padded cell."

But, there should be distance. He's a god, she's a mortal. He's amongst the bravest, most beautiful women in existence who do more wonders in a day than most people in a lifetime, she's a struggling doctor who shares a living space with her friend and occasionally mismatches her socks. There should be some play on just how different these two are. Look at the Lord of the Rings movies, for example, when they discuss how, even though he'll likely live a very long time, Aragorn is going to be old and wrinkled before Arwen has a single wrinkle. That should probably come up considering Odin was fighting frost giants before our calendar even reached A.D.

Let's look at the other background characters. How about the Warriors Three and Lady Sif?

Was it just me, or once they arrived on Earth did they go from being the noblest, mightiest warriors of the Asgardian realms to a college guy's frat buddies and the hot chick they hang out with? The scene with them knocking on the glass exclaiming they found Thor perplexed me. Of course you found him, you walked in a straight line from Point A to Point B and there he was. Did they have a Thor-detecting compass? Did their GPS (God Positioning System) tell them Thor was "five miles west, make a left at the 7-11?" Wouldn't they have been drawn to the hammer, since it was significantly more godly than Thor was at that point? Wouldn't a fun scene have been them trying to ask directions?

And did it bother anybody else that they made the actor playing Fandral look so much like Cary Elwes without letting him just be played by Cary Elwes?


Seriously, I kept expecting him to say "as you wish" or inform a frost giant that "unlike some other Norse gods, he can speak in a Scandinavian accent."

These characters did their job well, though I would have liked to have seen more of their involvement in Thor's childhood. Build up just how strong a friendship he has with the four who are apparently the only other Asgardians significant enough to live in the palace and go on adventures. Do they live in the palace because of their might as warriors, or is it actually the suburbs and Sif just has three of the strangest roommates of all time? (Note to self, pitch sitcom idea as "Asgard Meets How I Met Your Mother." We'll call it "Third Rock From The Aesir" or "How I Met Your Mjollnir.")

Then there's Big Daddy Odin and Loki. God bless you, Anthony Hopkins, you were overacting like every day was meant for the blooper reel, but from you we believe it. Loki...I don't know what to make of you. You're the god of lies and mischief, but it honestly felt that Obadiah Stane did a better job pulling the puppet strings in "Iron Man" than you did here. And he was played by "The Dude." I got a lot of your character, but you were...inconsistent. Were you really just having fun when you disrupted Thor's "big day" by letting the frost giants in, or was it part of your bigger plan? You didn't learn the big secret of your past until later, so maybe some character development where we show you getting overlooked in the past would've been nice, let us see where that resentment came from.

Then there was Darcy, Jane Foster's best friend. At least Dr. Selvig knew people who knew people at SHIELD and was a good point man to send to retrieve Thor. Darcy...you're going to be joining the ranks of Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl, Rob Schneider in Judge Dredd, Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element, and Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 2 as one of the characters that I honestly didn't see why you had to be included. If anything, having a roommate or "best friend" that only pops up now and again would add to why Jane keeps Thor around since she's undoubtedly lonely. Instead, we get a character who seems designed to just spout the most obnoxious lines in the movies and make us really start to root for the Destroyer armor.

But as I said before, it's not just background characters but also the backgrounds that are key to making a movie good. I was disappointed early on when we had the huge, sweeping view of Asgard, and at the bottom of the screen, where the streets were, I kept seeing either tiny CG people standing around or really bizarrely shaped shrubberies. Besides Thor, Odin, the Three, Sif, Loki, and Rene Russo, the only other people who show up in Asgard proper (I'm not counting Heimdall since the dude never takes a coffee break. Honestly, he's the one background character I had no problems with whatsoever.) arrive to hear Odin give a speech and then are never seen again. What do these people do all day? Who tends to gardens, builds the fascinating archetcture, or cleans the floors? Are they all gods and the magic of the realm does that itself, or are some "gods" just more godly than others? I want to see a populated Asgard, not just keep hearing the character in Monty Python say "It's only a model" any time I get a glimpse of the city.

However, there were details I picked up that I really did enjoy, though you have to be a comic book fan to pick them up. In Odin's vault I spied multiple artifacts from the comics, including a rather familiar...well, let's call it a "gauntlet" with six...let's call them "gems" placed in it. If only those frost giants knew what they had walked past.

As for the city in New Mexico...fine, I'll buy that somehow the rainbow bridge moved from Scandinavia (you know, where the people that worshipped Asgardians lived) to the southwest United States. I'll even buy that it doesn't land in the same spot each time (look out, California, it seems to be drifing northwest). But the city itself seemed to be misplaced as well. Maybe it was just me, but I didn't notice a lot of Hispanics in the city. And the people trying to pull the hammer out of the ground seemed like they belonged in The Dukes of Hazzard, not Thor. The city felt like just another backdrop.

Oh yeah, and the Hawkeye cameo? Wow, was that pointless. "Look, he's got a bow! He might fire it! He says something snarky! He never fires an arrow! Look for him in The Avengers!" If it weren't for the fact that I'm a card-carrying member of the Clint Barton Fan Club (Member number 00000243, get a 10% discount when you show your card at the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders), I'd wonder "Who is that guy? Why is he here? He's undoubtedly awesome, why couldn't he be Jane's friend instead of Darcy?" ...okay, maybe I was wondering the last part anyway.

If I had to grade Thor as a movie, I'd probably give it a high C+ or a low B-. It was fairly average, nothing about it really leaped out at me as spectacular. But as for the background material...I'd still give it a C. It had some fun eye candy for the comic book fans, but a lot just felt like filler when it could've been so much more.

If they ever do make a sequel to this, I'd love to see actual background characters who are recognizable, even if they just walk through a scene. The X-Men movies did this really well (well, the first two did), and Thor could benefit as well. Toss in a montage of Thor fighting various things like lava men, Ulik, or Fafnir.

Honestly, if they had just tossed in one scene during the ending credits where one of the planets in space looked like this:



...the movie would've gotten an A++. God bless you, Ego, you ridiculous bastard.

(Issues I didn't talk about: time line issues between Asgard and human mythology, the obvious deleted scene where Thor and Dr. Selvig get into their "bar fight," Loki's reputation as God of Lies when everybody believes everything he says, and the fact that Heimdall was black, but who really cares about the last one? If you're upset that Heimdall was black, you really need to get out more.)

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 14:The Man Who Controls The Whips Of Darkness!

After a brief reprieve I'm back in the thick of watching cartoons about superheroes!  You know, for writing purposes.  It gives me something to use to fill a post on Thursdays as opposed to having to go out and find something that costs money to enjoy different each time, and it connects each week to each other.

But enough justification of my hobby, it's time to get into the thick of things!  Let's dive right in for a story about...um...whips.  And darkness.  And a guy.  And- okay, did I wander in to the Fifty Shades Of Grey animated series?

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 11: A Present From Tony!

Japanese cartoons can be a bit weird about story flow.  Say you have a manga (a fancy term for "comic book") that's really popular, and you decide to strike while the iron is hot and create an animated series based on the manga.  You want them to tell the same story, but there's one pesky problem:  you can cram a lot more story into a half hour of animation than into one small "chapter" of a manga.  What's the solution?

Well, you can either take the Game of Thrones approach and decide "eh, screw it, TV's better than books these days anyway" and spoil everything for the readers, or you can cram in a whole bunch of filler episodes that fit between key story points.  How many filler episodes do you need?  Well, depending on the series, they can sometimes be up to 40% of the entire 400+ episodes.   That's 40% that take the smooth flowing narrative of someone's story and just starts jamming random side stuff into it.

Even aside from filler, you can sometimes wind up with really disjointed breather episodes that just don't fit in.  These can sometimes be filler, but it's often just a chance for the characters to "catch their breath."  These episodes often suck.

This is a breather episode.  But it doesn't suck.

Hulk Vs. Thor

Now, see, Hulk Vs. Wolverine, this is how you do a short, contained story.  There's a clear beginning, middle, and end, and characters manage to get some depth added to them without turning the whole thing into one long narrative.  This is how you have entertaining action mixed with real drama.  This...is  is what you could have been.  This is much, much better.

So, having completely summarized my opinion in the opening paragraph for those of you with short attention spans, I'll now break it down a bit more and explain why Hulk Vs. Thor is the superior of the two films.  And the reasons go more extensively than "The Enchantress.  Mrowr."

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode 5: The Mighty Thor Descends!

Something I think I've come to realize as time goes on is that while many "executive" decisions might be made for completely cynical reasons, the people who actually have to work on the projects aren't always simply trying to cut so many corners that they wind up with a perfect circle.  Sure, Hollywood might simply be attempting to cash in on a brief craze or something silly that's "in" with a particular crowd, but that doesn't mean that everybody who works on the project is just phoning it in waiting for a paycheck to show up.

That's right, someone likely cared about trying to make this "good."

So when you have a cartoon designed to push toys, it might be surprising that there are people who actually want to put out a good product.  The voice actors, animators, designers, editors, they're all looking at each thing they do as more than just "a way to make a paycheck."

For one thing, they know it'll be the most recent thing on their resume if someone looks them up on imdb.  But also, if you know people might watch it, why wouldn't you try your best to make sure they enjoy it?

Unless you're Uwe Boll, but that's a different topic.

So where were we in the show?  Oh, right, Spider-Man and Akira (and, thus, Iron Man) were being attacked by Diamondback while Hawkeye tried to recruit Hikaru into helping.

Let's not dilly-dally and get down to the action!

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 9: Spider-Man Is Missing!

It's been leading up to this, folks.  Ever since the beginning, our heroes have been divided, torn apart by Loki's machinations.  S.H.I.E.L.D. is frozen, unable to act to help anybody.  Nick Fury himself is in prison.  Heroes and villains were scattered across the globe, trapped in DISKs.  Spider-Man's been getting smacked around as if he was Frog-Man (there's a shout-out for you hardcore Marvel fans).

Finally, just finally last episode, our core five Avengers were finally reunited to face off against Loki's forces.  However, Loki's nowhere around, which means he must be up to something...

Enough chit-chat, let's get into it.

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode Two: All Heroes Exterminated?!

When I heard that Japan was doing a show about the Avengers, all I could really picture was their classic show about Spider-Man.

For those not in the know, the Japanese Spider-Man show differed in a few subtle ways from the comic book character we all know.  In the comics, teenager Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider, gains the proportionate strength, speed, and agility of a spider, and initially tries to get a career wrestling The Macho Man before his Uncle Ben dies and yadda yadda great power, great responsibility.

In the Japanese show (I'm not making any of this up), motorcycle racer Takuya Yamashiro witnesses a warship named the "Marveller" from the planet "Spider" crashing to Earth.  Takuya's father, a space archaeologist (because why wouldn't Japan have people with that job?) is killed upon discovering it.  His girlfriend, a kind-of nerdy reporter for a newspaper headed by a woman who is secretly one of the primary villainesses ("The Amazoness") working for the primary villain, whose name is "Professor Monster."  Takuya, after getting his throat slashed by a minion of the bad guys, winds up meeting Garia ("from the planet Spider") who gives him a bracelet that fills Takuya with "Spider-Essence" and heals him.  Oh, and he gets to use the Marveller in his fight against giant monsters by having it transform into a giant robot.

What I'm trying to say is that if Sony really, really wanted to reboot the Spider-Man movies after the Tobey Maguire ones, they went with the wrong Spider-Man.

Where was I?  Oh, right.  Needless to say, the Japanese Avengers program is nothing like that at all.  Yet.  I'm not ruling out each one summoning a portion of a giant robot that wields a gamma-powered hammer, but let's get back to the action.

Starcrash: Part Two

There's just something truly enjoyable about movies like this.  You could try to enjoy it ironically, but you can't.  To enjoy it ironically (even though it means mangling the definition a bit more) you have to enjoy it for the opposite reasons of why it was created.  Enjoying a movie that tries to be dramatic as goofy is "ironic."  Enjoying this movie is just...well, enjoying it.

And what's not to enjoy?  When we last left off, Stellar Star and a robot named L managed to escape from a giant stop motion Amazon robot by falling down a lot and getting rescued by a ship with giant lasers.  Obviously, whatever mission they're on, the right crew was picked out for it.

So the journey to recover the rest of whatever survivors were left from that ship from the beginning that we know nothing about continues, and we haven't even had a glimpse yet of David Hasselhoff!  Hurry up, movie!

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode 6: Hulk's Great Rampage!

A lot of the cartoons that Marvel put out over the years can be linked to very specific times in the history of the series.  The 1990s X-Men cartoon, for example, was so deeply entrenched in what was "cool" in the 90's that it looks almost quaint now.  Instead of making big heroes out of characters like Cyclops, Storm, and Jean, most of the stories revolved around time travelers who carried a lot of guns.  It's...really kind of sad, if you actually sit and think about it.

I suppose it's only natural that a show that comes out now about the Avengers would have most of the major characters from the movie in starring roles, but I wonder about the fact that they went with Janet Van Dyne (aka "The Wasp") over Black Widow.  Granted, the Wasp makes for a better visual in animation thanks to energy blasts, size powers, and flight, but considering we've only just recently had a Hawkeye cameo, I can't help but wonder if Japan just doesn't like Scarlett Johansson's character.

But enough thought, it's time to get back into the action!

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode 8: The Avengers Assemble!

Voices are a funny thing in cartoons.  I've talked before about what a huge fan I am of voice actors before, and I even- wait a minute.

...I was going to have another link there, but I can't find that I ever did a review of the movie I Know That Voice.

Okay, scratch that, this opening about some of the stranger voices I've heard so far in this series will wait until next week, because I need that post to link to.

Let's just get into the action!

If I Was In Charge... Of The Avengers! Part One!

Every single person who watches movies, reads books, attends plays, or listens to music has at one time or another made the same statement: "I could do better than that!" It's a phrase I've never truly understood, as it seems to question the speaker's opinion of their own work. For instance, if I said I could direct a better movie than Uwe Boll (which I totally could), one has to wonder how my ego applies: do I think I could make a great movie, which would mean Uwe Boll's work is simply average, or is my opinion of my own work so bad that it makes Boll's work abominable? Or do I somehow believe that there's enough of a gap between my own ability and Uwe Boll's that my movie would be great while his is equivalent to the caked-on-the-floor layers of cat urine you see in any episode of Pet Hoarders?

For the record, his is the equivalent of cat urine.

Now, if my experience on the Internet has taught me nothing else, it's that I'm right, everyone else is wrong, so that takes care of the ego aspect of this argument.  To prove I am a benevolent ruler of this blog, I will graciously share what I consider to be the idea line-ups for the three core "Avengers" teams, both the "deals with big threats" squad, the "street level challenges, if you consider super villains based on constillations to be street level" team, and the "shhh, they don't exist cause they're secret" team.

Feel free to submit responses as to why I'm wrong and why the evidence clearly indicates (naturally) that I consumed a lot of lead paint growing up.

Now, the rules:

1)  Only twelve members per team.  More than that, and it's just completely unmanageable.  Unless you're writing the Legion of Superheroes, of course.

2)  Half the team has to be people who were members before.  Otherwise, I'm not making the Avengers.  I'm making, at best, The Champions or The Secret Defenders.

3) No inserting any characters whose secret origin is from one of the fanfics I tried writing during my foolish younger years.  So, apologies to Zephyr, Teshup, and Bloodknifestabber.  (Bonus game: Figure out which one I created during the 90s)


 
So, let's start with the BIG team.  These are the guys who show up to fight Ultron, Ego the Living Planet, and deal with interstellar wars that spill over to Earth.  They are the A-team (not the one with Mr. T or the remake), the guys who, when the chips are down, get the job done.

They're also the easiest to begin with, because you're going to see some popular names here.  Starting with the first three:

1, 2, and 3)  Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man.

It's really quite simple: without these three, you don't have the Avengers.  Sure, occasionally one goes on hiatus or needs to leave to deal with a personal matter, but this set is the embodiment of everything the Avengers can handle.  With Thor, you have magic, Iron Man is technology, and Cap is the human element.   You also have, in that assemblage, a warrior, a tactician, and an engineer, reinforcing the idea that the Avengers is, in of itself, a balanced force that is prepared to face any threat.

Now, I can't imagine the key Avengers team without Cap leading it.  I've tried, and each time I always find it lacking.  Not only do you have a seasoned military mind, but you have the man who, over most other people who have ever been on this team, will be the last one standing when evil is about to triumph.  He is the one person who, right when the bad guy has ultimate victory right in its grasp, will spit in its eye and swing for the fences every time.

Iron Man, of course, is just as essential.  If technology advances as fast as it does in our world, it only makes sense that you need the mind behind the most advanced technology (not including Reed Richards and his "making stuff up as he goes along" science) on the planet to back you up.  Tony Stark is the Mr. Spock to Cap's Captain Kirk.  ...actually, he's more the Riker to his Picard.  But anyway.

Thor, of course, is the big gun you call into any situation.  If it can stand up to the might of the God of Thunder, then it clearly is an Avengers-level threat.  More manageable than the Hulk, and more versatile than any other brawler the Avengers have seen, Thor will lead the way in any battle and, after Cap, be one of the last standing out of sheer determination.

Plus, there's the intimidation factor.  Whether it's "We would have words with thee," "I say thee nay," or"Base villain, now you face the might of the Avengers!" anything that emerges from the lips of Thor carries more weight than if, say, Starfox says it.  He provides that classic heraldry that seems to indicate just how noble the Avengers' spirit truly is.

4)  Hawkeye

I love this character so much.  Not originally, mind you, but after the Busiek/Perez run of Avengers I really understood what makes the character so great.  Hawkeye in unique amongst the Avengers (save for one or two others who have their own reasoning) in that he made being an Avenger his entire life.  There's a new series out right now showing what happens when he isn't in costume, but for a long time there was no other life outside of wearing purple and shooting arrows at bad guys.  Hawkeye put himself into being an Avenger 24/7, even if he was on other teams, in which case he did his best to raise that team to "Avengers-level standards."

There's always that sense that, if the call goes out for heroes, before the summoner can even say "Well, let's see who shows up," Hawkeye will slam the door open and ask what's going on.  He is the best example of redemption the Avengers have (remember, before he was a hero, he was an honest-to-god super villain, one able to stalemate Iron Man without ultra-fancy arrows), and is frequently underrated by both characters in his universe and the people who write him, often enough.

5)  Scarlet Witch

Wanda Maximoff had it pretty rough the last few years.  She went insane, blew up the Avengers home base, rewrote reality, depowered most of the mutant population, then got caught up in a plot by Dr. Doom.  However, she's back in the good graces of most people these days, which is great because that whole lengthy storyline was capital "D" dumb.

The daughter of Magneto, Wanda is another example of redemption, having been one of the founding members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  She and her brother Quicksilver turned against their father and decided to fight for justice instead.  She's also ridiculously powerful, able to manipulate chance and probability on either a micro-level (a bad guy's gun happens to jam) to a ridiculously powerful level (see the above-mentioned story lines).  While it does make sense that you'd want to keep someone who can rewrite reality close by, I think they're done trying to play around with Wanda's sanity, and it comes in handy having a bona-fide mystic on the team to add some additional mystical impact (beyond that of Thor's hammer, at any rate).

6)  Spider-Man

Yeah, I know, there's some freaky storyline right now going on about Doctor Octopus in Peter's body and yadda-yadda, it won't be temporary.  Major changes never are.

So, once we get that silly storyline out of the way, we can get him back on a team he belongs with, having been, for years, the biggest team-up character the Marvel Universe has ever had.  Seriously, he's been on the Fantastic Four, he's palled around with the X-Men, he knows Power Pack on a first name basis, the guy's even visited Ka-Zar a few times down in the Savage Land.  Besides the Thing (who starred in Marvel Two-In-One), I can't think of any other character who's teamed up with more heroes than him and has fought everything from cosmic threats to street thugs.

Marvel was smart enough to get rid of the "oh, he works best solo" deal once, get him fixed up and back on the team already, people.  We ain't buying it.  ...in the figurative sense, I think book sales are actually pretty good right now, but- anyway, that's not my point.


Okay, here's where we start to drift from a classic Avengers line-up.

7)  Songbird

Another story of redemption, Songbird was once Screaming Mimi.  Screaming Mimi was, for all intents and purposes, lame.  Then the book Thunderbolts came along and took and idea that, anywhere else, would be a lame Green Lantern rip-off and made it into one of the best characters of the late 90s/early 00s.  Strong, powerful, and determined, she's lead the Thunderbolts at certain times (granted, during the strange Norman Osborn days), has a strong working knowledge of a lot of the criminal threats that the Avengers might face,

She's also the one person on the team who I think would keep them the most grounded.  If, at any time, the Avengers started to overstep their limits, she'd be the person able to recognize the fastest how close they'd be becoming something they often fought against.  After all, who better to state "hey, maybe we need to step back and rethink this" than someone who served under super villain and successful world conqueror Baron Zemo multiple times?

It's her time to be on the lead team, and I even think it might work for her to study under Cap as a "protege leader."  She's got the chops, she just needs to fine tune them.

8)  Rogue

So, one thing I like about the current Avengers books is that they have people taken from the X-Men and applied here.  One who definitely deserves a shot at being a "big leaguer" is Rogue, who can't get away from mutant drama and Gambit fast enough, in my opinion.

You're probably catching on that, in the Avengers history, there are a lot of people who started out bad.  Rogue's another example of that, having fought the X-Men, mind-wiping another hero (Carol Danvers, who I have no idea what she's going by any more code-name wise) and leaving her in a coma, and has dragged along that "Ah can't touch anybody" drama for waayyyyyy too long.  What she is, distilled down to her essence, is someone who lives to help other people, packing strength, flight, southern charm, and a neat "power-stealing" ability that also works for things like "hey, try really hard not to think of where the bombs are planted while I honk your nose."


9)  Banshee

Theresa Rourke, formerly "Siryn" is the daughter of deceased X-Men member Banshee who later decided to take on her father's name because banshees have always been women and his name never made much sense to begin with.  She shares his mutant gift of having a sonic scream that hits like a freight train and allows her to fly, as well as some subtle tricks she can pull with her voice to manipulate people.

Yes, this does make two sound people on a team if Songbird is around, but I also have several people with super-strength, and nobody is complaining about them.  Songbird and Siryn use similar power origins in completely different ways, allowing enough versatility that in this case I'd allow it.  She's also an established hero, having served on several X-teams, keeps her cool on the battlefield, and brings one more amazingly attractive accent to the party.  And there's always room for accents that great.

Okay, those were strange choices...now they get bizarre.

10)  Sasquatch

"Who?"

Walter Langowski, formerly (once I'm done with him) of the team Alpha Flight, is one of Canada's premiere superheroes.  Now, here's one thing I want in my version of the "premiere" Avengers, and that's a bit more international flavor.  You can't really be "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" if everyone on your team is either from America or Asgard (granted, you get the occasional Russian who speaks with a perfect American accent or a guy from a made up country in Africa, but it's still predominately "USA! USA! USA!").

With Wanda we get some of that Eastern European flavor, Theresa's decidedly Irish (and comes with her own haunted castle!  Someone needs to remind Marvel about that!), and Walt would fill in the hole for someone being from our neighbors to the north.  He's a keen scientific mind who also happens to turn into a giant, shaggy beast who punches holes in walls like they were made of paper.  He's also a neat tie to some long-ignored story lines, like the "Great Old Ones" that exist in the frozen north, and perhaps with some Avengers back-up they could finally shut down that ridiculous "Weapon X" program that keeps turning people into weapons.

11) Radioactive Man

Okay, now you guys must think I'm just messing with you.

Chen Lu was, up until a short time back, a major villain threat that the Avengers frequently faced.  He used to go mano-a-mano with Thor, was part of the original Masters of Evil, and fought everybody from Spider-Man to Iron Man...but here's the thing.  On his own, he's never really been evil.  He once joined a few Russian super villains in Vietnam, trying to be superheroes there (before a confused mix-up with the Avengers happened), and also served, quite well I might add, as part of the Thunderbolts, which is all about (here's that word again), redemption.

With China being so key in the world scene right now, I really don't think you can justify having 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes" not try to include someone from that country, and who better than a villain who seems to honestly be trying to make himself a better person in a changing world?  I mean, really, it's not like they're going to get any stranger than this, right?

12)  Ginny Mahoney (no codename)

Poor girl's suffering from a bad case of "90's Art"

Sit down!  I promise, this makes sense!

Ginny Mahoney was a throw-away character, introduced in an issue of X-Men Unlimited as a young woman turned into a prime sentinel (it involves nanotechs, don't worry about it, the storyline was very silly) trying to hunt down and capture/kill mutants.  However, upon realizing that she was more of a threat to civilians around her than the mutants she was hunting, she managed to override her own programming (something nobody else who was a prime sentinel ever managed to do up to that point) and fled the scene.  Now, to be fair, the last page of the comic indicates she was shot in the head by super villain Bastion and "was never found again."

But considering how often "forever" works in comics, I think we can just ignore that, don't you?

That "redemption" theme would come back into play again, as someone who is constantly fighting against a power inside of her that was designed solely to hunt and kill a specific group of people, and there's just added drama when it happens to be people you're on the same team with.  It would be a constant challenge, at first, to prove that she's more than what she was programmed to be, and that she deserves the second chance she's been given (something Rogue, Hawkeye, and Songbird would all sympathize with, I think).

Plus, won't it be nice the first time the Avengers have to fight an X-Men villain, they'll have someone on the team who can say "Oh, yeah, I was created to fight against people like you...non-lethal, of course..."

So that's my pick for the primary Avengers team.  Some of the old guard, some established heroes, and a few newbies to help round it out.  Before anybody cries out "how could you leave out X or Y or ZZZZZeeeeeeeeee," let me point out I'm not done yet.  I still have two more teams of Avengers to build, and believe me, they're going to get stranger from here!

(If you do wish to complain, of course, you can always send me an email telling me that my choices prove that I spent too much time drinking from that creek downstream from the chemical plant or leave a comment below!)

Ask Erik: Episode Five

Once a week, Erik takes one of your questions and uses it as an excuse to not think of a topic answers it, using the time to present information about himself, the entertainment industry, and Wikipedia research topics that people care about.

To Erik: What'd you think of Avengers vs. X-Men?

Never let it be said I don't keep just behind current events.

For comic book readers who were asleep under a rock during most of 2012, the biggest storyline to emerge from Marvel was the huge battle between the wayward mutants and Earth's mightiest heroes.  It was a huge, all-out, no holds barred that resulted in one (1) death, huge changes that I'm sure will last at least one year, and one of the most terrible costume decisions of all time.  So does it hold up to such other great company-wide crossovers such as...um, well Fear Itself was pretty decent, but...um.  ...so, yeah, let's see how good it is.

Here's the plot breakdown in its simplest terms:  The Phoenix Force (a cosmic entity known to consume planets and inhabit the bodies of specific telepathic redheads) is coming back to Earth.  The Avengers, rightfully, are worried because planets in the Phoenix's path tend to look like Alderaan after the Death Star wanders past, and the X-Men...well, okay, Scott Summers, leader of the X-Men, believes that the Phoenix is coming back because of a girl named Hope, and that its return will save the day for mutants, which are now a dying breed in the Marvel Universe.

Now, I have to address something here...while I love the original message of the X-Men ("protecting a world that hates and fears us!") I hate what they've become.  Originally, the X-Men were symbols that could stand for anything that people were being persecuted for.  Skin color?  Sexual preference? Whatever you feel isolated from everybody else over, the X-Men represent you and your struggles to be accepted by the masses.

Granted, I don't believe a single gay person was ever hunted by a 40-foot tall purple robot, but that's comics for you.

This idea became a bit lost when the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe reached a number so high that they were taking over entire districts of New York, but was still there since, while there might be areas of society that was accepting to who someone was, leaving that area might still be a risk.  It did, however, lose the "try to be accepted" part in two ways:

1) "Mutant problems" were always kept separate from "everybody else's problems."  There were clear lines between the departments at Marvel, so you rarely had an event happen in the X-Men that spilled out into the rest of the universe.  This left the X-Men rather "trapped," since we never saw Captain America or Thor reacting to the fact that the government funded giant robots to hunt and/or kill mutants, or that an ancient mutant who believed in "Survival of the Fittest" was trying to exterminate all life on the planet save for those he felt were "fittest."

2) The X-Men only ever fought other mutants or people trying to specifically kill mutants.  This gave the X-Men a feeling more like mutant gang wars.  While I was reading the comics, I kept waiting for the day we'd see Cyclops eating a sandwich in Manhattan and suddenly find himself fighting Spider-Man's rogues gallery, or have one of the female X-Men date Tony Stark for a while.  It always felt like the best way the X-Men could teach people they shouldn't be feared was to try to do their best to show that they wanted to help everybody, not just keep their "own kind" in check.

And then came "M-Day," which is when the Scarlet Witch stole the "mutancy" from all but a couple hundred mutants, and no more could be born.  This changed the X-Men dynamic even further, as they didn't seem to be at all about being accepted by the masses anymore, and just focused on survival.  This is an interesting idea, but the thing that ruined it for me was the fact that it suddenly became so terrible that nobody would be born with the "X-gene."

Wanting you and others currently like you to be accepted by the masses is one thing, but if you've been fighting for years that "mutants deserve equal rights like humans" and "we're people, too," to suddenly declare that your "species" is about to go extinct makes me think you're backtracking some.  So no more mutants would be born, does that suddenly mean that the people who would have been mutants suddenly have no purpose to their lives?  They can't shoot lasers from their eyes or grow wings or simply understand every language by just reading it, so they should just give up because screw it, who would want to be human?

I mean, I get wanting a culture to survive past being integrated, or wanting to remember your history, but being a mutant doesn't seem to really reach that level of 'something will be lost."

And this was my biggest problem with the X-Men in this book, that they're willing to fight the Avengers because they hope that the Phoenix's return will mean their "race" won't be extinct.  Cyclops even goes on about how "mutants are supposed to be the next stage in evolution," which leads me to think he's changed enough from "we just want to be accepted" that he's now "look out, puny people, we're going to take your place so suck it up and live with it!"  Suddenly, the "bad guys" building mutant-hunting robots are a bit more sympathetic, since they're looking out for the continued survival of their own race.

So all the X-Men rally behind Scott (except Wolverine, so kudos to him) because if they didn't, it'd be one page of Cyclops trying to blast Cap and then Thor backhanding him across an island.  So there's that, which is why I was supporting the Avengers right off the bat.  A major twist comes when the Phoenix does arrive, it gets "blown up" and absorbed by five mutants, none of which are Hope, and the first thing those five do is try to make the world a better place.

Two quick side notes:

1)  Why does anybody let Magik run around?  She's a proclaimed leader of a section of Hell, she has no soul, and even before she became a cosmic-level character, she kept trying to murder any Avengers she fought and got glee out of bringing them pain.  The character needs to either just become a villain or take a bullet to the head.

2) Cyclops now runs around in a thong over his costume.  Thank you, Marvel, no drinking will help me unsee that.

Now, my initial reaction was that this would lead to teamwork between the two sides, helping five people unprepared for the amount of power they now wield to keep it under control, and perhaps show them slowly losing their minds as "absolute power corrupts absolutely."  But no, instead the Avengers start picking fights for no better reason than "We gotta stop the X-Men!"  I get that they're worried about the power corrupting, as one other reviewer I read called it, "Team P.E.N.I.S. (Piotr, Emma, Namor, Illyana, Scott)", but it seems like if they're currently doing nothing more than helping plants grow in the desert and eliminating diseases in third world nations, maybe you should cut them some slack?

If I was doing a standard review, I'd comment that the artwork is great, the spotlight on some B-level heroes is superb, and that, as per usual, my favorite moments happen in the side stories that were printed in books outside of the main storyline.  But while I like the new direction the Marvel Universe seems to be taking post-series, I really got the impression that things were rushed to get there.  Characters act completely out of character, fights are picked and then resolved with no real reasoning given, and the implications of the connection between the Phoenix at the end of the series and people getting mutant powers just makes the "SCIENCE!" part of my brain hurt.

If I had to list my favorite moments, I'd have to list a scene where Spider-Man helps the Avengers rescue a few of their fallen comrades and then makes a huge sacrifice to stay behind and hold off two people at a power level so far above his they barely notice him.  There's also a moment when the Black Panther straight-up backhands Tony Stark and tells him to "get over himself and focus on the bigger picture."  That's just great.  Oh yeah, and "chaos fist" is just a fun phrase.

As for the big fights...they were fun to look at, but ultimately meaningless.  Pretty much any character could defeat any other character in the right circumstances or with the right plot device, so when I see Iron Man (a guy in metal armor) able to actually give Magneto (a guy who controls metal) a strong challenge, I chalk it up to "someone thought this fight idea was cool, then had to come up with a way to make it work."

Worst moment?  The side story that had a fight between Thor and Emma Frost, which consisted of Emma Frost teasing Thor that he might want to be sexually taken from behind by a woman, and Thor responds by smashing his hammer between Emma's legs so she explodes.  Seriously.  What the *(@#.

Oh, one other thing.  Seriously, Marvel, is your trade paperback schedule so messed up that Avengers Academy has put out the end of their series before we get the issues that cross over with this storyline?  What the hell's going on over there?

In conclusion, I give this series...probably a low B.  It's nowhere near as good as my favorite huge company crossover (which, at current time, is still The Infinity Gauntlet).

Review: Thor: The Dark World

I'm torn regarding this new tradition in film-naming where you don't include a number to show that a film is a sequel.  After all, in this time of constant reboots and re-envisioning of classic characters, someone who isn't in "the know" later on might come back and try to figure out if The Amazing Spider-Man falls somewhere between Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, or Spider-Man 3.  Does Captain America: The Winter Soldier take place after the most recent film, or does it somehow take place after Captain America II: Death Too Soon?

I'm not being paid to think of the best way to name films, though (actually, I'm not being paid at all).  Instead, I simply look at a movie I saw recently and discuss what I liked, what I didn't like, and explore a few of the ideas being presented.  The film I saw this last weekend, complete with funky 3D glasses was Thor: The Dark World.

Ask Erik: Episode Eleven

Here at Ask Erik, we've spent a lot of time reading books and comics, watching movies, and browsing through the Internet in the hopes of finding the answers to life's biggest mysteries.  Is there anything beyond the edge of the universe?  Could technology advance to the point where it surpasses us as the "masters" of this world?  Why does Adam Sandler keep getting to star in movies? 

Having instead amassed a vault of useless knowledge stored in his head, Erik instead tackles your questions and tries to find the answers you care about (or a reasonable facsimile).  Or, if you don't care, he'll at least try to make you laugh and forget you just wasted time you could spend doing anything else.

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode 7: Hulk VS. Captain!

Man, it's been a while since I've done one of these.  That cold I had (possible pneumonia, I'm not sure, really) really laid me out and made it hurt to breathe, much less type.  But hey, I swore to get through this series, and I last left off at a pretty great moment...I think.  Let's get a brief refresher.

Our five heroes (no, not the Avengers) were in pretty dire straights.  Akira and Hikaru (hey, I remembered!) had control over summoning D-Smashing Iron Man and Thor, respectively.  Chris, the slacker with no real goals in life besides "figure out what his goals in life are" is tagging along but for the most part refusing to get involved in anything.  Over on a tanker, Jessica and Edward are being held prisoner by Loki's forces, as is a captive Spider-Man.

The Hulk, meanwhile, is tearing up a military base of some kind, under the influence of Diablo's "alchemy" which I call "easy way of explaining something hard to explain."  Hulk has already defeated Iron Man and Thor in combat and is about to move into a residential area when Chris finally steps up (literally, standing in Hulk's path) and summoning D-Smashing Captain America into freedom to face off against something that's taken down an actual god.

I already know what happens, but I'm still excited!

Let's get into the episode!

Reviewing Is Magic: Episode 8

One of the aspects of the show "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" that has absolutely fascinated me is the weather patterns of the world these characters live in.  From all the various series, comics, and movies I've watched, it is truly mind-blowing that it's a show about young horses learning about friendship that has me the most interested about how the climate works on both a micro and a macro level.

This isn't to say that weather hasn't crossed my mind while watching or reading other series.  It's especially been something I've pondered during my time as a fan of comic book superheroes, particularly when it comes to Thor and Ororo Monroe, codenamed "Storm."

Both of these characters have control over the weather, able to not just make lightning strike wherever they want, but also cause storms to form or dissipate at will.  Ororo has created perfectly blue skies for a softball game or caused it to rain when she was angry at someone who was out for a run.  Thor regularly summons mighty winds and clouds to use as weapons against his opponents, and all I can keep wondering as I read is "how does this affect the weather on a local or a global scale?"

I keep waiting for a comic that features a lawsuit against one of these heroes, where their actions cause flood rains to be moved out of their projected path into an area where storms typically don't fall, or for much-needed rain for crops to simply be diverted away from farmland.  In one comic I have, Thor actually summons the trade winds to disperse a cloud that an enemy created, and that's officially affecting the weather on a global scale.

But this topic is never discussed, as far as I know.  I'm yet to see either hero refuse to alter the weather patterns because of any ecological damage it might cause.

On the other hand, we have episode eight of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, where we not only learn that there's a set schedule to weather patterns, but storm systems are actually built by winged horses, meticulously positioning every cloud into its proper place before the rains begin.

This episode starts by watching clouds be pushed into position by various pegasuses (pegasi?) who I'm sure have actual names, but I can't be bothered to look up.  We also have Rarity and Rainbow Dash down at ground level, getting rid of dead limbs from branches to prepare for said storm.

I really like the fact that Rarity complains about how what would be a "lovely day" is going to be ruined by this storm, and Applejack points out that a "sprinkle" was skipped the week before, so a "doozy of a downpour" is needed to make up for it.  This is said, of course, while she kicks trees to knock limbs loose.  I will never get over that.

But think about that for a moment.  There's a system, somewhere up where the peg- okay, hold on, I'm hitting Google for this.

Plural: Pegasi.

Got it.

Anyway, somewhere is a system where pegasi calculate how much rain is needed to maintain an area, and when even a small weather system is missed, it messes everything else up so badly the attempt to make up for it becomes exponentially larger than the original effort.  If I didn't know better, I'd say that one of the writers on the show might be trying to make us think there's actual scientific research involved here somewhere.

Now, something else I need to address is actually something I mentioned before, and that is that if Twilight Sparkle had never arrived in Ponyville, it's entirely likely some of these ponies would not be friends.  This holds especially true for Applejack and Rarity, who are polar opposite personalities.  Rarity gets caught up in details, Applejack looks at the bigger picture.  Rarity is delicate and demure and prissy, Applejack...well, she kicks trees on a regular basis and redirects cattle stampedes.  Rarity works in fashion, Applejack is a farmer.

This whole "conflict" is established pretty quickly, as both ponies wind up arguing for so long that it takes the storm breaking directly overhead to make them realize they need to find quick shelter.

The two get called into Twlight's domicile, and Applejack wins the award for "most practical thinker" by pointing out that "being inside of a tree during a lightning storm" might not be the best idea.

Of course, Twilight just says there's a "magic lightning rod" on top of it, so, whatever.  But I appreciate the writers thinking of something I'd think of.

We also get an interesting moment where both Applejack and Rarity get to make an aside about how, not only are they not really friends with each other, but they almost seem to despise each other.  But this needs to take a back seat for a moment to discuss what is both the saddest thing I've ever seen on this show, and something I'm absolutely jealous of.

Twilight gets the idea to have both ponies stay over for a slumber party (something she's always wanted to do), and she quickly fetches a book.  It's a book titled Slumber 101: All You Ever Wanted To Know About Slumber Parties But Were Afraid To Ask.   I'm guessing there's no Woody Allen ponies in existence making films of a similar vein.  It's also important to point out just how proud Twilight is of having this book, her "own personal copy," and she's been "waiting for a chance to use it."

The first time I heard her say that, I died a little inside.  I'll admit, I felt bad for Twilight, but I also felt compassion, having never really been the "social butterfly" growing up.  I could probably count the number of times I've stayed over at another person's house on one hand, and if I found a copy of that book at a bookshop, I'd probably be tempted to pick it up...not as a personal reference, but maybe to just read out of curiosity.

...anyway.

So we get some of the usual slumber party activities, each of which has moments of Applejack and Rarity all but attacking each other.  We have Applejack being humiliated through make-overs...

We also have bizarre ghost stories ("The Headless Horse" actually sounds cool), and we have s'mores an-

....whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.

...okay, we're all set.  I forgot that while marshmallows are technically made out of hooves and other animal parts (where did you think gelatin came from?) I guess they can't use horse hooves for it.  That...would have been rather terrible.

Glue, on the other hand, we'll get to in a later episode.  One that also features Rarity.

So we get to truth or dare and a pillow fight, both of which spiral out of control as tempers flare, and Twilight suggests everybody just heads to bed...and this is where one of the more surreal moments happens.

Applejack and Rarity share a bed.  ...no, this isn't any kind of freaky thing, unless you count the fact that two ponies are lying down on a mattress...a phrase I never thought I'd say.  How this works with pony biology, joint make-up, and physics just...it just boggles the mind.  And then there's how they get into bed.

I'm seriously overthinking this series.


Twilight chews out both ponies for "ruining her first slumber party" (again, I died a little inside), followed by a lightning strike (and Applejack's jumping to action) causing an over-sized branch to crash through Twilight's window, and things quickly deteriorate from there.  Twilight suffers what appears to be a tiny meltdown as she consults her book for anything involving tree branches, and we get to one more reason why I like Applejack so much.

Applejack manages to put aside her pride first to apologize to Rarity, point out that the other pony was right (about some things, not everything), and asks for help.  She even says "please."  Together, the two ponies manage to clean everything up,

Applejack and Rarity become friends, Twilight gets to check off "have fun" from her slumber party checklist (seriously, if you have to put that down on a list of things to do during any kind of "party," that's just tragic), and we end with Applejack goose-stepping.

Yeah, this show gets weird.

So, yeah, let's see what's next for My Little Pony: Freundschaft ist Magie.

It appears to be...voodoo and racism.  Oh, boy!

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 12: The Unstoppable Force, Juggernaut!

Okay, admittedly, it's been a while since I've done one of these, but the last few weeks have been rather... interesting, to put it simply.  I'll have some personal updates shoved into a Let's Talk soon, but for now, let's just get into another episode of the best Avengers program to happen outside of the movies...and in some ways, better than the movies.

Besides, in this episode, we finally get a massive threat to the Avengers.  Someone who isn't normally one of their own foes, and is wildly remembered for a pretty terrible meme that came out in 2005.

I mean, I just watched the video it came from again, and I still think it's terrible.

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 13: Gravity Control! Graviton!

It must stink to be a construction company in a comic book universe.  On the one hand, you always have work available to you since heroes and villains are always destroying giant structures around cities.

On the other hand, they destroy them before you even have a chance to finish them sometimes, which must be extremely frustrating because then you need to deal with insurance, overtime, contract renegotiations, suppliers...

It can't be fun.

So on that note, let's jump right into this week's episode of Marvel Disk Wars!  It opens with a huge fight at a building currently under construction!

A place truly doomed the moment the contracts were signed.

Top Eleven: Characters I Don't Want To See/Don't Think We'll See In Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

That might be the longest title I've ever had for an article.

Last time I discussed the top eleven characters/teams/groups I really, really hope we'll get to see or have a reference to in the new awkwardly named Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  As people know, my knowledge of obscure and obtuse facts and characters is rather well developed, and while I'd love to see every character done in a live action format one day (the world cries out for one of the villains in a Spider-Man movie to be the Big Wheel), I know for a fact there are certain characters who simply don't seem to fit in how the current cinematic Marvel universe is being developed.

Here's where I break down the list of ones I don't want to see or just don't think would work in this new universe we're getting glimpses of annually/weekly.