Thunderbolts* Is What Marvel Should Keep Making Thunderbolts* (or, The New Avengers) is what you remember Marvel movies and shows being, back when it was a pretty sure thing that any given movie was going to be good, if not excellent. Somehow, the rhythms and plot progression that have now become standard work here. The… Read More: Thunderbolts*: Bleak But Amazing »
In a world of jaded critics & fans, and collapsing franchises, this one actually delivers. In this era of endlessly disappointing sci-fi and pop-culture “events,” Tron: Ares is a breath of fresh neon air. The art form is back. This movie doesn’t chase nostalgia or hide behind exposition dumps; it simply exists—confidently, intelligently, beautifully. It… Read More: Tron: Ares — Just Plain Good. Here’s Why. »
You’ve seen movie & TV ratings before — stars, thumbs, percentages, emojis… you name it. But here at Sci-Fi Bloggers, we decided to do things differently. After years of watching sci-fi rise, fall, reboot, and reformat itself into oblivion, it was time for a new kind of rating system — one made for people who… Read More: Introducing the SFB Scale: How We Rank the Real Sci-Fi… »
“The Past Is The Past” Subverts Superhero Stories “The Past is The Past” is both an ending I’d want from a show, and way off from what I expected for this show specifically. Or any Marvel show, really. My general impression of the “origin series,” as I think of them, is to take a character… Read More: Ironheart Episodic Coverage: “The Past Is the Past” »
“Deep Trouble” Has Two Great Ideas Put Together I loved “Deep Trouble” in theory. I liked it in practice. There’s a difference between conceptually enjoying the decisions made and having the delivery be only okay. Let’s take the fear domain, for instance. Somehow, a submarine going through the ocean managed to combine so many different… Read More: The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Deep Trouble” »
“Karma’s a Glitch” Might Be The Second-Best Part “Karma’s a Glitch” has the pacing and progression of a movie, and I loved that about it. The series has been building up for so long that just having a bunch of classic superhero moments chained together was deeply satisfying. Like, yes, the series does have to… Read More: Ironheart Episodic Coverage: “Karma’s a Glitch” »
“Pipelines” Somehow Isn’t A Bad Magnus Episode Let me be clear. I hated three big things about “Pipelines.” I hated the re: being repeated so many times in a row. Some of the emails are so short that it’s actually ridiculous to include those—damn any verisimilitude. Secondly, I hate that the actual horror moment, the… Read More: The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Pipelines” »
“Temporary Positions” Is Great For Mystery Lovers Maybe this is just because I’ve listened to a lot of Magnus, and am going off patterns, but the series does have a habit of outright stating something after it was possible to mostly have figured it out. And that’s what “Temporary Positions” feels like. It’s a clarifying… Read More: The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Temporary Positions” »
“Repetitive Strain” Doesn’t Have Enough Runtime “Repetitive Strain” is mostly only brought down from excellence by the statement not having enough time. I love that the episode keeps matters mostly focused on one plotline, while also progressing it, but I was intrigued and increasingly horrified—and then the story stopped. Like, I don’t recall many Spiral-style… Read More: The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Repetitive Strain” »
“Slipping” Is An Offputting Episode Of This Series “Slipping” takes the format of Protocol and pushes it to the absolute extreme. There’s implying a horror story through the medium of whatever technology or multimedia thing we’re exploring that episode, and then there’s burying it so deep in that framework that it feels like a twist… Read More: The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Slipping” »