Month: May 2016

The Great Science-Fiction/Fantasy TV Showdown: Final Round

Welcome to the final round of the Great Science-Fiction/Fantasy TV Showdown! Round 4 went very well, with a full 40 people participating.

Here are the results from Round 4. The bolded numbers give the scores.

  1. Star Trek: The Next Generation made it to the final frontier by beating Daredevil. 28/11
  2. “Thor taught us to have no fear of death! But what did he teach you of pain?” Stargate: SG-1 lost to Firefly. 25/12
  3. “You don’t know the Bat. He don’t let up! He’s the dark angel of death, man, and he wants me!” Batman: The Animated Series beat Futurama. 19/14

And now, on to the Final Round of the Great Science-Fiction/Fantasy TV Showdown! This round will be a little different from previous ones. Members must vote for one of the three shows. Whichever show get the most votes is the final winner of the event.

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To vote in the Final Round, just click here.

Remember, you can also chat about all aspects of the competition here!

 

X-Men: Apocalypse spoiler-free review

There is a short scene in X-Men: Apocalypse that sees several of the new characters discussing the quality of the films in the original Star Wars trilogy, all of them agreeing that the third film is always the worst. It’s an obvious piece of meta-commentary on the original X-Men trilogy that takes a shot at X-Men: The Last Stand while praising director Bryan Singer’s original two films, which is gaudy enough on its own – but those paying attention will remember that X-Men: Apocalypse itself is the third film in this new timeline. Is this just a staggering lack of self-awareness, or a direct acknowledgement from the film-makers that they’ve badly messed up? It really doesn’t matter. X-Men: Apocalypse is a bad film all the same.

The story this time sees the various characters we’ve been following over the last couple of X-Men films reunite in order to try to stop an ancient mutant named Apocalypse and his four horsemen from taking over the world. It’s a simple tale of good vs bad basically, far removed from the more soap-operatic, character driven drama of the previous films in the franchise, and unfortunately X-Men: Apocalypse suffers for it.

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The Great Science-Fiction/Fantasy TV Showdown: Round 4

First up, the results from Round 3!

The bold numbers represent how many people voted for each series.

  1. Buffy may fight demons, but she couldn’t defeat this devil. Daredevil beats Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 21/12 
  2. Star Wars: The Clone Wars loses to Stargate: SG-1. 11/15
  3. Firefly kept flying right over Quantum Leap. 24/3
  4. Farscape lost to Star Trek: The Next Generation. 21/5
  5. Futurama  resoundingly beat TMNT (Original) 26/2
  6. Batman: The Animated Series beats Supernatural. 19/8

And now, on to The Great Science-Fiction/Fantasy TV Showdown, Round 4!

I used Random.org to input the six properties. I then took the pairs to use for the brackets.

 

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  1. Daredevil VS Star Trek: The Next Generation
  2. Firefly VS Stargate: SG-1
  3. Futurama VS Batman: The Animated Series

To vote for Round Three, just click here.

Remember, you can also chat about all aspects of the competition here!

 

A Guide to the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse

In a previous blog post, we examined the history and future of the various DC Comics cinematic franchises that make up what I (apparently alone) am calling the DC Cinematic Multiverse. But DC isn’t the only company to have a massive tangle of cinematic universes under its belt. It’s long-time rival Marvel has been even more prolific when it comes to adapting their material for the large and small screen. Unlike DC, though, Marvel gave up control over much of it’s catalog during the dark times (the 1996 bankruptcy and subsequent reorganization), resulting it several different studios having access to bits and pieces of the Marvel world. To this day there is still a lot of confusion over who has what rights, who can be in which films, and on-screen with who else, and which films belong to which shared canon.

Note: As with the DC post, I am mostly ignoring the animated parts of the Marvel multi-verse. There have been 36 (to date) animated shows and about a dozen animated movies.  In general, with two notable exceptions, these shows all exist in their own separate universes, with their own separate designations in the Marvel reality catalog, and otherwise play no role in the live-action TV or movie worlds.

So, as we did with DC, lets see if we can make some sense of of the tangled mess that is the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse.

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