Tag: villains

[EXPRESSO] Masters Of The Universe (2026) | The Barbarian Legend Of Big McLargehuge

Ah, yes, the new He-Man movie, i say if i actually grew up with the cartoon, or even saw the old 1987 live action adaptation with Dolph Lungren…. i did not.

I absorbed some He-Man knowledge through memes and Robot Chicken sketches, and i did grow up with the original TMNT, i know this “multimedia franchise-empire ment mainly to sell toys” tango very well, so why not?

The plot it’s an origin story where a very young Prince Adam is sent to Earth by his mother to escape the armies of the evil Skeletor invading the planet Eternia, entrusted with a magic sword, and 15 years later as a man he comes back tp his home planet to become the hero of legend he was destined to be, He-Man, and vanquish’s Skeletor and his minions for good.

It’s Superman meets Star Wars with a vague 80s PG-13 barbarian-medieval theming, with very little distinctive and a lot borrowed from the aforementioned franchises… and Marvel, more accurately trying to ape Gunn’ Guardian of The Galaxy trilogy, with very middling results since it can’t committ proper to be “Marvel quippy” nor sincere about its inherent sillyness, and tone comes off as undecisive and confused, almost as if the four writers were actively at war with each other.

It’s not horrible, mind you, there’s some simplistic entertaiment to be had, there is, despite these issues and other like some odd castin, i honestly found it enjoyable, the action fun enough, but… this really shouldn’t be 2 hours and 20 minutes long, it tries to cram too much stuff into this runtime and the result is that it’s bloated despite very little plot going for it.

It’s definitely not the worse movie to have an Amazon van in it, you can quote me on that.

[EXPRESSO] Thunderbolts* (2025) | Antiheroes’ Day Out

So we doing Suicide Squad now, but with a bucket of Marvel characters no one has ever heard before (Bucky aside)? I guess.

The question is this more like 2017’s Suicide Squad or James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad?

The question turns out it’s kinda incorrect, because it’s close enough but not quite that kind of story, and more surprisingly is the better Marvel movie i’ve seen in a while, which blindsided me entirely.

After her sister, the Black Widow in the Avengers team died, Yelena Belova feels depressed, but turns out her last job is a set-up by her employer, corrupt CIA director Valentina DeFontaine, whom is trying to remove all evidence of her shady illegal operations and experiments, and has decided to do so by setting up a trap for Yelena as well as other shady assassins and mercenaries.

The group of antiheroes (and a strange man in hospital garment that they found there, just called “Bob”) decides instead to collaborate in order to escape the trap laid out for them, and eventually have to team up against their will to save the day from a new menace, cheered on by Red Guardian (“Soviet Captain America” of the Black Widow film) and a concerned Bucky, whom is trying to empeach Valentina DeFontaine…

Nothing new, at all, it’s the usual “ragtag team of underdogs that are antiheroes of sorts and are gonna take this chance to do good for once”, but it’s pretty obvious that this time around there’s some chemistry, some effort, with actors that actually feel like they wanted to be there instead of anywhere else; heck, even the villain doesn’t suffer from most the usual problems of later Marvel films, making for an overall surprisingly decent flick, which is not how i expected “Phase 5” to end.