The Dark Herald Recommends: Shazam Fury of the Gods

So bad you’ll be begging for James Gunn reboot… - The Daily Beast In a drama this dumb and unaware, the buffed-up makeover seems like an insult to the same “inadequate” outsiders and weedy minorities the film pretends to champion… - Deadline Too derivative from previous superhero films and too goofy to present believable characters… - Don’t Care A sequel whose goofiness extends not only to its lame humor but its convoluted and senseless plot… -NY Times Bombastic and cacophonous, a relentlessly overstimulating carnival that...

Read more...

FLASH: VICTORIA ALONSO IS OUT AT MARVEL

I'm trying to find my jaw. It was on the floor here somewhere. Apparently, Iger is still capable of making a good business decision... In times of great crisis anyway. He needed to blame someone for the disaster they are in at Marvel and for once he chose the right culprit. From That Park Place: "Victoria Alonso, the longtime and high-profile Marvel Studios executive whose time with the company dates back to the first Iron Man, has left the studio, multiple sources tell The...

Read more...

Place Your Bets

Do you remember when I told you that the current plan for the new Star Wars movie was to star the following? Rey Chewbacca R2-D2 Baby Yoda And As Yet Unnamed Character to be Introduced in the Disney + Star Wars Show? Yeah. For those you lucky enough to not watch it, this was in most of the last episode. That's Katie O'Brien. Martial arts instructor, former cop, body builder and a lesbian with a wife. Disney is suddeny injecting her into everything and giving her...

Read more...

Marvel Doubles Down on Rick and Morty Writers

This artwork is so bad. Rick and Morty is a cartoon for grownups. It’s okay I guess, but it’s a cartoon for grownups and frankly a pretty overrated one.  It’s not going to be remembered alongside the Simpsons, South Park or even Venture Brothers.  And you can just forget about it being held up to any halfway-decent anime title.  For those of you who have never seen it, don’t bother it’s gone way downhill in recent years but at its height, it was basically a...

Read more...

The Antman 3 Leak

There is enough buzz about this that I felt I should say something about it. Here are the facts. About a month before Antman and the Wasp: Quantomania was released there was a script leak for it on Reddit. The script in question was a subtitle script. The thing the studio sends to foreign distributors so they can insert the subtitles in their country's language. The language in question was Portuguese, which all but guarantees that the leaker is...

Read more...

Disney In Freefall (Part 2: Marvel)

So much wasted franchise in one picture Antman and the Wasp Quantomania is officially a disaster. Its third-weekend box office take is so anemic you’d think it was attacked by a vampire and after a manner of speaking, it was.   Antman 3 will not break the $500 million mark in theaters.  Every Disney Marvel movie after Black Widow crashed on takeoff, has lost money.  Shang Chi, The Eternals, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Wakanda Forever and now Antman and Wasp Quantomania.  The trajectory of...

Read more...

Disney in Free Fall (Part One: Star Wars)

The second episode of The Mandalorian aired last Wednesday and I have yet to hear a peep out of Fort Mickey.  Whenever the streamer studios have one of their exceedingly rare wins they screech it from the rooftops.  HBOmax pounded its chest about House of the Dragon and The Last of Us.  Paramount struts around bragging about Yellowstone’s numbers.  Even Amazon felt the need to brag when The Rings of Power debuted (the numbers were a fantasy, but they felt the need to brag...

Read more...

Arkhaven Spotlight: The Golden Age

My loyal Darklings know that their herald is not given to false or indeed any kind of modesty whatsoever. It is alien to my nature. I'm just not good at it and it's usually embarrassing for all involved when I try. Painful self assessment is another matter entirely. I can do that just fine. Consequently, when I say that John C. Wright leaves me so far in the dust as a writer that the dust has long settled, been...

Read more...

Book Discussion: The Siege of the Black Citadel

When a nation forgets her skill in war, when her religion becomes a mockery, when the whole nation becomes a nation of money-grabbers, then the wild tribes, the barbarians drive in... Who will our invaders be? From whence will they come? -Robert E. Howard I was born into a world where an average boy’s upbringing would be viewed as terrifyingly savage by today’s standards.  It was a world without the leash and safety net of a cell phone.  We rode gravel byways on our...

Read more...