Luke Cage’s first season was part good, part dull, so fingers crossed Season 2 learns from past mistakes. So far I can say it’s been good, but with a few flaws, which is how Season 1 started! Anyway, while it’s far from perfect, it has some good action, good humour, good drama and sets up the new big villain really well. That’s a good start to a season! Let’s take a look…
Agents of SHIELD return to the present in order to stop the apocalypse in this middle chapter of Season 5, with some elements of their time in the future coming along with them. As the middle it does its job of setting up the end, and it also gives us plenty of good story moments too, including a twist with Fitz that was particualry great TV. So let’s have a deeper look into it, shall we?
Based on marketing and my vague knowledge of the original comic, I wasn’t sure I’d like Runaways that much, but I was happy to be wrong! The teen drama is actually toned down quite a bit, and more emphasis is put on the parents and their plight than the comics (again, from what I hear). All that and the lead characters themselves are all really well acted and realised! Who would have guessed? Let’s take a closer look at the debut season overall then, shall we?
Hopefully the last casualty of the “not being able to afford to go to the cinema” period, I finally saw Black Panther on blu-ray over the weekend. It certainly lived up to the hype, both being a really good film and the impressive cast, including a lead villain in an MCU film that’s actually good and well-fleshed out! Hooray! Let’s have a look…
Agents of SHIELD’s fifth season gets off to an unconventional start, being set not only in space, but in a dystopian future where most of the world is in rubble. That sounds like a spoiler, but that’s just the setting! Plus that doesn’t even include the Kree, who appear en masse here. So let’s have a look at this ten-episode arc that seemingly acts the prologue to the bigger story to tell…
So here we are at last. After 10 years of films and six years since Thanos first appeared on screen, the big pay off… or at least, the first half of the big pay off. To be honest they should have kept the Part I and Part II in the title like they were going to originally, but hey-ho, it’s still a hell of a two and a half hour ride full of amazing fight scenes, amusing banter and a surprisingly (and very un-MCU-like) fleshed out villain at the centre of it. Now more than ever, I’d skip straight to the “Overall Thoughts” at the bottom of the page and avoid all of this review under the *spoilers appear from here on out!* tag if you haven’t seen the film already…
So I’m going to watch Avengers: Infinity War tomorrow (or today, when this review goes up!) but I didn’t really have the time to watch a lot of MCU films leading up to it… in fact I just squeezed this one in, but still! Let’s have a look at Civil War, the film that could be argued as the real Avengers 3, though I feel that’s unfair given the focus is still very much on Captain America rather than the ensemble of heroes around him. It’s also the film that introduces us to both the MCU’s Spider-Man and Black Panther, the latter of whom’s solo film would turn out to be more successful than the former, which no one would have guessed a few years ago! So let’s dive in!
So another 13-episode chapter in the Netflix “street level” side of the MCU comes to a close, and sadly it’s on the lower end of the quality scale. It had a monster of a task following up on Jessica Jones Season 1 and its lead villain Killgrave, a task it couldn’t beat, though to be fair it goes in a completely different direction with its lead antagonist rather than inevitably fail to try and copy the already successful formula. So let’s have an overall look at Jessica Jones Season 2, because there is plenty to like still… It’s thankfully no Iron Fist!
Jessica Jones Season 2 ends on a high note, which is good because the season up to now has been quite flat. If you’ve stuck with it so far you’re treated to a great conclusion to the Jessica / Alisa Jones story, and a pretty good end to Trish’s struggle as well (plus an episode full of Killgrave again! Who doesn’t want that?) So let’s take a look after the spoiler message so I can actually talk about things!
The second season of Jessica Jones finally begins to show its teeth with this middle block of episodes. The big (and sadly predictable) reveal of the lead antagonist leads to flashbacks and some fun and dramatic scenes of conflicted emotion. Sadly while all of this is going on there is still an awful lot of uninteresting side-stories being told, so… Let’s take a look!
Hogan Reviews 