Week in Geek #139: Cloverfield Sequel, Black Panther Spinoff and WandaVision Ep 4 | Fanboys Anonymous

Welcome to another edition of WEEK IN GEEK here at Fanboys Anonymous—a rundown of some of the events, news and stories that went down over the past few days in the geek culture spectrum.

This week in geek culture Fanboys Anonymous nerd recap

Here are some of the topics I felt like voicing my opinions about:

Cloverfield Sequel in the Works

It took them long enough, right? At first, I thought it would be a mistake. The first film works well enough on its own. Then, I thought that a sequel should happen. However, they followed it up with 10 Cloverfield Lane and that felt like it wasn't at all a sequel and they would just go with Cloverfield being a universal name for a new Twilight Zone type thing.

10 isn't a wonderful film for a series like that. I think it works better as a standalone and ideally, without knowing if the aliens are real. But then, Paradox happened and that just sucked.

Now, a Cloverfield sequel in "proper" form, supposedly, will happen. It won't be found footage, which I think is a major mistake. That was the gimmick of the first film and if you're going to bother doing a follow-up, I want to know what happened to those characters and to see how someone found that camera. If they just do a generic action flick with the monster...meh.

WandaVision Episode 4

I haven't been loving the series so far. I'm not into old sitcoms, so when the episodes were pretty much just a pastiche of those with about 10 seconds of "maybe there's something more to this", I wasn't digging it. I felt like that's the type of material that would be charming if it were 20 minutes of a 2 hour film, rather than 60 minutes of a 9-episode show.

This most recent episode did a lot to undo that. I still felt like there were some issues, like how I'm not the biggest fan of Darcy Lewis, but getting a few answers to things and progressing the plot forward rather than continuing to live in the bubble any longer is a thumbs up for me.

I'm still assuming Nightmare or Mephisto is manipulating Wanda. I'm hoping Vision isn't still dead, as I'd like to see him brought back in the franchise in the white version like in the comics. I loved seeing The Blip in action. Jimmy Woo learning the card trick over the past few years was great.

All in all, the best episode so far.

Black Panther Wakanda Spin-off for Disney+

It was announced Ryan Coogler will be developing a series that dives more into Wakanda as a spin-off to Black Panther. Not much else was revealed.

In theory, this premise is great. However, without recasting T'challa, I feel like this could be much ado about nothing. The whole Black Panther series, in my opinion, hinges on T'challa, and if they just kill off his character for the third time and move on to a new person under the mask, I don't think I'll be as invested. I just don't think a series about Shuri holds the same weight as she's better as a supporting character. The same for M'Baku or Okoye or anyone else.

But maybe there's something to it. Without having much information, it's impossible to know. Had Chadwick Boseman not tragically passed away, I would be super into this idea. Without him and without the T'challa character, I'm hesitant to trust this is worth diving deeper into a side of these films that won't have the same weight to it. That would be like getting rid of Doctor Strange and focusing a whole spin-off on Wong, or wanting to do a deep dive on Luis from Ant-Man, or a show revolving around The Howling Commandos. Supporting characters support, most of the time, based on the strength of the lead. Without the lead...well, I guess we'll see.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THESE TOPICS?

LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW!

THIS POST WRITTEN BY: ANTHONY MANGO

Tony Mango is the founder, editor-in-chief, head writer and podcast host of Fanboys Anonymous as well as all other A Mango Tree branches including Smark Out Moment. He is a pundit, creative director/consultant, fiction writer and more. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

0 comments:

FOLLOW AMT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

SUPPORT FANBOYS ANONYMOUS