Massive Property Damage for Your Entertainment - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

    Wotta week!
     Busy, then a retroactive COVID exposure knocked one of my techs out into quarantine protocols and so threw my schedule into disarray, and that wasn't a paragon of order to start with. I'm on two lists for my vaccine, but nothing's been scheduled as yet. Here in Pennsylvania it seems that all of the people I know who've managed to be vaccinated so far did so because of a family connection or someone with a lot of free time jockeying, jockeying, jockeying for an open spot using a pharmacy link. I'll get mine as soon as someone else decides I can.
     Anyway, a briefer post this week, and both juvenile and narrow of interest, but that's life.
     Arriving on Amazon Prime today are the first three, hour-long episodes* of their latest comics-to-screen adaptation: Invincible. This is based on the comic by Robert Kirkman, most widely known as the creator of The Walking Dead.

     This is an eight-episode first season of an animated series, and they're hoping it'll ring some of the same bells that the irreverent The Boys has. This is a comics series I've never made the time for.  I think Kirkman and I would be great friends, or at least strongly sympatico comics fans, but most of his comics work in the superhero genre has been so derivative that it reads like a pastiche of elements I can't help but recall having seen elsewhere, where they were generally much more masterfully handled. We're obviously both fans of many of the same genre classics.
     Despite the worst implications of the above, oddly enough, I'm looking forward to this adaptation. Despite not having read it, I know what the big plot twist is, but it's a fairly good one. I've no sense of the pacing as yet, so I'm hoping the build-up isn't too lengthy.
     The voice talent is fairly impressive, with former Walking Dead player Steven Yeun playing the lead, and J.K. Simmons playing Omni-Man, his father. Other voices include Sandra Oh, Gillian Jacobs, Mark Hamill, Seth Rogen, Zachary Quinto, Zazie Beetz, Walton Goggins, Clancy Brown, Jon Hamm and Jason Roiland. The list really does go on from there.
     The main warning I'd give anyone thinking of looking at this is that it's ultimately not for children. Most of the first episode would work fairly well for all ages if one can manage fantasy levels of viloence, but before the credits roll it gets gory. I've only watched the first one, so I don't know what else may be lurking.
     So, that'll be three episodes this week, then one per week through April 30th. Through the 23rd that'll mean I have two comics-derived series appearing on Fridays, the other being Disney +'s (so far, wonderful) Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which will almost without a doubt remain the one I'm more interested in. (And this week's episode is another good one.)
     While on Amazon Prime, I want to take a moment to mention that I did eventually get around to watching Eddie Murphy's sequel film, Coming 2 America, which I had briefly mentioned back in February, a couple weeks before it debuted. I settled in and watched it, with a less biased eye than I would have earlier, and decided that it was done much better than I'd feared it would be. My late wife was a fan of the first movie, and I think she would have enjoyed this follow-up, on the whole.
     Next Wednesday, March 31st, HBO Max will be bringing us more landscape-demolishing spectacle with Godzilla vs Kong, the latest of Warner's films to get their pandemic treatment of simultaneous release in theaters and on their streaming service.

     For me, that's just popcorn fare, and that's fine. To ask much more of giant, make-believe monsters is to ask too much.
     In the meantime, look through HBO Max's holdings if you want to watch most of the Toho original Godzilla (including both the Japanese original and the slightly shorter, Americanized version with Raymond Burr, both from 1954) and related monster films, or either the 1933 original or 1976 remake of King Kong. Those and more are there.
     Oh! Looking ahead to August, and another simultaneous theatrical and HBO Max release, the first trailer for James Gunn's Suicide Squad dropped today. Some entertaining destruction and mayhem there.

     Just over four months away, but once we're there that'll seem like no time at all.
     So, until next week, stay well, take care and find some enjoyment where you can.   -- Mike

* Okay, another descriptor that reveals more about the age and even nationality of the one writing it. We older folks are used to thinking of everything in terms of what format it would run in on commercial tv. The actual run time of the first three episodes are 47, 44, and 42 minutes, respectively. Hopefully that's not a trend.