Category: marvel

  • Thoughts on “Spider-Man: Homecoming”

    Thoughts on “Spider-Man: Homecoming”

    Spider-Man Homecoming art by Ryan Meinerding
    When it was announced that Spider-Man would join the MCU, I was one of those people who got super excited. There had been too many memes circulating the internet about how poor Peter Parker didn’t get to join the Avengers. When the news broke that Sony and Marvel were teaming up to create a new Spidey movie series as well as make Spidey join the Avengers, I was so happy and over the moon. But then the honeymoon phase was over and came the worries that this new Spider-Man man would not be as good as the first one (the one played by Tobey Maguire) or be as a mess as the second one (the one with Andrew Garfield). So I waited. Then, surprise! It was good!

    Unlike the first two series, Spider-Man: Homecoming doesn’t tell us in details how Peter got his powers. The film opens with Peter Parker on his way to Berlin to join Iron-Man’s side on that Civil War climax scene and its aftermath, when Tony Starks tells him that he will keep in touch and assigns Happy as their middleman. But then days go by and Tony hasn’t contacted Peter yet. His life goes on; school, hanging out with friends, and catching bad guys around his neighbourhood. He keeps trying to contact Tony but without success. One night he sees two men in the middle of a weapon trade. The weapon is high tech and obviously dangerous. He goes on to investigate them, even goes so far as following them onto a ferry ship, where everything goes wrong and he has to be saved by Iron-Man. Iron-Man tells him to stop investigating the weapon and causing harm to innocent people. He also takes the Spider-Man’s suit. This leaves Peter devastated. He returns to his normal life and takes Liz (his crush) to the homecoming dance. But on the night of the dance he discovers the secret behind the man who invents the advanced weapons. It’s a plot twist you wouldn’t see coming and it’s SO GOOD! (I won’t tell you, obviously.)

    Homecoming is another small-scale movie in the MCU, after Ant-Man. The story is very ‘teenage-y’ and no city destroyed, only small parts of it blown. It’s refreshing to have one light movie in between all these kaboom-kaboom-cities-destroyed-innocent-people-are-killed movies. Is it better than the previous two series? Oh yes, absolutely! Like I said before, this movie is very teenager and the casts are suitable for playing high school students. The casts are also very diversed without putting any stereotype. I like that. We need that right now.

    So if you haven’t seen Homecoming yet, there’s still a chance for you as it’s still showing in your local cinemas. Go watch it!

    A post shared by Dara Oct (@darlaoct) on

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  • Likes & Dislikes: Ant-Man

    Likes & Dislikes: Ant-Man | Hola Darla
    For the very first time in years, I didn’t watch Marvel movie on its first showing day. Ant-Man was released one day before the Eid. There was no way for me to go to movie on Eid eve, so I had to skip the premiere. It was such a bummer, given the fact that I had a straight record of seeing the premiere. Haha!

    Ant-Man tells the story of Hank Pym, who invented a substance called Pym Particle which can shrink human into an ant-like tiny form. He shut down his own research because he saw that his invention could potentially create chaos in the world. However, he needs to use the particle again when his protegee, a young scientist named Cross, gets closer to finding hiw own shrinking substance. Hank is already too old to become Ant-Man, so he chooses Scott Lang, a criminal freshly out of prison for burglary. The two men along with Hank’s daughter create a plan to steal Cross’ invention to stop it being exploited by Hydra.

    Likes

    + It’s refreshing to see smaller (both literally and figuratively) Marvel movie. After seeing London and Sokovia being destroyed in previous MCU movies, seeing Ant-Man saving the world by fighting Cross on top of Thomas the Tank Engine is super entertaining. Ant-Man is a proof that superhero movies can be fun and don’t always need to be depressing (remember Age of Ultron?)
    + I love the father-daughter relationship in this movie. Not only the relationship between Scott and his daughter, Cassie, but also the one between Cassie and her mother’s fiance, Paxton.
    + I know both Hank and Scott are good looking as hell, but my all-time favourite character is Luis! His best scenes are the Dubsmash-like ones. Haha!
    + I also love the part where Falcon shows as a cameo. “It is really important to me that Cap never finds out about this.” Hilarious!
    + But my version of the best scene is of course the one when Siri plays Disintegration by The Cure. Classic yet techie joke.

    Dislikes

    – It’s less funny than any other installment in MCU. It’s even less funny than The Amazing Spider-Man.
    – I don’t really know Paul Rudd. I didn’t even know the name Paul Rudd before Ant-Man. And I think his acting is flawed. There are several lines which should have been funny but came out just wrong, IMO.

    That being said, I’m glad Ant-Man will be joining the Avengers in the next movies. But I’m also sad because Ant-Man marks the end of MCU Phase 2 and the Phase 3 won’t start until next year. That’s okay though, we will have Mockingjay Part 2 later this year 😉

    Image via.

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  • Thoughts on Season Finale: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

    WARNING: This post may contain major spoilers.


    So it’s finally here. The season finales of the series I watch are coming. This week is that of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and holy birds was this a good finale! As the previous episode has hinted, this finale tells about the war between the Inhumans led by Jiaying and SHIELD, though I’m not sure if it’s okay to call it a ‘war’ since it looks pretty much just like a small fight but with so many deaths.

    All through the season, I wasn’t sure what to feel about Jiaying. While I was pretty sure that the Inhumans meant no harm at all, I couldn’t decide whether Jiaying was a friend or foe. The previous episode proved the latter when Jiaying killed Gonzales with a Terrigen crystal and then shot herself to make it look like Gonzales tried to kill her. The Inhumans believed her, even Skye at first. But thank God she can see her mother’s true colour when Jiaying is murdering Raina (Yes, folks. The Flower Girl is dead.)

    Jiaying and the Inhumans then attack SHIELD’s ship while Coulson and Co. are busy dealing with Cal’s crazy prower. Here’s the funny part: Coulson gave Cal a pep talk and after all those episodes of Cal hating Coulson, Cal finally teams up with Coulson for the sake of Skye/Daisy’s safety.

    Meanwhile, Ward and Agent 33 have captured and are now torturing Bobbi so that Agent 33 can have some “closure”. Now, there are romances that make you go “Aww…” and there are the ones that make you want to vomit. Ward and Kara’s relationship is the latter and I must say that I’m glad to see Kara dies in the hands of her own boyfriend. Props to Agent May for coming up with that plan! A few episodes ago, I thought that the team should have forgiven Ward and let him back, but turns out the team was right not to trust him again. He’s such a dick.


    Back in the ship, Cal is confronting his wife to try and stop her from executing her plans. Coulson, Mack, and Fitz are trying to stop Gordon from teleporting the Terrigen crystals inside a box. Fitz gets to say the “Science, biatch!” and eventually kills Gordon, but in his last moments Gordon still tries to kill every non-Inhumans on board by dropping a Terrigen crystal. Coulson drops and catches it with his left hand which quickly turns into stone(?). Mack has to go to the rescue and quickly chop Coulson’s arm off. Literally, you guys! And then Coulson screams.

    Outside, Skye is trying to stop her mother but Jiaying insists on carrying on with her plans. She tries to absorb her own daughter’s soul and when Skye tries to stop her with her quake power, Cal comes and kills Jiaying instead, saving Skye from the horror of killing her own mother. Poor Cal. I’ve always liked him but I love him now.

    The conclusion: Coulson now only has one hand. Skye will go find other Inhumans. May is going on a vacation. Bobbi and Hunter may leave SHIELD. Ward is heartbroken (turns out he really loved Kara) and now tries to rebuild HYDRA. Mack is staying. Cal was put into TAHITI program and now lives as a vet and has no memory of Daisy. Fitz finally asks Simmons out and she says yes!!! But then she is dragged into the alien’s substance and we don’t know what happens to her yet.

    I like how the finale actually concludes the whole season. It serves well both as the second season conclusion and the third season premises. While I must say that I don’t want Raina gone, looks like she really is gone because the actress gets a bigger role in another show. Also, I hope Lincoln will be a regular next season. I need more cute guys in the show (aside Coulson). I can’t wait for season three!

    All images are from this site.

    PS. My giveaway on Sara’s blog is ending in TWO HOURS!

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  • Avengers: Age Of Ultron

    Avengers: Age Of Ultron poster wallpaper
    I was kind of lucky. I had been anticipating the release of Age of Ultron to be on 1 May 2015, but turned out that it was released on 22 April in my country. We got two tickets for the evening and so yesterday I watched Age of Ultron 🙂

    Avengers: Age of Ultron opens with a fight scene between the Avengers and the Hydra soldiers led by Strucker in an eastern Europe city called Sokovia. The team succesfully beat Strucker and find his experiments there, including the Maximoff twins, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. They also find Loki’s scepter, which they bring back to Stark’s place. Without the rest of the team knowing, Stark and Banner (the Science Bros :p) use the scepter to build an artificial intelligent called Ultron, which is originally intended to be installed to Stark’s peacekeeping robots seen earlier in the movie. They fail, however, then they leave the computers on while they go upstairs where a party is being held. After the party, the team gather and then this scene happens, where Ultron first comes alive and makes the memorable speech we have seen in the clips released by Marvel a few months ago. Together with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Ultron tries to create a real body while also try to “save” the world. And by “save” he really means to sweep all humankinds off the Earth to start anew.

    Age of Ultron serves as a good climax for Phase Two. Thanks to Scarlet Witch’s ability, we can see a glimpse into the Avengers’ personal deepest fears. The whole movie is personal. We get to see into Hawkeye’s real identity; we get to see Black Widow’s past and the reason why she seems so cold and “business-minded”. Also, we get to see some romance, something that didn’t occur in the first Avengers movie. I totally didn’t see the romance coming, and I’m sure most of you didn’t either, but it gives a little nice surprise into the mostly-dark theme.

    And because of the mostly-dark theme, the Marvel jokes don’t occur too often. There are only two running jokes in the movie; the first one isThor and his hammer, and the other one is Captain America’s ‘old man’-ness. The lack of humour is understandable, though. Ultron gives a real threat to Earth and he really seems too strong for the Avengers to beat. His origin also breaks the team and the whole Captain America versus Iron Man (which will be the main story of the third Captain America) can be seen in this movie. The Avengers are doomed. There’s no joke about it.

    I’d give Avengers: Age of Ultron 4,5 out of 5 stars. Totally recommended! But if you’re not following Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’d suggest you watch the previous installments first. I mean, man… You really don’t know what you’re missing out. Haha :p
    Afief and Dara after watching Age of Ultron

    Poster via.

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