[Yep, it’s part two. I couldn’t even include all the scans, but such is life. Thanks for your patience!]
Killjoys. Julie and I got started watching this because it follows Dark Matter on Syfy and we thought what the hell, we’ll give it a shot. Oddly enough, we ended up liking this one more … mostly because the setup for its fictional universe is more interesting and the show doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously as its other companion entries on Friday night, Defiance and the aforementioned Dark Matter. In fact, although Dark Matter is the show that actually comes from comics, Killjoys has a lot more swash in its buckle. The premise is that spacegoing bounty hunters (known colloquially as “killjoys”) Dutch, Johnny and D’avin are out hunting bad guys in a quadrant on the verge of civil war, struggling to remain politically neutral in the execution of their missions. That’s pretty much it.
The fun of the show comes mostly from watching the actors play off each other and the sharply-written, quip-heavy dialogue they’re given to say. I won’t go quite so far as to say it’s on the level of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, but it’s very much of that school, and you could easily picture Killjoys and Firefly taking place in the same fictional universe. No aliens, just people struggling to live through a galactic class war, trying not to be victimized by forces way too big for them. I’ll add that Aaron Ashmore as Johnny is pretty much carrying the whole show on his back, though the producers seem more enamored of Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and her maybe-maybe-not romance with Luke Macfarlane as John’s ex-military brother D’avin. That part’s tired.
On the other hand, Ashmore as the kid engineer who just wants to make money and chase girls and build cool things has shown surprising depth whenever they give him actual stuff to do, especially in this week’s episode.
So far we’ve seen eight of the ten episodes of the season and we’ve enjoyed all of them and never been bored. Hoping this one sticks around; it’s a lot more open-ended and flexible than its two companion shows, and as a result it’s more interesting to watch. Trailer here.
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Justice League: Gods and Monsters. I’ve had mixed feelings about the DC animated movies of the last few years, particularly the ones that are directly based on storylines from the comics. I’d rather see those talented folks doing originals than adaptations, for the most part.
Well, it’s happening … but boy, is this an ODD project. I really enjoyed it, and Julie thought it was okay … but man, the fan service is over the top. You have to be steeped in DC lore to pick up on most of what’s going on. The story is set in a dark twisted reflection of what we think of as the ‘real’ DC universe. Very similar to the “Justice Lords” episode of the Justice League cartoon from a few years ago, but this one is much more fully extrapolated.
In this version of events, Superman is the son of General Zod, who was raised by kindly Mexican migrant farmers and took the name Hernan Guerra. Seeing the injustices his adoptive parents endured left him with little patience for the laws of man. (We know he’s an evil mirror universe version of ‘our’ Superman because as we learned from Star Trek, The Middleman, and countless other SF stories, one’s dark reflection invariably sports a goatee.)
Wonder Woman is Bekka, a sword-wielding Female Fury from Apokolips who fled to earth after the evil Highfather murdered her husband Orion. Batman is Kirk Langstrom, a scientist who accidentally transformed himself into a vampire trying to find a cure for his cancer, and remains only tenuously connected to humanity thanks to his friendship with Dr. Will Magnus and his wife Tina.
Together, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are the hated and feared Justice League, a force for order that’s not afraid to get its collective hands bloody. The plot of the story begins as the League is framed for the murders of three scientists — Ray Palmer, Victor Fries, and most ruthlessly of all, the suspiciously heat vision-like incineration of Silas Stone and his young son Victor.
Follow all that? Congratulations, you’re as up on DC trivia as I am. Any kids picking this DVD up at Wal-Mart are likely to be somewhat befuddled, and their parents are going to be a little freaked out at the blood and violence. Which sort of begs the question, why such a push for THIS? It’s getting a tie-in comic book and a 13-episode webseries. (Three episodes are out now, another ten are promised for 2016.) That’s more support than DC gave their regular JLA or Batman direct-to-DVD animated features released over the last decade COMBINED.
Despite my vague sense of bafflement that this project is getting such a giant shove forward from DC marketing, I have to admit that I thought the movie was pretty good. But most of the fun came from seeing the twisted mirror versions of familiar characters, and that’s going to be lost on anyone that’s not One of Us. So, recommended with that provision. Be prepared to spend a large part of the evening explaining all the references to your significant other … Julie’s been married to me for over a decade and picked up a lot of DC lore just through osmosis, and even she was lost some of the time. Here’s a trailer.
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Ant-Man. I can’t think of much to add to what’s already been said about this one. It’s a fun movie, probably a solid B-plus among the Marvel movies so far. I’d rate it better than Iron Man 2 but not as good as The Avengers or Winter Soldier. About even with Thor.
What baffles me is why it got made in the first place. I can’t get my head around a Hollywood establishment that sinks this kind of tentpole-blockbuster money into adapting Marvel properties like Ant-Man (the SCOTT LANG version for God’s sake!) and the Guardians of the Galaxy, neither of which could sustain any kind of regular comic book series before these movies were made … and yet seems determined to ignore the Black Widow movie that’s just lying there WAITING to make billions of dollars for them after Natasha got star turns in The Avengers, Winter Soldier, and Age Of Ultron. There’s a brilliant fan-made title sequence and another fan-made trailer that’s VERY cleverly cut together from other movies with Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner that practically serve as a road map … [Edit: Greg’s link is dead, but I wonder if that one is the same as the one he linked to, just moved around!]
… sorry, distracted. Anyway, yeah, Ant-Man was pretty good and it’s amazing we live in a world where they even MAKE Ant-Man movies. But I’d still rather have had a Black Widow movie.
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So there you go. Before anyone asks, we still haven’t seen Mr. Holmes, though I would very muck like to (though I didn’t care for the novel it’s based on.) Maybe this weekend. I think we can safely skip the new Fantastic Four.
In any case, I’ll see you all right here … next week.
I liked Ant-Man because it was different from the template used in the other films, though it was let down with the villain. Id rate bot it and Guardians ahead of Avengers and Age of Ultron, which mostly bored me. Not as keen on the sequels
Never even heard of The Killjoys….or Dark Matter, which shows how out of touch I was about what was on tv. Or am, currently. The only new tv series I have seen in the past several years are Babylon Berlin, Irma Vep, Julia (season 1) and SAS: Rogue Heroes. Beyond that it is only Dark Side of the Ring, from Vice.