Here’s a lesson for all future MCU TV series: If a two-minute appearance by a well-known guest star can change the face of your show, elevating the energy level and making your audience perk up and take notice, more so than any action scene or character beat before or after, there’s a foundational issue with […]
Tag: Marvel
Pop Culture Maniacs Podcast Episode #18: Movie Franchises and Cinematic Universes
Kieran Freemantle and Jean Henegan discuss Hollywood’s increased dependence on movie franchises and the art of making a cinematic universe.
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier – The Whole World is Watching
The biggest benefit to television is that it allows writers to spend time developing characters over the course of hours across a season, rather than being confined to the mere two-hour window provided by most films. As I’ve written about before in these pieces, that was the greatest boon I could see from Marvel branching […]
The Falcon and The Winter Solider – Power Broker Review
When I began recapping WandaVision, I wrote that I was worried the series would feel more like doing homework for the upcoming Doctor Strange film (since Wanda had already been announced as a key character for that film) than a standalone series. After all, why bother to make a TV show about MCU characters when […]
Fan Control: Why Giving Into Fandom Outrage is Bad for Hollywood
On Thursday, March 18, HBOMax (and by extension, Warner Brothers) released the “Snyder Cut” – writer-director Zack Snyder’s recut version of Warner Brother’s 2017 disappointment Justice League, the culmination of a years-long campaign by a very vocal segment of the internet who hated the original version of the film and demanded that the studio allow […]
WandaVision – On a Very Special Episode. . . Review
Lots to discuss in this week’s jam-packed episode of WandaVision – the first one that really felt like an episode of the show Marvel likely wanted to make and not a piece of exposition to get us ready for the real story to begin. We have Vision starting to see through the ever widening cracks […]
WandaVision – We Interrupt This Program Review
So, four episodes into WandaVision and we have what appears to be the answer as to who or what is manipulating Westview, New Jersey: Wanda. Yup, it looks like there’s no hidden witches or devils, just an extremely powerful mutant who can manipulate reality and potentially destroy the world. Is it a bit disappointing that […]
Wandavision – Episodes 1 and 2 Review
Let me level with you: I don’t know the endgame for Wandavision. I don’t know why Wanda seems to be living in recreations of classic sitcoms (The Dick Van Dyke Show and Betwitched would be the templates for Episodes 1 and 2, respectively, in case you aren’t up to date on your TV history – […]
Pop Culture Maniacs Podcast Episode Two: The Marvel Cinematic Universe
Kieran Freemantle and Jean Henagan provide a double discussion about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how the X-Men could be brought into the franchise.
The New Mutants Review
The New Mutants is the last movie in the current X-Men series, a film that sees the superhero genre enter into horror territory. Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) is a teenager who awakes in a hospital where she’s told that her whole tribe had been killed and that she’s a mutant. In the hospital are four other mutants, Rahne […]