Thursday, March 28, 2024

Godzilla, Kong & the Unnecessary Sequel

Somebody sure watched Planet of the Apes. After already hitting the climax of this Monarch film series which gave us Godzilla versus King Kong, the pair are brought back together to mostly ignore each other in separate storylines, battle each other (briefly), and team-up against a threat that is underwhelming to say the least in a crazy ape and his miniature frost-shooting Godzilla. Other than merging the franchises with something like Pacific Rim or Transformers there was really nowhere for the series to go. And that's where it goes, absolutely nowhere.

The film starts out focusing on the displaced Jia (Kaylee Hottle) and her relationships with Ilene (Rebecca Hall) and Kong who has been searching in vain to find other apes in Hollow Earth. There's nothing we haven't seen before, but these relationships work. That's more than I can say for the rest of the film. We're teased with a warning coming from Hollow Earth. Well, actually, it turns out to be coming from a secret part of Hollow Earth within Hollow Earth.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The North / Legends

The final two episodes of the reimagined live-action season feature Aang's (Gordon Cormier) arrival in the North (while still doing nothing to learn water bending). Katara (Kiawentiio) on the other hand does throw herself into bending only to discover women aren't trained in anything other than healing. The show's decision to remove Sokka (Ian Ousley) overtly sexist nature from the animated show, still likely the best decision, means the live-action version does lose a throughline between both Water Tribes. The result is Master Pakku (A Martinez) comes off more like an anarchistic fool rather than someone holding onto the tenants of shared, albeit flawed and sexist, culture.

Wonder Woman #7

I often lament the lack of one-off super-hero stories. Give me a full story in a single issue and I'm happy. Everything these days gets geared to an arc to be easily bound together as a trade paperback with most of those stories, unfortunately, being often stretched beyond its limits. So I celebrate Wonder Woman giving us a fun little one-issue story of Wonder Woman and Superman shopping at a galactic mall for a birthday present for Batman. Sure, it's it he most bizarre and illogical place ever (in the middle of Wonder Woman's battle against Sovereign which is mostly ignored), but it's still a fun read.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Will Trent - It's Easier to Handcuff a Human Being

A missing persons case takes Will (Ramón Rodríguez) and Faith (Iantha Richardson) to a town on the coast where a small group disappeared after their party in the woods. They may or may not have been taken by a boo hag locals believe are responsible for a half dozen missing people over the years. Survivors from whatever happened start appearing one at a time with muddied memories of what happened. That is, until one eventually turns up dead.

Madame Web Honest Trailer