Top 5 Horror Movies of the 2010s

 

The “teens” saw a resurgence in horror (draw your own conclusions as to what in the zeitgeist might possibly have increased such an interest), bringing with it a host of useful filmmaking tricks and techniques, as well as a reverence for craft and story that was refreshing to note. These more recent outings pack a punch and do not disappoint, both visually and viscerally.

There may be something to the old chestnut that whenever there is a Republican in the White House, horror sales spike. I think that, beginning with the midterms in 2010 (when the Republican party took over Congress), we have seen a kind of cultural renaissance in horror movies, the likes of which I’ve never before witnessed. We are indeed living in interesting times, and so too are the wide array of interesting takes on what a horror movie is and what it can address.

While quite a few films stood on the shoulders of giants, others found fertile ground to plant a flag and try something new and different. Some of the most inventive and genre-bending horror movies made in this ten-year period were done so by directors who were also screenwriters, and in several of the films below, represented their inaugural outing as directors. This grab for new talent may have coincided with the proliferation of online streaming services and the need for content to satisfy the increased demand from an increasing number of new horror fans.

Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Five college kids all pile into a van for a weekend getaway at a (wait for it) cabin in the woods and end up driving into a night full of terror and madness and...oh, you know how this goes. It’s been done to death, right? I mean, even the previews made this seem like another cookie-cutter movie about the same old, same old...right? Right. Also, no. That’s not what the movie is about. 

I don’t want to say anything more about the plot, because to do so, even obliquely, would tip off someone who hasn’t seen it and trigger a torrent of “Ohmygoditssocooool!” from anyone who has, and this would be followed immediately by “Lemme just tell you one thing that won’t give anything away...” and then they will say something that totally gives something away.

Instead, let me tell you that Chris Hemsworth is in it. Also, Josh from the West Wing. Oh, and Drew Goddard directed the movie (he’s gone on to work on some really good projects that I know you have heard of, like Netflix’s Daredevil and The Martian). Goddard co-wrote the movie with Josh Whedon, and it’s one of the best things Whedon ever co-wrote.

Cabin in the Woods is both a meta-movie that not only explains the reason for every extant slasher film cliché, and it also posits a world wherein we are just barely keeping immense cosmic forces at bay through the efforts of banal government employees doing what amounts to a third shift sanitation job. It’s one of the darkest, most brilliantly conceived and executed ideas in modern horror films. If you can find a more cynical movie than this, I would welcome the discussion. That we have, in the film, moved well past the point of soul-sucking horror for the situation to guys on the clock complaining about how the other departments keep screwing things up, is all the more telling, and intentionally so, at that. Or to put it another way, some of the scariest parts of the movie aren’t the murder cannibals, but the people watching them. I’m not sure if Cabin in the Woods is scary enough for rabid horror fans, but it is absolutely required viewing for anyone seeking a deeper appreciation of the genre.

 

Let Me In (2010)

A young age boy, who is the target of bullies in his school, gets a new neighbor at his apartment complex; a mysterious girl with an elderly guardian who doesn’t seem to mind the cold. The two become fast friends and she bolsters his self-confidence. Meanwhile, the elderly guardian is out at night, luring strangers into dark places in order to drain them of blood...

It’s rare when a remake can creatively co-exist with the original movie, and Let Me In does just that. An American-ized version of Let the Right One In (2008), this movie came in fast, hot on the heels of its Swedish counterpart. When it was first announced by Hammer Studios, writer-director Matt Reeves alleged the movie would be a remake of the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, but this wasn’t quite so with the finished project. And that’s all right, because the things that we don’t understand while watching Let the Right One In, asking ourselves if there is some cultural significance that escapes us, are made perfectly and pointedly clear in Let Me In.

Despite its adult themes and subjects, the movie is made on the performances of the young boy, Owen, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee and Abby, played by Chloë Grace Moretz. Their performances are what make you buy the whole premise, and you find yourselves rooting for them until something horrible happens and you remember that one of them is a monster. And speaking of monsters, the bullies in the movie are sinister and terrible and drive the plot like a ticking time bomb counting down to all zeroes. A novel, fantastic vampire film from start to finish.

 

Get Out (2017)

Chris Washington is one half of an interracial couple, and he’s nervous about going away for the weekend to meet his girlfriend’s parents and attend their garden party. Despite several assurances that he’s among friends, everyone Chris meets can’t help but put their foot in their mouth, however well-meaning. But it’s when his girlfriend’s mom offers to hypnotize him to help him quit smoking that things take a very weird turn.

Jordan Peele’s writing and directing debut is a mix of social commentary and black comedy, and also some pulp-era scares that involve consciousness transference, old school zombie-ism, i.e. racism, and the loss of will and control that comes from being a stranger in a strange land. That sounds like a tall order, but Get Out manages all of it and makes it interesting, provoking uncomfortable laughs in the midst of some deeply uncomfortable scenes.

Of course, this movie is about racism, but not sheet-wearing clansmen. Rather, the racism is of the institutional variety that allows people the veneer of thinking they are good while also continuing to be part of the problem. However, Get Out does a fantastic job of putting the shoes on the other foot and letting white audiences see through the main character’s eyes and experience what he deals with, and how it affects him.

 

It Follows (2014)

A young college student, Jaime, has a romantic tryst with her new boyfriend, who promptly incapacitates her and ties her up so she can’t get away. He tells her that she’s about to be stalked, followed, by an entity only she can see, and if this thing catches her, it will kill her. The only way to avoid such a gruesome fate is to have sex with another person before she’s caught, thus passing the...whatever it is...on to her new partner. Then he drives her home and leaves.

What happens next is equal parts slow burn and 1980’s morality play throwback (and even includes an electronic, minimalistic film score that sounds like it came from a John Carpenter movie). Jaime’s friends help her track down her boyfriend, who has ghosted her and left town. And sure enough, creepy adults only she can see start walking slowly, ominously towards her... it may not sound like much, but trust me, it’s terrifying. The friends battle interpersonal entanglements as they try to solve the mystery, but eventually, It Follows turns into a monster-hunting bloodfest and manages to never let up on the creepiness its premise generates.

It Follows is another writer-director project. This particular fever dream comes from David Robert Mitchell, who worked on the story for years before getting it greenlit. It’s tempting to read the relentless entity’s progress and the subsequent violent death it metes out as deeply symbolic, and you probably should bring your own baggage to bear for the movie. Anyone who grew up watching 1980s horror flicks will recognize the statement implicitly suggested every time the promiscuous couple disappear into the woods to have sex—they are inevitably the first ones murdered. It Follows updates that conceit for the 21st century and creates a premise that feels sufficiently different to act as its own thing. 

 

The Babadook (2014)

Amelia’s six-year-old son is acting out, bringing improvised weapons to school, sleepwalking, and in general being a really weird and creepy kid. She’s stressed out about this, as she is raising him by herself because, as it turns out, her husband died in a car crash six years ago, while driving her to the hospital to give birth. When a children’s book shows up at her house, titled Mister Babadook, and she and her son read it, they unlock...something that wants to murder them both, and they are forced to fight for and against each other in order to survive the arrival of the baba-dook-dook-dook...

Written and skillfully directed by first time director Jennifer Kent, based on her short film Monster, The Babadook is one of those rare horror films that’s about something substantial and real, and the film’s metaphor about grief and survivors is both powerful and universal. Filmed in Australia, the only actor you might recognize is the mother, played by Esther Davis. That works in its favor, adding to the skewed and original perspective of the film.

There’s a lot of stuff to unpack, from the look of the monster being inspired by Lon Chaney’s vampire in London After Midnight to the raucous soundtrack and use of sound as a psychological warfare tool against both the harried mother and the audience. The babadook itself may be one of the most interesting horror creations of all time, tipping its literal top hat to Lon Chaney and other creepshow favorites, but coming off as something new and unique.

The Babadook is a disturbing horror film, equal parts psychological thriller and supernatural monster hunt, and it doesn’t even bother to thread the needle between the two. The movie is tense and exhausting, and you may well need a cool-down afterward.

Top 5 Horror Movies of the 1990s

This decade, preceded by the plastic 1980s, and let down by the promise of peace that accompanied the end of the Cold War, was a cynical and increasingly angry time. The emergence of the World Wide Web was a profound thing as fans began to congregate online in AOL chat rooms and on message boards. eBay became a going concern, and a lot of movies, once thought to be nigh-impossible to track down, were suddenly just a few mouse clicks and a credit card number away. Computers were The Hot New Thing, and this was reflected in a lot of films. 

By the end of the decade, whatever goodwill the end of the Cold War generated was all used up us and most of us had figured out that the fix was in, and we were the suckers. With Communism over and done with in the early 1990s, America needed a new enemy. When one didn’t appear readily, we decided to make a new enemy; it was us. And like the hit song from the 1990s, we were our own worst enemy, to boot.

As much as Jurassic Park, with its computer-generated and animated dinosaurs, was a watershed moment in filmmaking, CGI had a ways to go. That didn’t stop people from using it, badly, for most of the decade, until Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop improved the process dramatically to create believable characters that seemed real in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Conversely, a number of horror movies during this time were overly reliant on CGI to their detriment, while other filmmakers managed to work around the limitations of the technique or, in more than one case, jettisoned it in favor of good old-fashioned practical effects.

What makes the movies in this decade so hit-or-miss is the studios themselves. The venerable movie maniac franchises continued to thunder along under their own weight, and other companies, with star dust in their eyes, started remaking older films, slickly produced, but not very well thought out. There were also a number of smaller studios and even smaller movies that were wildly entertaining as B-movies, but weren’t scary or even very serious. Nevertheless, some innovations and interesting things developed, maybe even as a response to the naked and unashamed cash grab, that made the list below.

Stir of Echoes (1999)

Kevin Bacon is a blue-collar guy living with his wife and son in a suburb of Chicago. His wacky sister-in-law hypnotizes him at a party, and she tells him to be more open-minded, which turns out to mean, “now I can see ghosts and visions of past traumas.” This psychic ability runs in the family; their son has it, too. And wouldn’t you know it, it turns out that something horrible happened in the house before Kevin Bacon’s family moved in, and the spirit won’t rest (and neither will Kevin Bacon and his son) until the mystery is solved.

This movie often gets overlooked because it sits on the same tree branch as The Sixth Sense, which came out the same year. While not as gimmicky and as “gotcha” as the former, Stir of Echoes does offer up its own kind of disturbing scares, and in a wide variety, too: Jump scares, creep-outs, gross-outs, and even a creepy kid all conspire to make this movie greater than the sum of its parts.

David Koepp wrote the adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel (first published in the late 1950s) and directed the film as well. Matheson is a much-revered author for his various contributions to literature, television and film, mostly in the realm of fantasy, horror and science fiction, and Koepp was interested in paying him homage. As such, it has some changes from the book, but in the updating, it plays on some serious fears that were a part of the decade, including violence towards women and teenagers with guns. If you notice any familiar beats in this movie that you feel are a bit overused, you should know that Matheson is the one who first introduced those beats, and not the other way around.

 

Event Horizon (1997)

A salvage crew (in space) is tasked with the recovery of an experimental spacecraft called the Event Horizon, thought to be lost during its maiden voyage. It’s carrying a gravity drive that can fold space, and would be invaluable technology, if they can ever figure out what went wrong. The drive’s inventor joins the crew of the Lewis & Clark (that’s the ship’s name, I swear), all jaded hands at the wheel, and sure enough, they find the ship, and a big mystery with it. What happened? Where’d everyone go? What’s with all of the blood, anyway? The engineer inventor, played by Sam Neill, has his own agenda, and it doesn’t exactly line up with the rest of the crew, who are just in it for the bucks. And as these tensions mount, things begin to go horribly wrong with the routine salvage operation.

This rare gem of a movie turns a derelict ship into a haunted house, complete with ghosts and cultists and things from other dimensions. I’ll even forgive the capricious use of CGI to render a bunch of floating debris, all shiny and crisp, inside the ship because it would have looked just as bad if it was done with blue screen and traveling mattes. Thankfully, they get the gravity turned back on quick enough and you don’t have to spend a lot of time wondering if the movie was shot for a 3-D release (it wasn’t. The CGI is just that bad).

The cast is great, all character actors you’ll recognize, from Lawrence Fishburn to Sam Neill, in the only other interesting role he ever took after Jurassic Park. The movie itself, however, had a storied and torturous gestation process, with an auteur director (Paul W.S. Anderson), studio interference, multiple rewrites, and in the end, a patchwork film that no one was happy with. All that being said, this movie scratches a lot of itches and isn’t quite like anything else in the 1990s.

Panned when it was initially released, the film was marketed as science fiction, but make no mistake, it’s a horror flick, wearing a lot of influences on its sleeves, like sponsor patches on a NASCAR driver’s leather jacket. One of the things that isn’t readily known about the movie is that “the warp” concept of traveling through space was lifted straight out of Warhammer 40,000, so much so that Games Workshop fans consider it as part of the overall 40K universe.

The Prophesy (1995)

An L.A. police detective gets drawn into a weird web of mysteries; a dead body with no eyes, an expanded bible with additional chapters in Revelations about a second war of the heavens, body snatching, and what may or may not be a possessed child. It’s enough to make the detective, who was a seminary student, until he lost his faith, question everything he knows. And when the archangel Gabriel shows up, played by Christopher Walken, well...you know...you’re in...for one hell...of a movie.

The 1990s saw the apex of Christopher Walken’s career, and this movie showcases Walken at his most Walken-esque. His turn as Gabriel is exactly what you’d think it to be, and then it’s even creepier on top of that. Unsurprisingly, he’s got the best lines of dialogue in the movie, but he’s not the only big-name actor: Eric Stoltz and Viggo Mortenson also co-star, along with Virginia Madsen.

In truth, this isn’t the scariest movie of the decade, not by a damn sight. But it’s got a really unique story, some effectively creepy moments, and it’s one of those "idea" movies you keep thinking about after you’ve seen it. Despite being something of a flop in the theaters, it subsequently spawned four sequels. It never needed them. You can watch the first movie and feel like you got a complete experiences, and owing much to the quality of what came after, I’d take that advice.

 

Scream II (1997)

Two years have passed since Sydney Prescott survived the ordeal of the Ghostface killer. She’s now in college, with a new life, some new friends, and a few old ones. Everything should be perfect, but...Ghostface is back, cutting a gory swath through campus, even as the sensationalized events of the movie Stab, based on the real-life incident play out in the background.

Everyone that was still alive at the end of Scream is back for this one and you’ll likely not see who the killer is this time, either. But it’s an answer to the mystery that works within the story. And the blood! Everything is cranked up to eleven with this movie, and that includes the satire. Not content to be a meta-critique on slasher horror, Scream 2 takes some potshots at celebrity culture and the 24-hour news cycle for good measure.

There are not a lot of sequels that made the other top 5 lists, but Scream 2 is one of the few that maintains the emotional and intellectual drive of the first movie; if anything, it’s even more self-aware than the inaugural outing. And since sequels are such a part of the horror genre, there are rules for them, too, as Randy again explains. The genre conventions hold, even as they are being discussed. One of the few times you can watch a sequel and get as much out of it as the first movie.  

 

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Three college students head out into the woods with video cameras to film a documentary about a local bit of folklore, the Blair Witch. They disappeared. Later, their video camera was recovered and the tapes show the students at the beginning of their adventure, along with the strange things that plague their group when they cross into the woods.

Some films are timeless, and others are rooted in their time and place. The Blair Witch Project could not have been made at any other time because it is so specific to the level of technology used to create it and the zeitgeist from whence its inspiration comes. The movie begins with the declaration that “this is a true story” and then we go to video camera footage, and a new genre is born. This is the movie from which the term “found footage” originated, and it was so revelatory that the next ten movies that came out in that format were scored for using it; it was that big a deal.

I wish everyone could see this movie as I first did; it was an Academy Award screener, on VHS cassette, and I watched it on a square, boxy TV in a darkened room with six other people. There’s something about watching video tape on a video tape that adds a lot of authenticity to the movie, so much so that we all went searching afterward, just to make sure it really was faked.

Top 5 Horror Movies of the 1930s

 

This is the decade where movies officially came into their own, narratively speaking, with the advent of sound, and horror movies were right there from the beginning. In fact, the studio that became synonymous with horror, Universal, produced a whole slate of horrific features whose creatures were so impactful that they remain recognizable icons nearly a hundred years later.

Universal was carrying on the tradition of ghastly sights on the silver screen that started in the 1920s during the silent era; Lon Chaney and his grotesqueries were not far from the public’s minds, and many of the silent stars transitioned over to the talkies and continued to thrill audiences. Horror came into its own as a new kind of spectacle that only movies could deliver at the time. Now that sound was possible, the audiences could not only see the sepulchral crypt, but they could also hear the chains rattle, the coffin lid creak open, and the helpless young women could all scream.

Within reason, that is. In the middle of 1934, the Hays Code was enacted, Hollywood’s first attempt at self-regulation of their content. “Pre-Code”movies sometimes showed bare breasts (artfully, mind you) or other “shocking” scenes that were deemed grotesque and unsettling. And while there certainly some movies that benefitted from a lack of restraint, several movies listed below were made after the Hays Code was adopted and their impact was not diminished in the slightest. Most of these movies would also have a place on the cult classics list, and it’s that combination of transgressive and outré that sets them apart from others films of the decade.

The thirties were fueled by the Great Depression, providing a relatively inexpensive escape from reality of the bread lines and doing without. Science and scientific progress are hallmarks of the era, as magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics routinely featured experimental vehicles and buildings on their covers. It’s also noteworthy as the decade where Hitler rose to power overseas, producing an undercurrent of unease that wouldn’t fully be understood by the population at large until America entered World War II.

Mad Love (1935)

A gifted concert pianist’s hands are ruined in a train crash, and a strange doctor agrees to perform experimental surgery to graft new hands onto his wrists. But these hands belonged to a convicted killer, and they begin to act out their murderous impulses. But the pianist’s wife is also being persecuted by the odd doctor, who is obsessed with her. The mad doctor has elaborate plans for both of them, and it will not end well, for “each man kills the thing he loves...”

Peter Lorre’s first American production established him as one of the go-to guys for insane characters, but to be fair, they courted him after watching him in Fritz Lang’s masterpiece M (1931). It wasn’t quite typecasting, but when you’re Peter Lorre, what else are you built for, honestly? He’s compelling to watch, and this performance in these two movies is what forever typecast him as “that guy” in thrillers and mysteries. Director Karl Freund and cinematographer Gregg Toland borrowed heavily from German Expressionism to frame shots and most especially light the actors, which enhanced Lorre’s androgynous appearance and emphasized his bizarre disguise to great effect.

The screenplay was loosely based on a novel, The Hands of Orlac, and was a remake of a silent film of the same name. What’s really significant about this movie is that it’s one of the early (and one of the best) examples of body horror, specifically dealing with mutilation and the Frankenstein-esque tendency to reuse the anatomy of the dead. These willful mutilations performed by mad scientists may seem silly today, but soldiers returning home from World War I with missing limbs and other disfigurements didn’t think so. Peter Lorre’s crazy rigging, used to fool young Orlac, looks a lot like some of the medical instruments and contraptions used to affix prosthetics onto shoulders and legs for the veterans of trench warfare. Other movies would explore and remake this story over the years, but never with such style and aplomb as Mad Love.

What makes Mad Love work are the many things merely implied. Dr. Golgo, Lorre’s deranged surgeon, has an unhealthy fixation on Orlac’s wife, and his solution to that condition is, well, for 1935, obscene, at the very least. Several of the more racy elements that the newly formed Hayes committee categorically wouldn’t allow to be shown onscreen got shuttled off into the subtext, but the movie manages to get the point across, all the same. A near-perfect example of 1930s horror, Mad Love has become a classic on its own merits.

 

White Zombie (1932)

Young lovers, engaged to be married, rendezvous on the Island of Haiti and hurry to the sugar plantation of Beaumont, a man they just met on a ship, because that’s just what one does in the early 1930s. They pass by a bunch of hollow-eyed, shuffling field hand and are told that they are zombies, under the control of “Murder” Legrange, played with evil-eyed intensity by Bela Lugosi and looking particularly saturnine in the role. But Beaumont is already in love with the young woman he just met (ahh! Haiti!) and he asks the zombie master for help in wooing her. Legrange says the only way to bend the woman to Beaumont’s will is to kill her and bring her back...as a zombie!

One of the most enduring themes in 1930s horror is unrequited (and sometimes forbidden) love. This movie is no exception, and the film borders on melodrama at times. The standout star here is (no surprise) Bela Lugosi as the zombie master whose eyes and intense stare almost qualify as a special effect unto themselves. It’s no Dracula, but Lugosi was already famous for his turn as the Transylvanian count and he steals the show here, as well.

White Zombie makes the list because, for all of its flaws, it’s the first zombie movie. Zombies were an established part of many different folk traditions until the pulps got ahold of the concept and front loaded a lot of anti-immigrant hysteria and fear of miscegenation into the gruesome stories printed in magazines such as Weird Tales. This theme of a woman, helpless against the hypnotic charm and/or strength of the zombie master, would be repeated several times in other, better movies before George Romero rewired everyone’s conception of the walking dead in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. Nevertheless, much of the lore and the allure of zombies continues to borrow from White Zombie.

 

The Black Cat (1934)

A young, bright, American couple on their way to (wait for it) their honeymoon in Hungary share a train car with Dr. Vitus Werdegast, who is traveling to see an old friend. Werdegast, played by Bela Lugosi, explains that he’d been interred in a prison camp for the past fifteen years. When the young bride, Joan, is injured on the road, Werdegast takes the couple with him to the home of his friend, the architect Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff).

I won’t spoil where things go from here, but I will tell you that the title of the movie, and the credit for same in the opening credits, is only glancingly related to the Edgar Allan Poe story. But what the movie does have going for it is as follows: It’s the first and best pairing of Lugosi and Karloff in the same movie, satanic cults, psychological torture, black magic, a dash of necrophilia, German Expressionism’s last gasp, human sacrifice, and the creepiest chess game ever played, and that’s all I can list without giving anything cool away. You have to see this film to believe it.

Critics’ reactions were mixed when the movie premiered but audiences loved it; The Black Cat was Universal’s highest grossing film that year, largely thanks to the teaming up of Lugosi and Karloff, two of the biggest films stars of the decade. This movie is the kind of bonkers that will leave you shaking your head at what they managed to cram into the movie, and what they got away with onscreen. One of the more gruesome scenes in the movie is accomplished with mere suggestion and it’s incredibly effective. The Black Cat is a fantastic example of Universal’s non-monster-centric horror output.

 

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

A survivor of a shipwreck is deposited onto a small South Pacific Island, along with some live animal cargo delivery addressed to the resident Mad Scient—er, doctor, one Doctor Moreau, played to perfection by Charles Laughton. He welcomes the newcomer, Parker, to his home and introduces him to some of the other inhabitants of the island, including a shy, beautiful woman named Lota. What Moreau fails to mention is that Lota (and the others) are engineered humans, comprised of various beasts and jungle animals. Parker is understandably shaken by this and he tries to escape, taking Lota with him, and not quite realizing that she’s also one of the animal-people, too, and that’s when things start to fall apart on the island of Dr. Moreau...

This movie remains the best version of the H.G. Wells classic novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau. A remake from the 1970s features Michael York and make-up by John (Planet of the Apes) Chambers and it’s middling at best. The less said about the 1996 film, the better. You know the one I’m talking about; the version that starred Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando and is so bad, there’s a separate documentary that goes into great detail about just how bad it is.

Island of Lost Souls also features Bela Lugosi in beast-man make-up as the lawgiver, and it’s from him that we get the classic line of dialogue, “Are we not men?” Laughton is fascinating to watch in the role of Dr. Moreau, gleeful in his genius, and also mercurial in temperament.

Most interestingly, the film was censored when it premiered, with many small towns refusing to show it. Not for the beast-men, or the implied sexual relationship between Parker and Lota, but for its tacit endorsement of evolution. Those small towns that did show it raked it right over the coals for this transgression. But the movie had the last laugh; the cultural impact of the film is significant, from the various lines of dialogue quoted and repurposed, the reference to Moreau’s punishment room, the “House of Pain” and Laughton’s and Lugosi’s performances all push this movie into cinematic history.

 

Freaks (1932)

Hans and Frieda are little people, working in a traveling circus sideshow, alongside a host of other freaks. They are engaged to be married, but a beautiful trapeze artist named Cleopatra starts making goo-goo eyes at him after learning of Hans’ grand estate and inheritance. Cleopatra and the circus strongman, Hercules, hatch a scheme for her to marry into Hans’ family, and shortly thereafter she would kill Hans and assume control of the fortune, and then she and Samson could be horrible people together forever. Hans is blinded by Cleo’s grace and beauty and scorns Frieda. Cleo plays her part in the scheme for as long as she can, but eventually her revulsion for Hans and the rest of the freaks comes out, and what happens after that...well, it’s the reason why this movie is considered a horror film.

Tod Browning is widely associated with Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, which he directed, but he will forever be remembered as the director of the cult classic Freaks. This pre-code gem bombed at the box office, and it’s easy to see why: here were circus “freaks,” shown living normal lives, being friends with their fellow carnies, and even (gasp!) falling in love, getting married, and having children! Oh, heaven forbid! The horror!

This humanizing aspect of the film (as opposed to treating the performers as mere oddities) may well have been the reason for its lack of a draw at the box office; this was the period of time when eugenics was the fashionable science, and such people who were born this way would have no place in the so-called utopia that the proponents of eugenics were peddling (and this included the nascent Nazi party). Freaks is clunky in places, and teeters on the edge of being exploitative in a couple of scenes. It was also heavily censored, coming in at just over 60 minutes (the original cut was rumored to be 90). But the film still holds up, and the denouement, when Cleopatra’s treachery is revealed, is quite macabre and unsettling.

If you'd like to check out past Top 5 Lists, you can find them all Right Here!

Grief: "I Just Want Something I Can Ignore"

 Rob says that in the film version of High Fidelity, one of the great Gen-X films of the 1990s, played by Gen-X's poster child, John Cusack. I love that quote. It's one of those things I wish I'd written, damn you, Nick Hornby. It's such a succinct thought that conveys something we don't often articulate about mass media; namely, that there is, underneath the Must Watch Shows and the Trending Twitter Topics, and the "No Spoilers" Fan-Bombs on Facebook, a second layer of media, movies, and music. It's the stuff that, for one reason or another, serves as a kind of white noise machine for our overly-stimulated simian brains. 

Shows like M.A.S.H., for instance. That's a show everyone of a certain age remembered watching, both during prime time and syndication, for two or more decades. Now, well into our adulthood, M.A.S.H. is a show that is part of the glue of television. It's always on somewhere, and we've seen every episode multiple times. Even the episodes we think we didn't see...trust me, we've seen it. It's now a digital backdrop, visual Muzak, the kind of thing that can be on in the background during a family dinner and no one minds, because no one really pays that much attention to it, even the super serious episodes where Hawkeye cries or when Sidney tries to psychoanalyze someone.

Which leads me to Gilmore Girls. 

The Rise of Skywalker with medium-sized spoilers, casually thrown hither and yon

I’ve been reluctant to try and set my thoughts down on paper about the ending of the Skywalker Dysfunctional Family Drama, also known colloquially as The Star Wars Saga. I knew I would need to write about it, but I didn’t have any idea how I was going to get into it. Then a funny thing happened as I was recovering from my surgical procedure; I realized we were at the Fin-de-Siecle of sorts.

After all, it’s not every year that several major franchises wrap up long-time over-arching storylines, is it? We didn’t really celebrate the actual 21st century event horizon, since we were all too busy making sure Y2K didn’t happen. And then 2001 sucked all of the oxygen out of the room and, without getting off on a tangent, knocked us back into the 1980s in a lot of ways that we are only now seeing come to light.

All of the last 20 years feels like a virtual reality simulator designed by Cold War scientists to simulate what the Matrix was trying to provide us with; a reality fraught with strife, held together with flashes of popular culture, and an ever-expanding arsenal of shitty things to react to so that we stay miserable and jaded.

It’s fitting, really, that the last six movies in the Star Wars saga should be completed during these dark times.

The Ongoing and Updated Top 5 Horror Movies Master List

This has become something of an October tradition around here at the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker.  And the lists are all spread out over the blog and it's hard for me to link them and for you to track them.

That's why I'm making an evergreen list, and I'll add to it each year. This is current up to 2019, and as new lists are created, they will find their way here, too. That means if you want to bookmark this post, it'll serve you well and you can jump on and off without losing your place.

Finally, know this: I will be updating these lists until I don't. As new movies come out, it may change the rankings of the other films. I may have an epiphany and change my mind about something. When I do, those updates will be made on the appropriate lists and I may not think to mention it.

Five Things That Are Ruining Movies

1. The misuse and over-application of the word “trope.”

2. The misuse and over-application of the concept of a “plot hole.”
3. Deeply unqualified people telling me why the movie sucked.

4. Catastrophically angry people excoriating directors, producers, and writers for not doing enough.

5. Eagle-eyed detail-oriented people ticking off all of the mistakes a movie made, implying that the film would otherwise be a cinematic gem if X hadn’t gotten in the shot or if the scrambled eggs didn’t stop moving around on the plate in that one scene.

There’s an old saying that Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth. Well, movies are a collaborative effort between the actors and around seventy or eighty cooks. Mistakes get made. Movies aren’t a perfect story-telling medium and never have been. What they can do, they do very well, and more effortlessly than ever these days, thanks to ginormous budgets and super sophisticated computers. But “perfect” or “nearly perfect” movies are so rare, and I can’t think of a single one made after 2001.

Top 5 Favorite Witch Movies

Movies about witches and witchcraft are perennially popular, but that’s mostly because they are the same story, often played for laughs, as these women with magical powers help the men in their lives either thwart evil or perpetrate it, by degrees. It’s peculiar to me how many witchcraft movies are some iteration of that basic premise. Lots of things happen in schools, by the way. I’m sure there’s a message in there, somewhere.

When movies about witchcraft are scary, they are pretty terrifying. The alternative is something usually between Bewitched and the Witches of Eastwick. Fun movies, by the way, and certainly, witches usually come down on the Most Fun Classic Monster side of the aisle. However, I like my witches mysterious and weird and scary and Not Right. These are my top 5 favorite Witch movies in that specific vein.

Top 5 Favorite Vincent Price Movies

Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (1911-1993) was an American actor who made over a hundred feature films in a variety of genres, including historical drama, mystery, film noir, and even comedy, but he is best known for his roles in horror films. A graduate of Yale with a degree in art history, he later studied abroad in London, where he kindled his love of theater and later performed onstage opposed Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina. This led to a five-play contract with Orson Welles Mercury Theatre. Eventually he was put on contract at Universal as a character actor, playing romantic leads and scoundrels in equal measure. But he never abandoned the stage, returning to it every chance he got.

In fact, it was during his performance in the 1941 play Angel Street (the American version of Gaslight) playing the cruel Jack Manningham, pushing his wife Helen into madness, that he found his true calling playing villains. Speaking about that role, Price told one interviewer “…I came out for my curtain call and the audience just hissed. I knew I'd found my niche.” He secured a few more villain roles and turns in minor horror movies. Later, in the early 1950s, Price would become wildly successful in the genre, leading to some of his most memorable roles and performances for the next twenty-odd years.

In Defense of Bad Movies Part 2: FLAAAASSSHH!

Check out the muscles
on Blonde Conan!

In Part 1 of  In Defense of Bad Movies, I outlined the disconnect between film critics and the general public. If you want to read it, you can certainly do that. Now that I have made this particular bed, I’m going to lie in it by taking a pipe wrench to the skull of a film most beloved and personal to the Geek Nation. Let’s all watch some people’s heads explode. Fun!

Since I mentioned Flash Gordon (1980) in Part 1 as an example of a bad movie, I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why I think this is so. Before you start typing your hate mail, there's some objective criteria below that you ought to look at. I put pictures in the post, so you wouldn't have to just take my word for it. If you make it all the way to the end and still feel triggered, just follow this link over to my Facebook page and let fly with your invective. I'm bracing myself for impact. Okay, enough of that; let's go tip some sacred cows!

In Defense of Bad Movies Part 1: Somewhere Between High Art and Cult Classic

I’m writing a lot about old movies at the moment on both of my current blogs. Finn’s Top 5 is happening over at the Finn’s Wake blog, and my biased look back at the fantasy films of the 1980s that informed our Dungeons and Dragons games is happening over at Confessions of a Reformed RPGer. I like writing about film; I have been a professional reviewer and critic for many years now, and I’ve been named one of the top movie reviewers in Texas by the Associated Press Managing Editors several times. You may also know that I am co-owner of a movie theater in North Texas that plays first-run movies on two screens, which is kind of like a unicorn in today’s market.

Top 5 Favorite Stephen King Movies

It really says a lot about a person when they are their own genre of storytelling. Think about that: Stephen King is one of those very rare—as in, maybe four or five authors, tops—who have such consistent draw that they are household names. Not just any household, either, but every household. Try this: next time you’re at your grandparents’ house and they are regaling you with the saga of the latest bunion on their foot, wait for them to finish and then say, “Jeez, Grams, that was more horrifying than a Stephen King story,” and see if they don’t immediately know what you mean by that.

King’s prodigious output also accounts for a list of movies nearly as long, and while the quality of the aforementioned movies and books varies greatly, both subjectively and objectively, there are a number of great Stephen King movies that have been accidentally made out of their literary counterparts. Granted, there are also some god-awful ones, too, but we’re not here to talk about Maximum Overdrive…or Firestarter…or The Tommyknockers…or…you get the idea. For the purposes of this list, we’ll focus on the ones that cleaved most closely to the books and were also scary or horrific in some way. That’s why you won’t see Stand By Me or The Shawshank Redemption on this list, as great as they are.

The Return of Finn's Top 5 Lists

You asked for it! You demanded it! You threatened my dog If you didn't get it!

Okay, none of that really happened. But it might've. You don't know for sure, do you?

Over the years, I've done a lot of Top 5 Movie Lists for various horror films, usually around October. It's been a while since I did them, and I decided to go back to some fun stuff here on this blog since lately it's all been real life and seriousness. We need some fun.

So, for October, I'm dropping five new Finn's Top 5 Movie lists! They will be added to the already illustrious pedigree you see splayed out below.

And just because I wanted to, I went back through all of the lists below and updated them, adding new movies and eliminating redundancies, as was my original intention in breaking out all of the sub-categories, anyway. I also eliminated all of the bonus movies and either worked them into the existing list, or shunted them off into another list completely. Again, now there's more movies that before, each one occupying a single list. Am I thinking about this waaaaaay too much? You bet! But who benefits? You, the faithful reader and horror movie fan. After all, more movies listed is more movies to complain about, or wonder aloud why it's on the list so high, or point out that it really belongs on another list...

If you're new to this blog, or these lists, here's the complete run-down to date. And if you're interested in fantasy films, I'm doing a smaller series of reviews over on the sister blog, Confessions of a Reformed RPGer. Part 1 of the series, "The Movies of Dungeons & Dragons," can be found here.

My Top Five Science Run Amok Movies
My Top Five Horror-Comedy Movies
My Top 5 Creature on the Loose Movies  
My Top 5 When Animals Attack Movies
My Top 5 Mummy Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Frankenstein Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Horrors from the Deep Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Killer Doll Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Horror Anthology movies

My Top 5 Favorite TV Horror Shows

My Top 5 Favorite Dracula Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Lovecraftian Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Haunted House Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Movie Maniac Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Killer/Creepy Kid Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Devils and Demons Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Ghost Story Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Monster From the Void of Space Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Zombie Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Vampire Movies
My Top 5 Favorite Werewolf Movies

Cancer: Bedside Manner

We saw two oncologists, a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, and seven or eight nurses of various levels of competency since the diagnosis. Not counting the local doc and his nurse who first put us on this path.

House and Wilson. Whatever you do, DO NOT
Google their fanfic. Trust me on this. 

We have also watched 8 seasons of House, starring Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard as Gregory House and his oncologist colleague, James Wilson. Here’s what our take-away is: the pretend doctors, even the made-up, grouchy-pants ones that are written so as to be assholes, still have better bedside manners than most real doctors.

There’s a reason for this: in fiction (or more specifically in this case, in TV shows and movies), it’s necessary for the audience to understand what the plucky schoolteacher or the recently widowed father of a really bright little girl is going to have to face in fighting this terrible disease. So the pretend doctor outlines in very simple language what’s going to happen in act two (and maybe act three or act four, depending on the narrative structure). This is also done to introduce conflict and tension into the story, which will be ratcheted up, stair-step style, as the story progresses. We get the blow by blow from one or more of the supporting characters; “She’s having a seizure! That can only mean... it’s spread to her brain!”

Intellectual Property Homesick Blues, Part 2: Solo

I will be the first one to admit that I was one of the people who wondered, aloud, why we were getting a Young Han Solo movie, wherein we see how in one five-minute train ride sequence he picked up all of his quirks, habits, and signature moves, and then he goes and rescues his father from the Nazis.

Then I watched Solo and when it was revealed that they were going to rob a train, I laughed out loud. There is nothing more epochal, more character building, apparently, than running along the top of a moving train. Who knew?

The Children of Generation X, Part 2: My Rambling Thoughts on the MCU

Part 1 of this essay is here.

I don’t want to rank these movies for you. What’s the point? You’re just going to incredulously point out that Guardians of the Galaxy should be higher or derisively sneer that Iron Man 3 should be lower. Make your own damn list. Instead, I’m going to talk about my impressions and insights (such as they are) regarding the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies up until now.

In very broad strokes, I liked all of them, and moreso than any of the previous Marvel movies, with a few exceptions, as you’ll see below. This giant-ass list of entertainment media contains only one genuine false start and one really sour note, both of which were recent TV properties. Everything else has been overall quite pleasurable to watch, and as a fan with an understanding of the different storytelling mediums and how they might dictate the way a story is presented, it has been fascinating to watch the MCU origami-fold 35, 50, even 75 years’ worth of stories into the essential beats and elements for a film series. Some things get added, some things get taken away, and many things get re-purposed or streamlined. But the ends have justified the means in nearly every instance.

More to the point, let me say that, judging movie for movie, the MCU movies that I liked the least--out of all of them--I liked way better than I liked Spider-Man 3. Or X-Men: The Last Stand. Or Elektra. Or Daredevil (the Affleck version). Or X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Or all three Fantastic Four movies. So, if you need a barometer by which I'm grading these things on, let the above movies stand as your negative integers. I talked about this clear line of demarcation earlier in the year as part of a long diatribe on Super Hero Fatigue.

The other thing that these movies have done is to create a sub-genre unto themselves: “The Marvel Super Hero Movie.” I know it seems like a thin distinction, but perhaps the best thing that the studio did was to figure out how to translate the Marvel Comics style of storytelling into movies. That now-famous quote from Feige comes to mind about how Captain America: Winter Soldier isn’t a super hero movie; it’s a Cold War spy thriller that just happens to have super heroes in it. That aesthetic going forward, especially in Phase 2 and Phase 3, really set them apart from the Distinguished Competition, who have been trying, with limited success, to replicate their previous successes with Batman and Superman. I say this genuinely and without any acrimony whatsoever, because I love those characters, but Marvel has simply beaten Warner Brothers to the punch in nearly every way—with notable exceptions, like 2017’s fantastic and long overdue Wonder Woman.

Meanwhile, Marvel’s movies have forged complex relationships with one another, fueled by secondary and tertiary plotlines that eventually converge into Avengers movies. We get to see these heroes at their best, and also at their worst, and sometimes, they are more on point in their civilian guises than they are saving the world in their battle suits. Such as always been a key ingredient to the Marvel storytelling formula. Heroes with problems. Relatable, undate-able, and debatable—these guys aren’t always right. They make mistakes, bad calls. Tony Stark in particular has to carry the weight of several Silver Age scientists who screwed up, but Marvel Studio has deftly given Stark an ego the size of Avengers Mansion so he can handle it when he has a mega-setback (like, say, Ultron, for instance). They are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and they are also wonderfully broken in the ways that make them fascinating characters to watch. Some of the best scenes in all of the Marvel movies happen with no high-flying punching, just people sitting around a table, talking, or better yet, standing up and arguing.

Finally, this is not necessarily part of their plan, but because of their aggressive schedule it’s worked out in their favor. Having three movies a year gives Marvel a tighter turning radius than other studios and super hero properties. It allows them to make corrections on the fly—relatively speaking—regarding inclusion and representation. I think Marvel has done an excellent job of folding these concerns into the movies and letting them stand on their own merits, rather than asking to be noticed with press releases. More studios could take a page from this practice. Show, don’t tell. Make Shuri from Black Panther a cool character and more people will want to see Shuri again. Because she’s cool, see? It’s not hard to do in a universe where people have lasers coming out of their faces. Make cool characters, and then tell good stories. That’s certainly the Silver Age and Bronze Age ethic from which most of these films are derived.

Here are my talking points and take-aways from the MCU projects, all of which I’ve watched at least twice, and some as many as ten times. Skip over any shows or movies you haven't seen, because I cavalierly discuss plot points that you may not want to know. Spoiler alert. 

Phase 1

We didn’t even know there was a “Phase One” until they started talking about “Phase Two.” Looking back on these early movies, you can readily see that they had an idea in place, even if it look a while longer to get up to speed.

2008

Iron Man

Still very watchable for a number of reasons, most of them related to Robert Downey, Jr.’s brilliant performance of Tony Stark. He carries the movie—he really has to—and comes out of it both better and worse in the end. The suit tech has this veneer of believability to it, like using the repulsors in his gloves to stabilize his flight. And the updating of his origin—while sticking really close to it—was just the thing to bring the fans in. Bonus for the Stan Lee mis-cameo as “Hef.” By 2008, Stan had been in all of the Marvel films from other studios, and so it was a bit overplayed, but Tony mistaking him for Hugh Hefner was very funny.

And it was very cool (at the time, really forward thinking) to use Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" for the closing credits. Stark playing AC/DC and wearing old metal band shirts is another reminder that he's really one of us, the kids from the 1980s, much as the actor himself wasn't much other than we were in those teen comedies he played in.

The Incredible Hulk

I wish this had been Ang Lee’s Hulk movie. What a pleasure it was to not have to sit through the Hulk’s origin (using a montage in the opening credits, borrowed from the TV show of the same name). Let’s just cut to the chase, literally, as Banner’s hiding out in South America and looking for a cure. They threw a lot of stuff into this movie, but the biggest puzzle piece they re-arranged was the idea that Banner was looking for the Super Soldier serum. It was a nice shortcut that served as a dog whistle for comic book fans in the audience—all 40,000 of them—to signify that this was, in fact, the Marvel Universe, just different. A lot of people thought this movie was mindless, but frankly, a lot of Hulk comics were slugfests, too. The movie ends with a teaser about The Leader, but I don’t think we’ll ever see that particular villain until Hulk’s rights gen unentangled from Universal.

And as much as I love Ed Norton, watching Mark Rufalo take over for the Hulk, physically, has been great. His involvement in the character’s arc has been a positive all the way, and I think it’s because he got to play both sides of the character.

2010

Iron Man 2

People frequently list this at the bottom of their Marvel rankings, but it holds up much better the second time around, and in hindsight with what’s gone on since. At the time, a Russian ex-convict being a brilliant computer hacker was stretching the bounds of credulity; but in 2018, it now makes perfect sense. Whiplash was always one of the many B-Grade villains from the Justin Hammer stories, and it was nice to see him re-imagined as a blunt instrument/ex-Soviet terrorist who actually gives Iron Man some trouble.

The best thing about this movie is the introduction of Black Widow. Scarlett Johansson took a cheesecake role and leaned into it, playing the seductress and the ass-kicker with the same aplomb. Later she would get to do more than just pole-swing around a bunch of stuntmen, and this is when her character really takes off. Don Cheadle as Jim Rhodes was another inspired choice, and he’s a much better foil for Downey, Jr. to play off of, and their chemistry is noticeable. Another quick shout-out to Stan Lee being mistaken for Larry King this time around. 

2011

Thor

Probably the best decision Marvel made in this period was to make use of good directors with an affinity for the source material. Kenneth Branagh is the unsung hero of the first Thor movie, putting the emphasis on the High Court Drama and inter-family squabbling that is such a rich part of Shakespeare’s plays; his work with the Bard’s body of work is largely what made Branagh’s reputation as a director and an actor. The other best decision, geekily speaking, was giving us a glimpse of Hawkeye, character I never dreamed would be realized in a film.

This movie, I think, is probably the closest to a standard "super hero" movie, a structural hold-over from what had come before. There’s an economy of scale here that drops Thor into a small town in the desert, stripped of his powers, and so of course, the appearance of the Destroyer would seem epic by comparison, only it's not, really, is it. The final scenes felt a little cheap, almost rinky-dink. That’s not to say it’s not a fun movie, mostly because of Hemsworth, but subsequent uses of Thor had the spectacle that was missing from the inaugural outing.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Director Joe Johnston, on the other hand, knocked it out of the park. This is one of my favorite Marvel movies, despite a weak third act, and for one simple reason: this was the only way to do Cap, and it was the first time since the comics themselves in 60+ years that they got it right. Cap starts out scrawny Steve Rogers and takes the Super Soldier serum and bathes in Vita-Rays and out comes Captain America. Dr. Erskine is killed by Nazi saboteurs and Rogers goes on tour as Captain America. But what gets him into the war is the word that Bucky’s unit is captured. So he breaks them free and joins their unit, the Howlin’ Commandos. What’s not to love? It’s a great simplification of the story, and it’s really satisfying to watch Cap kicking Hydra ass with Dum-Dum Dugan. Talk about something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. Chris Evans is pitch perfect in the role, easily one of my favorite MCU characters, because he is instantly recognizable as his comic book counterpart.

2012

The Avengers

I love this movie, from start to finish. It starts small, gets weird, and then blows up at the end. We go from seeing one-on-one fights and petty bickering—straight out of the Marvel Comics Standard Playbook—to an epic, city-wide battle with civilians scrambling and Avengers as a team, coming together to save the city, and this incredible tableau of fantastic violence that is part of any good Avengers comic.

Joss Whedan knows what makes a good Marvel comic, having written and read a ton of them himself, and easily the best thing he did with the characters was beef up the role of Black Widow. She’s almost like Batman in this first Avengers, solving problems, providing tactical support for the big guns, and in general proving over and over again why she is on the team. Mostly, the movie was proof of concept that not only could super hero movies work, but that they would be accepted by a larger audience. Not just Spider-Man and the X-Men, but a movie with Black Widow and Hawkeye on the team. That idea moved the whole thing forward in a way that Elektra and The Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer never could.

Phase 2

These movies represent a lot of mid-points in various character’s journeys, and while they are perhaps the most uneven of the lot, they still hold up solidly under repeated viewings. Most of the playing pieces were on the table at this point, fueling rampant speculation about Thanos and it was around this time that the concept of “Super Hero Fatigue” first set in. Also, here in Phase 2 is when the Grey Beards in comic book fandom began to speculate that, despite the success of the first set of Marvel movies, they were sure to be upended, hoisted on their own petard, and otherwise in danger of screwing the pooch for bringing “Fill in the blank upcoming movie” onto the big screen.

The one I’m talking about that had everyone doubting the power of Marvel was, of course, Guardians of the Galaxy. Honestly, I thought this would be the one. They’d pushed it too far. Thankfully, I was proven wrong and those characters have become among the most popular in the whole MCU. I was happy to shut my mouth after that, but the Grey Beards, looking for a failure so they could cackle online and say, “See!? I was right all along!” because we are our own worst enemies, they next fixated on Ant-Man and were again proven wrong.

2013

Iron Man 3

I like this movie more than I should, mostly because of director Shane Black. For all of the off-putting weirdness and the misfires of the fake and real villain, Black working with Downey, Jr. is movie gold and this was no exception. Black is not afraid to go cynical, hate on children, and bludgeon Christmas to death as an ironic counterpoint to the horrible things happening in his movies.  Together, they brought Tony’s arc-reactor (see what I did, there?) to a somewhat satisfying conclusion, but left him wide open for future psychic trauma, as we will see. The misuse of the Mandarin was well-handled, meaning, as much as I would have liked to see the guy with ten rings on his fingers that each did something cool, building him as a political propaganda puppet (and explained just so) in the movie was a bold choice, and I think one that worked far better than if they'd grafted an actual Asian into what has since become a highly problematic character. I may be the only Iron Man fan that thinks that way, but let me ask all'a y'all this: would you rather the Unicorn? Remember, Iron Man has some of the dorkiest villains ever committed to pen and ink. Not a lot of primo choices, there.

Thor: The Dark World

I found this the weakest of the three Thor movies, but there are a lot of people who would disagree with me based on a number of reasons that boil down to personal preferences. Regardless, the epic scope of the movie was sufficiently beefed up after The Avengers, and Thor’s mass battle scenes were a lot more satisfying. Leaving most of Asgard on the table and concentrating on Thor and Loki’s relationship was a great choice, and one of the things that saved the movie.

It's not a stretch to suggest that Loki is the most interesting, most well-developed, and most popular villain in the MCU, and easily one of the most popular characters overall in the MCU. Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth are going to go down as one of the best acting duos in the first three phases. There’s a real rock star quality to the character even as he’s shown failing at more than one scheme. But his role never devolves into comic relief. Loki is too proud for that. This movie was the peak of Loki-mania, and I think this is what saved the movie.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

More than once I have referred to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as “the Silmarillion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” It’s not necessary to consume it to enjoy the main story, but for those who like deep dives into obscure background material, this is that show. What they initially sold as a spy drama with super heroes dropping in quickly pivoted away from that model and became the place to lay out real estate and concepts that they could pick up later in other projects; things like the Kree and the Inhumans. The Darkhold. Ghost Rider (a GOOD Ghost Rider, not a Nick Cage Ghost Rider). All sorts of great things have played out in five seasons. It’s one of my favorite shows on television, but I realize it’s insider baseball for comic book nerds like myself.

2014

Captain America: Winter Soldier

One of the best movies in the MCU, period. The Russo brothers perfectly balanced the Cold War Spy elements with the absurdities of super heroes and shadow organizations. And hey, best of all, we got The Falcon, another one of my favorite Marvel characters. He made a great partner for Cap in the comics and they are able to bond instantly as fellow veterans in the MCU. So simple, so well-done. A great part for Anthony Mackie, one he really seems to enjoy.

Also, Black Widow is all over this movie in a great way, using her Cold War spy stuff to get the upper hand more than once. Oh, and hey—Batroc the Leaper? Are you kidding me? What a cool way to use that iconic and also very stupid character. But I think Robert Redford as the spymaster was the best casting, clearly a more than passing acknowledgement of the Three Days of the Condor elements and another great use of these cool actors. The MCU is for American character actors what the Harry Potter movies were for British character actors.

Guardians of the Galaxy

As I stated earlier, I thought this would be the one that tanked. Mostly because of Rocket Raccoon. But I was wrong, and quite happy to be so. That said, as enjoyable as it is, it’s a little too silly for me at times and I think the humor doesn’t always work. I liked it. But I didn’t love it like how some folks do. Pratt and Saldana are awesome together, and I was glad to see their chemistry build in the second movie.

Still, I feel like this whole movie was Gunn’s audition tape and sizzle reel for making a Howard the Duck movie. That will be great, if they let him do it. Big if. Colossal if. Because Howard the Duck needs almost an R-rated sensibility to do the right way. Otherwise, why make it? 

I suppose part of the popularity of this movie lies in the fact that it’s a one-off. I mean, there’s nothing to connect it to the plots on Earth, save the mutual threat of Thanos. As such, GotG is actually a weird on-ramp to joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in media res, as it were. Granted, there’s probably only a dozen people in America who made this movie their first MCU film, but I’ll allow it could happen. There are some people, though, who aren’t big into comics and super heroes, but love space-pirate-based Science Fiction, and this movie is certainly SF of the “Pew, Pew” variety. It just happens to have a couple of super heroes (barely functional, but still) in the space pirate movie. If there was ever a need for proof of concept regarding the MCU, it’s this movie, right here.

This was also the first of the Marvel movies to trade on the 1980s nostalgia, another hand-waving sign that Generation X is helming and lensing these movies for the 45-55 year olds in the audience. That’s not to say that 1980s music (really, it’s 1970s music in the movie, but we were listening to it back then, too) isn’t for everyone, but...okay, you know what? It’s not for everyone. But in this case, the songs were a nice counterpoint to the action on the screen, if a touch overdone and in a couple of cases, repurposed.

Marvel’s Agent Carter

This was one of their best projects and the reason for its cancellation has never been fully explained nor was the half-assed explanation satisfying in the least. Peggy Carter kicked ass for two full seasons, and even got to re-unite with The Howling Commandos. It’s available to stream. If you loved the first Captain America movie and you somehow didn’t catch this series, go fix that right now.

I wish this series had found a wider audience. It had everything that people praised Wonder Woman for in 1017, and it did it in an 8-part series that was much sharper in its commentary. Probably the best part of the show is the Howling Commandos episode where Peggy re-joins them as not only an active member of the squad, but as team leader, something she hadn’t been able to do until that point. It was glorious, watching her finally get the acknowledgement in the show that we’d been giving her since the first episode. Also, we get to see the Soviet program that trained the Black Widow agents (but only super nerds would know that). 

2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron

I think this movie suffers from two things: it didn’t meet the unspoken expectations of its audience, who all seemed to say, “We don’t know what we were expecting, but we weren’t expecting that,” and also you can see the stress cracks from Joss Whedon dealing with his new Mouse-Eared Overlords.

All that aside, it’s a pretty worthy sequel to the first Avengers, made all the more interesting by the choice of James Spader to play Ultron. He’s never not James Spader, and so it’s alot like putting Joker make-up on Jack Nicholson. He’s still terrifying, even as he’s reading to audience members completely as Spader and not the homicidal Vibranium-enhanced AI Android from Marvel comics that we all know and love to hate. Instead, he's playing the James Spader villain we love to hate. Am I splitting hairs? Yeah, so did the movie.

Avengers: Age of Ultron pays a lot of things forward, introducing Klaw and Wakanda in one fell swoop, right alongside Vision, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch. Lots going on. I went back and paid close attention to the Black Widow trying to start a relationship with Bruce Banner and I really think a lot of people had a knee jerk negative reaction to the idea of Natasha having any kind of romantic entanglement. Unfortunately for the Internet, that was her character from the very first page in her origin story; a seductive Soviet super-spy who uses any means necessary to achieve her goals. Eh, to each her own, I guess. The George Perez-inspired slow-motion capture shots at the beginning and the end of the movie kept me more than somewhat entertained.

Ant-Man

The second film in the “Will ‘Movie X’ be the film that kills the Marvel Franchise” litany of “Well, I don’t know...I mean, it’s Ant-Man...” nonsense. Especially with an outlier like The Guardians of the Galaxy doing so well previously. I think people were nervous about the attempts to work with writers and directors and actors known for comedic work. After all, comics aren’t funny, right? Oh yeah, smart guy? Then why do they call them “funny books?” Boom. Done.

Where was I? Oh, right. This heist-caper flick starring former thief Scott Lang, played by Paul Rudd. I know I sound like a broken record, but I love this character so much. I always liked the one-off heroes with really specific gimmicks. The Falcon. Hawkeye. Black Panther. Ant-Man. It’s like The Marvel Cinematic Universe was made for me.

This movie was no exception. Rudd does an incredible job as Lang, the former Do-Gooder thief who is just trying to make things right with his daughter, his ex-wife, and her new husband, who just happens to be a cop. I don’t normally like Michael Douglas, but he was great as former bad-ass Hank Pym, now that he’s finally playing characters his age and not being creepy as a sex object.

The only problem that some people had with the movie was the sameness of the hero/villain set-up from Iron Man. That couldn’t be helped. Tony Stark and Hank Pym were both scientists. They both made cool suits. They both fought their mirror images, armed with tech they created, and often. I think Ant-Man was different enough that it didn’t bother me any. But, then again, I’m the hardcore fan.

Daredevil

I had no idea what to expect, other than the guy that was the showrunner also did the first two seasons of Spartacus on Starz, and that went over pretty well, so what the heck. I was not disappointed in the slightest. De Knight spent a long time—hours of it—introducing Wilson Fisk and making us actually care about him. Then, when he finally meets Daredevil, and says, “Take your shot!” and Fisk beats him nearly to death in an inconsolable rage, we are reminded that “oh, yeah, right, the Kingpin is a sociopath.” This first season, from its hallway fight tracking shot in episode 2 to the long, slow burn to simply line up all the pieces in a thoughtful manner, it really altered the tenor and scope of what could be done with narrative TV and super hero stories. Bonus points for actually letting us see Murdock and Nelson doing lawyer stuff.

Jessica Jones

If there was any doubt as to how “dark” the Marvel Knights line on Netflix was going to be, Jessica Jones answered it and spiked the ball: charcoal. Kristen Ritter has found her calling as the exceptionally capable and exceptionally damaged private investigator and former super hero. Jones was a more recent addition to Marvel Comics, but writer Brian Bendis wasted no time in stitching her into the fabric of the world. Specifically, she hooks up with Luke Cage. Now, in the comics, they end up together and having a baby. I don’t think we are quite there yet. But when Luke Cage showed up in Jessica Jones, the Internet exploded.

Phase 3

By the time this was announced, everyone knew that there was an endgame movie and it would feature the inevitable dust-up with Thanos. But as the schedule got longer and longer, thanks to real interest in a Spider-Man movie and an Ant-Man sequel, the timeline didn’t so much as lengthen as the number of hurdles before we got to Avengers: Infinity War have increased. I see this as a feature rather than a bug, since we had a great many things to distract us while we waited for Thanos and the Guardians of the Galaxy to come crashing down to Earth.

2016

Captain America: Civil War

Why are the Captain America movies so good across the board? I don’t know, but this one ticks all of the boxes. You’d think with twelve heroes onscreen, squaring off against one another, plus the introduction of Spider-Man and Black Panther, that the movie would feel crowded. Instead, it moves with alacrity toward the inevitable conclusion and teases a couple of great instances; namely, Cap breaking everyone out of jail, and the Wakandans working on Bucky to get the Winter Soldier program out of his head. Both events obviously (we presume) happened between movies, but that we know exactly how these things played out is a testament to the quality of the writing where Chris Evans and Captain America are both concerned. Some of the credit has to go to comic book writer Ed Brubaker, whose excellent stories were the source material for Cap’s (and Bucky’s) character arcs.

That super hero throw-down at the airport is, again, a classic Marvel trope, expertly rendered, full of great surprises, like Ant-Man’s embiggening, and of course, everything that came out of Spider-Man’s mouth. Sony’s past attempts have done a good job of capturing one or two aspects of Spider-Man’s character and pathos, but they never really got it all in one place. With two scenes, inside of the Captain America movie (and a bonus scene at the end), Marvel showed how Spider-Man could and should be done.

Doctor Strange

I’m on record as not being a big Benedict Cumberbatch fan, mostly because I’m not a woman, but also because he has an oddly-shaped head that I find distracting, but when he was cast as Doctor Strange, I had to admit that at least from the point of view of his gargantuan cranium, it was a good fit. Kudos, too, for taking the source material as created by Steve Ditko and making movie-sense of it. Ditko frequently drew Doctor Strange off-kilter, and in fact, many of his more strange and unusual characters (like Odd Man, a one-shot deal from DC comics) used spatial distortions to frighten and confuse enemies. Yes, Yes, Poindexter, they did the same thing in Inception. We get it. You spotted it. You’re very clever. Now go sit down. Having Inception do the heavy lifting of establishing the architecture of dreamscapes in such a way made it instantly recognizable and something they didn’t really have to spend any time dwelling on. It was a smart choice.

Points, too, for getting Dormammu into the movie and making his head be a giant ethereal ball of flame. Take that, shitty Galactus from the second Fantastic Four movie! I can’t wait for more Doctor Strange, and honestly, I’d love a cameo from him in everything in Phase 4.

I wonder, since Doctor Strange is so removed from the rest of the MCU, if this isn’t another weird on-ramp to the Marvel Universe, alongside GotG. I’d like to think there’s a gaggle of very confused Cumberbatch fans who came staggering out of the movie on opening night, stunned, and said, “Well, I guess we’ve got to watch Thor, now.”

Luke Cage

Sweet Christmas! Another of my favorites, done right, and really done with the kind of agency and also gravitas that really helps his origin rise out of the “black hero” trope that Marvel and DC both employed during the seventies, when they tried the first time to be more diverse and inclusive. In Marvel’s case, they copied the language of Blackploitation films. Only, see, Luke Cage, hero for hire, couldn’t swear in the 1970’s. So, “Sweet Jesus” became “Sweet Christmas.” You can guess what “flamin’” was a stand-in for. Most of the “mature characters” in Marvel comics in the 1970s have their own version of Cockney Rhyming Slang that is just hilarious in hindsight.

But we’re talking about Luke Cage, expertly and deftly written to knowingly nod at the Blacksploitational elements in his comic stories, but not imitate them. Update, yes, but with the kind of verve and swagger that’s more New Jack City by way of Do The Right Thing than, say, Super Fly. Mike Colter plays the part like he’s born to it, and his supporting cast is terrific all around. Also, the music is practically its own character, and easily the strongest soundtrack the MCU has produced, hands down, no takebacks.

It’s a small thing, tiny really, but there is one scene in the show where Cage appears, wearing blue jeans, the headpiece he wore during the experiment that gave him his powers, and a yellow blouse that he found on a clothesline. He takes a look at himself—the spitting image of Power Man in the 1970s, and says, “I look like a damn fool.” I haven’t laughed that hard at an in-joke since Cyclops glanced at Wolverine, back in 2000, and said, “Would you prefer yellow Spandex?”

2017

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

I don’t know if this movie was a home run, but it was certainly an off-the-wall triple. Director James Gunn doubled down on everything that worked in the first movie, and while the experience was different, it was also kinda the same, too. The only character that got any growth was Star-Lord, and it was forced upon him by the realization that his father, Ego, the Living Planet, was actually a rampaging asshole. Go figure. With a name like Ego, the Living Planet. I can't make this stuff up, folks.

I really think that the combined soundtracks are part of the appeal of these movies. This deliberate attempt to tap into the broader tapestry of pop culture (dig the Ramones album cover-inspired poster on the left) and the judicious application of certain songs in both the trailer and the movie should get partial credit for this particular franchise's continued success. I'm not going out on any limbs here when I say that was the best use of "Fox on the Run" ever in a movie. Sweet gets no love these days. 

Also, massive Kudos to Gunn for giving us Ego, the Living Planet (take that, shitty Galactus from the second Fantastic Four movie!) as well as all of the original (and really damn goofy) Guardians of the Galaxy, like Charlie-27 (that's really his name) and Martinex, in a more recognizable form.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

This was one of the mid-stream-announced Marvel movies that I was most looking forward to. I pinned my fanboy hopes on this movie not sucking and I was not disappointed. Not just in the setup and execution of the film, but in all of my fears being allayed by them doing everything the way I thought they should do it. That doesn’t happen very often, but in this particular case, I was so relieved.

 Here’s what they got right: 1. They didn’t even bother to re-tell the origin. More room for a better story; 2. They scaled down the scope of the movie to something resembling the kind of things Spidey dealt with in his first 20 issues. They Lee and Ditko stuff. It wasn’t epic stuff, Wagnerian opera-type things. It was Peter standing up his homecoming date. In high school, that is epic enough. And it played that way in the movie; 3. Tom Holland is the youngest guy to play a teen-age Spidey, and it shows. Spider-Man should be a teenager, not a senior-nearly-a-freshman-in-college, nor a thirty-year old glandular case in hipster clothes. The teen angle is what made all of his choices—the “Great Responsibility” parts—have that extra oomph; and 4. No Green Goblin/Gwen Stacy iteration anywhere in sight. Thank you Marvel. And the Ramones in the soundtrack made me extra happy. ‘Cause they’re from Queens, too, ya mook, and not just from Queens, but Forest Hills, which is Peter Parker’s old neighborhood. Is that a deep cut, or what? I know, right!?

Thor: Ragnarok

I loved this movie, but it’s a hybrid. Tonally speaking, it’s about two-thirds Guardians of the Galaxy and one third Thor: The Dark World. But the part that is a Thor movie at least focused squarely on the Loki-Thor-Odin triangle. Thor and Loki manage to patch up their differences, to both escape the garbage planet and reclaim Asgard, and then they don’t really, because Loki will always be Loki. The Hulk, as he has been written in the comics for fifty years, finally makes an appearance as the guttural-speaking brute who can keep himself transformed so long as he keeps simmering. We finally get a Valkerie (if not the Valkerie), which is nice. Idris Elba finally has something to do as Heimdall. And Kate Blanchett crushes it as Hela. Oh, brother, does she crush it. 

Ironically, there’s more Kirby-inspired design in this movie than the other two Thor films, though they did take a stab at it in the first movie. And while Jack Kirby got his due credit, it would have been nice to see a little bit more of his work represented. The Doctor Strange cameo sorta makes up for it. 

But I mentioned before how Thor should have an epic scale. This one has that scale, and as bookends to the movie, no less. If you didn’t get a vicarious thrill out of the Mjolnir-Cam at the beginning of the movie, then you’re dead inside and probably not the target audience for these movies. Moreover, if the inspired use of Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” as fight scene music didn’t move you, then I suspect you never played Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager, which begs the question: how did we meet, again, exactly? Finally, Jane Foster was completely written out of the story. This made me way happier than it should have. That story was going nowhere, and their romance felt weirdly shoehorned in to the second movie, anyway. I like Natalie Portman, but not in this role. Don't worry about her. She's got Star Wars money. She'll be fine.

Iron Fist

From the first announcement that Luke Cage and Iron Fist would be in the Netflix shows, I had two parallel thoughts: well, martial arts are easy to do these days; they can’t possibly screw this up—and—holy crap! We’re going to get a Power Man/Iron Fist team-up!

Well, I was wrong. At least, about one thing. They could mess up Iron Fist, and did. It’s not that it’s bad—but it’s certainly the weakest of the four Netflix series. Allegedly the show got the shortest amount of lead-in time (this same showrunner also worked on The Inhumans—see below) and it actually feels like a first draft script with a lot of weird redundancies that a couple more passes would have expertly eliminated. It’s a shame, too, because I loved both Power Man and Iron Fist as a kid, and when they teamed up, my head exploded. I wanted this to be great, especially since I was the target audience for this show. And I wanted to like it, and I tried to like it. There are certainly pieces of it that aren't bad, and I think the criticism was so vitriolic because the other three shows were so good. It just felt like a major step down in quality and tone. 

Thankfully, Jeph Loeb has been listening to the massive feedback. Iron Fist Season 2 is now at the back of the schedule, and they are clearly driving for a Heroes for Hire team up. But Danny needs fixing, first. He’s got a better showrunner and more lead-in time to get it right. If Into the Badlands can have a third season, there is no reason on Earth why Iron Fist can't be fixed so as to not suck.

The Inhumans

Well, here it is: the first real failure from Marvel since 2008. And it’s a total failure, too, from the casting on down to execution. It’s a failure made all the more baffling because it didn’t have to be. This could have been handled by the same team working on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and really should have been) but for some reason, they wanted a mini-series and gave this thing literally 3 months of prep time (as opposed to all of the Netflix shows, which got 9-12 months lead-in time or more). Not only do the stitches and seams show where they jammed this Frankenstein together, but the two greatest sins it commits are (a) it didn’t even bother to link up with the detailed groundwork laid out by Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. over three seasons, and (b) from tone to execution, this feels like it was made in the mid-1990s, back when producers would say, “Okay, we get it, she’s got telekinetic hair, but that’s going to inflate the budget, so how about we cut her hair off in the second episode?” and “hey, I get it, this is based on one of those, whaddayacallit, graphic novels, or some shit, but no one is going to care if we switch some of this stuff around. For example, do you know how cheap it is to film in Hawaii?”

Skip this show. I’m serious. You gain nothing by seeing it, and you lose nothing by omitting it. And if anyone tells you, "Oh, it's not that bad," you punch them in the throat and unfriend them on Facebook. Because they are wrong, so very wrong. 

The Defenders

It’s not fair to cast this mini-series as “the Avengers of the Netflix MCU series” but that’s kinda what it was, only not really. Sorta. Kinda. I don’t know. The biggest problem with the show is that the timing of the series didn’t quite match up regarding villain development. The Hand, an ancient criminal organization that fought both Daredevil and Iron Fist, was the engine driving the storyline, which is about extracting dragon bones from under the bedrock of New York City. The process would have caused the city so suffer massive seismic distress that would have brought it tumbling down, but the Hand doesn’t care, since it would have the dragon bones it needed. Not bad, but as a story goes, it’s both too epic and not quite epic enough. It could have used a lot more Vincent D’Onofrio and a lot less Sigourney Weaver, a statement I never thought I’d make in print.

As a story point, people are going to look back on The Defenders with fondness, since it presents connective tissue into everyone’s second and third seasons, and also manages to get some key players into the room together. I’m looking at you, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing. For my money, I’d take Knight Wing Investigations right alongside Heroes For Hire, if both are on the table, and why wouldn’t they be? The Defenders goes into conspicuous contortions to get those two in the same room together. There’s no other reason other than to have them team up.

All that aside, it's okay. It's not awesome. There are parts of the series that are great. Scenes in every episode that are just awesome. But it doesn't hang together as well as it should. Those great scenes feel like padding, which isn't fair, because among other things, they establish these characters getting to know one another despite vast differences (Danny and Luke, for example). 

The Punisher

This Netflix series was an add-on after Jon Bernthal tested so well as the Punisher in season 2 of Daredevil that they sort of had to make a spin-off. Now, I am not a big fan of this character. Written well, he can be entertaining in small doses, but he’s very rarely written well. The reason for this lies in the Punisher’s origins. Not his character origins, but how we got to him in 1974, shooting Spider-Man with a gun on the cover of the comic book.

Marvel was floundering in the 1970s. We didn’t know it at the time, but the Silver Age was over and they were really trying to keep up with the rapid changes in the world. So, they took a lot of cues from movies. Shang Chi and Iron Fist were attempts to slipstream behind the martial arts movie craze. Luke Cage was the attempt to borrow some cool from Blacksploitation. Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk and Spider-Woman were trying to emulate Wonder Woman’s success as a feminist symbol for the Women’s Lib movement. And The Punisher? Well, he’s straight up a costumed reworking of Charles Bronson from Death Wish. He hunts the people who killed his family. With a gun. Back in 1974, this was very radical stuff. Heroes didn’t use guns and they didn’t kill. Not back then.

The Punisher changed all of that. He appeared in a vacuum, the literal “good guy with a gun,” although that’s not quite right, either. For years, he was written as an antagonist, right up into the early 1980s. But he became insanely popular, thanks to Frank Miller using him in Daredevil (which is why he showed up in that Netflix series, of course). And it was inevitable that The Punisher would get his own movie. How hard could it be, right? I mean, he’s got no super powers. He just shoots people with guns. Easy peasy, right?

Google the Punisher movies. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Yeah, they all suck green donkeys. The reason is simple: what’s unique and special by omission in comics is woefully commonplace in the movies. He shoots criminal with guns? Get in line, Frank Castle. Everyone shoots everyone in the movies. You can’t feed beef back to the cow. That’s how you get Mad Cow’s disease. Or, if you prefer, shitty Punisher movies.

So, I told you that to tell you this: Netflix finally got it right. This series isn’t about him killing people. It’s about how he got so messed up—and now that we know more about PTSD, unfortunately, in modern combat veterans, this story bristles with meaning and nuance, something that was always lacking in every other movie version of the character. You won’t believe how good it is. You may still not like it for its subject matter, but you will not-like-it way less than any of the other Punishers that you totally hated. That sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise, but I’m really not. There’s a great story in there, but it starts in Daredevil, Season 2 and you need that before you watch the series. Not a chore, I promise.

2018

Black Panther

It’s easy to like this movie; it’s got everything going for it. A likeable and engaging cast, from the heroes to the villains (Andy Serkis retuning as Klaw is awesome), some cool spy-drama throwbacks that are half Captain America: Winter Soldier and half Luke Cage, and the coolness of Wakanda, in all its splendor (I’m totally including Man-Ape when I say this). This is also a more intricate back story than the set-up we got in Captain America: Civil War—which, it turns out, did some of the heavy lifting for this movie by giving us the short-hand origin story. I can’t think of another movie franchise which is able to chain-link its heroes in such a way as to introduce them in a couple of scenes in one movie and then spin them off into an entire film all their own the following year. That kind of thing has never been done before, but they did it with two different characters in the same damn movie, both times with great end results. No small accomplishment.

Oh, and for the record, I want an armored war rhinoceros. I think that would effectively end them being poached if we gave them armor and taught them to charge their attackers. That whole scene felt like an outtake from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I say that in the nicest possible way.

Part 3 coming Tomorrow.