The Wandering Mind of a Rolling Stone

Two years ago, Black Panther had first been introduced to movie audiences all over the world in Captain America: Civil War with the promise that he would he receive his own starring vehicle. Created initially as a friendly(-ish) rival for the Fantastic Four, T'Challa, king of the fictional sub-Saharan African nation of Wakanda, is one of those characters that transcends his source material and stands for something beyond mere collection of sequential art printed on paper. He represents of an afro-centric vision of a continent free of the vestiges of colonialism and neocolonialism that has cast such a devastating legacy over the entire sub-Saharan region for centuries; the idea that without outside influence, Africa could be the most advanced place on Earth yet celebrating the individuality and diversity that tribalism provides. T'Challa is Afro-futurism personified, a figure celebrating African culture while providing a glimpse at the possibility of its unfettered potential.

Marvel Studios had never quite been sure how to handle Thor but were at a consensus from all those involved including Chris Hemsworth that things needed to be taken in a different direction after The Dark World 's tepid response. The initial reports were that the original script for Ragnarok , the prophesied end of Asgard, was the darkest one written for the MCU yet which didn't sit well with producer Kevin Feige; they'd tried dark fantasy and nobody seemed to care. What they ended up doing was something that was the most metal entry in the expanding canon but also somehow the funniest film in the already light-hearted MCU; it plays more like a sci fi comedy without managing being a total parody of the genre. A lot of that comes from hiring New Zealander Taika Waititi, best known for writing and directing indie comedies, to helm the third solo outing for Odinson. Under his purview, what could have been a very somber last stand of Asgard became something more akin to Big

I can remember how I was first introduced to most superheroes including the big ones like Superman and Batman but, for the life of me, I can't for Marvel's flagship hero, the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man; Spidey was just always THERE. The comics were commercially at their peak, outsold really only by the X-Men, and I was reading 90s storylines like Maximum Carnage and The Clone Saga while watching the animated series on Fox (with the theme by Joe Perry from Aerosmith?) and playing the video games. The thing is, I've never really been 100% on those initial five Spider-Man movies. I enjoy the first one and Spider-Man 2 for what they are and there's even moments in Amazing Spider-Man 2 I think are pretty good but even at their best, there was just something off about the whole thing. Tobey Maguire was always such a sad sack and I could never really get behind his performance; dude's crying all the time and I get that Peter Parker is a geek but he's ju

A lot of my early days of pop music appreciation came from my father's vinyl collection and listening to classic rock radio in his 1980 blue Toyota Corolla; my mom was more into traditional Korean music and classical which I developed a healthy appreciation for as well. But the stuff he would play on that old turntable was stuff more from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 than its predecessor: Fleetwood Mac, Glen Campbell, Cat Stevens, John Denver. Something about those tunes are perfect for contemplative night drives or background music alone in the apartment. A standout for me was always The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, a song that perhaps best embodies its album's mission statement of relationships becoming frayed and unwound with that song recognizing the ties that bind coming loose in one final declaration to keep it all going. That song figures more prominently than any other in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel at a moment when the team runs the very real risk of completely

Growing up, there were elements of Korean mysticism around me that wasn't really aware of at the time. For most of my elementary school years, my maternal grandmother lived with us and, every morning after doing a pre-dawn walk around the neighborhood, she would quietly deal Korean tarot cards in her room. It was not uncommon that I would wake up to the sound of shuffling cards down the hall and saunter over half-awake to observe. The Korean tarot deck is, as you can imagine, quite different from its European counterpart, employing 22 cards instead of European tarot's 78. Having said that, both forms of card-based divination involve reading through pairs; tarot cards are incomplete alone. Similarly, Korean mysticism takes heavy cues from Chinese I Ching which has elemental-based divination readings formed by patterned hexagrams; there are 4 such hexagrams on the South Korean flag. But none of these divinations work individually, they are defined in relation to what's arou

It never made much sense to me that Captain America and Iron Man would be anything more than work buddies. Tony Stark is the rich kid that has never known anything but a life of luxury, full of swagger and style that would put off someone that literally grew up alone and sickly during the Great Depression in a big way. Even in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the two briefly came to blows in Age of Ultron and very nearly did so as early as their first team-up in The Avengers all those years ago; Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are on the same team and work towards the same goals but go about it in very different ways. Right around the time Man of Steel came out, audiences were growing weary of seeing populated metropolises being caught in the crossfire of super-powered action, the novelty of watching skyscrapers tumble had quickly worn off in a world of increasing consequence. And consequence really is the name of the game here. After watching the intelligence agency he helped found

Everybody had kind of written off Ant-Man , including a lot of the people that made it. First pitched as a standalone by Stan Lee himself in the late 80s with Howard Stern trying to buy the rights in 2000 to make his own version of it, Ant-Man was among the MCU movies first announced in San Diego in 2006 along with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk with Shaun of the Dead writer/director Edgar Wright at the helm. The thing is, Marvel themselves never really considered the adaptation a priority so they let Wright take his time on the script while they moved forward with their other projects. And Wright didn't consider it a personal priority much either tentatively writing the flick in between working on Hot Fuzz , Scott Pilgrim vs. the World , and The World's End . Anybody else think Thomas the Tank Engine always looked kind of creepy? By the time Wright had finished his final obligations on The World's End and could dedicate himself fully to Ant-Man , it was 2013: A

There are some people that fucking HATE on this movie like it personally destroyed their families and brought shame upon the Shaolin temple. Joss Whedon's follow-up to his own blockbuster film is at once a more personal and studio compromised effort; the producers predictably wanted to go bigger and more bombastic whereas the writer/director wanted to go darker and stranger remarking during post-production that Ultron was a character that he identified the most with making me wonder if we all need to send Edible Arrangements to Joss. To that end, I like Age of Ultron when it focuses on going deeper rather than bigger in its narrative; The Avengers is about an unlikely family coming together, its sequel is about the team actually getting to know each other in uncomfortable detail. Cinematically, it's the hangover after the party. What lies at the heart of Age of Ultron is pain and fear which is weird for a Disney summer blockbuster and flagship title for their biggest fr

The biggest gamble Marvel Studios ever made since getting the momentum going was deciding to make a standalone film about the relatively new Guardians of the Galaxy. When that movie was first announced, it made some (including myself) hesitate. The team that the film follows were created in 2008 and, even then, were more of a cult readership in Marvel's publishing line; a niche within a niche. But it turns out a radical change of pace was just the second wind the already long-running MCU needed and in a lot of ways the first Guardians of the Galaxy was this generation's Star Wars ; arguably moreso than The Force Awakens . I think it's because it was new riffs on old classics, literally. We've all seen bombastic space opera before but this was focused on misfits and outcasts that felt more like outsiders than Luke Skywalker or Spock ever did. Another big part of it is that audiences could tell this all came from a very personal place for writer/director James Gunn wh