Category Archives: TV/Movie

Minipost – Heavy is the Head (AoS)

Posted on by

I woke up with a migraine this morning and while I’m better, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this post, I still feel rather ill. I know miniposts are a bit of a cop-out, I definitely usually wouldn’t do two in a row, but at least I’m keeping my promise to write something everyday.

Anyway, I just saw last weeks Agents of Shield episode and figured it would make a good post for today. I don’t usually put miniposts under the cut but given that it has only just aired, I don’t want to accidentally spoil anyone should they stumble across my blog somehow.

Warning, there will be spoilers for episode 2, season 2, enter at your own risk.

Continue reading →

Stargate Worlds

Posted on by

Note: This was written in September. I was holding the post in reserve but with the challenge I’m just posting it now.

There have been a number of attempts at making a video game based on the Stargate series. For one reason or another all of these attempts ended in failure. Part of the attraction of a game like Marvel Heroes is running around Avengers Tower, or the Shield Hellicarrier. Likewise with Swtor, the environment is very recognisable. It’s like diving into and becoming part of your favourite universe.

Don’t get me wrong the IP isn’t enough, the game has to stand on it’s own. I tried out Star Trek Online, played for half an hour and deleted the game. I didn’t like it at all, it wasn’t fun and being Star Trek based wasn’t enough.

Anyway, there was once an MMO in development based on the Stargate IP called Stargate Worlds. There’s few if any details about it, though it did get far enough along in the dev process that there were screenshots to be seen. However, this post isn’t about what Stargate Worlds was, or might have been, it’s about what I would have done, or would do if MGM rang me and said “design an MMO based on Stargate”. Much like how I’ve spent time thinking about how I’d develop/reboot the franchise, I’ve thought about how a game would work.

Continue reading →

Agents of Shield: The Second Season

Posted on by

Let’s be honest Agents of Shield had a pretty rough first season. If it hadn’t been for the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which changed everything, then the show might not have picked up and might have never been renewed.

However, The Winter Soldier did change everything, the show did go from strength to strength culminating in one of the best season finales I’ve ever seen. It was renewed and the first episode of the second season has now aired and wow, what a season premiere. It definitely picks up from where season one ended, determined to put Agents of Shield on the map as an incredible TV show.

Spoilers under the cut. You have been warned.

Continue reading →

The importance of secondary characters

Posted on by

I finally got the DVD set for Stargate: Atlantis. I posted about it on twitter and listed some of the characters that made Atlantis great. I then looked back at my tweet and realised something. Only one of the characters mentioned had ever been in the credits, the rest were just recurring guest stars.

There’s this TV show Alias. I’ve mentioned it a few times I think as it proved inspiring for this novel I’ve been attempting to write for years. However, one of the points about Alias that I always laugh about is that it’s a hard show to actually watch. The headcanon I have for Alias works much better than the actual show. Why? Because I loathe the main characters. I can not stand Sydney or Vaughn.

Obviously I like the main characters in Atlantis but that doesn’t stop me from sometimes wishing that the secondary characters got more screentime, and a little more respect. There’s a running gag in Atlantis that no-one likes Zelenka and I don’t understand why. He’s a genuinely nice guy, a good scientist, a loyal friend, has none of Rodney’s arrogance. He gets the job done but no-one likes him or trusts him. It’s because he’s a secondary character, they can make fun of him and we’re not supposed to care – but I do care.

Continue reading →

Moebius is headache inducing

Posted on by

I love time travel and alternate realities, I am a complete sucker for those. I find it really interesting about how different the future can be if an event plays out differently. It’s always so fun watching it on the TV, people are the same yet different. However, I’m pretty big on logic. I know it’s ridiculous to try and apply logic to sci-fi, as it isn’t real, but I try anyway. Basically I just like things to make sense.

I watched the Stargate season 8 finale Moebius last night and I’m still trying to work it out. Stargate has had a couple of alternate universe and time travel episodes. ‘1.21 – There but for the grace of god’ where Daniel goes through the mirror, ‘2.21 – 1969’ with the solar flare, ‘3.06 – Point of View’ where an alternate reality comes through the mirror for help, ‘4.06 – Window of Opportunity’ had the groundhog day time loop, ‘4.16 – 2010’ where they send a note back, ‘8.13 – It’s Good to be King’ has prophecies written on the wall by a time travelling ancient, Moebius of course and finally the Atlantis episode ‘1.15 – Before I Sleep’. There may be others in the remaining episodes that I’ve not seen.

So how to make sense of it?

Continue reading →

Stargate: An Evolution

Posted on by

Today I woke up to news reports that Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the team behind the original 1994 Stargate movie, have been given the green light to reboot and produce a new trilogy of movies. Stargate is returning to the big screen – kinda. You’d think I’d be excited but I’m actually cautious, more wait and see than jumping up and down.

I mentioned Stargate in a mixed post I made in March. On February 26th I started watching it from the third episode of season one, as I’d seen the first two and the movie a year or so earlier. It’s now the 30th of May, so effectively three months later and I’m now on episode 15 of season 8 of SG1 and episode 16 of season 1 of Atlantis. I still have 170 episodes from the combined shows to watch, plus the two TV movies. I’m hooked, it’s as simple as that. I might be a new fan but I am a fan.

The news that the franchise is being revived should be good news right? Well it rather depends on your point of view.

Continue reading →

The Winter Soldier

Posted on by

I should probably do a recap post on the last month seeing as I haven’t posted at all. However, instead I’m going to talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I saw this film a week ago and it needs a post. I didn’t write one about Thor: The Dark World. I liked Thor 2 but I didn’t write a post as I didn’t have anything to say, not really. It was a solid film, there were some eye rolling moments but on the whole it worked well. I did write a post about Iron Man 3 as I was disappointed, that film was all flash and no substance. It wasn’t the film I had hoped it would be.

Cap 2 was different. It had a lot of action, some eye rolling moments but it wasn’t just a solid film like Thor 2, it had a lot of substance. It turned out to be one of those films that are like an onion, the more you think about it, the more layers you start finding. It was a game changing film in more ways than one. In my opinion it’s the first film that really continues the legacy of The Avengers, builds on it and delivers something even better.

Obviously there’s going to be spoilers, don’t read if you haven’t seen the film and aren’t up to date with Agents of Shield either, just to be safe.

The Winter Soldier, how deep does it go?

Continue reading →

Rewrite and Rebrand: A Random Lockbox of Words

Posted on by

aka I wasn’t sure what to call it. You know those lockboxes, those bags of potential you get in games? Well, you don’t know what’s inside and it’s a mixed bag, a little like this post.

I started writing this post weeks ago, some posts are like that. I write them, then rewrite them, then add things and rewrite some more etc. I know I write in quite a conversational style, but I don’t just type continuously from beginning to end and hit post, I do go back and read what I have written. With some posts, I realise that what I’ve said is just a variation on a theme, it’s something I’ve posted before. Then I realise that my mood, or current events, are perhaps overly influencing the direction of the post. Then there’s the question, what is the point of the post? I like to, usually, try and at least say something in a post, start with a theory, talk around the subject, and then write a conclusion. After all that I wind up either rewriting or just scrapping the whole thing.

This post started off life with the title ‘Journey vs Destination’ which is something I have written about before. How the way a player approaches a game, and their expectations of it, have an affect on the way that they play and their enjoyment. It’s no secret that I’m less than thrilled with Warcraft right now, either how it is currently or the direction that it seems blizz is taking it in. So that first draft went over old ground, all things that I had said before, about how raiding had changed, about how the way that I raided had changed. There was nothing new and the whole post came across very miserable. It was basically asking the question should I quit? It seemed like the obvious answer was yes. However, I’m not ready to quit, and I’m not going to lose everything I have until I’m sure, no matter how unhappy I am with the game right now.

So what is this post about then? It’s about a lot of things, it’s one of those mixed bag posts where I have a bunch of things I want to say, and I just combine them all into a post. I’m going to talk about Marvel Heroes, Amazon Prime Instant Video with a side order of Hulu, a little bit of general TV, some Stargate SG-1 and of course Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve been itching to tweet about these things but 140 characters is not enough, that was the impetus for starting this blog in the first place.

I know this is supposed to be a Warcraft blog. However, everything I write about that is just so negative right now. I think it would be better to wait for more concrete information, after all beta has to be soon right? I can scarcely believe that it’s not been announced yet, it’s March already. Besides I’m thinking of changing the definition of the blog, it started off as Warcraft, then went to Warcraft and Swtor, before back to just Warcraft. Considering I am writing about more things these days, and more often rather than just occasionally, especially Marvel Heroes, it is probably overdue.

Right, on to the post.

Continue reading →

The Next James Bond

Posted on by

On my 100th post I said that this would be an upcoming post. It’s languished in drafts for quite a while waiting for me to finish it, I figured it was about time I did so and pressed publish.

Daniel Craig has reportedly signed on for another two films after Skyfall, so they won’t be looking for the new actor just yet. However, for years I’ve had an actor in mind who I would love to take the role on. I’ve said this to people I know and been laughed at. However, this is my blog, you are free to laugh at me, but at least I can finish and say my piece.

I’ve been re-watching Hustle lately, it’s something I do relatively often. I don’t watch much British TV, it’s different from the US drama that I love, and I don’t like it all that much. However, Hustle is amazing, it’s American in it’s production really, it’s had some off episodes and it’s sadly not being made anymore, but I can watch it and rewatch it and it’s just as good everytime. The lead actor for this show (except for season 4) was Adrian Lester.

Can you see where I’m going with this now? Yeah, my vote for the next James Bond goes to – Adrian Lester.

Continue reading →

Minipost – Marvel Agents of SHIELD

Posted on by

It’s Marvel in a TV Show.

That is enough said really. I love the movies, I really seriously do but they have one major flaw – they are movies. They only last for a couple of hours, if that, and that’s all you get. TV shows equal movie length in 3 episodes and everything after that is just more.

When I really get into something then I want to watch it all the time, but how many times can you rewatch the same movie, or the same set of movies in a short time frame? TV shows are longer, so you can feed the addition, you can fall into that universe for far longer. It’s still never enough, not for me, as once I’ve rewatched a lot then I remember everything and I do hunger for new material. However, once the show has been running a few seasons there’s usually enough episodes that the memory won’t be clear for all of them, and I can scroll through the description and find one that I want to watch.

So Marvel and TV show is enough to make me a fan and two episodes is not enough to form an opinion of the show. I suppose it’s the pilot and one episode which then means even less. Coulson is awesome though, I have been punching the air and screaming “Coulson Lives!” because, it’s Coulson and it’s just awesome.

Clearly they want the show to do well, as I imagine getting Samuel L Jackson in to do just one scene was expensive. It’s really cool though as with Coulson heading up the team, Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) guest starring in the pilot, and now Samuel L Jackson in the first episode, it really grounds it in the SHIELD we’re familiar with from the movies. It’s a TV show so it has a smaller budget, I’ve spotted the use of CGI to manufacture a few scenes already, whereas in the movies I don’t notice the fakeness.

Some of the episode composition is a bit jarring too. It’s a familiar format but I guess because it’s Marvel, it doesn’t feel like it should read like an NCIS episode, but it does, it beats just the same. I don’t know whether ultimately I’m going to like the show once the “marvel!” thing wears off. I guess it’s showing a normalcy to something that wasn’t normal, all we saw previously were the missions and the heroes, these are just regular agents and you get the normal work too. The SHIELD in the movies is very shiny and I guess it’s Black Widow, Hawkeye, Maria Hill etc. that I remember the scenes of when I think of SHIELD. Coulson is a field agent but obviously in a different department, as much as I really like Coulson he’s not in the same league as the others. I didn’t realise that I was consciously expecting a Black Widow kind of SHIELD until I was disappointed. I guess what I was hoping for was a cross between my favourite bits of Alias and Flashpoint. Top level espionage with a lot of professionalism.

It’s early days yet and it’s the first new TV show that I’ve watched in a long time. I’ve stuck with my old favourites for years, so at least it’s something different. Once I’ve seen more I can post a more indepth review, so until then.