Pete Messum Reviews...

After a ham-fisted attempt to tie-in Agents of SHIELD to Captain America: Civil War, this week's episode saw the return of General Talbot, played by Adrian Pasdar. Talbot has become my favourite supporting character on the show, and this episode summarizes why. From his quick-witted comments such as "Daisy-waisy" to his very logical, if a little ignorant views, Talbot is just a really fun character in the series, and I'm glad to see more of him and Coulson interacting in this episode. Can he feature as a main character in Season 4 please? We also had Lincoln tricking Daisy into tricking Lincoln to trick May and escape SHIELD HQ, a sequence I was so glad was in fact a double-bluff on the part of Lincoln. Either that or he was an idiot and May was an even bigger idiot with that alarm business. It's a much more redeeming thing for  Lincoln to do in the show, and was further justified by pitting Lash up against Hive. That was an awesome moment in the episode, and g

'Failed Experiments' brings to mind just how familiar these latter episodes of Agents of SHIELD Season 3 have felt. Daisy joins with an evil Inhuman with plans that threaten the human race but protect her own, and the team must bring Daisy around to see that whatever the evil Inhuman is doing is evil and that they need to stop them. I watched this episode about an hour ago and I'm still racking my head around what to say about it. I really don't have much, and I've even tried to write notes for this one! Well, I enjoyed seeing Agent May actually acting like a Spy in getting Hive's location from...the Australian bloke...whatever his name was...? I also really liked Mack's speech to Daisy near the end, and seeing Hive's origin as well as him facing down a Kree. And then I have to get cracking on what doesn't work here. Lincoln gives himself a prototype Hive cure...and it destroys his immune system. So...I guess we're not saving Daisy with it th

It's easy to think that after 16 years the X-Men movies would run out of ideas, but oddly enough the latest instalment - X-Men: Apocalypse - vows to change up the typical X-Men formula with a brand-new baddie in En Sabah Nur, also known as Apocalypse. Formally an Egyptian God who spread from body to body to gain various mutant powers over the centuries, Apocalypse (played by Oscar Isaac) awakens in 1983 to find that the world as he knows it has changed. Recruiting the help of the Four Horsemen - consisting of Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Angel (Ben Hardy), Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) - Apocalypse vows to destroy the Earth using Professor X (James McAvoy)  and start afresh with mutants as God-like beings. The only people who can stop him are Xavier's mutant students - Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Beast (Nicholas Hoult)  and leading mutant figure Mystique (Jennifer Lawren

The first half of  Arrow : season 4 was a bit of an average selection of episodes that seemed to be treading water until some actual interesting plot threads could start. The entire show seemed severely damaged by season 3, and the future didn't seem all that bright for Team Arrow. This second half of the season, however, has been much, much stronger overall, despite some notable flaws. Felicity still takes up far too much focus on the show. Although I at first liked the idea of Damien Darhk permanently injuring her, the show then turned this pretty good twist around so that Curtis actually used nanobots to heal her...so what was the point in injuring her like that, giving her an arc of accepting this change and then undoing it all? Oh, and then of course she calls off the wedding with Oliver and then gets a whole episode focused around her and bee-lady from The Flash (an episode filled to brim with awful puns),  and  a whole episode focused around her and Oliver staging a fake

As Agents of SHIELD hurtles towards its third season finale, the big bad Hive puts his plans into action - now with the help of Daisy, the Aussie guy and...urm...nope, can't remember her name, sorry. If there's one thing I can praise about this over-arching narrative its that Brett Dalton is really, really good as Hive. The way he subtly alters his performance when he's accessing different people he's absorbed over the years really works. His vocal performance and posture really differs Hive from Ward, helped no doubt by his very evil-looking long coat. If I'm honest, I can't talk about the story-line itself very much, although I can't help but get X-Men vibes from it. Chloe Bennet seems to be the only actor in the show who's able to get across Hive's influence though, and the further exploration of how he's controlling the Inhumans helps to explore a possible moral conflict between humans and Inhumans in future episodes. This episode seemed

"The Team" begins with the Secret Warriors assembled by Daisy and Lincoln to rescue the captured SHIELD agents and...they succeed. It's unexpected to see an episode of SHIELD called "The Team" pretty much deliver the team-building stuff supposedly in the opening 10 minutes. Then the episode changes into a claustrophobic whodunnit, something akin to a horror movie. The whole of SHIELD is locked down in the bunker, with supposedly no means of escape. Thus, they have to work out who has been possessed by Hive before its too late. While I'm talking about these scenes, I have to admit that I was a little confused by Malick's death. In his vision of the future, Malick specifically says that Hive will kill him, but it is revealed later that Daisy killed him. So...why did Malick say that Hive would kill him if his attack - that being Daisy - was stood right in front of him? It doesn't really add up, if I'm honest. Hmmm... Lincoln is believed to be t

After 8 years, 12 movies and billions of dollars in box office, it seems that Marvel Studios are making the biggest movies in Hollywood at the moment, but even with this continuous success, it could be very easy for Marvel to fall out of favour with audiences. Many people were left disappointed with Avengers: Age of Ultron last year, and some were worried that the cracks in Marvel's vibranium armour were beginning to show. The films were feeling a little repetitive, with few repercussions for the heroes and very few strong antagonists. Thus, it only makes sense for Marvel to begin their third phase of interconnected super-hero movies by basically destroying the Avengers. Captain America: Civil War is the biggest shake-up in the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. When the new Avengers cause a disaster in Wakanda, the United Nations prepare what they call the Sokovia Act - a document that if signed restricts the activities of any 'enhanced' individuals and mak