I chanced to see that while Comicon was in play out in San Diego last week, Amazon slipped a standalone origin story for Atom Eve onto their platform, placing it just after the first season finale for Invincible, the animated series based on Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman's superhero comic series. That was followed by the announcement that the start of season two of Invincible will be arriving November 3rd. Unfortunately, presumably with an eye on the content pipeline and another on the ongoing strike, that will just start the first half of the eight-episode season. So that fourth episode will land on the 24th, the day after Thanksgiving. Currently they haven't announced the date for when the second half of the season will begin, other than to announce it will be "in early 2024." Presumably they'll tell us by the 24th, so as to give the audience a new target date to fix on the horizon. Amazon declined to comment further, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
On the topic of animated returns, Futurama is back, on Hulu, returning for a new season ten years after it was canceled for a second time. New episodes are on Mondays. It was an amazingly smooth return to form, irreverently self-referential without being in the least stale.
Speaking of animated, I did want to follow up last week's post to note that the intended series-capping Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart was terrific. I'd taken the plunge and bought the digital copy heading into last weekend (the $19.99 getting a $5 discount as I'd bought it through Amazon Prime), and must say they did a nice job of trying to tie up some lingering plot threads and provide some character development, while also hitting plenty of fun character call-backs. As expected, of course, 84 minutes is still too little time. They still managed to squeeze some new elements and universe-building into the mix, too. I will now cherish thoughts of a schmatte golem each time I look at piles of laundry I'll never really get around to putting away.
The timely return of Futurama, ten years after a second cancellation, helps give me hope that we've not seen and heard the last of these characters.
Disney+ wrapped the sixth and final episode of their Nick Fury-centered miniseries, Secret Invasion, this Wednesday, and it was almost amazing the range of people who seemingly could not be delayed from announcing how utterly boring they found it to be. That some of them had been doing essentially the same week by week for the previous five weeks only made the "fan" exercise more tedious.
While hardly bowled over by the series, I tended to enjoy it more than not. I supposed part of it is that I enjoy the universe-building, and the fleshing out of some characters, and so found the arc an interesting look into the MCU's long-lived, hardass spymaster and Avengers-wrangler, who's had to make so many hard decisions over the years, and had to essentially live his rep. We got to catch some glimpses of the man beneath the persona, a little more of his history, and try to tease out the truth from the pretense for a character who's managed to come out on top in a world increasingly populated by superhuman beings, armed only with his wits, his ability to read people, and the glamour he's built around himself. We had some time to appreciate something of what this has cost him as a human being.
We also got to not only see how he's been seen by various others over the years, but how he was changed by the Blip -- the five years when he and half the sentient beings in the universe ceased to exist thanks to Thanos' extreme Malthusian solution to the problems of life and scarcity of resources.
Even with all that we're left not entirely certain - well, at least that's the case for me - how much of the seeming fall from strength Nick went through over the years was real, and how much a move to deceive opponents and provide an opening.
Do I think the series was generally better acted than plotted? Yes, but I don't think it was as abysmally written so many seem to want to paint it as. Much comes down to expectations. I think it's worth noting that a large and expanding portion of vocal fandom arguably had their meters bent by the time they left the theaters having seen Avengers: Endgame back in 2019. That was the culmination of what the MCU had been building to for 11 years, and like an addict chasing the dragon, they're approaching each new thing looking for a high on that same scale -- something that has definitely not been in play since the start of Phase 4.
As this was meant to be a Nick Fury-centric tale - the only main mover and shaker of the MCU, in place since the post-credits scene of Iron Man back in 2008, who hadn't gotten a film or limited series - it was arguably necessary to keep it from just being a countdown to him calling in one or more of the Avengers to clean things up.
While it's unlikely to be sometime very soon, I can imagine a time when I'll be going back for a rewatch.
As noted last week, a new, six-episode season of Good Omens arrived on Amazon Prime this week, on Thursday. Technically it wasn't due until today, but I saw it was there by Thursday night. I had a nice rewatch of that first story arc this past week, the first time I'd returned to it since end of May/early June 2019 -- amazing that it's been just over four years already.
Here's the new season/story's trailer. As with the first series, Michael Sheen and David Tennant are back as he angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, respectively. All episodes are once again directed by Douglas Mackinnon, and all scripts are by Neil Gaiman... though for this latest run of six he's joined by co-writer John Finnemore, a comedy writer and actor I'm thinking has a much bigger status in the U.K., particularly working in radio. I'm looking forward to it.
Presumably key players in both Heaven and Hell are still hungry for an apocalypse, failing to embrace the Now of existence as Aziraphale and Crowley had come to across the millennia, seeing it instead as unimportant filler between The Fall and Armageddon.
Arriving on Hulu is a crime thriller starring Morgan Freeman and Cole Hauser, playing an anthropologist with a terrible secret and a detective obsessively working off his grief, respectively. They end up on the hunt for a serial killer whose crimes are following the ancient magic practice of Muti.
It appears to have gone straight to video (digital rentals/sales and Redbox DVDs - hence the Not Rated) back on March 10th, and was not well-received. So, some of the interest in seeing this will be to see what went wrong, or maybe just to determine why it went down the wrong pipe for so many.
It's The Ritual Killer (2023 NR 1h 32m)
Based on a video game series I've never played (you know, like nearly all of them) a post-apocalyptic action comedy series landed on Peacock yesterday.
Anthony Mackie stars as John Doe, an amnesiac milkman given a delivery job as a matter of personal survival. Most surviving cities are modern fortresses, with the land between them zones of Road Warrior-like, gang-controlled, violent madness. Cars, guns and violence, a contentious traveling companion, and eventually a mission with the promise of a life-changing reward. Battle minions, defeat themed boss, rinse, repeat, all with that subtext race for the lead between uncovering his forgotten identity and becoming whoever this fresh start has allowed him to become.
Not having played any of the games, I'm spared any specific story expectations save for the obvious formulae... though the trailer reeks of formula. It's Twisted Metal All ten episodes arrived on Peacock yesterday. I may give this a look before the weekend's out, but it's not initially riding high on my list. That's another way of saying that when I do get around to looking at it, my expectations will be set guardedly low. I will be happy to be pleasantly surprised.
Especially with so much international material in the mix, and so much on various streaming platforms, it's no surprise that things slip past unnoticed. At the end of 2020 into early 2021 there started a South Korean series about a quartet of demon-hunters, tasked with taking down escapees from the afterlife. That first season was released weekly in both South Korea on Netflix week-by-week for its 16-week season. (I'm thinking it was the weekly release mode that made this something I was briefly aware of, but shelved to possibly look at once it was all in place... and forgot about by late January when it wrapped.) A second, twelve-episode season is set to start tomorrow, the 29th, and will finish September 3rd. Here's the trailer for the first season, it's The Uncanny Counter It's starting to come back to me now that the textual pitch was much more interesting to me than what I was seeing in the brief promo. Add to that the weekly release, and it starting during the end-of-year holiday block when so much else was calling out for attention, and it quickly dropped off my list of things to get 'round to. This might be a good time to try a little of the first season and see if it grabs me.
Next Wednesday, August 2nd, the most recent big screen Marvel movie will arrive on Disney+. The last MCU movie written and directed by James Gunn, it's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3. It closes out the story of at least this grouping of members for this team, and as Gunn was subsequently hired to be the creative half of DC comics screen adaptations for Warner Bros. Discovery, a position he began five-year contract as this past November, it's questionable if he'll ever be back to do anything else for Disney.
He got to advance and in some cases wrap the stories of the characters,
the latter with respect to roles the given actor wanted to move on
from. Comedy, tragedy, family and music, along with a villain pretty
much everyone can come to loathe and hiss at. The most
distressing aspect is some themes and scenes involving cruel
experimentation on animals.
Knowing that increasingly over the past couple years many with Disney+ subscriptions have opted to wait out the theatrical releases, I still want to be cautious about saying too much about the plot details.
To what degree some of it crosses a line into being patently manipulative schmaltz is, as ever, a personal meter, but it helps if one doesn't go in with a chip in their shoulder.
Gunn managed some magic during his time working in the MCU, introducing the Guardians there an almost unbelievable nine years ago, then integrating them into the broader MCU. This final film in the series, and last year's Holiday Special for Disney+, have arguably been highlights for the MCU in both Phase 4 and the current Phase 5 so far, and Warner Bros. Discovery's gain is Disney's loss.
The story goes that "what's up, doc?" was a casual script add-in by director Tex Avery. A common expression in Texas, where he was from, it as a natural toss-off line for him to give to an insouciant character who was having sport with an adversary. Tex tossed it into the script as a natural, offhand move. The phrase was novel for most theater audiences, though, and routinely brought down the house. The relaxed in the face of danger carrot-chewing and "What's up, doc?" became the immediate signatures for the character, and so became a staple of his future appearances.
Debuting July 27, 1940, it's A Wild Hare (Click on the title, and a new screen will open. It's a nice print of the original version.)
When it was reissued a few years later as a Blue Ribbon release it was retitled "The Wild Hare", and in the "Guess Who?" sequence "Cawole Wombard" was redubbed "Bawbawa Stanwyck" as Lombard had tragically died in a plane crash early in '42, at a mere 33 years old.
That's all for this week! It's been a trying week for me, personally, and most of the next four will be weighed down by something at work, but I'm going to try to keep things balanced -- a skill I hope I'm not too old to finally learn. Wish me luck, and I'll see you back here next week, for the first weekend of the new month! - Mike
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