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JauntyJohn

Name: John ONeil

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JauntyJohn's Recent Comments
April 14, 2019 8:35 pm How long have we been in Batman's hallucinatory psychodrama? TOO LONG! Jesus wept. If you were perhaps finding some new element in his psyche or some new motivation or some new character point (and good luck with THAT on this character)then maybe it would be justified but the amount of wheel-spinning is ridiculous. Also, I am older than the two of you are so if you want to tap the brakes on the whole "we're old men" thing I would be grateful.
March 11, 2019 12:39 am Okay, sorry guys, but I have to disagree re the Skrulls. I WANTED to like the reversal but I felt like it was completely unearned. All it needed was one throw-away line from some Skrull somewhere about "remember, don't kill any natives/innocent bystanders" or something like the Kree got at the beginning on the ambush mission to plant a seed that justified the idea that they were victims of some Kree propaganda machine instead of a creepy evil empire. In every fight before the reveal they were take-no-prisoners (Ben/Talos was going to kill Fury in the records room in pure villain fashion, for example). Sure, you can come up with reasons logically extrapolated from the script as to why they were that way ("I'm fighting to save my family!", or worse, "No no no... we're the GOOD Skrulls!") -- Head Skrull even says his hands are filthy in basically a "War is Hell" moment -- but for me it was still kind of a cheat. With that said, it WAS an interesting and subversive twist, and a pretty original way of looking at the Skrulls. Overall I liked the story, and the low key subversive/feminist vibe. Sadly, I wanted to like Brie more than I ultimately did. I see what you're saying about "interesting choices" but I found her decidedly un-charismatic -- and believe me, I walked in there wanting to love this movie and her in this role. I think she is a perfectly serviceable actor, but one without a lot of "It" factor (I would have said "star power" but that's a bad pun in this context). With that said I'm hoping how she interacts with the rest of the characters turns that flatness into something substantive -- which it very much could.
June 6, 2017 12:18 am MARVEL Agents of Shield was really very good this season. It is phenomenal story telling; great pacing, stellar performances (mostly) etc. And once in a while I even have a "I did NOT see that coming" moment, even though I am a jaded old fanboy who maybe hasn't seen it ALL, but has seen a lot. WW Annual 1 made me super nostalgic for the years gone by where almost every title had a "Giant Super Sized Annual!" with three or four stories, sometimes some maps (I would give a significant body part for what I remember as a killer floor plan/map/tour of the old Legion of Super Heroes clubhouse -- you know, that one that looked like an upside down yellow rocket smashed nose first into the ground) and in general was full of fun, breezy stories which explored the characters but wasn't bogged down by a metric ton of continuity and cross-title marketing imperatives. Thank you gentlemen for another enjoyable 'cast.
June 5, 2017 11:40 pm Wow... I guess you really ARE lost. Bye, Felicia.
June 3, 2017 6:10 pm To put it charitably, I think Finn was seriously mis-cast. Even given that these stories take place in a fantastical universe he was never believable to me as... anything. I think of it as GoT effect -- if you got a role in that show suddenly you're a hot property, whether you've really got the chops (is that a bad pun?) or not. Honestly from a writing and acting standpoint Ward was the standout. He and his character really traveled an arc. There was a fantastic moment when, after he finds out his father has come back from the dead, he was just brilliant at being freaked out, resigned, outraged... But why... seriously, why... did we travel something like 28 city blocks with returned-from-the-dead ward's dad? It added nothing, it explained nothing, it was just plain stoopid. Show him murkily rising to the surface of the swamp, crawl up on land, one big scary roar... and cut to the penthouse, and him cleaned up and more crazy and more evil. Maybe the intensity of the criticism was heightened, but this was MUCH more of a miss than a hit.
June 3, 2017 5:52 pm I went Thursday night to add my movie-voting dollars to her pre-opening weekend tally. I think I spend the first fifteen minutes in near-disbelief saying over and over to myself "The didn't screw it up! OMG they didn't screw it up!" Then I relaxed into pure enjoyment. Is is uneven? Sure. But it's still a great fun movie and more than transcended all the extra pressures, benchmarks and expectations it inevitably had. Thanks for getting this one out early, guys.
November 13, 2016 8:22 pm Oh, I was hoping hoping hoping you would talk about WW #10. The Nicola Scott art is so damn good - some of the panels are great comic booking (to loosely quote you all to yourselves). Mother Panic is really fresh - very original work on her look, which really makes me want to stick with it. You've talked me into giving A. 1.1 a try. I admit I'm of the school where comic numbering with a digital addition to it gives me hard eye rolls. I think the Scarlet Witch's headpiece was (originally) a riff on Magneto's helmet crossed with a tiara. What it evolved into was cool - and certainly distinctive - but its original iteration looked a lot like she got her face stuck in a bolt of fabric and they just cut a circle around it so she could breathe and talk.
November 10, 2016 10:35 pm Thanks for the S.E. Podcast, guys. My two cents: Rachel McAdams was wasted, yes, but Dr. S. doesn't really have a Lois Lane until Clea comes along, and that is well after his origin. Having a love interest that he mistreats and then apologizes to is good arc shorthand for his internal transformation. I think any restlessness felt in watching is more about that it is a trope-filed story origin arc - Marvel loves their fallen princes: (Thor, Iron Man, Spiderman et al).. We know he's going to be a dick, we know he's going to be broken down, we know he'll rise to take up the responsibility of being the hero because that's what these stories all are - no surprises. But to spend any less time on those beats I think would have robbed the payoff of emotional weight, even though you see it all coming from a mile away. There is definitely a low grade hum of "come on! get to the magic!" during the first act (after the opening set piece) but I don't think they could have spent any less time in that set up. Loved the cloak. They made it fresh. If we HAD to do yet another "there's giant black hole in the sky and the world is doomed" element to the finale, at least Strange's solution was about being clever. With the countless time travel stories around across many, many heroes, I honestly feel like they gave it a fresh twist. I give it an A on adaptation and a good solid B+ on being a good movie.