Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same.
Despite having all 6 Infinity Stones at their disposal, Joe Musgrove and the Pirates are still in last place and 13 games out of the playoffs.
This is an A+ glove design though and just goes to show how much more exposure MLB could gain amongst younger viewers if they just lightened up a little bit. Obviously this glove would never fly in a real game, but Musgrove was allowed to break it out for Players Weekend. Normally Players Weekend is basically just an excuse for the MLB to act like a couple wild and crazy guys…
…by putting nicknames on the back of team jerseys.
That is of course unless you are a humorless stiff who hates fun like the Yankees’ Brett Gardner, who simply put “Gardner” on the back of his Players Weekend jersey.
He’s probably a fun guy to talk to at parties.
Anyways, if MLB would relax some of its stuffier rules, let players express themselves, and oh maybe chill out with the Gestapo social media policy that takes down every video that makes its way onto the internet, then they would be on to something. I will say, as bad as MLB is at social media, no one is worse than FIFA. I’ve only gotten two C&D’s in my Twitter career and they both came from FIFA after tweeting out videos of players scoring and celebrating. The horror.
Obvious Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t caught up on Season 8 of Thrones yet come back later.
The Mad Queen has arrived. The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones final season kept the promise that so many seasons before it had; delivering the biggest blow right before the finale. An absolute spectacle for the ages as Khaleesi turns full heel and embraces the role of The Mad Queen as she literally burned Kings Landing to the ground. I was leaning forward in my chair in suspense for about 40 minutes straight. What started out as violent efficiency by Khaleesi turned into legitimate terrorism as the Dragon Queen became the very thing she vowed not to be; a tyrant. How did we get here?
“Alright then, let it be fear,” Daenerys says to Jon Snow after he rejects her affection on Dragonstone.
This is a central theme that the last Targaryen has struggled with for years, but most explicitly in Season 8. She has continuously walked the line of being the beloved savior, freeing slaves, being the voice for those without a voice, and taking what she wants simply because she can. With great power comes great responsibility and after seven seasons of Khaleesi balancing that responsibility while she became only more powerful, she ultimately decides to throw it all away in the name of rage and revenge.
“I don’t think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did. And then she sees the Red Keep, which is, to her, the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago,” showrunner DB Weiss said on the Inside the Episode. “It’s in that moment on the walls of King’s Landing, when she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to make this personal.”
The sped up arrival of Daenerys unhinged has been a bit too convenient for my liking, but the show has been hinting at this for years.
“I’m not my father,” Dany says to Ser Barristan in S5E2 to which Barristan replies: “The Mad King gave his enemies the justice he thought they deserved and each time it made him feel powerful and right. Until the very end.”
All of Dany’s closest friends and most trusted confidants are all gone. She’s too strong for Jon Snow, as Varys puts it, and Tyrion has lost her trust after repeated lapses in judgment. Barristan, Jorah, and Missandei were the only three people who were ever really able to temper Dany’s worst impulses. And all three are dead.
“I am not here to be Queen of the ashes,” Dany says in S7E2 to her small council when discussing the best way to take Kings Landing.
Oh and lets not forget about these gems from Season 2.
To quote another pop culture behemoth in Avengers: Endgame: Khaleesi “did exactly what she said she was going to do.”
My only complaint with this storyline is the same critique I’ve had about this entire season; the pacing. In a matter of 5 episodes Daenerys has gone from the savior of Westeros, the liberator from tyrants, and the beloved Khaleesi to the Mad Queen? She has suffered some tragic losses in Jorah, Missandei, and her two dragons, but to use that as justification for destroying an entire city and burning thousands of innocent citizens alive is a pretty big leap.
With that being said, George RR Martin’s books have become absolute must reads just to see how the godfather handles the same storylines.
Whats even more shocking is how Khaleesi has turned into the type of person she hated the most (arrogant, entitled, and cruel) just like….her late brother Viserys Targaryen. She has been shattered by her inability to gain the love and support of Westeros, despite quite literally saving the country from death. To her dismay, it is Jon Snow whom the people still love and champion. It is a stunning parallel with Viserys as Khaleesi has become just like her brother (who was killed for those same qualities).
Every time a Targaryen is born the gods flip a coin. Well it seems like the coin landed on the wrong side.
— Robert of House Glasgow (@therobkabob) May 13, 2019
One of the most incredible scenes in the episode and really the series was Khaleesi finally unleashing her dragon’s power to take out her enemies singlehandedly. It was glorious to see, if not a little inconsistent. Khaleesi *easily* takes out a hundred ships and just as many Scorpions after losing a dragon to just one of those pesky jumbo crossbows in the previous episode.
I understand she was taken by surprise somehow (she forgot about the Iron Fleet according to the showrunners…) in Episode 4, but thats just not great writing. Too often the end has dictated the circumstances required to get there, which has become a problem primarily since the show has passed the books. Without Martin’s elaborate game plan to lead the way, Benioff and Weiss have had to piece key events together with various plot devices. Just imagine the damage she could have done with 2 if not 3 dragons?
One of the deeper cuts were the various Wildfire explosions going off throughout the city as Khaleesi lit up Kings Landing. Aerys Targaryen’s old Wildfire stash was still buried underneath the city, going off like fireworks in the trunk of your car that you forgot about.
Again, we’ve been building to this for quite some time. Go back to Khaleesi’s vision she saw in Season 2 in Quarth at the House of the Undying because this is incredible foreshadowing, intentional or not.
Winter never came for King’s Landing, but Khaleesi did.
Sansa Was Right
Something I’ve been saying for a while now is what if Sansa wasn’t just being a distrustful or jealous sister? What I wrote last week:
“Sansa just does not trust Khaleesi and maybe she sees something that everyone else is blind to because they either love Khaleesi, they admire her, or they fear her. Sansa has none of those emotions towards the Dragon Queen so maybe its more than just being spiteful; maybe she really doesn’t believe she’ll be a good ruler…So maybe we need to start treating her disdain for Khaleesi as more than just unnecessary drama.”
What if she truly saw something in the Dragon Queen that unsettled her? Sansa is arguably the best politician in all of Westeros. Trained by Littlefinger, she survived Joffrey, Cersei, and Ramsay Bolton all while uniting the north and saving Jon at the Battle of the Bastards with the Knights of the Vale. She was often referred to as the key to the north to boot. Well after “The Bells” it sure seems like Sansa had Dany pegged from day one.
RIP to Varys
Varys, as always, was the only one that saw the big picture. He could see Khaleesi losing her grasp on reality/sanity/decency and tried to get ahead of it, but nobody wanted to listen. They all saw the same signs, but everyone was blinded for their own reasons. Tyrion is the Hand of the Queen, and Jon Snow loved her but more importantly he swore himself and the North to her (that damn Stark nobility). Varys cared only for the Realm aka the common people and Varys knew the people were screwed.
Ring the Bells
The aptly titled episode refers to the bells that ring in Kings Landing when the city has surrendered. It means the war has been won. Well when Tyrion repeatedly says they need to stop the attack if they hear the bells ringing I became suspicious. Would Khaleesi think that maybe the bells are a trap of sorts by Cersei? Not really. Actually she just didn’t care and merely used the bells as the soundtrack to her rampage.
Thrones offered zero character development for these guys and now we know why. They didn’t even make it out of the locker room before Khaleesi came out of the goddamn walls to blow them away.
The Cleganebowl
It would be hard to do justice to anything that fans have been clamoring for after 7+ seasons. While I don’t think this was the amazing sword battle we all expected, it was visually stunning. The shot of the two brothers fighting on a crumbling stair case in the Red Keep as Drogon flies behind them burning the city to the ground was incredible.
This battle royale also showed just how indestructible The Mountain really was, something thats been apparent since his resurrection, but never really deeply explored. Not to quote the Avengers too many times in this Thrones blog, but Sandor my man:
The Hound saving Arya’s life by talking her out of a suicide mission for vengeance was a rare emotional moment for this character. Arya’s the only one he’s ever really had any affection for and vice versa so he’s the only one that can snap her out of it and send her away.
Arya
Arya has repeatedly said “I’m going to kill the queen.” About halfway through that episode I realized she’s rarely said I’m going to kill Cersei; only “the queen” specifically. Well, once Arya got caught in that hell fire and saw more and more innocents getting scorched it became pretty clear to me that Arya was always going to kill the queen, maybe just not the one she thought.
Fine, you want more foreshadowing?
And I looked, and behold a pale horse
and his name that sat on him was Death
— Drake France Jaculina (@DrakeJaculina) May 13, 2019
Khaleesi:
Don’t be surprised when Benioff and Weiss tell composer Ramin Djawadi to take a few plays off in order to let Arya do her work with Coldplay playing in the background.
Something that has been in my opinion shockingly underutilized is Arya’s game of faces. We literally spent multiple seasons learning about this and how deadly the faceless men are. Arya has become one of the most lethal killers in Westeros and did take out the entire Frey House, but since then we’ve seen zero use of this pretty rare talent. Will we finally see Arya break it out in the series finale? Could she kill someone like Grey Worm in order to take his face and get close enough to the Queen? We’ll see, but this is another thread that seems to have been forgotten if not.
Starks Run Deep
Also, I’m not sure if this is intentional or not, but Jon and Arya have literally become the same person. It’s like that Progressive Insurance commercial about becoming your parents. The long hair with the top knot, the long leather outfit; they’ve all become Ned Stark.
Cersei and Jaime
I’ve seen a lot of hate on Twitter about the way they handled Cersei’s death, but it did a pretty good job of humanizing one of the most evil characters in the show in just a couple of scenes. Again, pacing of the character arc was poor, but what did people want? For Cersei to stand on the roof and give one last defiant speech before getting lit up by Drogon?
At the end, Cersei sounded a lot like Janos Slynt at the Battle of Castle Black. Someone who is in way over their head and trying to convince themselves that the inevitable is not actually coming as they mindlessly babble in the face of certain death
Another pacing issues though is how they handled Jaime’s last two episodes and his ultimate death. I think we all knew Jaime would either die trying to save Cersei or trying to stop her, but to introduce the entire Brienne love storyline, the immediate reversal, his capture and release by Tyrion, followed by his frantic effort to get to Cersei was the definition of rushed.
How does the King in the North handle Khaleesi now? Cersei blew up the sept and killed a couple hundred people and we were all shocked; Khaleesi just burned down the entire god damn city. He can’t openly challenge her because of the aforementioned dragon, the Unsullied and the Dothraki, who seem pretty jazzed up about destroying said city. It seems like marriage is probably off the table as well. So its going to take quite the coup to unseat Dany from the Iron Throne at this point. Even if Arya or someone is able to kill the Dragon Queen, this could devolve into a bloody and meaningless civil war real quick.
Bran
We are now down 80 minutes away from Bran becoming the No. 1 in Red’s Power Rankings of Most Useless Characters of All Time. He has said that he’s not really Bran anymore and that he doesn’t want anymore, but did we really build this guy up for 7 seasons just to have him be the know it all grandpa in the corner?
I can’t believe we are now just 6 days away from the last episode in Game of Thrones history. I am shook. I will be an emotional wreck next weekend so don’t take it personally when I ghost any and all forms of communication. How does this all end? Will Khaleesi rule unopposed with fire and blood? Will the North finally overthrow the rulers in Kings Landing? Could Jon Snow aka Aegon Targaryen possibly take Drogon for himself? Will Jon finally change the narrative about Stark men in the capital? So many questions so little time.
As we all know though, when you play the Game of Thrones, you either win or you die.
Captain America: Civil War (2016) is one of my favorite Marvel movies and I think a lot of people agree with that sentiment. My worry going back and watching Cap 3 for the first time in years was that it would just be me remembering another OK movie through rose colored glasses because of the incredible airport scene. Fear not, despite yet another convoluted villain character, this movie still kicks ass all these years later. As it should, considering this movie really made up for the disappointing Avengers 2. They should have called this movie Avengers 2.5. It also has the distinction of giving Captain America hands down the best complete trilogy in all of the MCU. Iron Man 2 and 3 leave much to be desired. Thor 2 was not great, and Guardians 3 is TBD. Now lets get to it!
Oooooh I love cold opens.
It’s 1991 and Winter Solider is back. It seems like he’s being tortured by the Russians, but after a series of code words uttered wake him up you see he’s basically a brainwashed spy for the Russki’s. They send him out on a retrieval mission and he whacks someone driving a caddy and takes some blue goo from their trunk. Title card.
We cut to Scarlet Witch, Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon scouting out a scene in Nigeria for a mission which quickly turns into an all out firefight
“Wanda, just like we practiced,” Cap says to Scarlet Witch, implying the training thats been taking place before this.
But, wait its not just some faceless mercs, it’s Crossbones who is already an established villain apparently, but someone I again had to look up to remember his story. For anyone thats forgot like me he played Brock Rumlow in Captain America 2 as a sleeper cell agent for HYDRA. Welp Crossbones tries to suicide bomb Cap, only to be temporarily stopped by Scarlet Witch, who in an effort to levitate him to safety accidentally blows up half a building.
And thats how you get the Sokovia Accords.
Holy christ they CGI’d Tony Stark’s de-aged face onto a teenager’s body.
Tony Stark gets confronted by a woman who blames Stark for her son’s death in….you guessed it, Sokovia.
And thats how you get the Sokovia Accords.
The Secretary of State drops in on Avengers HQ to lecture the team about all the collateral damage they’ve caused with literally no repercussions.
It raises an interesting question though, what gives the Avengers the right to operate with “unlimited power and no supervision,” as the Secretary puts it?
We are introduced to Helmut Zimo, who is another HYDRA agent on a mission. Zimo is torturing another old Russian general. When he asks how Zimo found him he directly references the gigantic Wiki Leaks dump Black Widow did at the end of Winter Soldier.
This is where the split between the team members of the Avengers begins. Tony Stark the rogue “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” immediately opts to surrender his rights and sign the Sokovia Accords. This basically gives the Avengers the United Nations for a boss, which military lifer Captain America is just unwilling to do. It’s quite the role reversal we see here and drives the wedge between the team when half of them sign and half of them don’t.
Sokovia Accords ceremony gets bombed to high hell and King T’Chaka, of one Wakanda, is killed in the blast, which we will learn later leads to the introduction of another hero.
But who would bomb the Sokovia Accords? Oh well the news immediately identifies the culprit as one Bucky Barnes. That took 5 minutes, but sure. We’re then introduced to the first incident with the Sokovia Accords exposing why it’s such a pain in the ass. By not signing the document, Captain America isn’t allowed to interfere so he and his crew are officially outlaws at this point.
Cap going to help his friend out turns into Cap aiding and abetting a wanted terrorist realll quick though. He nearly gets out of it unscathed too until a goddamn Black Panther drops out of the clouds to stop them. United Nations sanctioned War Machine joins the party and congratulates Cap for now being a criminal before all three are arrested. Oh and we learn that Black Panther is in fact King T’Chaka’s son, T’Challa.
“I’m not getting that shield back am I,” Cap asks.
“Technically it’s the government’s property,” Black Widow shoots back.
This movie has a lot of parallels to X-Men 3: The Last Stand. As bad as that movie was it’s how this storyline could very easily turn, with the world calling for the eradication of Mutants and the Mutants fighting back. Here we have Tony trying to stave off “something worse” than signing a document.
Hey look its Zimo who somehow works for the government and is the exact guy interrogating Bucky Barnes. K? Zimo uses an EMP to knock out all the power in the building so he can say the code words to turn Bucky back into the Russian spy he was back in 1991. But, before we get into that, maybe War Machine can explain what the hell happened with that EMP?
Bucky is in brainwashed mode yet again and nearly kills everyone before Cap is able to knock him out before he can escape. He snaps out of it and explains to Cap how he got his brain scrambled again and what these guys might be looking for exactly.
“Because I’m not the only Winter Soldier,” Bucky says as a flashback shows exactly what that Blue Goo was from the opening of the movie. A group of psychos Bucky refers to as the most elite death squad in Hydra history were also injected with that serum, but they all seem to be pretty unhinged.
Tony Stark is officially given an assignment to bring in the rogue Avengers, but without half their team, Hulk, and Thor to back them up it’s time to do a little recruiting.
We head to Queens to meet the best Peter Parker ever put on film, who Tony quickly takes a liking to and invites him to Germany for a little project. Cut to Hawkeye who’s come out of “retirement” to bust Scarlet Witch out of house arrest, which takes a little duel with Vision to do so. Black Widow recruits Black Panther and Cap hits up Agent Peggy’s niece (whom he also macks on) to get back his shield and Falcon’s suit. And to round out the crew we got a starstruck Ant-Man meeting Cap and the rest of the rogue Avengers.
Paul Rudd should be in every one of these movies from here on out.
Tony and his crew of War Machine, Black Widow, Black Panther, Spider-Man, and Vision show up to shut that shit down. Let the Battle Royale begin.
Most of it’s all fun and games with some cheeky one liners, ya know except for Rhodes getting paralyzed. Other than that though, it’s all a pretty good time before Cap and Bucky escape and head to Russia to figure out WTF is going on. HYDRA winter soldier death squad, sleeper cell evil scientists?
The rest of Cap’s crew is on lockdown in the “max security underwater super pokey” as Tony describes it. He seems to be realizing this whole Sakovia Accords thing may have been a bad idea.
Tony learns of Zemo and with a tip from Falcon heads to Berlin, which don’t ya know is exactly where Bucky and Cap are headed. Zemo finds the old HYDRA lab in Berlin and locates the other winter soldiers saved on ice.
In a change of heart Tony realizes what Cap has been trying to do this whole time and joins forces with him.
Now this is where this movie gets weird. We finally see those other winter soldiers, but Zemo has already killed them all? So this whole thing was all a ploy to get the Avengers here? Bombing the UN, framing Bucky Barnes, killing innocent people for what?
“An empire toppled by its enemies can be rebuilt, but one that crumbles from within, thats dead forever,” Zemo says.
Zemo plays the security cam footage of Tony Stark’s parents not actually dying in a car crash, but getting straight up murdered by Bucky Barnes all those years ago. And it turns out Captain America knew the whole time.
Welp, there goes Tony’s renewed alliance with Cap and Buck. Blind with rage Tony will stop at nothing to kill Bucky now, even if it means going through Cap. After some serious hand to hand combat, it seems like Iron Man is in some deep shit, but with a blast from his goddamn chest piece Tony blows off Bucky’s metal arm.
Turns out Zemo’s family was killed in the shitshow that was Sokovia. Knowing he couldn’t kill the Avengers himself, he plotted to have them destroy each other. Black Panther apprehends Zemo before he can kill himself meanwhile Cap and Ton continue to beat the hell out of each other. Cap gets the upperhand and Tony drops a real heart wrenching quote that forces him to leave his shield.
Captain America goes full rogue and busts his half of the Avengers out of super max prison and leaves Tony with a promise, and a flip phone, that if he ever needs him he’ll be there.
Mid credits scene: Cap and Bucky are in Wakanda as Bucky decides being frozen once again is the best thing for everyone until they can figure out whats up. Oh and these guys have quite the technology don’t they?
Post credits scene:
This movie absolutely holds up and is one of the best of the entire MCU. It doesn’t really advance the overall plot of the Infinity Stones or the impending threat from Thanos, but this is a popcorn flick to beat all popcorn flicks. Captain America: Civil War is like when you finally get to open all your presents on Christmas Day and play with all your toys at once.
I never knew I needed to see another Men in Black movie until now, let alone another one without Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The most recent entry into the series, MIB 3, was excellent and an absolute tearjerker with Thanos, I mean Josh Brolin, starring as a young Tommy Lee.
I thought that would have been the perfect sendoff, but hey studios gotta make money right? Thankfully Men in Black International actually looks like a fun, self aware, action comedy, which is exactly what made the first MIB so good. Chris Hemsworth takes the mantle as the young veteran MIB agent and brings on Valkyrie, I mean Tessa Thompson, as the rookie hotshot.
Not sold yet? Well good because I’m not done. Rounding out the cast is the go to action/deadpan comedy actor of our generation in Liam Neeson.
This came out of left field entirely for me as I thought Men in Black had gotten shelved entirely after the whole Sony email leak revealed plans to create a crossover event with 21 Jump Street. That movie would have been fucking awesome, but it seems like that got canned, for now at least. But Chris Hemsworth showed in Thor: Ragnarok that he has some serious comedy chops that he’s dying to put to use so I am all in on this movie.
Men in Black International releases on June 14, 2019.
The Avengers: Endgame trailer just dropped and in the words of my friend Pikachu:
First off, I need to address that aside from the trailer, we finally got a title reveal. ENDGAME. Short, sweet, and to the point. I like it. After 11 years in this wonderfully constructed cinematic universe, we are at the end of this current iteration of the story. Now we all know this is not the actual end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hell, they already announced Spider-Man: Far From Home which is interesting considering where we last left our friendly neighborhood spider. This is a turning point in the road, where we may actually see some of our favorite heroes meet their demise. Some serious shit is about to go down. SPOILERS FROM HERE ON SO BE WARNED.
So when we last left our heroes in Infinity War, half of the universe was completely dusted. A bunch of our Avengers disappeared in front of our eyes and we were left with what pretty much resembled the original Avengers lineup, and there is absolutely zero chance that wasn’t done on purpose. We’re back to where we started and in the words of George Lucas, “It’s like poetry, they rhyme.”
We were also left with a lot of questions. Where the hell is Hawkeye? Is Ant-man still stuck in the quantum realm? Is Pepper pregnant? Oh, the humanity!
Luckily, we have our brand spanking new Avengers trailer to help answer some of those questions.
I think I can speak for most when I say, holy shit. I know this trailer doesn’t give away too much, but it does set us up perfectly for what’s to come. Sure, there’s no hint at what the actual plot is, but a friend of the blog put it as “Well, we’re all going to see it anyway, let’s just use it to hype us up.” Solid advice from a solid individual.
So we start with a stranded Tony Stark in space. The chaos perceived after the Thanos snap is awesome. None of our heroes seem to have tabs on where the heck anyone is, and who is actually still standing which is great for the tension in the beginning of the film. So how will Iron Man find his way out of this one? Well, we pretty much have one option I can think of off the top of my head. Captain Marvel.
I feel ya, Cap.
Next up, we have the Incredible Hu….Bruce Banner going over what seems to be images of the people the Avengers think to have hit the old dusty trail. Here’s hoping in Endgame that Bruce takes some of Michael’s Secret Stuff from Space Jam and figures out how to Hulk out again.*
*He will, duh.
Nebula! Kind of forgot you were still alive!
Now this is where things start picking up. Who’s our new assassin friend?
By Golly! It’s our old pal Hawkeye! Way to make an appearance!
Title card. Yeah, i’m pretty damn excited for this thing now.
And finally, we get the return of Scott Lang. So many questions. How did you get here Scott??? I guess we’ll all have to collectively wait and see April 26th.
The 300s 