Superhero madness

As I've said before I've only gotten into comic books/graphic novels in recent years but I've been a fan of superhero movies since the first spider-man. The fact is now we are really spoilt for choice in terms of superhero movies with some people complaining that there are too many but I don't think this is the case, if people were tired of them they would stop going to the cinema to see them. Although the Avengers was great and it definitely deserved its success it has resulted in other studios seemingly rushing to create their own shared universes.

Marvel are still showing how everyone else it is done, they had a plan and they've stuck to it, Iron Man was basically unknown outside of the comics and yet it is one of the best Marvel movies to date and jump started phase one.  The Avengers movie was something that had never been done before, having a group of superheros who had each had featured in individual movies appear in one movie together and it was a huge success. We are already two movies into Phase 2 with Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World. Captain America: The Winter soldier is up next and it looks great. Surprisingly Marvel have gone with Guardians of the Galaxy as their final movie before the Avengers 2, again they are a group that are virtually unknown outside of the comics. They are definitely a bit more out there with a tree alien and a talking racoon on the team but the first trailer has definitely gotten me excited for it. Personally I thought that some of the Phase 1 movies were missing something and Iron Man 2 was just ok but they were still great movies and they didn't exactly have much competition. I think Phase 2 has been pretty awesome so far. They've already announced that Ant-man will start Phase 3 again a character who isn't well known. In terms of TV well I haven't watched Agents of SHIELD in ages since channel 4 have decided to delay showing the second half of the season so UK viewers don't have to endure another gap later on...Its improved slightly but its still just ok. Marvel have also announced a bunch of netflix exclusive shows: Dardevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones who will then team up in a Defenders series. This could be pretty awesome but netflix exclusivity is annoying.

Cosmic Avengers aka the Guardians of the Galaxy

DC on the other hand despite being Marvel's main "rival" have only just started to build a shared universe with Man of Steel. They were short sighted in that they let Nolan make a closed Batman trilogy (albeit a very successful one) which was a bit too grounded i.e. no killer croc, mr freeze, joker just wore makeup etc. so it wasn't exactly a world which you could imagine guys like superman and green lantern fitting in. Also they released the abomination that is Green Lantern, a movie with almost no redeeming qualities and one not fit to start or even be part of a shared movie universe. I really enjoyed Man of Steel and I think a lot of the criticism against it was groundless, especially with a lot of people seemingly unable to get over the fact that it was not like the Christopher Reeve movies, conveniently forgetting that Superman 3 and 4 weren't that great and Superman Returns tried to do the same thing and was poor. The problem is now they seem to be rushing with the sequel to Man of Steel not only featuring Batman but Wonder Woman and potentially other members of the Justice League as well. Instead of building up to a Justice League movie from individual movies they seem to be doing the opposite with this next movie apparently leading into a Justice League movie and then individual movies. They also seem to be going the unconvential route in terms of casting, of course Ben Affleck was not exactly a popular choice for Batman, then Gal Gadot who looks in need of a good square meal as Wonder Woman, most recently they've cast Jessie Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. He wouldn't exactly be my first choice for Lex I just hope he is a bit more complex than Kevin Spacey's Lex in Superman Returns who was just boring. DC are doing better on the TV side of things, Arrow season 2 has definitely been a step up from season 1. They have really ramped things up, it will be interesting to see if the Flash spin-off can be just as good.

"What do you mean I have to share my next movie with Batman and Wonder Woman?"

Now I previously made my dissatisfaction with the amazing spider-man clear but after watching it for a second time I enjoyed it slightly more but I still think it has a lot of things wrong with it. Unfortunately the trailer for the sequel doesn't excite me either, for one thing it looks to have too many bad guys, the effects don't look that great and the first trailer effectively spoils the plot of the movie which is rather annoying. Sony have already announced two more sequels as well as Venom and sinister six spin-offs, at least they are being slightly original by having a movie featuring a group of villains as the main characters. Frankly I'm annoyed at Sony for rushing the first amazing spider-man reboot rather than letting the movie rights revert to Marvel, on the other hand I'm annoyed at Marvel for ever selling the rights in the first place and/or not buying them back or doing a deal with Sony so that they could have Spider-man as part of the Marvel movie universe.

Doesn't look like a video game at all....

Marvel also sold the rights to X-men and Fantastic Four to Fox which I don't mind so much. I haven't seen the Wolverine or X-men origins:Wolverine (which is meant to be pretty bad) but I have seen all the other X-men films. The next film is called Days of Future Past and will combine the cast from X-men First Class and the old X-men trilogy which is pretty cool. People seem to think it is great that Bryan Singer is back to direct it but tbh I thought the first two X-men movies were just ok and he left to do Superman Returns resulting in a new director giving us the mess that was X-men 3. He also cast the actor who plays Cyclops in Superman Returns meaning that he had to be messily killed off in of X-men 3 despite being one of the main characters. Despite the fact that this next movie isn't even out yet they have already announced a sequel as well as adding the Fantastic Four into the X-men movie universe with their new reboot.

On one hand the sentinels look stupid, on the other it features Peter Dinklage of GoT fame rocking a handle bar mustache

It doesn't look like superhero movies/shows will go away anytime soon and I think its great that high profile actors are getting involved even in smaller roles though this is mainly noticeable with Marvel. Robert Redford is in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Bradley Cooper is the voice of Rocket Racoon and Vin Diesel is the voice of Groot in GoTG and Michael Douglas will be in the Ant-man movie.

Is it too much to ask?

Right this is yet another bit of a rant about technology. I can't remember if I have talked about this before but since I take my hearing aid off at night I can't really use a conventional alarm clock instead I use one with a pad that vibrates under my pillow to wake me up. This is all fine and dandy and it works pretty well, the problem is that it is seemingly designed for people with poor vision as well. This means that it has quite a large screen to show the time(it looks like a conventional alarm clock but is connected by a cable to a round pad which goes under the pillow), this wouldn't bother me if not for the fact that it is extremely bright even on the dim setting. I've had to resort to putting it face down on my bedside table otherwise my room is partially lit up in a green glow that makes it hard to sleep. Just makes you wonder why nobody thought to install an off switch for the light.

An even more illogical piece of technology I've come across is a doorbell which is for deaf or partially deaf people....which makes no sound. Now I understand why that might make sense for someone who lives alone and who is deaf but for someone who lives with other people who aren't deaf then it is pretty stupid. I first found this out when we got a new smoke alarm which works normally but also is connected wirelessly to this remote device which is connected to another round pad under my bed. This means that if the smoke alarm goes off the pad should vibrate and wake me up. This system can also be connected to baby alarms and door bells which is how we found out that we couldn't get a dual function doorbell. The problem is that I can hear the doorbell fine when i'm awake and have my hearing aid on but if we got the doorbell then I or whoever is in the house would have to make sure to carry the remote thing around with them. Also I don't know what it is with these devices and stupidly bright lights but the holder for the device/remote has a light on it as well which makes sense as it shows you that it is connected properly but I've had to put a piece of blu-tack over it as it was so distracting.

Spock agrees with my assesment