Month: October 2022

The day may come when we forsake ALL our physical media and resign ourselves to watching stuff on streaming, but it is not this day.  An hour of DVDs and broken players when the age of physical media comes crashing down!  But it is not this day.  This day we BUY!  I bid you stand, physical media collectors!  Okay, I’m done.  In all seriousness, streaming is the future of home video releases,  whether we like it or not.  It’s going to take time, but we’re starting to see some movies not get physical releases.  That’s why we’ve got those amazing Blu-Ray boutique shops like Arrow Video, Criterion, Shout! Factory, and Grindhouse Releasing.  I don’t think physical media will disappear entirely, but it is going to become very niche in the future.  But for now, I’ve got another haul for you folks and this one is another large one.  As always, when I pick up 4 or more discs, another episode of Recent Blu-Ray hauls will go up.  Like before, I’m going to start with the discs I got from the guys over at Horror Pack.  So, let’s dive in to what I brought home.

Horror Pack #4

It Stains The Sands Red

This one was quite the surprise.  I had heard about the film, but I dismissed it because it looked like just another zombie movie.  It Stains The Sands Red is anything but.  The approach to the genre in this film is quite different.  Yeah, it takes place during a massive zombie outbreak, but the focus is on two people.  One alive and one not.  The dynamic between Brittney Allen’s character and Juan Riedinger’s walking corpse is surprisingly compelling.  The zombie doesn’t get tired and is constantly chasing Brittney, but over the course of the first hour, you see a connection that Brittney forms between herself and her zombie stalker.  Granted, it’s a one-sided connection, but her journey through the Nevada desert forces her to confront her own personal demons.  It’s rare to see a character-driven zombie movie these days, and Sands delivers.  It’s still got some of that zombie action that a lot of people crave, but that’s not what it’s about.  It’s definitely worth checking out, and I think this is one of the best movies that Horror Pack has ever included.

Happy Birthday to Me

I had heard the name of this movie a while back, but I’d never seen anything on it until it showed up in the latest Horror Pack.  It’s an early 80s slasher movie that involves a girl about to celebrate her 18th birthday when her friends start dying one by one.  Because of a traumatic accident in her past, Ginny begins to suspect that it could be HER that’s killing her friends.  If you want a movie that’s all about red herrings, Happy Birthday to Me is loaded with them.  It’s a surprisingly clever little slasher.  It doesn’t always work, but I ended up being surprised at the end of the film, so I guess it worked.  While the kills aren’t as gory as what we see today, they’re still pretty effective.  My only issue is that the movie runs about 10 minutes too long.  It starts Melissa Sue Anderson of Little House on the Prairie fame as Ginny.  Not bad.

Obsidian

THIS is October’s exclusive from Horror Pack.  These particular selections are very low-budget indie horror movies.  I understand that movies are difficult to make, especially good ones, but Obsidian is not good.  It centers around a group of test subjects for a medical drug that’s supposed to help them heal from their past injuries, only for really strange things to start happening.  I do have an appreciation for the low-budget indie scene.  I really do, but the ones that Horror Pack has included lately haven’t been working for me, with the exception of Woman in the Chair.  The concept for Obsidian is interesting, but the character are all incredibly unlikable, so I’m not particularly willing to connect with them.  I’m glad I have it, and I want these film-makers to succeed, but what I’ve seen so far has been less than impressive.

Paramount Activity 3

Second month in a row, I get a movie that I already own.  Before September, I had never owned any of the Paranormal Activity movies.  I felt it was just another found-footage gimmicky movie like The Blair Witch Project.  After seeing Blair Witch for the first time a couple of years ago, I finally understood why the found-footage genre became as popular as it did.  The Paranormal Activity films started coming out in 2009.  The first movie was really good, but the following movies were constantly relying on the same formula that made the original film so good.  I don’t hate these movies.  In fact, I actually enjoy them quite a bit.  It’s just a concept that got stretched to far.

Regular Blu-Ray Haul

Paranormal Activity 6 Movie Collection+Next of Kin

Movies about demonic possession are nothing new.  The greatest demonic possession film of all time, The Exorcist has yet to be topped.  But nobody had attempted to do one of these movie using the found-footage technique.  Even though the film is clearly fiction, it felt real.  It’s incredibly creepy.  When the first film became a smash hit, it opened the floodgates of the found-footage genre.  Everybody was cashing in on this phenomenon.  Some of it was great, most of it was crap.  The sequels to Paranormal Activity kind of went off the rails after the third movie, but I can understand why people really liked these movies.  So, after I got Paranormal Activity 2 in last month’s Horror Pack, I decided to buy the rest of them.  So, I got the rest of them, including the straight-to-streaming Next of Kin.  I picked up the 6-movie collection, which was the first 6 movies.  Next of Kin felt more disconnected with the series and more of its own thing.  Still enjoyed it though.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween and Halloween II Theatrical Cuts

I had already owned Rob Zombie’s Halloween on DVD, but it was the unrated cut, which had a version of Myers escaping the mental hospital where two orderlies were sexually assaulting one of the female inmates.  It was completely unnecessary and shocking for the sake of being shocking.  Aside from that, Rob Zombie’s movie was surprisingly effective.  It had a great cast that included Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Loomis(perfect casting in my opinion), Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode, and Tyler Mane as the adult Michael Myers.  Tyler Mane was a beast in this movie, and incredibly intimidating.  I didn’t like the unrated version of the second film, because it made the character of Laurie Strode incredibly unlikable, and I just wasn’t going for it.  I managed to find a collection of these movies that were only the theatrical releases.  It’s rare, because the only versions available are the unrated, so I got lucky.  I’ve always like Rob Zombie as a director, and I actually enjoy the theatrical versions of his Halloween films better than the unrated versions.

Croc!

While I absolutely love the big budget horror movies, sometimes I just want to watch an Asylum-style movie.  What is The Asylum?  The Asylum is a production company that makes “mock-busters.”  These are basically extremely low-budget versions of mainstream horror and science fiction movies.  They’re hilarious.  Croc! is very much in the same silly style.  The acting is bad, the CGI is awful, and most of the kills are off-screen, but it’s just a goofy fucking movie.  I love my creature features, no matter how bad they may be.

Nope

Nope is the third movie by Jordan Peele, following Us and Get out.  Both of which I found to be really good.  Nope is Peele’s take on the whole alien abduction idea in science fiction, even though the film plays out more like a thriller than a horror film.  There are some horrific moments, especially during a rainstorm.  The tension is crazy.  It’s got some pretty good performances and the social commentary is biting.  The big issue is that the movie starts off really slow, and runs almost too long.  Still, it’s one that I actually recommend, especially if you’re a fan of Peele’s first two movies.

The Lost Continent

Ah, Hammer Horror.  Most of Hammer’s stuff is played pretty seriously, but The Lost Continent is so insane that you can’t really take it seriously.  Man-eating sea-weed?  Giant squid-like monsters and scorpions?  The Spanish Inquisition?!  The first hour of the movie is kind of a straight-forward action drama, but when they hit the Sargasso Sea, that’s when the film gloriously goes off the rails, and I love it.  Yeah, the acting’s not great, and some of the effects aren’t that good either, but it’s all done practically or with miniatures.  They don’t make them like this anymore.

Blade of the 47 Ronin

The story of the Akō Vendetta is one of the most well-known stories to come out of Japan in the last 400 years.  It was a story about 47 samurai warrior who set out to avenge their fallen master.  The story’s been adapted many times, but the 2013 film with Keanu Reeves may be one of the more infamous ones.  The film-makers decided to throw in a bunch of fantastical and supernatural elements into the movie.  It didn’t really work.  The story didn’t need all that to be compelling and it was more of a distraction.  I guess somebody thought it was a good idea to make a sequel and set in modern Budapest.  The story is so ridiculous, I’m not even going to try and describe it.  The CGI is awful and the acting is…brutal.  What this movie has going for it is the action sequences.  Those are actually pretty good and seeing Mark Dacascos slice people up with a katana is awesome.

Cyborg

The post-apocalyptic genre was pretty much in vogue during the 80s with movies like The Road Warrior and Escape from New York.  Cyborg is not one of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s best movies, but it’s one of my favorites.  At 86 minutes, it moves pretty quickly and has an amazing villain with Vincent Klyn’s Fender.  The action is pretty decent and Van Damme is at his physical peak here, so he’s pretty good.  Ignore the terrible wig that he wears in the movie, though.  Some of the stop-motion effects are interesting, if dated.  There is a director’s cut out there somewhere, but it hasn’t been made available to the general public, which is a shame, because I would love to see it.

Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight

Tales From the Crypt.  It was one of the most interesting shows to hit the airwave during late 80s and early 90s.  It lasted 7 seasons and featured one of horror’s most iconic figures: The Cryptkeeper, who was voiced by John Kassir.  It was incredibly over-the-top show.  1995 saw the release of the first movie under the Tales From the Crypt banner: Demon Knight.  The horror movies during the 90s were something else.  There really wasn’t a whole lot in the way of social commentary, but a lot of them were just ridiculous and gory fun.  Demon Knight featured one of the most iconic villains with Billy Zane’s demonic Collector.  He was so good in this movie, that it defined his career as an actor.  You also had William Sadler, CCH Pounder, Dick Miller, Thomas Haden Church, and an early performance from Jada Pinkett-Smith.  It’s just a good time.

Terrifier

I don’t like clowns.  It’s not that I find them scary, I don’t.  I just hate them.  I’ve never found them funny or entertaining.  Maybe I’ll do a Best or Worst Clowns list at some point.  That said, Pennywise the clown from  It is one of the most terrifying clowns in cinema, whether it’s Tim Curry’s version from 1990 or Bill Skarsgard’s character from the 2017-2019 movies.  He’s a creepy fucker.  Well, Art the Clown gives Pennywise a run for his money in Terrifier.  This clown is particularly savage.  Terrifier isn’t a particularly smart film, but holy shit this sucker is violent.  Now, some people accuse this film of misogyny because the character is targeting female victims, but that’s been happening for decades in horror movies.  This is just a modern take on all that.  But now, we’ve got a sequel out there that’s make all sorts of noise that I want to see.  If you like brutal and gory slashers like I do, Terrifier is right up your alley.

Well, that’s my haul since last month.  It’s a bit of a doozy, but hey, as a physical media collector, I have no regrets.  None.  Whatsoever.  PHYSICAL MEDIA FOREVER!!

Released: October 2022

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Run Time: 124 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Distributor: Warner Bros./New Line Cinema

Genre: Action/Sci-Fi

Cast:
Dwayne Johnson: Black Adam
Aldis Hodge: Hawkman
Pierce Brosnan: Doctor Fate
Noah Centineo: Atom Smasher
Sarah Shahi: Adrianna Tomaz
Quintessa Swindell: Cyclone
Marwan Kenzari: Ishmael
Bodhi Sabongui: Amon Tomaz

I’m a huge superhero movie fan.  Seriously.  Don’t act so surprised.  I’ve been a huge fan of this particular genre since I first saw Superman: The Movie.  Then Tim Burton’s Batman came along, and eventually we got movies like Blade, X-Men, Iron Man, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman.  The list goes on.  You should see my Blu-Ray collection.  I’ve got most of the DCEU movies and Marvel movies on Blu-Ray.  So, yeah, I’m a bit of a fan.  But at some point, I’ve started getting burned out on superheroes because a lot of the movies have been almost carbon copies of  each other.  They tend to follow very similar patterns, so you know what’s coming.  Very rarely, does the genre shake things up with films like Logan or Deadpool.  These are the exceptions, not the rule.  It’s becoming harder and harder to separate one superhero film from another despite different characters and actors.  So, where does a movie like Black Adam fit into all of this?  Sadly, nothing much more than generic, if it wasn’t for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

The story of Black Adam is centered around a 5,000 year-old demigod named Dwayne Johnson, sorry, Teth Adam.  He’s been asleep for 5,000 years after taking revenge for the murder of his family by using magic.  He’s awakened and saves the life of one Adrianna Tomez, who has been looking for a specific crown that grants its wearer the ability to command the legions of Hell.  But he faces stiff opposition from the Justice Society of America with Hawkman in the lead and Doctor Fate. Dwayne Johnson’s been trying to get this movie made for almost 15 years, and this is the best that Warner Bros. has got for this character?  It’s about as generic a story as you can get that’s built around Dwayne Johnson.  It’s about as straight-forward as it gets when it comes to comic-book movies, and audiences are generally smarter than film-makers think.  All you need to know about the story of Black Adam is that Adam’s pissed and he goes around zapping fools with lightening like he’s Darth Sidious.  That’s pretty much the gist of the whole thing.  Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, but the genre has evolved since the early 00’s.  At least, I thought they did.

I’m going to tell you right now: The only reason that Black Adam works on ANY level at all is because of Dwayne Johnson.  This has been a personal project for him for quite some time, and it does show.  A lot of the focus of the movie is on his character, who is the most interesting character out of all them.  Dwayne’s performance is exactly what you would expect from him.  His performance is magnetic.  He’s clearly having the time of his life here.  Unlike Shazam!, Johnson didn’t need a padded suit.  He’s built like a tank.  He handles the physicality just as well as the quips.  Pierce Brosnan shines as Doctor Fate.  This character is a sorcerer who can see people’s fates.  Brosnan has always been a fantastic actor, and he’s fantastic here.  Most of the actors do pretty well, except for one: Bodhi Sabongui as Amon, the kid.  Never before have I wanted to see a kid get obliterated.  I was secretly hoping that Adam would zap Amon out of existence.  He’s incredibly irritating, and the performance by Bodhi is just as bad.  It’s flat and uninteresting.  In fact, it was downright cringe-worthy, and I hate using that term.  Jar Jar Binks was far more tolerable.

If all you’re looking for is action, this movie’s got it in spades, and a lot of it is actually really cool, especially when Adam’s tearing things up with his lightening bolts.  When he’s not vaporing bad guys with lightening.  The problem here, is that it’s nothing that you haven’t seen before.  It also feels like a 90s action movie at times.  If I really wanted a throwback, I would go back and watch a 90s action movie.  They’re quite good, and surprisingly a lot smarter than what we’ve got here.  Another issue is that the entire movie is strung together by action sequences.  There’s very little time to actually breathe and take in what’s happened.  When you’re constantly on the move like this movie, it gets exhausting after a while.  Even at two hours, it’s a little much.  That said, a lot of the visual effects are pretty impressive.  Black Adam’s lightening effects are really good.  They’re enough to put Emperor Palpatine to shame.  Some of the CGI is not great, especially on the main villain.  Meh, is all I can say about that.  But I do like the looks of Doctor Fate and Hawkman.  They look great.  The cinematography is also pretty damned good.  We can see what’s going on and there’s really no shaky-cam.  Any movie that avoids shaky-cam gets bonus points in my book.

It’s not the first time that a movie’s been built around a specific movie star.  It happens all the time.  In the 80s, it was all about Stallone and Schwarzenegger.  During the 90s, it was Bruce Willis and Jean-Claude Van Damme.  It’s almost common practice, especially in action movies.  A lot of the problems that I have with Black Adam obviously come from a bad script, but the direction is also a huge part of the problem.  I happen to like Jaume Collet-Serra as a director.  He directed one of my favorite slasher movies, the House of Wax 2005 remake.  He’s really good at B-level movies.  When it comes to big-budget blockbusters, however, he’s out of his league, especially with someone as intelligent and magnetic as Dwayne Johnson.  I don’t think Black Adam is a complete waste of time.  Far from it.  It moves quickly, while leaving you breathless by the end, but it knows what it is.  Obviously, a lot of people are enjoying the hell out of the movie, because the audience rating is currently sitting at 90 percent.  People are loving it, and that’s awesome.  I just think Black Adam could and should have been so much more.  It’s an intriguing character and his relationship to the other characters in the DC universe is crazy.  Sometimes he’s a villain, sometimes he’s a hero.  You never can tell with this guy.  If nothing else, Black Adam points to some really exciting possibilities with the JSA and a certain someone who has been on the sidelines for far too long.  I’m not big on the movie as it stands, but where it’s going in the DCEU?  Sign me up.  Also, Black Adam is a hell of a lot better than Thor: Love and Thunder.  That’s right, I said it.  No backsies.

Released: October 2022

Director: David Bruckner

Rated R

Run Time: 121 Minutes

Genre: Horror

Distributor: Hulu

Cast:
Odessa A’zion: Riley
Jamie Clayton: The Priest
Adam Faison: Colin
Drew Starkey: Trevor
Brandon Flynn: Matt
Aofie Hinds: Nora
Jason Liles: The Chatterer
Yinka Olorunnife: The Weeper
Selina Lo: The Gasp
Zachary Hing: The Asphyx
Goran Visnjic: Voight

Behind my left shoulder on a black shelf lies The Scarlet Box.  What is that, you ask?  It is the collection of the first 3 Hellraiser movies on Blu-Ray.  Not only does the box include the movies themselves, but a great deal of extra stuff including booklets, cards, and even more behind-the-scenes details.  It was released by Arrow Video some years ago.  It’s a very limited edition boxed set, and probably my favorite.  I bought it for about 60-70 bucks from Walmart Online, and had it delivered to my local store.  Just for fun, I decided to look at what the boxed set costs NOW, and the highest I’ve seen is close to 500 bucks.  The lowest? Maybe about 225.  Why do I bring up The Scarlet Box?  Because I’m a huge fan of Hellraiser, obviously.  Especially the first two movies.  Sadly, the franchise started going downhill with number 3 and 4, and would end up going straight to video starting with Hellraiser: Inferno, which I will defend to the death as a not-so-terrible movie.  The last film in the franchise, Judgment was a huge step back in the right direction, but the movies before that and after number 5 were…awful, especially Revelations.

Hellraiser, which is based on Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart, follows Riley, a young woman struggling with addiction when she and her boyfriend discover a mysterious puzzle box hidden n a safe tucked away in a cargo container.  Upon solving this box, mysterious beings begin to show up as Riley seems to hallucinate.  These creatures are Cenobites, beings from another dimension that represent forbidden pleasures.  The leader of these creatures is The Priest, a female Cenobite that has pins in her head.  While the original film was essentially about a broken family and a broken marriage, addiction is the focus of this story.  It’s not just addiction to painkillers or other drugs, but also addiction to the flesh, to power, or to forbidden knowledge.  You see that with time the box changes shape.  The story in this movie stands apart from all the other movies.  There really is no connection outside of certain key elements that define Hellraiser: Pinhead, the Lament Configuration puzzle box and the other Cenobites.  But you also have this one character that searched for ultimate pleasure only to experience unrelenting pain.  I’m amazed at how good this story is.  I wouldn’t put it on the same level as the original two films, but it’s infinitely better than all the others.

This new Hellraiser changes things up quite a bit, especially in the lore.  In the previous films, the Lament Configuration was simply the name of the puzzle box that summoned the demons.  In this new picture, the Lament Configuration is one of several different shapes that the box takes with each victim, and that is another change.  Each configuration requires a sacrifice made in blood when the configuration is solved by a small blade that sticks out from the box.  As a result, the victim begins feeling woozy as if from some kind of high, but the world around them changes as walls open revealing other-worldly hallways.  This is a visually stunning film.  It feels different and it looks different.  I really dig the new design of the box and the way it changes forms.  It’s very mechanical.  The Cenobites on the other hand, have a more organic look to them.  In the original film series, these demons were clad in black leather fetish-wear with horrific make-up.  The “clothing” on these new beasts is basically the result of extreme torture.  I really like the look of the new Pinhead.  She’s pretty intimidating.  She’s the best Pinhead the franchise has had since Doug Bradley’s iconic performance in the original films.

The acting in the film is pretty good.  Odessa A’zion is pretty good as the drug-addicted Riley.  Goran Visnjic is basically the film’s “villain” as it were.  He plays a rich guy that’s obsessed with the occult and ends up getting more than he bargained for when he tricks people into solving the puzzle box.  But the real question that fans had on their minds was who was playing the new Pinhead and was she going to be any good?  Jamie Clayton is the new Pinhead and YES, she’s fantastic.  Most of the side-characters though, are pretty forgettable and end up being demon-fodder.  From a visual standpoint, Hellraiser is extraordinary.  I’d already mentioned some of the costume and box designs above, but the sets are also incredible.  It looks like a lot of the shifting walls and rooms were done practically, but I’m sure that CGI was used to enhance the atmosphere at certain points.  There is some obvious CGI being used, but it’s done in such a way that doesn’t feel out of place.  If there’s one huge complaint about this movie that I’ve got is that it’s not gratuitous as a Hellraiser movie needs to be.  The original film was an oozing gore-fest, but when you’re dealing with S&M-themed demons, it kind of goes with the territory.  That’s not to say that this movie isn’t gory.  It really is, but it feels restrained to a certain a degree.  The musical score by Ben Lovett is really good.  He obviously incorporates a good deal of Christopher Young’s themes into this movie and it really amplifies the atmosphere.

Clive Barker spent the better part of 14 years trying to get a new Hellraiser film off the ground.  Unfortunately, Dimension Studios, under the umbrella of The Weinstein Company, weren’t really having it, as the majority of Hellraiser films were made strictly to maintain the rights to the franchise.  When it was announced that 20th Century Studios/Disney had obtained the rights to Hellraiser, I was utterly shocked.  We were finally going to get the remake that was promised.  Was the final film the movie that was promised?  Not quite, but it’s still an achievement.  It looks great, and it feels like a proper Hellraiser movie.  That’s because the people involved were more interested in respecting the franchise rather than keeping the rights.  Dave Bruckner and David S. Goyer have delivered a movie that I think should satisfy most Hellraiser fans.  I think they did Clive Barker proud and Doug Bradley himself has said that really likes what they did with Pinhead.  It’s not a perfect movie, but I really enjoyed it.  The fact that we have new really good movies in both the Predator and Hellraiser franchises, is amazing.  Hulu’s been killing it lately, and I hope that we get more good Hellraiser movies, because why wouldn’t that be awesome?  So, yeah, I definitely recommend this movie to horror fans.  2022 has been pretty good for horror so far, and we’ve still got two and a half months to go.  This genre has such sights to show you.

After the release of Thor: Love and Thunder, I postulated that I would be stepping away from the Marvel’s MCU.  I also said that after Avengers: Endgame, because what else was going to be as epic as the Infinity Saga?  Well, with Phase 4, they’re now leaning heavily into the Multiverse.  So much so, that they’ve labeled next couple of phases as the Multiverse Saga.  I’m going to be honest:  When I first saw Love and Thunder, I enjoyed it to a certain extent, and my review reflects that, but after a couple of months thinking about it, the worse the movie gets.  It’s not the only movie during Phase 4 that I’ve had a problem with.  The phase started with a poorly timed release of Black Widow which really didn’t need to happen, especially since we know what happened to Natasha Romonoff in Endgame.  Eternals I liked, but it was very long.  Shang-Chi was the Marvel equivalent of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and it was awesome.  Spider-Man: No Way Home was also great.  While I really enjoyed Multiverse of Madness, the latest Doctor Strange movie didn’t really blow my socks off.  As far as the shows go on Disney Plus, I haven’t been interested in any of them.  I tried watching them, but they weren’t working for me.  This has been one of the major problems with Phase 4: The quality of projects during this phase has been all over the place.  Not only that, there’s been a lot of stuff coming out that really don’t feel connected to one another.  What made the Infinity Saga work was the level of focus for those movies.  As soon as the first Avengers film hit the screen, the audience and comic book fans knew exactly where these movies were leading us: To Infinity War.  Honestly, the MCU has been one of the most ambitious undertakings in movie history.  Nothing like it has ever happened before.

But with Phase 4, that focus seems to have been lost.  Kevin Feige had come out and said that by the end of Phase 4, we would know where this was all heading.  Maybe we’ll find that out with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.  I don’t know.  Marvel’s facing some serious issues right now.  It was recently reported by Hollywood Reporter that the upcoming movie Blade just lost it’s director, Bassam Tariq.  Changing of directors happens more often than you would think, whether it’s due to “creative differences” or “scheduling conflicts.”  It happens a lot.  But for a movie like Blade to lose its director mere weeks before filming is supposed to begin is really bad news.  There’s a reason why there was no announcement for Blade at Disney’s D23 event.  This was why.  What does this mean for the movie?  It means the movie’s going to be delayed.  You can’t just bring in a new director to pick up the reins and move forward with it.  The new director needs time to get everything in order and in place for filming to begin.  They have to get familiar with the script and everything that’s been put into place.  You can’t do that in just 2 months when the movie was slated to start shooting.  That brings us to another problem:  It’s also been reported by multiple sources including CBR that there are serious problems with the script.  If the reports are accurate, it sounds like the script is incredibly weak with lackluster action sequences.  Enough so that Mahershala Ali is reportedly getting incredibly frustrated.  Mr. Ali is supposed to be playing the film’s titular character.  If this is true, that means the script will have to undergo some serious changes to bring it up to where it needs to be.  That means the film will no longer make it’s 2023 release date.  Since this movie will most likely be delayed, it’s reasonable to assume that a number of upcoming movies will also be delayed, with the exception of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as that movie’s already in the can.  This is an incredibly bad look for Marvel.

A lot of people were worrying about Marvel trying to do too much at once, and it looks like that’s what’s happening.  The cracks are beginning to form.  I saw this coming a mile away with Love and Thunder.  That movie was so bad that I refuse to buy the Blu-Ray, making it the first MCU movie that I don’t want in my collection.  Again, not everything in Phase 4 is awful.  There’s some really good stuff in here, but the way Marvel’s been ramping up projects has got Kevin Feige being stretched to the absolute limit.  My respect for Mr. Feige is unending, but he IS only human.  There’s only so much that he can do.  All this is part of the reason why I’ve tried to step away from the MCU.  I’m looking forward to Black Panther 2, as it looks really good, and I can’t wait to see how they address Chadwick Boseman’s passing as King T’Challa.  The other Marvel project that I’m really looking forward to seeing is Deadpool 3.  Earlier this week, Ryan Reynolds announced the release date of the film as well as the inclusion of one Hugh Jackman as the legendary Wolverine for one more adventure.  But those two movies are really all that I want to see from Marvel right now.  Marvel’s been making the mistakes that Warner Bros. and DC have been making with their Snyderverse.  Right now, a lot of this seems to be coming from Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s lack of ability and understanding of what makes movies work.  He’s taken control away from the creatives and handed it over to corporate moneymen.  We are now seeing the results, which I don’t think are good.  Honestly, I would not be surprised if we found out that either Blade gets canceled or that they end up finding somebody else to play the character, because Ali might not stick around.  He’s contractually obligated to, but he’s been passing up projects left and right waiting for Blade to start filming.  There is some serious mismanagement going on at Marvel and it needs to get sorted out, pronto.