Tom’s Geek Year In Review

2015 is over in a few more hours, so how was the year we just had?  You know, from a Geek Perspective?

Some good, some bad.  Like every year.

Gabbing Geek Box Office Report–Get Your Butt Back To Mars

Man, people bought movie tickets over the weekend!  Wow!  Commerce at work!

Honest Trailer For Avengers: Age Of Ultron

The Rotten Tomatoes numbers above are really not all that bad.  They are not stellar like the first Avenger’s movie’s 92% Fresh, but they are acceptable.  I’m curious how I will feel about the film after a rewatch?  I’m sure I am like most that was incredibly let down by it, but expectations were sky high.

In the meantime, I will just have to be content with watching the Honest Trailer for Avengers: Age Of Ultron after the cut.

Where Does the Josh Trank Fantastic Four Movie Rank Against Other Superhero Flicks?

You’ve seen me praise the film in my review.  Jenny liked it as well in her review.  The critics combined score over at Rotten Tomatoes was another story.  But again, I feel they missed the boat on this one.

To illustrate how wrong I think the critics are on this one, I decided to examine exactly where Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four ranked relative to the other DC/Marvel superhero movies in the post-Iron Man and Dark Knight era.

My findings after the jump.

Before You See Ant-Man Check Out This Infographic Of All Marvel Movies

This post is so awesome, this isn’t even the infographic!

While Iron Man was the first film of what we now know as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was far from the first Marvel film.  That distinction belongs to…ugh…Howard The Duck.  But they followed that up with The Punisher…starring Dolph Lundgren.  And then Captain America and Fantastic Four films so bad they never received theatrical release.  Marvel was really not off to a good start.

But starting in 1998, though there would still be some bumps in the road going forward, Wesley Snipes came along and saved the day.  Yes, Wesley Snipes.

Read more about Blade and all the other Marvel movies on the infographic from shirts.com after the break.

Avengers of Oz: Age of Tin Man

Check out the this trailer mash-up after the break.  Don’t say you haven’t been warned…

Podcast Reaction: The Ryan Edition

Ryan likes this movie.

I’ve been doing podcast reactions for a while now, even before I got tapped to write for this site.  In that time, I have picked on Jenny and Watson quite a bit.  Why not?  Jenny is three ducks in a woman suit who doesn’t know who Max von Sydow is despite his memorable roles in both The Exorcist and Flash Gordon–leading to my theory that someone is finally continuing Flash Gordon‘s “To be continued” tag when Ming the Merciless is revealed to be the bad guy in Star Wars Episode VII.  Watson just has that one picture that makes it rather easy.  Heck, it doesn’t matter what other pictures I use, that picture will be the one that appears on Facebook for any article I write and use it for.

But aside from pointing out just how much Ryan likes the awful, awful Krull, I don’t pick on him that much.

I’m not going to pick on him now, because this post is an intervention.

Gabbing Geek Poll: Sophomore Slumps

Wacky Wednesday: Go Home Toy Industry, You’re Drunk!

There is a serious injustice happening right now in the Toy industry. I’m not talking about how we’ve strayed from making toys indestructible (have you ever tried to break a Lincoln Log?), or how craftsmanship is a thing of the past. Nor am I talking about how most toys now-a-days have some kind of mechanical battery operated mechanism which leaves nothing left for imagination. No – the injustice I speak of is something that’s always been there, yet I’m so damn fed up with it – and that’s gederfication and blatant sexism in the toy industry.

Sequels Better Than The Originals

 

Age of Ultron came out last week.  Like many geeks and fans of the Marvel movies, I saw it that weekend.

And, to be completely spoiler free, I was also a little disappointed.  I won’t really go into why here.  The problem for many sequels, and Age of Ultron was no exception, is that its hard to meet expectations.  The Matrix sequels were highly anticipated, and were a major letdown.  Big budget action sequels often do stuff like go back to what came before and seemed to work, and then doing more and more of that.  Meanwhile, the novelty has somewhat worn off.  Take, as an example, the big fight in the middle of Anchorman:  The Legend of Ron Burgundy.  No one really saw it coming, and it was full of amusing cameos from recognizable actors.  Naturally, when the sequel was made (a movie I mostly enjoyed, truth be told), the fight was expanded and made even crazier, as befits a sequel.  Was it better?  Not really.

But every so often, a movie comes out that is a sequel that is just plain better than the original.  It doesn’t happen often, but below the cut are some of my picks for sequels better than the originals.