Opinions: The Avengers: Avenging Phil

His Name is Agent

          Ok I want to talk about the The Avengers, (I refuse to call it Avengers Assemble (Take that poorly produced 90's film based on a sucessful 60's British tv show)) a bit late I know but anyway.

          Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) didn't die in the movie, in my opinion he lived. So it doesnt suprise me in the slightest that Marvel announced him for the cast of the S.H.I.E.L.D. live action tv show their producing.

          Here's my hypothesis to back up my argument: Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) realized that the cards  Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) pulled out in the speech/debrief after Loki (Tom Hiddleston) was rescued/freed by his minions weren't in  Agent Coulsons pocket at the time when he was attacked (they had been in his locker), to which Nick Fury says "They needed the push".
So in my opinion what happened was Loki's spear missed Agent Coulson's important organs, he was still injured and probably thought he was going to die so due to this and his bloodloss he passed out (or fainted which is common in people who have serious injurys, especially once the adrenaline is gone), and then Nick Fury made up this story as an oppurtunity to unite the team, going so far as to retrieve the cards from Agent Coulson's locker and smear them with blood (pretty manipulative eh?).

         My next point is the golden rule in action films and horror films for that matter, if you dont see the body they aren't dead. Now I know Joss Whedon has a habit of killing characters to create tension (I mean look at Buffy by my count she's died and been raised/reborn at least 3 times (which isn't alot compared to Sam & Dean in Supernatural but i digress)), however I doubt Marvel would allow their most popular and competely orginal character to be killed off. But that's just my opinion.

          And incase you cant tell I love what Marvel have done in creating their own Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was a big risk and I honestly thought it couldn't be done, but it has been done and it's exceeded my wildest expectations.

Opinions: Star Wars VII and beyond

          When I first heard the news that Disney had bought Lucasfilm (and associated properties and films) and planned on releasing a 7^th Star Wars film by 2015, I was shocked and to be honest angry. As a fan of the original trilogy I thought back to the dark days of the prequel trilogy and the nasty after taste it left on my favourite film franchise. But the more I read about it and then digested the information my opinion has changed to a shyly optimistic one. The main problem with the prequel trilogy (in my opinion) was George Lucas had complete control and no one challenged him, which can work wonderfully with certain projects but didn’t in this case. I will admit though that Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) is my favourite of the prequels and my 3^rd favourite over all behind, Episode IV (A New Hope) my No. 2, Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back), my No 1. And in case you’re wondering Episode VI (Return of the Jedi) is my No. 4, Episode II (Attack of the Clones) is my No. 5 and you guessed it Episode 1 (The Phantom Menace).

Lil Orphan Annie

          Now you might see that I wasn’t a huge fan of the newer Star Wars films and while that’s true to a degree its not the whole truth. As a fan I was unbelievably excited when I heard of the Prequel trilogy and as most fans did it gave us hope that we would get to see more of the franchise we loved, what we got in The Phantom Menace though was a film we had to force ourselves to love, kind of like when you open a present you don’t really want but have to be nice and appreciate it as say thank you (admit it we all do it), its only now when we reflect on it we can admit its faults and downfalls. But we had two more films shot in the same manner and written in the same vein as the first to come so we had to love it, but luckily not all fans accepted the film just because it was a new Star Wars film and took to the internet (yes it existed back in 1999) to express their dissatisfaction with what they saw namely certain characters (Jar Jar), lack of character development (Qui Gon Jinn and Darth Maul), wooden dialogue (everyone’s guilty of this), convoluted over indulgent plot and Annie (ooh Jake Llyod you were better than this). And for the most part these issues were ignored (well except Jar Jar he was cut quicker than the 1^st blonde chick in a slasher film), but they were improved, the producers challenged George more on the 2^nd and 3^rd films after giving him free reign on the 1^st prequel and the result is they are much better films.

          Ok I could go on about the past but now to look to the future, or why I think Episode VII will be good. The 1^st reason is it’ll have a new director, one that isn’t George Lucas and when this happened before it resulted in the best Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back which is also widely regarded as one of, if not the best sequels ever. So that’s a plus.

Secondly George Lucas won’t have complete control over it as we saw when he is in charge on his own the ship veers towards the rocks (Episode I and II) but when he is challenged and put under pressure he does an amazing job (Episodes III to VI), so him suggesting certain plot points and picking certain creatures will ensure the newest film will match the tone and feel of the ones that have gone before.
And lastly why I think this will be good in general it opens up the franchise to more people and opens the opportunities’ to future Star Wars films set in the expanded universe to be made or completely new original ones that we could never imagine or get with George Lucas at the helm.

          Anyway that’s my two cents on the matter I hope you can see how passionate I am on the matter and try and see things from my point of view and please feel free to disagree with me if you want.