Pete Messum Reviews...

' Inescapable ' might just be the best episode so far in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sixth season, centring entirely around Fitz and Simmons as they find themselves trapped inside a Chronicom mind prison, and have to face their fears together. Whilst the meta aspects of ' Inescapable ''s trippy, mind-bending dream sequences may seem obvious - Fitz is haunted by his potential for evil, Simmons is haunted by the fears and anxieties she'd locked away in her music box - they do serve to give the episode stakes. The characters' inner demons are given physical form to pursue them through the maze of their own shared dreams, which helps to keep up the pace when things seem to be getting a little too slow. Once everything is all resolved and FitzSimmons are back together as a unit though, so are their demons - in a rather humorous end to the episode. It's probably worth mentioning that Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstringe are both fantastic through...

After the baffling tonal inconsistencies of ' Code Yellow ', Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. attempts to get back on track with ' The Other Thing ' - an episode that feels like it's simply there to set things up for later. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. abandoned its villain-of-the-week format a long time ago, but it still feels somewhat dissatisfying when episodes feel like smaller pieces in a larger puzzle. It's as though the show is being produced for a streaming audience, bingeing the entire season in one go, as opposed to working as week-to-week entertainment. It's also at this point that I really started to feel the length of this season - and we're only five episodes in. I had thought that a shorter, thirteen-episode season would benefit the show, and while it might in the long run, I don't think that the story has gone very far in five episodes. May has been captured by Sarge and his accomplice (whose name escapes me, but she keeps mentioni...

When did Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. become DC's Legends of Tomorrow? ' Code Yellow ' starts off with Deke having reinvented himself in 2019 as the head of a tech/games company, with a girlfriend (played by Executive Producer Maurissa Trancheon) and a revolutionary new system called "The Framework". Sound familiar? Oh, and obviously the episode opens with a cheesy action sequence of Deke fighting some aliens in a corridor and then seducing Daisy in a fake-out dream/game sequence so obvious that for me at least, the episode started on the wrong foot. With this and the previous episode, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be trying to embrace a more humorous approach, with a style of meta-humour similar to that of DC's Legends of Tomorrow. Deke's look towards the camera in the pre-titles sting was a bit too on-the-nose for me, especially given how grounded Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has tried to be for so long. If the show wants to head into a new direc...

' Spider-Man: Far From Home ' is the twenty-third film in the Marvel Studios Cinematic Universe, the concluding chapter in their third phase of films, the fifth film to feature Tom Holland as Peter Parker / Spider-Man, and the second installment of this third live-action film iteration of the character. In short: ' Far From Home ' is a sequel to ' Spider-Man: Homecoming ' and a direct follow-up to ' Avengers: Endgame ', meaning that if you are one of the (apparently few) people who didn't see ' Endgame ' (and statistically speaking you probably did, as it made a colossal $2.7 billion worldwide), ' Far From Home ' will spoil almost all of the major twists in that film - and so will this review, so be warned. With Planet Earth saved after the Universe-shaking events of ' Avengers: Endgame ', everyone is still trying to adjust to the five years that technically never were. Those "snapped" by Thanos are back living t...

' Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson ' is a rather bizarre episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., attempting a more bizarre and humorous installment without actually having the story to justify this. The tonal shifts throughout the episode border on the bizarre, and do serve the remove a lot of the tension. On the one hand, it's a story about Team Space SHIELD (Daisy, Simmons, Davis and the other one) desperately trying to find Fitz (and Enoch), coming so close and yet again losing him at the last possible second. A new threat emerges in the form of a hunter Chronicom, and the episode ends on a very dour note with a short epilogue showing Sarge's plan coming to fruition. The issue here isn't so much with the story as much as the execution of said story. Initially the scenes of Enoch trying to blend in at an alien casino are fun, and a welcome relief of tension, but then Daisy, Simmons and Davis get high off some alien drug and the whole thing meanders about w...

The struggle with reviewing individual episodes of a serialised show like Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D . is that each episode naturally builds on the last. Not enough Sarge or Fitz in Episode 1? Give them more focus in Episode 2. And surprise surprise it actually works really well, even if it does highlight that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would perhaps work best as a binge-able streaming show as opposed to a week-to-week network drama. Each episode is considerably more action-packed and engaging than standalone episodes of Marvel's Jessica Jones (or most of the Marvel/Netflix shows), but that partly comes with the format of a network television drama - you need to keep the audience hooked, not just to come back next week but to sit through horrific amounts of adverts. ' Window of Opportunity ' dedicates a lot of its time to setting up Sarge and his team, establishing their dynamic with one another and teasing their threat to planet Earth, which is thankfully handled w...

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns for its sixth season after what seemed to be it's definitive ending last year. Whilst I felt that Season Five was a rather small-scale season to go out on - more because of the low production values than the story - and that a definitive, planned-out ending would be better than running the show into the ground, I was encouraged by the news that a sixth season would only consist of thirteen episodes, and be set after Coulson 's death in the Season Five finale. About a year later, Season Six has arrived in the UK, set to be followed by a thirteen episode seventh season next year. ' Missing Pieces ' is very much a slow-build episode, pulling together a few strings and setting multiple ongoing storylines in motion, making it a rather uneventful self-contained episode but no doubt an integral part of Season Six. I felt very much underwhelmed by this opener, but that's mainly because of how little it can really achieve in f...

With the spoiler ban (referred to as #ThanosDemandsYourSilence ) lifted for Marvel Studios' ' Avengers: Endgame ' , Sony Pictures have very quickly released the trailer for the next installment in both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and their current crop of Spider-Man films, ' Far From Home ' . Since watching the first trailer, I've actually re-watched ' Spider-Man: Homecoming ' for the first time since seeing it at the cinema in 2017, and to be frank I found it very underwhelming. 'Homecoming' is very flat, lacking in ambition and frankly laughable in comparison to the incredible work put into the likes of ' Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ' and Sam Raimi's Spidey trilogy. Sadly though, the film made enough money and pleased enough people to justify bringing back the same creative team for ' Far From Home ', and I honestly think that this could actually ruin the film - and the prospective series - in its entirety. Di...

It's almost impossible to explain the full context of Marvel Studios' ' Avengers: Endgame'  to the uninitiated. It's the twenty-second film in the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe, the culmination of eleven years of story-telling, and the second half of a huge 10th anniversary crossover epic. This isn't the last Marvel film per say, but the last to feature many of the key characters featured throughout the series up to this point, with the intention of moving future stories forwards with the more recent Avengers - Ant-Man and the Wasp, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther and Captain Marvel, as well as Avengers yet to be introduced. Whilst to some people Avengers: Endgame may seem baffling, to the fans who have watched this series unfold over eleven years, it's an epic of never-before-seen proportions. That does sadly mean that ' Avengers: Endgame'  is stuck in the shadow of its own greatness. Whilst ' Avengers: Infinity War '  coul...

It's worth mentioning here and now that the second season of Marvel's The Punisher isn't very good, and the following review probably won't be too encouraging for those who haven't seen the season yet. Therefore, whilst I will try to avoid spoiling too much, I will probably touch on some spoilers for the show's final season. In short though: it's really not very good. Unless you're seriously invested, or want to give it a go for completist's reasons, don't bother. The season starts off strong, setting Frank Castle in a new direction. He's moved on from the death of his family, and with the mystery of their true murderer having been resolved in Season 1, he's starting a new life on the road. He even meets a new romantic interest, but soon becomes embroiled in a conspiracy: a mysterious group of people are hunting down a young girl called Amy, who's keeping secrets of her own. It's an intriguing set-up, but the pay-off very qui...

Back in 2014, Marvel Studios' President Kevin Feige announced Captain Marvel - a film based upon a more recent iteration of the classic comic book character - set to come out in Summer 2018. After incorporating Spider-Man: Homecoming and Ant-Man and the Wasp into the slate, whilst also switching Inhumans from a feature film to a "limited series", Captain Marvel has finally come out in March 2019, mere weeks before Marvel Studios' Avengers: Endgame - quite possibly the most anticipated film since...well, Avengers: Infinity War, I suspect. Anyway, Marvel is now the biggest franchise on the planet and Captain Marvel is the first solo female lead in any of these films, which has been met with a variety of bizarre reactions. Regardless of what you can say about the film, I doubt that "groundbreaking" will come-up for a number of reasons. It's not the first female-led superhero film, the character isn't Marvel's first female superhero, it's com...

Oh boy. So Sony Pictures have dropped the teaser trailer for their upcoming Marvel Studios' Spider-Man: Far From Home (sequel to Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War and the as-yet-unreleased Avengers: Endgame, not The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, definitely not Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 and sadly not Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ), and I have some thoughts on it. Firstly, digging the trailer music. Took me a few seconds to work out what it was, but when I did, I absolutely loved it. Kinda hoping Michael Giacchino resurrects his one-off motif in Homecoming as the main theme for this flick (or at least the end credits). From a visual perspective though, this has the same weirdly-flat colour palette Homecoming had, the slightly iffy CGI (especially on the suit) and the oddly stilted direction - which, especially since Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out and blew everyone away, is even more di...

As I finished the third season of Marvel's Daredevil this weekend, it was admittedly with a tinge of sadness, knowing that this would be the last season of the show, and that Episode 13 would serve forever more as the show's series finale, not just a season finale. Despite the criticisms hurled at Marvel and Netflix's co-productions, I feel that they managed to create something really special as a whole. It was an experiment that people invested in, but now seems to be without an ending. If rumours are to be believed, after next year's Jessica Jones: Season 3, the Marvel/Netflix-verse will be no more. But if we're being honest here, Daredevil was always the best of these shows - despite its rocky second season. The characters were likable, complex and well-defined with clear roles in the stories; the villains were (mostly) brilliant; the production values excellent; and the fight sequences incredible. We had a strong hero, a strong villain, and a strong confli...

Somehow amidst everything that's happened over the past month I completely forgot to finish reviewing Marvel's Iron Fist: Season 2, so here goes... Looking back over the season as a whole, the biggest problem with Marvel's Iron Fist as a show is that is seems to be in constant contradiction with itself. It's a superhero show, but Danny Rand rarely uses the Fist and doesn't have a superhero costume. It's a street-level vigilante show, but Danny Rand has a superpower that can take out almost anyone trying to attack him, and can also fend-off any financial issues because he's the son of a billionaire. It's a martial-arts show, but the series tries to stray away from the cultural influences of traditional martial-arts stories and incorporate the superhero and vigilante elements. A series like this needs a certain amount of focus to really work, and Marvel's Iron Fist just doesn't do that. What would I do to improve this season? Firstly, give Da...

Am I allowed to say I really liked this trailer? Cos I really liked this trailer. For the record, Captain Marvel is, and has been, my most anticipated Marvel film for a little while now, mostly because it just sounds like a general film I'd be interested in watching. I mean, the story is Brie Larson fighting space aliens. Plus, the movie's got a really, really good cast (most of whom aren't shown off in this new teaser) and intends to tell the story from the perspective of "yeah, Carol Danvers has got powers already, so what?", which after seeing so many origin stories (and that's just in the superhero sub-genre), is quite refreshing. I've got no idea what relation this has to the comics other than that Captain Marvel's costume looks like her's, and her iconic helmet briefly features. Other than that, I think the green aliens are shape-shifters...? If there was one element I was hesitant about, it was the directors Ana Boden and Ryan Fleck, ...

The first season of Marvel's Iron Fist has been much derided since its release last year, but there's been a clear passion from people for what the show could've been. Enter M. Raven Metzner, a new showrunner determined to shake-up the series for the better, with much more of an emphasis on martial arts action and street-level heroism. The cinematography is more vibrant and colourful, the fights more slick and action-packed, and a new composer has been brought on to really showcase that this is indeed a fresh start for Iron Fist. I just wish the show had gone further with that. For starters, "The Fury of Iron Fist" (an amazing title for a ho-hum episode) almost instantly places some drama around Rand boardroom logistics with a meeting between Joy, Danny and Ward. While this meeting is about Joy putting everything together for her plans with Davos, there's still a sense of "oh no, not another one of these". Had Metzner ended the meeting with some...

Originally, the showrunners of Agents of SHIELD wrote these final three episodes, including Episode 22 'The End' as not just the season finale, but the overall series finale of the entire show. Everyone involved put all their effort into a satisfying ending to the show, endeavouring to give the series (and its lead protagonist Agent Phil Coulson) a proper send-off. Since then, however, the series has been renewed for a sixth, 13-episode season set to debut mid-2019 (although filming reportedly began quite recently), potentially undermining this entire three-part finale. Does it? We'll have to wait and see for definite, but actually the way this season ended was open enough that I think a continuation is a valid option. I initially planned to review each of these episodes separately, but given that they're so tied-in to one another, I figured that it'd be better to evaluate them as a whole, chronicling General Talbot's transformation into Graviton. It's a...

After its UK release was delayed a whole month (a fact I'm still bitter about by the way, Disney - don't do this again), I finally got to sit down and watch Marvel Studios' ' Ant-Man and the Wasp ' yesterday in its full IMAX glory and...colour me slightly disappointed. I remember really enjoying the first ' Ant-Man ' film back in 2015, but subsequent re-watches have caused me to re-evaluate the film not as a bad one, but simply as a solid Marvel flick. It just lacks the creative flair I think a movie like ' Ant-Man ' needs, and I was disappointed to hear that Peyton Reed would return for the sequel. However, credit to him, Reed has clearly tried with both films to make the most out of the material, and he does showcase his strengths in directing improvised comedy scenes, but he lacks the flair of a director like Edgar Wright (who had been working on ' Ant-Man ' for 12 years prior to his departure from the project). ' Ant-Man and the W...

On September 7th this year, Netflix will release the second season of Marvel's Iron Fist - a series almost universally panned since the release of its first season last March, and heavily criticised even in its early stages of development. Since then, the character was better received in Marvel's The Defenders cross-over miniseries, but was still seen as a weak link. More recently though, the character guest-starred in the second season of Marvel's Luke Cage , to which the general fan response has been one of acclaim. Personally, while I'm still not 100% sold on Danny Rand as the lead in his own standalone series, that Luke Cage guest appearance reworked Danny into a much more likable and entertaining character, and one I hope to see again in his own series. Interestingly though, Marvel Television and Netflix seem determined to play-up how different (and how much better) the second season of Iron Fist will be. The San Diego Comic Con panel introduced fans to th...

In their latest effort to branch out their broad-appeal multi-billion dollar franchise, Marvel has teamed-up with America site Hulu to present Runaways, a new television series based upon the fairly recent and popular Marvel comic book series. Blending teen drama with superheroes seems like a potential recipe for success in terms of popularity, and given how acclaimed Buffy the Vampire Slayer was with blending teen drama with horror, it seems like a natural follow-on from that. It's just such a shame that Marvel's Runaways is so sloooooooooooow... This first season is divided into ten, roughly hour-long episodes, but most of this time is dedicated to building up mysteries and creating as much character drama as possible. One of the series' main characters disappears for the last two episodes and no one seems to care because all of the other main characters (and believe me, there's a lot) are spending so much time arguing and debating amongst themselves. Very littl...