Brian's Thoughts on Movies

 I am starting to get behind on the MCU because I do not watch all the shows.  I have not made the time to watch Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel or She-Hulk.  Nor have I seen the older shows like Agents of Shield or Agent Carter.  While I enjoy the films and some of the shows it does make for a lot of superheroes and my interests are varied.  So I will likely continue to watch the films and some of the shows if they grab my attention but not all of them. Spoilers for the three films below Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) Writer-Director Ryan Coogler had a monster of a job to rework the story he had developed when Chadwick Boseman tragically passed away in 2020 of colon cancer.  I thought Black Panther was the best film by far of the MCU and while I was excited to see where it could go, I also felt that a follow-up had little chance of holding the same power.  When Boseman died, Marvel faced a difficult choice.  They could have recast T'Challa (as they are with Thunderbolt Ross after t

The original producers of the James Bond series, Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman made some interesting decisions with the early films.  One of them was not only to film the books out of order but to film some of the later books first.  You Only Live Twice was the eleventh Ian Fleming novel but was the fifth film.  Dr No was first film but came in the middle of the series.  From Russia With Love was the second film but the fourth book and Goldfinger, Thunderball, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service were all later books but were the third, fourth, and sixth films.  The logic might be to capitalize on a recent successful title but it is interesting that although the books follow a through-line the films were largely designed to be independent experiences with only loose connections so an audience member could watch one without having seen prior entries. The first four film adaptations are pretty similar to the novels but You Only Live Twice takes the Japanese setting, the villai