Author: stevenattewell

There’s a lot of good things to be said about the MCU, but why can’t they make a good villain? I find their villains either forgettable or pathethic, the only exceptions I can think of are the Vulture and Hela. The X films at least nailed Magneto, except for his genocidal bit at the end of X2, and Stryker.

I think recent MCU has better villains than it’s given credit for – Killmonger, Vulture, Hela, Ego, Mordo, Zemo, Loki, Pierce – it’s bigger problem is that it keeps killing off villains so that they’re one-offs and can’t develop over time. 

As for the X-films….Magneto was good but they really over-used him, and Stryker is less interesting without his theological costumery. But how do you get Oscar Isaac, one of the best actors working today, and so completely waste him? And while I love Peter Dinklage’s work, I can’t say that his Trask was particularly engaging either. 

Why ‘Im Relieved Ta-Nehisi Coates Is Writing Captain America – Lawyers, Guns & Money

Although it’s been widely rumored for months, Marvel only lately announced that the next writer of Captain America will be Ta-Nehisi Coates. This is excellent news for a couple reasons: first, because after Nick Spencer’s disastrous run where Captain America became a Nazi, the book and the character badly need not so much a “Fresh …

Why ‘Im Relieved Ta-Nehisi Coates Is Writing Captain America – Lawyers, Guns & Money

I know you’ve made the argument that Westeros is not as economically or developmentally stagnant as a lot of people tend to view or portray it as being. But I’m curious if there are any indications of how Essos and Westeros’s perceptions of each other have shifted or just changed over time? It also seems to me as if there is an element on both continents which views Old Valyria the way Medieval and Rennaisance Europe viewed Ancient Greece and Rome, and I’d like to know your thoughts on that.

Great question!

I would definitely agree that there is a perception that Old Valyria was the height of human civilization, which gives people in Essos a sense of cultural superiority, similar to how Renaissance Italians lionized classical Greece and Rome. After all, at the same time that Cosimo de Medici was ruling Florence, the English were still fighting the Wars of the Roses…hence why the Renaissance is more of a place than a time.

As to how perceptions have changed over time, I think it’s hard to say, especially since the WOIAF didn’t give us much information about pre-Targaryen Westeros/Essos relations. 

Was it just Lady Stoneheart’s influence that turned the BwB from a popular anti-nobility Rebellion to an anti-Lannister/anti-Frey movement? Or was it the Red Wedding itself, where the Lannisters and Freys demonstrated contempt not only for the well being of the smallfolk, as the other participants in the Wot5K did, but contempt for the laws of gods and men as well? Would they have turned on the Freys/Lannisters even without Stoneheart?

It’s a bit complicated, because the BwB were always anti-Lannister (but anti-everyone else too), and because the Red Wedding knocked out the everyone else, so the Lannisters and Freys were left as the occupiers of the Riverlands. 

So even if Beric hadn’t resurrected LSH, I think the change would be more about methods and focus rather than the target.

Have you ever written about Deadpool (the movie) ? If not, maybe write something now?

I don’t know if there’s anything particularly deep to say about Deadpool, but I’ll do a short post:

  • First, Deadpool is an impressive feat of economy. While $58 million is a decent budget for most movies, blockbuster action movies, especially superhero movies, have budgets that are several multiples of that. So Deadpool had to do a lot to compensate for lack of spectacle with humor and style – the gag where Deadpool forgets his giant bag of guns in the taxi is a nod to that, because they couldn’t afford to do the big spectacle shootout that they wanted to do.
  • Second, Deadpool pulls off the humor. Deadpool’s particular style of humor – a weird blend of “edgy” sex and violence, fourth-wall-breaking and superhero satire, and randomness – is incredibly easy to get wrong and turn people off. (I tend to avoid Deadpool in the comics for this reason.) So it says a lot about the writing and Ryan Reynolds’ delivery that the humor works really consistently throughout the film.
  • Third, Deadpool actually has one of the best portrayals of sexuality and romantic relationships in superhero movies, strange as that is to say. Wade and Vanessa’s relationship is straightforwardly sex-positive and kinky and fun without being leering or exploitative, Wade’s decision to disappear to “protect” Vanessa is called out clearly as being the wrong move, and while Vanessa is made a bit of a damsel, the movie goes out of its way to avoid fridging and tragic backstories. 

Which do you prefer, the MCU films or the X-Men films, and why?

MCU has a much higher consistent rate of quality to the X-films, and that becomes all the more so if you look only at the main X-films, as Logan and Deadpool which are the two best atm have both been spinoffs, whereas the main films have always been rocky and have gotten even more so recently. 

It’s one of the reasons why I’m very curious to see how the MCU handles the X-Men, because I want to see what happens when creatives who understand and love ensemble superhero stuff get to start from scratch.