Showing posts with label X-Men Apocalypse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label X-Men Apocalypse. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

It's the End of the World: Civil Wars, Apocalypse & Brexit #scifi #politics

I guess it's oddly appropriate that at a time when my country is tearing itself apart and in turmoil over the EU referendum that I finally saw Captain America: Civil War and X-Men Apocalypse. Maybe I should finish it off with Independence Day: Resurgence for the full dose of doom, gloom and destruction. Lol.
I haven't found much to be happy about in any of them. After over an hour of boredom in Civil War, the only highlight for me were two action scenes: the chase with Bucky, Black Panther, Captain America, and Falcon, followed by the odd humorous twist (finally!) during the big airport fight. After that...well, by the end of the film I pretty much hated all of the main characters. I get the film is about friendship, loyalty, choosing to do what you think is right vs what the rest of the world thinks is right (rather like Brexit, and look how that's turning out), and the futility of revenge. But I've never been a Cap fan, and this film didn't change my feelings. I liked the Iron Man films but in the Avengers Stark has become more of a jerk than he started out as (even if he had good reason in Civil War, and that was a great, unexpected twist). My boys enjoyed it, which is okay I guess. But I think I'm done with Avengers films.

I am and have been a much bigger fan of the X-men films, but again Apocalypse left me cold with only Quicksilver and Nightcrawler (and Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult) keeping me watching. I'm confused. Have we now negated everything from the original films? I thought Days of Future Past put the timeline back on track, but Apocalyspe seemed to take it away again. And why didn't Quicksilver tell Magneto who he was?! Surely that would have made for a better turning point that a few memories of Xavier?

Whatever, the characters now seem to have more multiple reality origin stories than Spiderman and Batman. I'm pinning my hopes on Guardians of the Galaxy 2 to restore any faith I had in Marvel. And there's Rogue One coming from Disney: I have high expectations based on The Force Awakens.

As for Brexit... Our PM has resigned, there's no new leader though we're likely to end up with blond buffoon Boris Johnson, our economy is tanking, businesses are abandoning the country, racism has sky rocketed, the Leavers are suffering buyers' regret, and no one knows what the hell is happening next. Apparently not even our government had actual plans in the event of a Leave vote. Kinda thought that was the job we voted them in to do. I'm starting to feel we're entering Neal Asher's Zero Point. O.o Right now we need our very own Toruk Makto to reunite the tribes of our not so United Kingdom. Sigh.

Happenings
The Summer of Magic blog hop starts on the 4th of July, and while there's no fireworks there is a $50 Amazon gift card and ebook bundle giveaway, plus visitors to my blog have the rare chance to pick up a bundle of my short stories. The theme is all things summer so I'm sharing a never-before-published excerpt featuring my characters from Keir's Fall on an all too brief holiday.

And no sooner does the Summer of Magic end than the SFRB Summer blog hop begins! The grand prizes will be three $50 gift cards and book bundles. The theme is Other Worlds so I'll be taking you on a short tour of some of the planets featured in my time travel romance Keir.

And as that ends on the 15th of July, there'll be a stellar SciFi Romance sale event coming up. To receive details on that, please sign up to my newsletter HERE.

In less than three weeks I'm off to the Europe Star Wars Celebration, and I'll be meeting up with another fellow Brigader - Patty Hammond. I'll be going in cosplay, and my equally Star Wars obsessed 11yo will be joining me for one day in his Hux cosplay. I'm so excited!!!

Status Update
Gethyon is ready to go back to my editor but she's taking a well deserved holiday right now. Revived and Reunion are still awaiting my attention.
The Rey cosplay is coming along nicely, but I'm now being held up by lack of funds to buy more fabric. I need to tweak my own Jedi outfit for the Star Wars Celebration in less than three weeks! Then a week later I'm off on my seven week social media break. Eep! Too much to do! *runs away*