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I kind of like how omni-man kind of looks like Simmons but still looks like the original character.

I enjoyed the Invincible series for sure.

I'm amused every time an actor from Kirkman's other famous show, The Walking Dead, shows up.

Invincible must be traumatized for life after that last episode.

Sound of Metal was pretty good. Not your typical addiction story.

Without Remorse is 'ok'

It's funny even in their xray comments they state that it does not follow the plot of the book. Which had been licensed since the 90s!

Greer they made her Jim Greer's daughter and took care of that issue I had.

It's set up for them to do RB6 which I hope is better overall.

Spoiler:

They let Ritter be a good guy after all, but i'm pretty sure he becomes a bad guy in another book.

ranalin wrote:

Without Remorse is 'ok'

It's funny even in their xray comments they state that it does not follow the plot of the book. Which had been licensed since the 90s!

Greer they made her Jim Greer's daughter and took care of that issue I had.

It's set up for them to do RB6 which I hope is better overall.

Spoiler:

They let Ritter be a good guy after all, but i'm pretty sure he becomes a bad guy in another book.

I thought I heard niece instead of daughter, but I may have not been paying enough attention.

I'm with you. I enjoyed it but it does not rise to the level of some of the original Clancy movies. Or maybe even the TV show. It's a mostly fun dumb action movie with a revenge motive. Not a techno thriller like Clancy was known for in the books.

And changing the bad guys was more confusing than modernizing to me. Not that Clancy hadn't gone to the direction they went here in some of the books, but it just didn't pay off here for me.

BTW, I hadn't put together in my head the plot similarities of Jack Carr's Terminal List with Without Remorse until watching this. I'd just read a couple of those books after seeing Pratt was doing a series based off these books. I enjoyed the first two books and could see the TV show working if done correctly, but didn't connect the plot points that line up until just now.

Finished Invincible. I dunno. It just felt... empty. Soulless. It wasn't saying anything new, it was just a rehash. Its exaggerated superhero world didn't reflect anything interesting about the one in which we live.

I did see a blurb about it the other day. Superhero kid comes into powers and living up to dad's reputation. And I was like yeah I saw that movie: Sky High.

I mean maybe there's more to it than that but I wasn't intrigued.

I think some of the issue with Invincible is that since the comic came out almost twenty years ago and was fairly popular and influential, a lot of the ways it’s deconstructing superhero tropes have become tropes themselves.

99% of movies and tv are are hash of some idea. The questions I ask myself are Is the telling of the rehashed idea in this way interesting to watch? Any cool characters? Do I wonder what will happen next? For me the answers were yes for Invincible.

MannishBoy wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Without Remorse is 'ok'

It's funny even in their xray comments they state that it does not follow the plot of the book. Which had been licensed since the 90s!

Greer they made her Jim Greer's daughter and took care of that issue I had.

It's set up for them to do RB6 which I hope is better overall.

Spoiler:

They let Ritter be a good guy after all, but i'm pretty sure he becomes a bad guy in another book.

I thought I heard niece instead of daughter, but I may have not been paying enough attention.

They mention "your uncle" so she is the niece, not the daughter.

I'm with you. I enjoyed it but it does not rise to the level of some of the original Clancy movies. Or maybe even the TV show. It's a mostly fun dumb action movie with a revenge motive. Not a techno thriller like Clancy was known for in the books.

Yup. I felt the same. It was just a generic action movie for me. A "Bourne Identity" lite style of movie. Clancy's books, even the ones that are full of action, always had a lot more plot in them. I think this movie would have been better as a series, they would have been able to dig more deeply into the plot.

Stele wrote:

I did see a blurb about it the other day. Superhero kid comes into powers and living up to dad's reputation. And I was like yeah I saw that movie: Sky High.

I mean maybe there's more to it than that but I wasn't intrigued.

It's got a lot of The Boys in it too. And I think Invincible's origins were older, so it's more that The Boys have some Invincible?

Stele wrote:

I did see a blurb about it the other day. Superhero kid comes into powers and living up to dad's reputation. And I was like yeah I saw that movie: Sky High.

I mean maybe there's more to it than that but I wasn't intrigued.

If you're not worried about spoilers (this show takes a few very surprising turns that I don't want to ruin - I went in blind and enjoyed them) check out this article that explains one of the themes that I haven't really seen addressed in many media.

Spoiler:

Family members who are basically Nazis io9 link

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I finished Invincible over the weekend and went from thinking it was just okay to really loving it by the end.

I have read the comics series, so through the first few episodes I was just checking off the boxes in my head--oh yeah I remember this plot, I remember this character and this conflict and this idea, etc. But by the end, especially that closing montage, it reminded me just how much I enjoyed the comic so many years ago, especially the first 50 or so issues. Aside from the core plot around Invincible and his dad, the comics did a wonderful job of constantly seeding things that don't wrap up in just one short arc but instead continues to move forward and change and really matter in the future, and the montage at the end of the final episode shows they're sticking to that. I love how big the world is and how no problem is ever resolved perfectly cleanly without meaningful fallout. Everything that happens matters and has consequences that are felt and remembered.

I understand the thinking behind comparing Invincible and The Boys--they're both pretty violent and feature one or more "heroes" who aren't what they seem. But Invincible is so much less cynical, and is much kinder to its characters, even if bad stuff does happen to them. Shocking stuff happens and people are flawed and make mistakes, but most of the characters are fairly well-developed humans (er, humanoids?). I like The Boys too--well, the TV show much more than the comic, mostly because the TV version isn't quite as cynical and punishing as the comic--Invincible is just more of a heartfelt superhero story in the traditional mold, it just happens to depict the consequences of violence and destruction in exaggerated fashion (I wanted to say more realistic, which doesn't seem right, but it is probably closer to an accurate amount of exploding heads in its world than in Batman or The Avengers or whatever where everything is quite bloodless despite the violence).

I really went into this show thinking it was unnecessary, but I hadn't realized how much I liked Invincible and how long ago it was that I read the first 3-4 hardcover collections. It's good!

Without Remorse was pretty by the numbers to be honest. It had some good set pieces and what felt like a level of authenticity to the battles I wasn’t expecting, but the story was plodding and predictable and overall I thought it was a little dull.

Because I have very fond memories of Three Days of the Condor, I watched the two free episodes of Condor. I feel like as a series it would probably be better enjoyed by somebody who never saw the original - specifically Max Von Sydow as the assassin Joubert. I won't be subscribing to Epix to see the rest anytime soon.

mrlogical wrote:

I have read the comics series, so through the first few episodes I was just checking off the boxes in my head--oh yeah I remember this plot, I remember this character and this conflict and this idea, etc

How long did you keep reading Invincible? For me it's kind of like Walking Dead (or really Kirkman anything) where initial enjoyment/goodwill was drowned in boredom and eyerolling the longer the series dragged on. Is the animated adaptation following the comics closely enough that I'm likely to have the exact same opinion? i.e. if you didn't like the comics are you also unlikely to like the animation, or are they changing it up/updating it/taking it in any unique directions?

IMO the comics just ended up an American version of DBZ by the time I threw in the towel and stopped reading it entirely.

Yeah I enjoy Michael B Jordan and I just thought Without Remorse was just ok also. It was very predictable which can still be fun if the action is exciting but it seemed to be just too much of a setup for future movies. Those future movies seem like they might be more flexible and exciting then this one.

There are changes between the comic and the show, but it's working from more or less the same outline. I read the entirety of Invincible, but definitely much less enthusiastically over the last half or at least third of the series. I liked the comics series quite a bit for at least the first 50 issues or so, and I think the series covers the first 3 trades, so by my math, I'm assuming I won't get tired of it for a few seasons at least, if they continue to follow the books as closely as they have. If you were tired of the series by issue 20 or so, then this is absolutely not worth your time. Otherwise, eh, who knows what the next few seasons will hold...I'd assume it's gonna stay close to the trajectory of the comic, but I guess you never know.

Random question. What happened to Matt, White House Guard/Jon Hamm's stepson in Invincible? Did the Mauler twins kill him? Did they mention him dead or missing and I just missed it?

mrlogical wrote:

There are changes between the comic and the show, but it's working from more or less the same outline. I read the entirety of Invincible, but definitely much less enthusiastically over the last half or at least third of the series. I liked the comics series quite a bit for at least the first 50 issues or so, and I think the series covers the first 3 trades, so by my math, I'm assuming I won't get tired of it for a few seasons at least, if they continue to follow the books as closely as they have. If you were tired of the series by issue 20 or so, then this is absolutely not worth your time. Otherwise, eh, who knows what the next few seasons will hold...I'd assume it's gonna stay close to the trajectory of the comic, but I guess you never know.

Thanks for the comments here and on Millar. I made it farther than issue 20, 50-60 sounds about when I lost interest. The longer the series went on the more the story/decisions/consequences just felt sillier, less important, and more DBZ-ish. Which is fine if you like DBZ, but isn't the type of series I was initially "sold" on, IMO.

But it sounds like the first (and potentially second when it comes out!) season might be fun for nostalgia's sake.

Regarding the Invincible adaptation, it won't closely follow the source, but I don't think it'll make major changes in terms of plot points.

Later in the panel, Kirkman explained that when he was in the writer’s room on The Walking Dead series, he was often keen to kill off fan-favorite characters as a way to shock the audience and tell stories that were unexpected. Though he’s leaned toward making surprising changes when adapting stories from comics to television in the past, Kirkman assured fans that Invincible won’t have many significant changes.

“When it came time to adapt Invincible, it’s like a second draft for me. I get to come in and say, ‘Okay, I can make this better and I can make that better.’ But I have gotten over that urge to change things completely,” he said. “It is a well-worn path that I’ve traveled down in comic book form. I think I’ve gotten a little bit better at adapting my own material, and I didn’t spend every hour in the writer’s room trying to kill Daryl Dixon.”

source

It's been awhile since I read it, but it does seem like they've sped up some of the side plots that could make the comics drag, which was a welcome change.

Finish season 4 of Castlevania and liked it. Get another classic big boss. A couple of epic fights. The best fight was in the middle but the last one was cool also.

They did the same as last season with presenting multiple storylines and having them come together. Except one story never joined the others. Also the story didn't have a ending. Might be okay if there is another season. The other stories concluded well.

I believe they are done with straight up Castlevania seasons and are going to work on a spinoff series. Don't know which characters they are following, though.

Is Castlevania on Prime in some markets? I thought it was a Netflix joint.

Grenn wrote:

I believe they are done with straight up Castlevania seasons and are going to work on a spinoff series. Don't know which characters they are following, though.

I saw an interview with one of the executive producers that made it sound like it would basically just be a new season with different characters. They likely just wanted to do a soft reboot to get rid of Warren Ellis since he was both writing and producing the series.

ruhk wrote:
Grenn wrote:

I believe they are done with straight up Castlevania seasons and are going to work on a spinoff series. Don't know which characters they are following, though.

I saw an interview with one of the executive producers that made it sound like it would basically just be a new season with different characters. They likely just wanted to do a soft reboot to get rid of Warren Ellis since he was both writing and producing the series.

Why would they want to get rid of him?

*Checks Google*

Oh, ok. Yeah. Soft reboot. I'm game.

Just watched Parallel on Amazon Prime.

It was entertaining, but they really whiffed and woofed the ending.

It was so baffling/silly I had to Google it, and found an interview where the director is proudly talking about changing the ending, his reasons being mostly stupid. Makes me wonder what the original would have been like.

If you like smaller mind-bendy movies like Coherence or Time Lapse, I think you'd get a kick out of it. Although Coherence is a much better film IMO (and actually nailed what Parallel was trying to achieve with the end.)

Four twenty-ish somethings, drunk and depressed over their failed startup, discover a mirror to a parallel universe in their attic, then start exploring the rules, crossing lines, and trying to figure out ways to profit from it. The movie poster reminded me a lot of Jet Li's "The One" and seems action-movie-y, but it's definitely more of a spiraling consequences film instead.