Will we ever witness a superhero spectacle as grand as Avengers: Endgame?

My original article here.

6 May 2019

Last year, at pretty much exactly this time I sat down and wrote about how Avengers: Infinity War lives up to the 10 years and 18 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies worth of hype. And here I am doing it again for the spectacle that is Avengers: End Game.

Avengers: Infinity War lives up to high expectations

Ten years, 18 movies, a lot of hype and finally Avengers: Infinity War arrives. The question is, does the movie deliver?

BY CHARLES SIBOTO 2 MAY 2018

I say spectacle because this is what directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, have given us. They’ve made a film that surpasses ridiculously high expectations and services, now, 21 preceding MCU films with an insane amount of love and detail. This is by no means a perfect film in the sense that when YouTubers pick it apart and agonise over every detail that everything makes sense. We live in a time in which everyone’s a screenwriter and knows better than the people paid to do so – no film or series can meet those expectations.


This past weekend was huge for the geeky fandom. Avengers: Endgame was released to huge hype and the third episode of the last season of Game of Thrones promised us the biggest and longest night battle sequence since the battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Social media was buzzing (and still is) with memes, spoilers and on Monday morning perhaps a sense of disappointment. I think both Endgame and Game of Thrones delivered and that emptiness that we now feel is that we won’t see such spectacle for a long time. Both Thanos and the Night King represent such a huge scale of threat and villainy that we just honestly don’t know where to go after this.

Picking up where we left off

I digress, though, we’re here for me to tell you about Endgame. I thought that after Avengers: Infinity War that all this movie could hope for is to be as good as that but, no, it goes and far surpasses that movie! The 181 minutes of runtime means that the movie pays attention to all the characters and give them all a bit of the spotlight. This also means that the movie can hit different thematic beats in its story. The movie opens with the remaining Avengers and the rest of the world recovering from and dealing with the repercussions of that finger snap from the last film that resulted in half of all life in the universe being wiped out. Everyone’s grieving and we spend time with the surviving characters, all of whom have lost people. The Avengers are not used to losing and Thanos has soundly defeated them so they’re at their lowest.

Avengers: Endgame is emotive and impactful

Avengers: Endgame has ensured that a 10-year journey has come to an end with a film so emotive and impactful that it will be spoken about, in reverence, for some time to come...

BY NATALIE LE CLUE 30 APR 2019

All the characters deal with their grief in their own way. Hawkeye is back and pretty much on a criminal murder spree after his family gets dusted. Tony Stark is angry at Captain America for not being there when he needed him and for the rift created between the team after the events of Captain America: Civil War. The Cap is running a survivor’s support group where he helps people move on from their grief but admits that he can’t move on.


Natasha tries to hold the rest of the Avengers team together because they’re the only family she has. Thor is in a state of self-loathing because he should have gone for the head. Everyone’s pretty much not having a great time. This part of the story also reveals a flaw in Thanos’ plan. He erased half of life in the universe but the remaining half hasn’t forgotten and instead of moving on people are stuck in their grief and the world goes through somewhat of an apocalypse because, well, half of the universe’s workforce is just gone.

Fan service and Easter eggs abound (*Spoiler alert*)

You can’t keep the Avengers down for too long, though, and the movie kicks it up a gear when Ant-Man escapes from the quantum realm and puts time travel on the table for the team. They come up with a plan they refer to as a time heist and go off to try and get back everything they lost. The time heist allows for many, many callbacks through the MCU’s past movies. This part is pure fan service and just a treasure trove of Easter eggs. The references to the MCU are just brilliant and the nods to other time travel movies make for a lot of laughs.

This part of the film is Marvel showing off their amazing ability to use humour whilst still making you feel like everything you love will be lost. It’s quite magical. The time heist itself is wibbly wobbly timey wimey and probably doesn’t make sense if you overthink it. Things obviously go wrong when you mess with time and the action kicks in on an epic scale from here on. It would be too much of a spoiler to tell you how huge everything becomes from here! Again, all I can say is that it’s a spectacle of astounding proportions! Thanos is still very much the main threat and he is still as menacing as ever.



Marvel has crafted a masterpiece with Endgame and I think whatever they do from here on out, it will remain as a highlight that will not be overshadowed anytime soon. You don’t need to have watched all the 21 preceding movies to enjoy this movie, but it sure as hell makes your experience so much better if you did. The MCU has taken what for the longest time could only be successfully done on the pages of comic books, showing off the sheer spectacle of a huge space villain like Thanos, that Mad Titan hell-bent on destroying half the universe on a massive scale. You don’t even understand, this movie is me reading Grant Morrison’s epic comic book, Final Crisis (DC, I know) and wondering how a comic book can be so massive in scale and emotion. Watching Endgame is like that and as the credits roll up you wonder if you’ll ever feel this way again.

The Casual Vacancy TV Miniseries

I finished reading JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy earlier this year after avoiding it for a while but then Christmas happened and I got book vouchers as a gift and the book was on sale at the local bookstore. Christmas made me do it! I enjoyed the book though, it was lots of fun to read. Nothing like Harry Potter, of course. JK Rowling is allowed to write other things, you know ;). It was more like Game of Thrones lite with more normal seeming crazy people (they are all batshit certified).

The Casual Vacancy is the story of a small English town largely populated by petty adults and petty school children, all of them preoccupied or affected by petty small town politics in some way. Everyone in this story is downright crazy on some level. JK Rowling knows how to tell a good story, she's not popular for no good reason.

Anyhoo, I see that The Casual Vacancy made it onto TV in the form of a miniseries as a joint production by HBO and the BBC. The series consists of three 60-minute episodes and was aired from 15 February to 01 March this year. The series is directed by Jonny Campbell, who has directed a few episodes of Spooks, Doctor Who and the film, Alien Autopsy. The screenplay is by Sarah Phelps who writes for the soap opera, EastEnders.

Some of the names that comprise the cast are Rory Kinnear as Barry Fairbrother, Emily Bevan as Mary Fairbrother. Michael Gambon who played Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies plays the rather sinister Howard Mollison in the series. Julia McKenzie plays his equally conniving wife, Shirley Mollison. Keeley Hawes plays Samantha Mollison. Lolita Chakrabarti portrays Parminder Jawanda and Silas Carson her husband, Vikram Jawanda.

From the two trailers I saw the show looks like it could be fun and I will be getting my mittens on it soon.

Winter is Coming!

Winter is coming . . . Well, here in South Africa winter is actually coming but no one cares about that because the winter that really matters brings with it fear. To quote Old Nan: “Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.” That is winter, Game of Thrones style, my sweet summer child and we cannot wait.

There be dragons!

It seem that pirates with even more cunning than Salladhor Saan could not wait either and leaked the first four episodes of Season 5. Game of Thrones is already the most pirated show in the world and it looks like this is not about to change. This is a really harsh blow for HBO though as the pirates are now a whole four weeks ahead of everyone and it's likely that the interwebs will be overrun with spoilers in the next few weeks. If you are not a pirate and want to avoid spoilers I would suggest that you avoid going online in any way and just lock yourself in a dark room for the next few weeks. Another blow to HBO is that they timed the release of their standalone streaming service, HBO Go with the release of the new season. This meant that those without cable TV could watch the show at the same time as everyone else but now the pirates are way ahead. 

Season 5 is being aired simultaneously here in South Africa as it is in the US and kicks off tonight at 21:00 on HBO, which translates to 03:00 tomorrow morning here. Catch it on DStv's M-Net Edge, channel 102. If you are not a crazy fan person (seriously, you aren't?) you can catch the episodes on Thursday nights at 21:00 on M-Net Edge as well, starting off from 16 April.

Daenerys Targaryen, everyone's favourite Khaleesi

I feel rather bad for HBO with the whole piracy thing and I hope they have a clever response that won't leave viewers who aren't pirates out in the cold.

Anyhoo, another year and another season of our favourite show. Enjoy, everybody. Also, it seems Jon Snow still knows nothing even when he's invited to a dinner party.

My Magical Place: John Wick Review

A thing is clearly happening when it comes to action movies at the box office these days. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing but it sure as hell is happening, what with the success of The Expendables franchise proving that you can take action heroes from the old school whom we all grew up with but had pretty much lost their relevance and revive their careers and audiences’ lust for some good ol’ skop, skiet en donner flicks at the same time. Why stop there when you can delve deeper and take a star like Keanu Reeves after the mess that was 47 Ronin and put him in an action movie that doesn’t try to lie to you about the depth of its plot? This right here is the future of making movies, you guys!

They totally killed this cute puppy. Bastards!

John Wick is straight up one of the coolest movies that I have seen in a long time. This movie doesn’t beat around the bush because the only beating that John does is kicking bad guys in the teeth. What you saw in the trailer is pretty much it in terms of plot. Seriously, it’s Keanu Reeves’ character, John Wick and his wife died but because she’s an amazing woman she arranged for a puppy to be delivered to their house after she dies so John has someone else to love and doesn’t become too lonely. This is all good and well till some punk, who happens to be a Russian mobster type of guy’s kid kills his puppy when he wouldn’t sell him his car at a petrol station. It turns out John Wick is the most badass of contract killers in the game and he sets out to exact vengeance on the punk kid and all the henchmen who dare stand in his way (which had me thinking why henchmen are such a loyal breed of people anyhow? After seeing my buddies get their teeth kicked in I’d just go home). That’s it. What more do you want out of life?

Keanu Reeves is perfect in his role as John Wick because he’s just the sort of guy who really doesn’t sell the idea of being an action hero when he’s just standing around putting petrol in a car and then later when he’s kicking the snot out of bad guys you can then turn around and totally buy into it. A proper action star in the mould of a Jason Statham would ruin a role like this because he lacks a certain banal aspect that Keanu Reeves has in spades.

John Wick is Chad Stahelski’s first venture in the director’s chair and he does a good job of always upping the ante in terms of the actions scenes. Stahelski comes from a stunt co-ordinating background and has had a hand in many action heavy films over the years, working on projects like The Matrix, V for Vendetta, 300 and even stuff like The Hunger Games. The man sure as hell knows how to make a stylish action movie. This movie might be light on plot but it oozes style and the banter between the characters, although not on the same level and cheesiness as The Expendables is funny enough to have you laugh out loud at moments.

Adrianne Palicki

There are no performances worthy of an Oscar nomination here but the cast is rock solid with names like Alfie Allen (an even punkier kid than his character in Game of Thrones in this movie), Willem Dafoe, Adrianne Palicki, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick and Michael Nyqvist. The cast all deliver on the goods and it all adds up to a fun action romp.

I was a bit late on this bandwagon because, you know, Keanu Reeves and John Wick is almost off of the local circuit so be sure to pop in as soon as you can or catch it on Blu-Ray and DVD soon. If you like action with almost no plot but a boatload of style this one is for you and boy is it fun!

Things on the interwebs that make me :) when I can't sleep

So much of lulz :D (GoT Spoiler Alert!!!)

I just love this! It's as adorable as Pikachu!

Winter is Coming!

"The Starks are always right, eventually. Winter is coming."

It is upon us, in fact.

The first episode of Season 4 aired last Sunday night in the US and we, here in sunny South Africa, will be getting it from the 18th of April. Needless to say that we are all very excited for new episodes of the show that has gotten many a fantasy hating soul into the genre. This could have something to do with fact that you see a lot of boobs in the show but the convoluted and fun plot does eventually win over boobs (not taking anything away from boobs, they are one of life's coolest things). It's also morbidly exciting to see which of your favourite characters will get killed off next because George R.R. Martin clearly takes the whole Valar morghulis business seriously.

Since winter actually is approaching here in SA I decided to spend as many of the precious sunny days we have left being a beach bum. I've been lying on the beach getting all kinds of excited about one of the best shows on TV right now and recapping on the previous three seasons when I get home. This is the one show I'm glad to see without having read the books beforehand. There are just so may unexpected deaths and surprises that it's nice to be genuinely surprised for once.

The best thing about the show is the grey morality. There are extremely good characters and extremely evil characters but most just hover in that grey area between good and evil. You spend a lot of time hating people for being such tools and then you find yourself liking them a few more episodes in. Everyone's out for vengeance or power and you spend a lot of time rooting for people and then switching sides because they are entirely stupid or they get killed. It's interesting to see how the story will unfold because there is so much happening in the fringes that no one seems to care about: dragons, wildlings; creepy, undead guys called White Walkers and even more creepy, and possibly undead, guys called the Others. Shit is real and everyone squabbling over a super uncomfortable throne made of sharp swords! By the time the story reaches a climax everyone might be dead.

I've met people who don't like the show because they don't like fantasy in general (which is fine) or they are hipsters and hate anything mainstream even if it's actually good. The haters seem to complain that the show is mainly about sex. This is not true. The show does have a lot of sex and but it's also rather violent. It still bothers me that people are cut up about sex but are fine with violence . . . The show is more than sex and violence though. The story takes elements like sex, violence, politics, magic and dubious morality and plays with them in interesting ways. This is why we like stories as a race, they let us experience things in ways which we normally would not.

Don't be an asshat and let your kids watch the show unless you're a super cool parent who actually teaches your kids about mature issues. You really can't blame GoT for the way your kids or pets turn out. Take some responsibility once in your life. If you hate the show that's fine, just don't watch it. Also, try and hide from all the fans because they will chew your ear off about it. The whole thing's like Breaking Bad all over again ;).

For everyone else, enjoy Season 4.   

Brace yourselves, winter is here!

Finally! Game of Thrones Season 3 is here and we're all losing our minds. I am in any case.

Sex, political intrigue, swordplay, boobs, dragons, direwolves, white walkers, the Others and all that good stuff. Who can have enough of that?

I'm especially looking forward to Daenerys Targaryen and Arya Stark's adventures. Arya always meets the coolest people! Syrio Forel and Jaqen H'ghar were amazing.

This is the rare occasion that I'm glad to not have read a series of books before the on-screen adaptation. HBO always delivers the goods it would seem and this gladdens our fantasy loving hearts.

Ladies. Gentle Sirs. Winter is here. Grab a glass of wine to warm your belly and enjoy.

Letters to God #3

Hello Big G,

Pieces of Letters to God

It's Charlie again. I'm here a lot lately - lots to say and nothing at all at the same time, sound and fury. The thing that keeps me coming back is what You've done with the throne room, very nice! The clouds drifting through the whole space and the throne carved into a mountain peak is just a nice touch. You've always had great taste though, one need only look at trees, the ocean or the stars in the heavens to know that You're balling.

 I'm lost, You know. I'm not sure where to begin with everything that's happening to me. This is my chance to build something beautiful, something I can write You about and You'd smile in approval. I have plans, blueprints, maps and all that great stuff effective people always have on their desks but I've no idea what to do with them. I spend most of my time staring at all of my plans and frowning a little. Would You terribly mind telling me what the first step is? All I want is to do something constructive that I'll enjoy, that'll make someone else out there (in the horizon I guess) breathe a little easier, that'll pay my bills, pay for Mass Effect 3 and allow me to watch the second season of Game of Thrones, that sort of thing, You know. I want to do something that gets me excited about being alive and all. I don't mean that it has to tickle me all day long but it has to get me going. The stuff I have planned can do this for me I suspect and that's why I need a little kick start.

The clouds drifting through the whole space and the throne carved into a mountain peak is just a nice touch. 

Sifting it all through my mind works out a little like this: Big Five literacy programmes, GAM (this one's uber big), NAG, Food and Trees for Africa and company. Those are the big players that I can access in the tangle of my brain right now. Commendable don't You think? Well, I hope You do think it's worth pursuing.

I guess it's all about time management in the end. I think my 24 hours are broken, they go by much faster than other people's. If I do one useful thing a day it's a miracle (sorry for having You perform so few miracles). I've got to learn how to do the time management thing and the getting things done thing while I'm at it.

I dozed off on a comfy cloud for a bit. Had a mini-dream that featured Whiskeyjack as a ghost in the supporting role. Not an Oscar performance but still cool.

Because Grunt has rights too.

Before I go, we had Human Rights Day this week, do the other sentient races celebrate that sort of thing? Like a Krogan Rights Day? I wonder.

Okay, later.

Love,

Your b3anbag

There Be Dragons!

There be dragons. That is all. As you were.