Bri’s Favorite Holiday Things

Happy Holidays everyone! I love the holiday season, but I haven’t actually had the time to read many holiday-themed books this year. So here is a list of a few of my favorite holiday books, movies, video game events, and snacks!

Favorite All-Time Christmas Book

This book is about two young orphans who work in a workhouse in London, and who escape to the streets after a fever sickens many of the girls. They loved a doll that was in the window of a nearby shop for months as they worked, and they soon find a doll that looks similar on the streets where they now live.

I recieved this book many years ago for Christmas, and I loved it when I read it. I can’t remember too much about it, but I am planning on rereading it soon and giving it a full review on here, hopefully before Christmas this year.

Favorite Recent Christmas Book

I don’t read a lot of Christmas books, and when I do read Christmas books, I rarely read Christmas romance novels. I find that they tend to be simply romance books with a tree or two, and then they call it a Christmas story. This is the second book in a series about two college professors falling for one another, and it revolves around the two and their relationships with their family. This was what truly made it a Christmas book for me, the focus on family and how that tied in with their overall relationship. If you would like to read my full review of this novel, please click here.

Favorite All-Time Christmas Movie

Alright so I cheated a little bit here. My favorite Christmas “movie” is actually a ballet called The Nutcracker. Technically it has been made into a film several times or the actual ballets have been recorded and distributed as a film, so it counts to me! I personally used to take ballet lessons in elementary school and I performed in the Nutcracker at 8 years old as a soldier, so the Nutcracker will always put me in the Christmas spirit. The Nutcracker, for those who don’t know, is a ballet about a young girl named Clara who receives a nutcracker as a Christmas gift from her godfather. At night, when Clara goes to check on her new gift, she is swept away to a magical land full of evil mice, soldiers, and a handsome prince.

Favorite Recent Christmas Movie

I’m not that big on Hallmark movies. I find them to be pretty boring and repetitive personally. But I don’t have a problem sitting down and watching them with my family when the Christmas season comes around. This Thanksgiving, we ended up watching this movie together, and I really enjoyed it. It is about a woman named Allie who is fired from her job as a maid in a hotel in NYC and is hired to be a governess for a princess in Europe. She takes the job because she needs to send money to her sister and brother who are still in school / looking for work, but when she gets there, she thinks that she is definitely the wrong fit for the job. Even though this movie was just as cheesy as other Hallmark films, I still enjoyed it a lot.

Favorite All-Time Holiday Game Event

I loved Build A Bear Ville as a kid, and this is still probably my favorite Holiday Themed video game event of all time. I still remember waiting on Thanksgiving for Bearville to drop the holiday update so that I could get on with my little sister and we could skate our characters around the Ice Skating Rink while watching Hal and Holly movie that the company had released. I would also spend hours in the Mrs’ Claus cafe buying all the Christmas themed food items that I would sip on all year until the next Christmas so that I would never run out. This game, albeit simple, was probably one of my favorite games of all time because of all the fun childhood memories.

Favorite Recent Holiday Game Event

Maplestory 2 is such a cute MMO that I love to play, and their new Kritias expansion is a perfect mixture of holiday cheer with a serious game expansion. This expansion has added a whole new map to the game and increased the level cap from 70 to 99, but it has also added an area called Happy Kritias that is completely decked out for the holidays. I wish that there was a cool mount like last year, but I don’t know if that will be available to unlock yet. I am definitely going to be spending a lot of time in Maplestory 2 in between streaming and finishing Darksiders 3. Follow me on Twitch to catch my streams!

Favorite Recent Holiday Snack

I love Aldi, I love minty chocolate things, and I love pretzels. This perfect mix of sweet, salty, chocolatey, and minty, I just can’t stop eating them. Perfect movie snack!

I hope you all are having a good week, let me know in the comments what some of your favorite holiday things are. Thanks for reading!

Rambling About Iron Man 3 With Spoilers

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Iron Man 1 Review

Incredible Hulk Review

Iron Man 2 Review

Thor Review

The Avengers Review

Captain America First Avenger Review

Civil War Review

Spider-Man Homecoming Review

Infinity War Review

Captain Marvel Review

This movie was probably my favorite Iron Man movie out of the ones that I have seen so far. It manages to balance Tony Stark’s emotional vulnerability with his super-hero stoic qualities. After Tony Stark almost died in The Avengers, he has been having panic attacks. He has turned from a man who was completely overconfident in himself into a man who sits in his basement all day creating suit after suit for himself. He is scared to be without his suit, but Pepper is worried that Tony is making too many suits that he may not be able to control. Then Stark’s house is attacked, Tony crash lands in another part of the US without his suit or any money to help him, and he has to rely on a young boy named Harley to help him to defeat Mandarin.

I liked Tony Stark but I didn’t really feel any sort of connection with that character until this film. Marvel couldn’t have made him any more personable than they did here. He is still arrogant, but his brain is forcing him to slow down and reach out to the people around him. He has to rely on Pepper to get him out of sticky situations as he can no longer rely on himself. The discussion of mental illness and mental health was an important one that the Marvel franchise had never truly had in their MCU films before this one. Iron Man had been through a lot, so the human man in the suit Tony Stark also has to deal with the mental reprecussions of those events. They didn’t make fun of Tony Stark for having panic attacks or having PTSD, they treated those illnesses like the serious issues that they are. Even Marvel knew when to be serious and when to joke around in this film. It was nice to see.

I thought that Peter Parker was the first time that Tony Stark had taken on the role as a father figure, but he does that with Harley in this movie. Alright, Tony sucks as a “father figure” in this movie. When he isn’t making Harley feel like crap he is putting the kid into extremely dangerous situations. BUT, he does redeem himself in the end by giving Harley such a cool lab at the end. I hope that Harley shows up in future films, but I don’t know if he will.

The main thing that I disliked in this movie was the idea of the different suits going rogue. It just doesn’t look that cool in my opinion to just have a bunch of suits flying around as a part of the final battle. And for the final Iron Man movie, it just seeemed……meh. A bit lackluster. But I think that the overall film made up for this meh last battle. And I definitely liked that Pepper came in to help save the day, she was no longer the damsel in distress that she had been in the first two films! Definitely a welcome change.

I would recommend this film to anyone looking for a new action-adventure movie to watch.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Rambling About Marvel’s The Avengers With Spoilers! (2012)

Iron Man 1 Review

Incredible Hulk Review

Iron Man 2 Review

Thor Review

Captain America First Avenger Review

Civil War Review

Spider-Man Homecoming Review

Infinity War Review

Captain Marvel Review

It’s interesting that I am just getting to watching this movie now! I have actually seen the entire first season of Agents of SHIELD, and part of the second season of that show (if not all of it) in 2013 and 2014. That show had to do specifically with the aftermath of the events of this first Avengers film. Therefore, I knew about what had happened in this movie and about what happened after the movie before I saw the movie! But I finally watched it, and I have to say, it wasn’t my favorite?

For starters, Hulk. After realizing that this was the first Hulk appearance after his 2008 film, it was very easy to judge the choices made with his character. Hulk grew on me in future movies, but this was so different from the original Hulk. The original Hulk was far more in control. He had a personality. Now, Bruce Banner has personality, but Hulk only seems to know how to destroy. Hulk was able to originally recognize Betty in 2008, but now Bruce can’t recognize anyone after the change. The breathing and meditation techniques that Hulk had learned in the first film also seem to have been thrown out of the window in this installment! It was like a brand new character was just thrown into this film, even though Hulk 1 is still technically a part of the MCU. At least when the Rhodey actor change occurred Rhodey kept most of his original personality. This seems to be a completely different Hulk.

One thing that I did enjoy was including the scientist from Thor. I didn’t know why he was even in Thor, but now I see that he was one of the top working scientists at the time. It makes Jane seem even smarter for being able to get his help for her project. Even Loki knew that he could be useful and took him. We also finally get properly introduced to Clint, well semi-properly as he is also taken by Loki. But at least we get to see how powerful he is! Last movie he was just standing in a giant basket during a 5-minute fight and then didn’t even end up getting to shoot anything. I want to know even more about his character.

Stark finally has to work with a real team in this film. He is used to just going off by himself and doing whatever he wants to do, but these tactics won’t work in this case. They have to come together and use the knowledge from the whole team in order to defeat Loki and his army. Just when the team is about to fall apart, Coulson dies. Those who haven’t seen Agents of SHIELD might not know Coulson, but Coulson’s death is so tragic to me as a person who loved that show! But his death was not in vain, as that was what the Avengers needed to truly become a team. Then, they were finally able to work together to defeat Loki!

Honestly, I don’t have much to say about this film in comparison with other films? Yes, it was a good film, but I just didn’t connect with it as much as I connected with the individual films. I loved Infinity War and Endgame as well, so this original creation of the team seems small in the grand scheme of things. But this was how the Avengers started to work together even though some, like Thor, weren’t even from Earth. The team was finally created, and Earth finally had a proper group of defenders. Which is good, because they are going to need them.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Rambling About Captain America The First Avenger With Spoilers (2011)

Iron Man 1 Review

Incredible Hulk Review

Iron Man 2 Review

Thor Review

Civil War Review

Spider-Man Homecoming Review

Infinity War Review

Captain Marvel Review

So, I didn’t know much about Captain America before watching this film. I was shocked to say the least, but it actually really made me respect Steve Rogers for the man that he was even more.

Steve Rogers was a weakling with a lot of different health problems, but he was very patriotic. He knew that he wanted to fight for his country no matter what, and when he was given the chance to fight for his country with the super-soldier experiment, he takes it. Even when the experiment was extremely painful, he still wanted to take it because he knew that he would be helping America. To think that a guy in his late teens to early twenties would already be this dedicated to his country is crazy! He was so resilient and determined that he would let no one get in his way of doing his part. He hated watching war clips before films because people would always be rude, wondering why the clips had to be shown for so long. Steve knew who and what he was fighting for. He was even willing to sacrifice himself by falling on a grenade and taking the explosion to save his fellow soldiers, as he viewed himself as being expendable before the experiment.

Then after the experiment, he was extremely strong. Right after receiving these rays, a man murders one of the scientists. Steve chases the man, and this shows off his true powers. My favorite part about this scene was when the man threw the kid into the water and Steve was about to jump in to save the kid, but then the kid could swim and told Steve to catch the murderer. The murderer is captured but kills himself so he won’t reveal any information, and the super-soldier formula is permanently lost. No one would be able to create anyone else like Captain America.

Then comes the dumb part of the movie. If you have literally created this super-soldier that you know you can never create again, why would you want to keep him in hiding and use him for fake plays? Why not just use a real bodybuilder and use your supersoldier on the battlefield? No one knows how long Rogers will survive after the experiment, so the government should have been using him as much as possible for as long as they had him to win the war. But no, he turns into “Captain America” who does dumb comedy skits and films to make American citizens more patriotic. It’s honestly ridiculous and so unrealistic.

After that, Steve gets back into the action and things go back to the way that they should be. He goes to save his friend Bucky whose unit was reported as Missing In Action and leads them in a battle against the Red Skull and other Hydra bases. This movie has a lot of war action scenes, but they are all done very well. I felt like I was really seeing scenes from WWII. No bright colors on the battlefield, everything was dull, which made Red Skull’s ugly face really stand out in the midst of it all. His face and Steve’s blue uniform.

When I started this film, I didn’t realize that Red Skull was the one on the mountain in Infinity War. I thought it was just an ugly skeleton that had been there for thousands of years. In this movie, you see exactly how Red Skull came to be on the mountain. In his fight with Captain America, he grabs the Tesseract. It beams him into space, and then the Tesseract is burned through the plane. So that means that Red Skull had actually only been on the mountain of this planet for around 60-70 years at the start of Infinity War and that he is around the same age as Bucky and Steve. The only difference is that he is basically a red skeleton at this point, whereas Bucky and Steve have just stopped aging.

Steve lands his plane into the Arctic so that the weapons on board aren’t detonated, which would kill many people. It was sad watching Agent Carter talk to him through transmissions, as he basically says goodbye to the love of his life. I wish that she had been a part of some sort of immortal experiment as well so that she would be able to stay with Steve! It’s so weird that Steve has some sort of relationship with her grand-niece…..immortal Agent Carter would have been better.

Overall, this wasn’t my favorite Marvel film in the MCU, but it did have an interesting plot! I respect Steve Rogers/Captain America so much more after seeing his backstory, and I hope that the next Captain America movies really teach me more about him.

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Rambling About Thor With Spoilers! (2011)

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To be honest, I don’t remember hearing about this movie when it came out? But then again, I wasn’t watching much TV back in 2011 and none of my friends were going to see it, so that could have been a very good reason why. The Thor movie that I did hear a bit about was The Dark World or Thor 2, and I heard about it because I was playing Super Hero Squad Online or Hero up. Ah, the good old days. I messed around with my friends and explored every inch of virtual Asgard, but I never watched the films. I got to know the heroes as their virtual characters and not as their full stories, which I think affected my view of this movie a bit. I was used to seeing Thor as an all-powerful hero, but in this movie, he really isn’t.

Thor is like a teenager going through a phase where he thinks that he is smarter than his parents. He is supposed to be like in Asgardian 20s, but my God he’s pretty dumb. I started the movie hoping to see a massive god-hero who knows all and is fighting for his land. I ended the film feeling like I had watched a teen grow up into some kind of an adult, mid-teen rebellious phase and all. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn’t the Thor that I originally expected. I know he grows as the film series goes on, but this was definitely a different start.

Literally, he starts a war for his people. Completely unnecessarily too! He had no reason to go to the Frost Giant’s land after his father told him to leave it alone, but he goes there. Apparently, he takes it as a personal offense that the Frost Giants tried to take the Casket during his coronation/ascension to the throne. He would have died if it wasn’t for his father, and saving him did not stop the war from being started. Then, when his dad banishes him, he has the audacity to be upset that he’s being punished! Like, none of this would have even happened if it wasn’t for you being impatient about your coronation. You have your whole life ahead of you to rule, but you are so upset that it is being put off a few days that you decide to go murder some Frost Giants and start a war. This makes no sense to me.

Then, the evil Loki plot truly kicks in. To be honest, I have gotten pretty far into the MCU series. I’ve even seen the second Thor film now! But I don’t know wtf Loki is trying to do. Like, ok, you are an illegitimate son. Actually, you were never Odin’s son. But he literally saved your life and raised you as a prince, like, there are worse ways to be “saved” dude. But he’s just jealous because he can’t be king. This movie doesn’t even show why he would want to be king. He’s just evil to be evil because he’s a Frost Giant disguised as a human.

That leads me to the next point, why are Thor and Loki even fighting to be king so much? King comes with a lot of responsibilities, Thor and Loki get to hang out with their friends in a castle all day. They have access to go anywhere in the Nine Realms through the magic rainbow warp system, and they have fun sparring with each other. Why be king and taken on responsibility when you already have this amazing life?

Then, there is the side story of the scientists on Earth, Jane, Darcy, and Erik Selvig. Jane was one of my favorite characters in this movie. She was serious about her work and wouldn’t even let the government, aka SHIELD, get in the way of her findings. Thor landing on Earth just gave her a person willing to help her get her stuff back, as he wanted to get his hammer. Of course, there was some romance, but it wasn’t that bad. I liked that they fit each other, both stubborn to the slight point of stupidity sometimes.

I also liked how the movie ended. Loki isn’t dead, which is shown in the post-credits scene, but it did give the audience and Thor some semblance of closure when he fell off the rainbow bridge. I still don’t really get what he was going for, but it’s fine. Hopefully, Thor and Loki will sit and have a heart-to-heart in Thor 3 and I can figure out exactly what I missed.

I would recommend this film to anyone looking for a new action-adventure superhero movie.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Rambling About Iron Man 2 With Spoilers

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Whiplash is as smart as Tony Stark. If not, a bit smarter in some ways. He managed to make a suit that would severely damage Stark’s Iron Man suit from some sort of basement lab in Russia! Tony Stark did create the original Iron Man suit while in captivity, but he still used his money and tech to create a truly fully functional amazing suit that he uses in later movies. Vanko was able to do this with much less machines and much less money, but a lot of creativity. Not gonna lie, Whiplash was definitely one of the best villain suits I have seen in the movies so far. He even recreated the type of power source that Iron Man used!

As Iron Man’s palladium core was killing him, Vanko was teaming up with Justin Hammer to recreate Iron Man’s suits for private sale. Justin Hammer was probably the stupidest villain I have ever seen in a Marvel film. Even though Vanko had basically the same intelligence of Tony Stark, Hammer treated him as if he was some sort of stupid child. Vanko plays along with this, very well I might add, and acts as if he is just someone who only half knows what he is doing. He isn’t doing what Hammer really wants him to do, but Hammer wouldn’t know because he deosn’t know how to build the machines anyways. Hammer didn’t even pay attention to see what Vanko was doing at all, he just trusted this villain to do exactly what he wanted without any questions asked and without any problems. I hated every time Hammer showed up on screen, the weasly little man he was. I just started rooting for Vanko by the middle, just so Hammer wouldn’t win.

Tony was…..well he was being Tony for most of this movie. Stupid, immature, and 40 years old. He was using the suit as a sort of publicity stunt, and acting as if he was a celebrity. He got drunk, almost hurt people with his stunts, and ruined his relationship with his friend Rhodey in the process. Rhodey took one of his suits to the Army, which was a dumb decision in hindsight, but it got it out of the hands of a clearly unstable Tony. Then, Tony got in contact with Fury, saw that he really needed to change things around in order to defeat a new villain, and got himself together.

I was totally not expecting the battle scene to go as it did. Vanko really thought about every single little possibility, Rhodey and Tony barely made it away! Hammer never even knew what the machines that he paid for were being made to do, and now he’s arrested for putting so many people in danger. Vanko did kill himself trying to kill Tony, but he definitely caused a lot of damage. What he wanted to do was show the public that Iron Man wasn’t invincible, and he definitely did that. If things hadn’t gone the way they had at the end of the fight, Tony would have died. And what wasn’t really explored in the future films was how the public viewed Iron Man after those events.

Sure, he saved a lot of people, but Hammer was one of Stark’s business associates. Now, it is two business associates of Stark that have gone rogue and tried to kill a lot of people. This would have definitely had some sort of impact on Stark’s reputation, but this isn’t even touched upon. The movie also doesn’t discuss how the people really react to Tony after Vanko. The public just treat him like a hero and give him medals, they don’t talk about how so many people, even people in other countries are going after him. It would have been an interesting spin, the public wondering if the superheroes are putting them in more danger than safety, but it isn’t quite discussed until later films.

Oh, and Pepper does get a little better in this movie! Tony wants to dedicate all of his time to making his suits, so he makes Pepper the CEO of Stark Industries. She does have to deal with a lot of the fallout from Tony’s poor decisions, but she does so in a calm and collected manner. There were a few scenes where she had to deliberately be dumb so that Tony would swoop in and save her, but she was definitely better than last film. I’m still mad that she just stood there as the robot’s body was beeping and about to blow up though. Like cmon, she can be a CEO, but she can’t tell when a bomb is literally being a bomb?

Overall, I liked this movie! I liked it a lot. I would deinitely recommend watching this before Endgame, it’s definitely a fun one.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Rambling About The Incredible Hulk (2008) With Spoilers!

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Before I went on this journey of watching all of the MCU films before Endgame came out, I thought that Mark Ruffalo was the Hulk since the beginning, like Robert Downey Junior. I thought that I was watching the wrong film when I started this one, and then I found out that the Hulk was switched. I’ve only seen Mark Ruffalo in the Avengers so far, so I can’t really compare his performance to Edward Norton’s performance. But what I can say is this. The Hulk was supposed to be a far more important character than they made him out to be. The more Marvel Movies I see, the more I realize this.

For starters, Bruce was dating Betty, who was General Ross’ daughter. General Ross almost killed her as he was going after Banner. This was an important plot point, as Ross is basically against the Avengers in the current films. In this film, he really learns about what the heroes can do, and he learns that he can’t just judge a book by its cover. The Hulk looks like a monster, but he still knows enough to protect those he loved. When Bruce reappears in the Avengers in 2012, Betty should have shown up again! She was his soulmate, and this would have gotten the General involved in a far smoother way. He would have sort of been against the Avengers, but he still owes the Hulk for saving both his and his daughter’s life. But they completely dropped this storyline in the future Marvel films. Betty isn’t even mentioned, the Hulk gets into some sort of weird relationship with Black Widow, and the General doesn’t show up again for the rest of Phase 1. I don’t even think that he mentioned Bruce Banner in Civil War, but I will have to see the movies in between to see if he even interacts with Bruce at all.

This movie is definitely darker. From what I’ve seen of the new Hulk in movies like Infinity War, Bruce Banner seemed to be more like the bumbling, nerdy scientist who has this crazy alter ego. This Bruce Banner was a lot cockier in some ways. He did the experiment on himself because he knew it would work, and he was just shocked when it didn’t work. He was going to different teachers to learn how to keep his heart rate under control so that he wouldn’t turn into the Hulk. It wasn’t really about him being “angry,” but it was more about his heart rate hitting a certain number. He was determined to find out what happened to Betty after the experiment, but he has to get control over himself first. Then he gets back to the states after escaping the government trying to take him back into custody, and is still struggling to get the information he needs. He wants to cure himself, but there seems to be no cure. He then teams up with Betty, gaining even more control over his Hulk, and trying to get up to New York in order to find a scientist to cure him.

The action scenes in this movie could be amazing if they were made this year. Unfortunately, this movie suffers as all the action scenes feel like they took place in the middle of the night. Only the Hulk Vs. the military fight happens in broad daylight, and that’s not the main fight! I wanted to see Hulk fight Abomination in decent lighting! Honestly, this was a pretty gritty fight. The Abomination is an abomination with exposed bones and skin taught over the nonexposed ones. The Hulk was breaking off parts of the Abomination’s spine, the ribs, but because everything was in the dark, you just saw a bone chip here or there. I need the Abomination to show up again, please, I need a fight with the new computer technology of almost-2020. We’ll see.

Honestly, I really liked this film. Even though some said that it didn’t have the best plot, I think it did well as a gritty hero film. There were like no “jokes” in the film, it was full drama. The Hulk does not have a happy story, he is sort of like Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in one. He can’t live with regular people, as he can’t control when he turns fully. But he is still a human most of the time, and he craves being around people. It’s an interesting mixture, and I hope that Marvel brings up this dynamic when they FINALLY give the Hulk another film. His story doesn’t deserve to be left off like this, no matter who plays the Hulk. It’s a huge time skip between here and the Avengers movie in 2012, I want to know what happened then!

One funny tidbit I have is that action/science fiction/fantasy films think that Brazil is just full of supernatural people who need a place to hide out where the people won’t question anything. In this film, the Hulk goes to Brazil. In Twilight, Bella and Edward spend their honeymoon on an island off the coast of Brazil and hire Brazilian people to clean the house for them. I wonder how many other supernatural films use Brazil as a perfect hideout location?

I would recommend this film to anyone looking for a new good science fiction/action film to watch, but who don’t mind cliffhangers that might never be tied up properly in the MCU.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Rambling about Iron Man With Spoilers! (2008)

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I have decided to watch all of the Marvel films before Endgame comes out. This is definitely a huge task, but I am dedicated to actually doing it! I want to be able to know the full story before I see the “end.” Of course, I will probably skip the ones that I already reviewed, but I will link them in every post from now on so you guys can read any previous reviews that I did.

Captain America: Civil War

Spiderman: Homecoming

Infinity War

Captain Marvel

So, being that I started further into the MCU with a more mature Tony, I was surprised to see Stark acting in this way. He was just so…annoying! I like his character in the later films, but boy oh boy, he has had some major character development.

You start the film with a scene where Stark was traveling to some unknown location in a desert. Tony is being his usual charismatic self and making small talk with the soldiers assigned to protect him when the van is attacked. He runs away, sees a missile with his name on it land nearby, and then he blacks out in the explosion. This was totally an epic start to this film, and I was ready for action! But before we could get into this storyline, we had to go back to how Stark got into this situation.

Stark was in Vegas gambling instead of accepting his award, and then he sleeps with a random reporter. His secretary, Pepper Potts, gets the woman out of the house in the morning and catches him up on what he has left to do for the day. This is when he goes to the desert to show the military his new missiles, and when he was in the van that got attacked.

I was surprised when Pepper Potts turned out to be his secretary. I totally thought that Pepper Potts was actually a girl he had been dating for a while, not the “sexy secretary” that he ended up falling for. I can’t say that I hated Pepper in this film, but I could already tell that Tony was a womanizer, so why would Pepper fall for him? Realistically, she had been cleaning up his messes for so long, she would probably be tired of him and would not think of him in any sort of romantic way. It was pretty random, the story giving Tony a love interest, even though he was clearly not ready and not mature enough for that kind of situation. Someone online aid that Marvel didn’t really start writing female characters well until Thor/The First Avenger, which is correct for what I’ve seen so far. Hopefully, Pepper Potts will improve with better characterization in future films.

When Stark is captured, a doctor named Yinsen saves his life by implanting an electromagnet in his heart to keep the shrapnel from the missile from killing him.  While there, he and Stark create another tiny arc reactor, replacing the primitive electromagnet and saving Stark’s life in the long run. Then, instead of working on the Jericho missiles that the captors want Stark to build, they build a weaponized armor suit to escape. Yinsen dies during the escape, and Stark is able to defeat the terrorist and be rescued by the army.

Now, we start to see Stark’s character truly change for the better. He realizes that he doesn’t want Stark Industries to produce weapons anymore if they are going to be in the hands of the wrong people. He also decides to start building a suit so he can counter some of the actions of those who are using the Stark Industries’ weapons in the wrong ways. This was how he really became “Iron Man,” and Pepper helped him run his company while he was on his leave of absence. This was probably my favorite part of the film, as Tony changed from an overgrown teenager/college student into a more mature businessman who was conscious of the things happening in his world.

He gets the shock of his life when he finds out that Obadiah has been going behind his back and producing and selling weapons to terrorist groups. The man says that he did this because he didn’t think that Tony was worthy of owning Stark Enterprises. To be completely honest, he was an understandable villain. He had been putting up with Tony’s immaturity for years and years, and he thought that this was his chance to take over the company. The country already thought that Tony had lost his mind so it would be the perfect opportunity to do so. I wasn’t mad that Tony defeated him, but he wasn’t just a villain because he randomly hated Stark. I like semi-realistic villains!

Tony’s relationship with Rhodey was very interesting to watch. Rhodey and Tony were great friends, but Rhodey had discipline from being in the army, while Tony did whatever he wanted. Rhodey even had to save Tony a few times, as the army was just going to destroy him

The last battle was pretty awesome. I loved that Pepper finally got to be useful, even though she acted kinda clueless when Tony asked her to push the button. LIke, if Tony tells you to push the button and its kind of an intense situation, just push the button? Why question it? She acts so smartly in some spots of the movie, but then when Tony needs to save her in a scene, all of a sudden she can’t even like think for herself. Besides this though, the rest of the battle was epic, and I was on the edge of my seat until the end. The addition of Tony’s power core failing on him steadily throughout definitely gave the scene a bit more suspense.

Overall, this movie was pretty good! Not as great as some of the later Marvel films, but it was definitely up there. I am glad that I am finally taking the time to see Tony’s story from beginning to end, and it makes me appreciate how much Tony has grown as a character.

I would recommend this movie to anyone looking for a fun action-comedy film.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Rambling About Captain Marvel (With MAJOR Spoilers!!)

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I wasn’t thinking that I was going to be seeing any movies for a while after seeing Into the Spiderverse. I’m the type of person that sees maybe one to two movies a year, so that wouldn’t be rare for me. Then, Captain Marvel was coming out, and I was super HYPED. I just couldn’t wait to see this new film! I even went by myself, which I never do, just to make sure that I would be able to see it this week. Boy, I was definitely not disappointed!

Let me start off by saying that in hindsight, the trailer was a bit misleading. I honestly had no idea what the movie was going to be about from watching the very first one, and was only starting to sort of piece the story together in the second one. Honestly, these were some of the most confusing trailers that Marvel has ever released. Nevertheless, the movie was not confusing at all.

You start off the movie with Vers (Captain Marvel) on the Kree capital planet of Hala. She is training to be on a sort of military team that has been tasked with fighting the Skrull, but she is struggling to control her powers during her training with her boss. Honestly, the training seemed to be that typical Marvel superhero train and flirt session, so I thought that this dude was going to be a love interest. I wasn’t mad about it, but I wasn’t exactly delighted either. He wasn’t though, Vers doesn’t seem to have any love interests in this film, which was a nice touch. I was sick and tired of female superheroes being beaten by love (cough Kara Danvers Supergirl cough).

Anyways, she is taken during a mission and torture-interrogated by the Skrull. She manages to fight her way out, but she is too far away from her platoon when she lands on Earth in the 1980s. She is on a mission to find a scientist that was locked away in her memories, hoping that she will find the rest of her memories with that woman. While waiting for them to show up, she catches the attention of the Skrull coming after her and a young Nick Fury working for the FBI. She brings Fury up to speed with what is going on in her world, and as he sees more and more proof of the aliens being real, he agrees to help her find the scientist she is looking for.

This is when the movie really starts to get fun. Fury was always pretty serious, but it was hilarious to see a younger Samuel L Jackson! At first, I thought that it was just an incredible makeup job. Then I Googled it and figured out that they had to digitally age him down for every single scene in every movie. Whoever did that had a very tedious job, but they did so well! Vers/Carol Danvers and Fury had such fun and playful banter that it made me crave for more scenes with them! Carol was finding out things about her real life that she couldn’t remember, and she even started to remember a little bit more about the last minutes of her life.

Once she finds out about her friend, she goes to visit her in Louisiana. I loved the interracial friendship that they had, they were like sisters, and her friend’s daughter called her Aunt Carol! Their friendship was my favorite part of the movie. Rambeau was just as capable of a pilot as Carol. She could have even been on the mission with Carol and the scientist, but she was worried about dying and leaving her daughter. She never gave up hope that her friend might still be out there somewhere, and she barely hesitated to help her current friend on her new mission.

This movie really hit home with me once we got into the main plot. Once Carol remembered that she got her powers from the energy core blast on her mission with the scientist, she realized that she had been fighting on the wrong side of the war the entire time. The Kree were moving in on the Skrull land, wiping out the species, and taking their planets. The Skrull were not technologically advanced enough to fight the Kree, and the Kree continued to bring their armies. Armies that Carol was a part of. The scientist realized this and was trying to find a way to get the Skrull off of their hiding places and thousands of lightyears away where the Kree couldn’t hurt them any longer. Now, it was up to Carol, young Fury, Rambeau, and Talos (a Skrull refugee) to save the Skrull species.

I know that this was just a fantasy film, but it did make a pretty strong statement. The Skrull knew that they had done some bad things, but they were trying to protect themselves from the Kreee who had struck first. The Kree media were constantly painting the Skrull as demons, even though the Skrull were mostly acting in self-defense. No Skrull was going and killing thousands of Kree families, the Kree were killing thousands of Skrull families. It seemed almost like a statement as to what’s going on in America currently, on a more drastic scale. I don’t know if the graphic novels had the same story as this or if it was the writers of the movie making a statement, but it really stuck with me. America has been on the “wrong side of the war” a few times, just like the Kree were, and it takes a strong, smart person to recognize that.

The rest of the movie was mostly just Carol saving the Skrulls found on the scientist’s old space station and fighting her old Kree military team. It was an awesome scene when she found Talos’ family, and it was definitely epic when she broke free of the limiter that the Kree had put on her to dampen her powers. Rambeau and Fury didn’t stay out of the action either, they got a little help from a cat and managed to help fight off Carol’s former teammates. I don’t know why the team didn’t listen to Carol at all, I guess they were all in on it and wanted the Skrull to be demonized? This wasn’t really explained all that well.

My last favorite part of the movie was when Carol’s boss tried to do a “last stand battle for honor” sort of thing. He wanted her to fight him in hand to hand combat, to “prove” that she was stronger than him. She just blasted him with her powers and sent him back to Hala. No one has time to do last stands! That always got me so mad when villains would just talk and talk and the hero would agree to their demands like they are the VILLAIN for a reason!

Overall, this was an absolutely amazing film! I will definitely be watching it again when it is put on Netflix, and I would definitely recommend that everyone I know sees it! Of course, if you haven’t seen it, you shouldn’t have read this rambling post with spoilers, but still. If I didn’t convince you to at least watch it for yourself, I don’t know what will. This one was good!

Overall Rating: 6 out of 5 stars!

Rambling About Infinity War (WITH SPOILERS!)

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So I watched Infinity War a few months ago, and then I watched it again, and then I watched my favorite scenes again. I don’t know if I can say that it is my favorite Marvel movie, as I haven’t even watched all 18 movies of the MCU yet, but I can say that it is definitely up there. Definitely at least above Civil War, maybe at the same level or a bit above Spiderman Homecoming. I loved it! I just hope that Endgame won’t be disappointing when I see it in April or May.

Let’s start with the general plot. Basically, Thanos wants to collect all the Infinity Stones into his Infinity Gauntlet so that he can snap his fingers, and kill thousands. Basically, he thinks that the universe is overpopulated, and he thinks that the reason why there is poverty and suffering is because of this overpopulation. In his head, as long as he kills off half of each of the different species in the universe, they will all be better off in the end. He thinks it would have saved his species on Titan, and he tested it out on Gamora’s species (Guardians of the Galaxy). He thinks of himself as a savior, and he will kill anyone who refuses to give up the stones. All the MCU heroes, including the Avengers, Dr. Strange, citizens of Wakanda, and the Guardians of the Galaxy must work together to defeat Thanos and save the universe.

So let me start off by saying that I loved the action scenes. Almost all of them kept me on the edge of my seat, and I was almost yelling at my computer screen when something went wrong. Nevertheless, these are not PG-13 action scenes. I just, I don’t understand how Marvel gets away with this sort of stuff sometimes. Movies like Eighth Grade that talk about real life and could be actually helpful to preteens and teens get smacked with an R rating. Even though literally any girl most likely goes through what Kayla goes through in the film. But then you see Marvel films, and they get to keep PG-13, no matter what they do. In the first few minutes of the film, Loki gets choked to death, ON-SCREEN. This didn’t bother me that much, as I am 18 and don’t mind seeing intense action scenes like this, but this could be disturbing for a kid to see.

Parents have a habit of letting their kids, especially their sons, watch superhero films that are rated PG-13 when they are in early elementary school. Marvel is basically making R-rated movies at this point, but their mantra is “if there’s no blood, we can do whatever we want on screen and call it PG-13.” I’ve seen Enemy of the State, a great movie that was rated R. I thought it was pretty tame for R, but I didn’t watch it until I was like 16 or 17. If you took out the blood, and a bit of the sexual scenes, this movie could be rated PG-13 by Marvel standards. Parents really need to make their own decisions on whether or not their kid should see the Marvel films, maybe even watching the films before bringing them, because Marvel really pushed it on this one and still managed to get a PG-13 rating. This doesn’t really affect my review, as the scenes didn’t bother me, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Back to the actual movie! I think my favorite interactions were with Spiderman, Iron Man, and Dr. Strange. These are like two genius men and one genius boy, and they are all almost butting heads to figure out how to solve problems. Then the Guardians of the Galaxy show up and it gets even funnier, as some of the smartest heroes are teamed up with some of the…heroes that are sorta smart in their own very unique ways. Alright, I’ll stop. Smart guys get paired up with dumb guys.

This also leads to my least favorite part of the entire film. I absolutely despise Quill. Half of the events in the movie would not have happened if it wasn’t for Quill. There’s a difference between being a “lovable idiot” and being a person with literally only one brain cell. They went through a super long fight, and they almost had the gauntlet off of Thanos, but then Quill ruined it. He was taunting Thanos when Thanos revealed that he had killed Gamora, and then Quill loses it. He hits Thanos, knocking off Mantis, waking Thanos, and making Thanos snatch back the gauntlet. It is literally the dumbest thing ever, and I will never forgive him for it. And then he just turns into dust anyways, so he doesn’t even have any consequences for his actions. Tony doesn’t even get to beat him up for being an idiot.

I have to say that I love Vision and Wanda, they are such a strong couple! They compliment each other, and they fight well together. Wanda was even strong enough to try to take out the Mind Stone from Vision, and she succeeded, but Thanos just turned back time to ruin her hard work. She killed her boyfriend just to see him be brought back to life and then killed again. I was kinda glad that she got to turn into dust and rest in peace, at least for now.

I felt so bad for Wakanda in this film! They literally just revealed themselves to the world like a year or two before the events of this film occurred, and then they are destroyed. If they had stayed in hiding, half of their population would have turned to dust, but they might have still had land to live off of until whatever happens in Endgame happens. But now, those who are left have a completely destroyed land, as Thanos’ followers have ruined it with the alien dogs and the wheels of death.

The Guardians of the Galaxy parts were bearable for me, I could have liked it better if the characters weren’t so annoying at times, but I did appreciate Quill and Gamora’s relationship. Before Quill was dumb, I even supported them and really hoped that Gamora would have been brought back so that they could be together. It was adorable how Groot was going through his rebellious preteen/teenage phase, but then he ended up still being an asset to the team. Then Thor joins, and Rocket’s conversation with him was so enlightening. It’s crazy to think of all that Thor has lost throughout the years, even though he is a god, and think that he barely gets anyone to talk to.

The absolute saddest scene in the entire film was when Peter Parker dies. Not Spiderman, but Peter dies. Peter was Spiderman when he was helping to fight Thanos, but when he felt himself disappearing, he turned into Peter Parker, the fifteen-year-old kid from Queens who doesn’t want to die. I’m sure Tony took this pretty hard, as Peter was basically a son to him, and I can’t WAIT to see how this will affect him in Endgame. Only Gamora’s sister is still on Titan, I think, so hopefully, she will be able to help him through this horrible event

Overall, I love this movie, I would definitely recommend you see it, but you have to see at least some of the previous films to truly understand what is going on. If you have the time to watch a few Marvel movies, then you should definitely watch this one! It was great.

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars