MCU Movies 22 – Avengers: Endgame

From the moment Thanos first appeared in the post credits sequence of the first Avengers movie, everyone knew that the MCU was building up to something even bigger than what we already had. Yet nobody realized how huge the MCU would get. Not in terms of scale. Not in terms of the crazy amount of money it’s made. Not in terms of how large the cast would get by the time Endgame released. The MCU stopped being a movie franchise two phases ago. That’s when it became a cultural phenomenon, with each Avengers movie being an event.

In a way, Avengers: Endgame feels like a conclusion to the entire MCU. I’m not saying that it’s done by any means, but I’m saying that if one wanted to jump off to take a break from superhero movies, Endgame is the perfect place to do it.

Avengers: Endgame is also a massive financial success, in a film franchise that is already massively successful. As of this writing, Endgame is only $7.16 million short of passing Avatar as the highest earning movie of all-time. And as impressive as Avatar’s run was, it needed an extended cut re-release to get to its $2.78 billion worldwide record. At this point, it’s too close to call as to whether Endgame will pass Avatar or not, but it earned another $2 million this weekend despite having released nearly 3 months ago. It earned almost 10 times as much as Dark Phoenix did this past weekend, and Dark Phoenix came out just over a month ago. Then again, Dark Phoenix is on path to bombing hard.

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Comics of July 10, 2019 plus back issues

It’s been a couple weeks since my last comic post. Not because I’ve lost interest in them, but because I didn’t have the time. For example, most of last Wednesday was figuring out how to pay all of my bills. As much as I do enjoy my comics, that’s a bit more important.  Now that it’s all done with, especially since most of my bills are paid automatically, I can get back to these comic posts.

Today, I’ll be looking at some of the comics I finally picked up last Friday, and some of the comics I picked up today. I’ll save the rest for next week, which is my week off. Then hopefully these posts will be back to normal. Anyway, of the comics from up to two weeks ago, I’ve read Red Sonja 6, Mr. and Mrs. X 12 and War of the Realms 6. Of today’s comics, I picked up War of the Realms Omega, Secret Warps part 2: Weapon Hex, Supergirl 32 and Star Wars 68. So far, I’ve read War of the Realms Omega and the Weapon Hex comic. I’ll save the rest for next week in addition to the other comics from the last couple of weeks I haven’t read yet. Here are my first impressions for the comics I have read.

X-Men Movies 13 – Dark Phoenix

The Dark Phoenix Saga is widely considered the greatest X-Men story of all-time, and when you’ve got a franchise with the likes of Days of Future Past, God Loves Man Kills, E-For Extinction and Joss Whedon’s very entertaining Astonishing X-Men run, that’s saying a lot. Yet despite how multiple animated TV shows have adapted the story quite well, the movies can’t seem to understand why the Dark Phoenix Saga is so great. X-Men: The Last Stand completely wasted it by shoving it into a one and a half hour movie, along with multiple other major story arcs. X-Men: Apocalypse added in the phoenix force at the end with no context, turning the greatest X-Men story of all-time into a blatant deus ex machina. But let’s see how 20^th Century Fox’s latest attempt pans out.

For those of you who are new and might be confused about this being post #13 when there have only been 12 theatrically released X-Men movies, I actually started this blogathon with Fox’s live action made-for-tv Generation X.

War Movies Month 4 – Hitler: Dead Or Alive

The first three movies I looked at for this month’s movie theme were all relatively serious. Rightfully so, because war should be taken very seriously. But to close this theme month off, let’s look at something completely different. Let’s look at a 1942 pro-war propaganda piece, Hitler: Dead Or Alive.

This movie is about a group of former Alcatraz prisoners for their gang activity, trying to kill Hitler for money. You’ve got Ward Bond (the Searchers) as Steve Maschick, Warren Hymer as Hans “Dutch” Havermann, and Paul Fix (The Rifleman) as Joe “The Book” Conway. Warren Hymer seems to be an interesting hire for such a role, considering he was previously blacklisted from the industry. Long story short, he was kicked out of Columbia Pictures after showing up to work drunk, and then urinated Columbia Pictures’ head Harry Cohn’s desk in revenge. Just … wow. But I guess he had the kind of mean streak needed for such a role.

War Movies Month 3 – Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia is a great example of a classic film. It’s an epic historical drama based on the life of T.E Lawrence, a British military officer, archeologist, diplomat and writer. He is most known for helping the various Arab tribes to unite and help fight against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War (the Turks were allied with the Germans). The movie primarily focuses on that specific part of his life.

The movie ended up winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Sound, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography (colour), Best Music Score, and Best Film Editing. It features a number of famous actors from the time, including Sir Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, and it features the debut of Peter O’ Toole in the title role. It was voted as one of the top 100 films of all-time by the American Film Institute in 1998, and also voted the best British film of all-time in a Sunday Telegraph Poll in 2004.

Adventures in Home Ownership week 3

Like last week, I haven’t had much time to really start unpacking, due to not only working on Saturday, but spending most of the rest of the weekend in my hometown. Instead, this is going to be more about the journey that brought me here, and how I feel about this place so far.

Before buying this townhouse that I’m currently typing this blog post in, I lived in the same house for the first 32 years of my life. Well, 2 days short of 32 years, but you get the idea. I wasn’t a freeloader mind you – I paid a small rent and I helped out around the house when I could. I also sometimes bought groceries, and often let my mother use my employee discount while I still worked in a grocery store. But I wasn’t emotionally ready to move out, at least not on my own.

Comics of June 19, 2019

This week’s comic post is delayed for several days because the nearest comic store is about 50km away from where I now live, and as much as I’d like to, I’m not going to drive all the way out there to pick up comics one day, when I’ve got Kung-Fu in the same town on Thursday evening. I might as well do both in one day and save money on fuel. I’ll still pick up comics on Wednesdays when I’m working evenings though. It’s also been a busy week up to this point and I haven’t found the time to read them until just now. As such, here is this week’s comic post.

This week I picked up Star Wars 67 and Captain America 11. Here are my first impressions.