Deconstructing the Netflix/Marvel “Defenders”
Marvel and Netflix have inked a deal that will bring Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones into your living room via 13 episode mini-series to be released on Netflix. When those series conclude, they will team up in a “Defenders” series and everyone at DC will wonder how the hell they managed to screw everything up so completely. While they’re busy trying to cram whomever they can into the upcoming Man of Steel sequel featuring Batman and greenlighting all manner of spinoffs from Arrow on the CW, including a new proposed Hourman series, Marvel is finding a way to get their properties on screens in ways that people will actually watch.
Let’s face it, Netflix is the way most people consume long-form tv nowadays. Who do you know that didn’t binge watch Breaking Bad trying to get caught up for the series finale? While Agents of SHIELD is doing well enough, I think Marvel knows that TV isn’t the most viable option for many of their heroes. Serialized events may be the way to go, but 22 episode seasons on network TV is just not in the cards. Especially for something like a Jessica Jones show. They were trying to make that happen for a while and it just didn’t pan out. But if you make it part of a larger world with some other street level characters and release it on a platform that people are beginning to embrace wholeheartedly, you may be on to something.
Marvel has done something exceptionally smart here. They could have started a separate film universe that essentially parallels the Avengers level films. A “Marvel Knights” film universe, if you will. But that would require, bare minimum, two extra films on the slate for every year. They would be diluting themselves a little to heavily. By working with the Netflix platform, Marvel opens up a whole new avenue to exercise the film rights on their characters. Let’s not forget that they also have regained the rights to Punisher and Ghost Rider. Could they end up cameoing in these series? Or perhaps get their own focus in the “phase 2” of Marvel’s Netflix plan? It certainly has to be being discussed in Marvel office if they haven’t already committed to it.
This could truly be everything that those disappointed by Agents of SHIELD are waiting for. Kudos to Marvel for going for broke on this. I hope this leads to even more tertiary characters getting a little focus, even if they aren’t part of a shared event plan. I’d love for them to break out the horror based characters like Man-Thing, Werewolf by Night, Damian Hellstrom and others. Marvel also got back the rights to Blade, so they could really pull something special off in that regard.
If you aren’t excited for Marvel projects coming out in the future, you just aren’t doing the fanboy thing right.
“Just Because” Review – Tremors 4 – The Legend Begins
I watch a lot of dumb shit. Netflix seems to encourage it. I get all sorts of weird recomendations and I’m not one to ignore the pleadings of a computerized generation of possible late-night viewing options.
I saw that Tremors 4 was up on instant watch and decided to give it a go because it was, up until now, the only one I hadn’t seen and felt like I was doing myself a disservice by not completing the series. Besides, I love hokey junk like this. I figured it’d be a a nice “so bad it’s good” entry and then I’d move on.
The thing is, it’s actually not a bad little movie. I mean, the budget constraints are obvious. Probably why up until the last quarter of the film we really don’t see that much of the actual monsters. It’s not an uncommon tactic even in better movies. Hell, how much of the shark did we actually see in Jaws? How much worse was it when we actually saw more of it in the sequels? Remember how shitty it looked in part three? Yeah.
The movie here is good for what it is. Michael Gross is still the best part of the franchise, but this time he gets to play against type by portraying Burt’s ancester Hiram who’s a pampered city boy who has never fired a gun in his life. Seeing Gross reverse his role so heavily makes the film stand out among the other installments and it makes for a fun ride. The supporting characters all do their job well but this is Gross’ show through and through, much as it was with the third film and the better parts of the second.
The biggest improvement over the last two sequels is that we’re back to seeing the monsters simply as worms. None of the shrieking chickens or fire-farting birds. As infants the worms launch themselves from the ground to attack their prey but they grow up so fast that this really isn’t much of a factor in the overall film. Just another little glimpse into the creature’s asinine life cycle.
I may be delirious but watching character-actor/amazing creep Billy Drago play a gunfighter hired to help kill the beasts made me think he’d be a great Saint for an eventual Preacher movie but god knows that’ll never happen. Still, food for thought.
If you’re bored, go ahead and watch it. It’s only 100 minutes long and there’s much shittier stuff on Netflix at the moment. Believe me because I’v watched it.
Spring Break Boredom Buster Challenge : Day One – “Bitch Slap”
I’m not going anywhere for Spring Break. At least, not during the week. Next weekend I’ve got some work-related responsibilities up north in Dallas to take care of but between now and then I really don’t plan on leaving the comfort of my immediate area. That being the case, I figured I would catch up on some movies that have been piling up on Netflix. I thought it’d be fun to go through and once a day watch a film that popped up as a “suggestion” from Netflix and review the experience here on the blog to provide the illusion of regular content.
So here we go with day one.
The Flick : Bitch Slap (2009)
The Director: Rick Jacobson (Spartacus: Blood and Sand)
The Players: Julia Voth (Visual Likeness For Jill Valentine in “Resident Evil), Erin Cummings (Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Detroit 187), America Olivo (“Frisbee Girl” in Transformers 2)
Synopsis (via IMDb): When three curvaceous babes, stripper Trixe, business executive Hel, and the feisty ex-con Camero, arrive at a desert hideaway to steal a stash of diamonds from an underworld kingpin, things quickly spiral out of control. Allegiances are switched, truths are revealed, criminals are unmasked and nothing is quite what it seems as the fate of the world is precariously balanced among this trio of sexy femmes fatales.
Review: Ladies and gentlemen I have seen a lot of bad movies. I seek them out from time to time. I assume that is why Netflix assumed that I’d enjoy this. What is presented here is somewhere in between a direct-to-video abortion and a genuine grindhouse exploitation trainwreck. The main problem with the film as an homage to the exploitation genre it so heavily wishes to be, is that it’s far too clean and crisp at its basest level. It doesn’t look like it was made on a budget. When you get to the egregious greenscreen work, you can tell that it was made on a budget because whatever the exact opposite of “seamless” is, that is how I would describe the greenscreen and cgi work in this film. It’s far too middle ground to succeed. The CGI pushes it into shitty SyFy movie territory. The film would have succeeded had they shot the film like “El Mariachi” with whatever money they could have scrounged together from looking under their collective couches. In doing so, we may have gotten something more genuine. Instead, we are left with a spectacle of failure. It fails to truly entertain because everything about the production takes you out of the moment and precludes the audience from enjoying the proceedings even in a “So bad it’s good” sort of way. Nobody in the film can act with any hint of believability, though when your leading trio is made up of actresses who, let’s be honest, were chosen for their chesticular assets rather than their background in theater that is to be expected. When Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless show up, then it just devolves into self-parody.
Save yourself the trouble and go watch a true exploitation flick. I wish I had.
Comics Con Queso 