If I was complaining about Fear Itself having too much action, this issue definitely put a stop to all of that. It’s the penultimate chapter to Marvel’s Summer event, and it was quite a build-up to the inevitable knock-down, drag out fight coming with The Serpent and his Worthy against the heroes of the Marvel Universe.
Thor is thankfully back on his feet, with some fancy new armor and the Ragnarok sword to face down the Serpent as the prophecy says he would. Does that mean Thor’s reprieve is only temporary? I sure hope not. But at least his dad was being helpful as he continued being a crotchety old man in this issue.
Tony Stark is just finishing up in Svartalfheim with the weapons Odin has allowed him to forge with the foundry there. So now the Worthy will have met their match with the Stark Weapons imbued with Asgardian magic in the form of the Mighty, made up of the world’s mightiest Avengers shockingly enough.
This makes me very excited for the next issue. Even though I’ve thought that the whole Fear Itself event has just been ok, I think the last issue is going to go out with a bang. The Worthy have been tearing the world up with no one on the same level to stop them except Thor and even he was badly wounded. Once the Mighty take them on it’s going to be with tons of collateral damage.
I give the sixth issue a 3 out of 5 grizzlies. I’ve become more and more accustomed to Immonen’s art, while the story dominated over action in this issue. Before I would have given the issue a higher score due to this fact, but when the last four issues were nothing but action it kind of screws up the pacing a little bit. Stay tuned for the final part 7!
After a hugely disappointing Book 4, Fear Itself picks up the pace a little bit in this issue. It does however still suffer from the lack of character and emotion that makes Flashpoint so much better. Things just move so fast in Fear Itself and there’s really not a whole lot to it. There’s an evil Asgardian named the Serpent who is the anti-thesis of Odin who gives special hammers to his minions. Annnnnd he feeds off fear. Simple, right? Not to say I don’t like it but Fear Itself is lacking plenty of substance. But let’s get to the meat of this steak.
After Thor confronts the Serpent and fails, it’s a knock-em out, no holds barred, slug-fest between Thor and two of the Worthy: Nul (Hulk) and Angrir (Thing). Not good odds. This fight was easily the best part of the book, with Thor proving that he is one of the major powerhouses of the Marvel Universe, comparable to Superman in the DC Universe. His only equal is Bruce Banner in his Hulk form and Thor was even able to withstand an assault against him in this issue, but not without a price. It was awesome to hear Thor telling Hulk what a pain in the ass he always was and how he could never beat him. I think Thor is selling himself short on that one because those two seemed pretty evenly matched and this is Hulk in Worthy mode with a giant effin’ magical hammer!
Aside from the Thor triple brawl, Stark is in the process of trying to convince Odin to let him use Asgard’s workshop to make his own weapons to use against the Serpent and his forces. It makes sense, they need magical weapons to fight back against the Serpents magical weapons. That might be where the Mighty come in, which we have yet to see.
***Spoilers Below! ***
Here’s a little teaser of what Stark’s new weapons will look like. Who do we have in this line up? It looks like Iron Man, Spiderman, Wolverine, Hawkeye, Dr. Strange and Ms. Marvel. Who might the others be? Perhaps that’s Valkyrie with the gigantic sword….
Overall I give this issue a 2 out of 5 bears. Not much happened aside from more build up to the climax of the arc, but the fight with Thor, Thing and Hulk definitely helped. Immonen’s art is still pretty decent throughout the book. At first I thought he was the wrong fit for a story of this caliber and I never was crazy about his art to begin with, but I’ve definitely taken a liking to it in Fear Itself.
We write a lot of articles here at Grizzly Bomb about TV shows, movies, comics… pretty much anything and everything entertainment related. But it’s always coming from our perspective, our point of view. So it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the newest feature at GB, where we will take it to another level, and see it from a different perspective. Where he head… Inside The Grizzly Studio.
For the past few weeks I’ve been showing you one of my new favorite things, Avengers Assemble: The Series. You can check out some of the episodes here, here and here. Season 2 recently premiered over at avengersassembletheseries.com, and it was hilarious. Some of the cast were gracious enough to talk with us about the series and Season 2, which is where we’ll start off today.
I wanted to like this movie so much more than I did, but it just wasn’t happening. Not to say I hated it, but it definitely could have used some work. That being said, let’s get to the premise of the whole tale.
Basically this fella wakes up with no memory of…. anything really. This movie probably set the record for the most times that the phrase “I don’t know” was used. One of the things he doesn’t remember is the metal bracelet on his wrist. This bracelet, as we know from the trailers, has the awesome ability to deal out seemingly endless ass whoopings to both aliens and humans alike.
He makes his way to the town of Absolution, a little place run by the Cattle Boss Woodrow Dolarhyde and his imbecile son Percy. Percy doesn’t really run anything, he’s just a downright turd who bullies everyone in the town because of who his father is. Our mystery man as it turns out is really Jake Lonergan, a wanted man for numerous crimes. After he is taken captive by the local law enforcement is when the real fun begins, because that’s when the aliens arrive. Their attack results in Dolarhyde’s dumb ass son, and many other townspeople being taken captive by the invaders, with Jake’s bracelet activating in proximity to their ships. He manages to shoot one down and the wounded pilot is their ticket to finding the captives that were taken.
The group to go after the alien and their people consists primarily of Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), Jake (Daniel Craig) and Ella (Olivia Wilde) who is a rather mysterious woman with a very keen interest in Jake’s past and missing memory. The tag-along company includes a Bartender named Doc who’s wife was taken, one of Dolarhyde’s cattle hands, and a preacher. Doc is played by an always excellent Sam Rockwell, and serves as a bit of comic relief as the man not accustomed to gun play or combat. Meacham the preacher is played by veteran of the screen Clancy Brown, who is a favorite actor of mine. Aside from Pet Semetary 2, Shawshank Redemption and the HBO series Carnivàle, this was the first extended role he’s had in a movie in a very long time, and it was good to see him in it.
I won’t explain anymore about the plot of the movie, so as to not give away any spoilers. The movie suffered from the many amnesia flashback scenes that Daniel Craig had. To me, the whole amnesia aspect only served the purpose of finding an excuse to put the wrist blaster onto Daniel Craig. If you look at it from a standpoint of trying to add depth to Daniel Craig’s character Jake it failed miserably. I like Daniel Craig and think he did a great job in the movie, but his character was just a shell that I really could have cared less about.
“No my name is not Indiana F–king Jones! It’s a different hat!”
Even though Dolarhyde’s son was a complete nincompoop, I still felt more sympathetic towards him because of his past as a soldier and depth of care for his son’s well being. That being said, Harrison Ford did a great job in the role of Woodrow Dolarhyde playing his usual gruff and stern self, but this time with a twinge of crazy to it. As the movie went on I liked him more and more, especially towards the end when he starts to take charge. There was a particularly touching scene with him and a dying somebody. (You’ll know what I’m talking about when it happens in the movie.)
Hell, Even Ella’s background was far more interesting than Jake’s once you find out what it is, but like I said I won’t spoil it for you guys. Needless to say Olivia Wilde was a great actress once more, while also managing to be one of the hottest women on the planet.
Kudos to her!
The aliens themselves were kind of one dimensional, but I did enjoy them. They were definitely scary enough and kind of reminded me of the Independence Day invaders the way their set of little arms emerged from inside of their large outer body. Some people though (Doc Kronner) only thought of our little disgusting friend Kuato from Total Recall.
GO KUATO! IT’S YOUR BERFDAY!
One thing that I did not enjoy about the aliens was their main reason for being on Earth. Most people would be fine with it I guess, but I just cringed when I found out. I was actually hoping that the aliens were going to have a translator of some sort so as to have some sort of communication with the humans, but they still worked fine as the more primal type of aliens who just like to kick primitive human ass.
“Come on 007. Haven’t you ever shot a wrist blaster? It’s like this!”
I wish Jon Favreau all the luck in the world, but I’m starting to think he may have just got lucky with Iron Man. Iron Man 2 wasn’t that great of a movie, and Cowboys and Aliens was just a step above that. His movies – though shot beautifully – are suffering from something I can’t quite pinpoint. Perhaps the writers (Orci and Kurtzman) were still a bit rusty from writing the piece of shit we call a movie Revenge of the Fallen. So maybe it’s really their fault.
Either way I give the movie a 2 out of 5 bears. Great presentation and cast, but it fell flat on story and utilization of the material. It could have been so much more, because it took out all of the bad from the graphic novel aesthetically, but the story from the graphic novel would have better suited the movie.
It’s been a little while since I visited this web series, and my life has definitely been lacking some Avengers humor. So it’s only fair that to make up for that I will be bringing you three episodes this post! Three!
And no, I’m not doing that because Season 2 starts today and I want to catch up. Really. Mostly.
This makes me very excited for the next issue. Even though I’ve thought that the whole Fear Itself event has just been ok, I think the last issue is going to go out with a bang. The Worthy have been tearing the world up with no one on the same level to stop them except Thor and even he was badly wounded. Once the Mighty take them on it’s going to be with tons of collateral damage.
Grizzly Bomb 