Something Something Hot Trailers

So, two long awaited trailers dropped this week.

The first was for Thor: Ragnarok which looks incredible. This looks like the sort of epic scale the Thor movies should have always been aiming for. Thus far, the series has been, let’s face it, a series of well produced romcoms with fantasy elements not unlike the white thirst cinema that is Starz’ Outlander. Jane and Thor make doe eyes at each other, Kat Dennings looks hot and cracks jokes, Tom Hiddleston steals the show, Kat Dennings looks hot and…..you get the idea. Rinse and repeat. Thor is one of those properties where each and every adventure should have all of existence hanging in the balance. This franchise and the Hulk’s movies should always be about super destructive epic god battles. For context, Jason Aaron’s God of Thunder series features a future vision in which an older, war worn Thor who now rules Asgard gets into a fist fight with Galactus where he thrown into the moon so hard he comes flying out the other side. I shit you not. So, a slugfest with the Hulk is more than welcome.

Until now, the movies never had that sense of scale and urgency. The trailer alludes to that and it also manages to look fun which, at the end of the day, is really the most important element to maintaining the kind of audience these movies attract or should attract (are you listening, DC?). A movie about a thunder god should go for broke AT LEAST and Ragnarok looks like it does just that.

Then, there was The Last Jedi….

Though I could geek the fuck out about every detail, I’m going to try not to go on very long about about it because I have a feeling I’m going to be talking about Star Wars a lot in the near future. First of all, the Tron inspired poster look spectacular and really gives Rey that epic hero look she needed in the Force Awakens poster.

The trailer was epic, though. I mean, it was only a minute and a half and it threw out thrills and questions to be answered faster than Janet Hubert tweeting during a Fresh Prince marathon. The part I’m most interested in is the part at the end where Luke said, “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” That line alone opens up potential for some interesting directions for Luke’s character to go. Even though the Jedi are mostly about order and learning to center your emotions and letting go of earthly attachments and shit, Skywalkers tend to have a complicated relationship with the Force. With him being literally the LAST of the Jedi, there’s no telling what secrets he learned once he found the Jedi temple. He could have learned the truth of how his father was seduced by the dark side (and how his mother was dating Anakin when he was clearly still a minor) which would be enough to give anyone resentment issues. Who knows? I’ve even heard some theories that we might get introduced to the beginning of the “Grey Order”, something we’ve never seen in mainstream canon. Also, make sure you get a good look at Poe Dameron’s black X-Wing. The ball’s in your court to pump out some quality toys and model kits, Disney. I’ll be waiting.

My review of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps is available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure.

The Obligatory Iron Fist Post

So, in case you haven’t heard, Marvel’s long anticipated Netflix series Iron Fist….is garbage. Even by Arrow season 4 standards, it’s pretty rough. The worst part about wasn’t even that Iron Fist was a white guy. Matt Fraction’s version was pretty awesome and featured a white guy but also many Iron Fists of color that, Marvel seems to have completely overlooked for reasons unknown. It’s a bad thing but not the worst thing.

It was that it was painfully obvious that Marvel had been putting the development off because they had no idea what angle they wanted to approach the story from so they went with a paint by numbers origin story that, good or bad, just didn’t feel genuine at all. Granted, I realize that “heart” isn’t really quantifiable but you can definitely tell when a writer has something to say and the writers for Iron Fist didn’t.

No matter what you think of any given Spider-Man film, it’s very clear in each installment that the writers have a clear understanding of the fact that Spider Man’s most prevailing themes is “doing the right thing even when it sucks.” Hell, even Kung Fu Panda seems to run with the theme that “Being a hero isn’t about where you come from so much as who you choose to be.” Nothing about Iron Fist seems to convey an overall theme aside from “because kung fu” which is pretty rudimentary considering how far along we are in telling of the superhero myth.

Honestly, Marvel had a chance to beat DC to the punch of something they do well because they’ve been doing legacy stories forever (Reminder: There have been four Flashes, three Batmen and three Green Lanterns in one sector). They could have easily done a Book of the Iron Fist series about various wielders of the power throughout the years. Introduce a new Iron Fist, preferably an Asian one and have the show be about him returning to the world to fight the Hand when someone else emerges who controls the Iron Fist simultaneously, a white man named Danny Rand (because there is precedent in the comics of two people having the power at the same time), let them do an obligatory team up and have Danny go away and let Lewis Tan or Collin Chow or whoever be in the Defenders.

So yeah, I’m not as mad about Iron Fist being racially problematic and silly. There’s plenty of that. I’m salty because it’s structurally silly and full of missed opportunities. No matter WHO plays Iron Fist….the show would have still been bad. The only difference is that we’d be drowning in think pieces about how (Enter Much Better Actor Here) is way too good to be in it.

The Defenders seems promising, though. So, there’s that. Check out my review on the Green Lantern/Space Ghost crossover on Black Nerd Problems