MCU Rewatch – How Doctor Strange expands the lore to create longevity

Click here to see the reviews of the MCU leading up until this point.

For a long time, I just viewed Doctor Strange as a soft reboot of the original Iron Man movie. I mean, they follow very similar story beats utilising very similar character archetypes. But upon rewatching it for the purposes of this post, I was actually really shocked at how much the movie expands on the established lore of the MCU and the implications is has going forward.

Magic has been a contentious subject in the MCU before now, the closest the franchise has gotten to having it has been with Thor. But even in those two movies, their “magic” is always treated like some kind of higher science that us mortals simply can’t comprehend. And in all honesty, this approach makes both of the standalone Thor movies a lot weaker as a result. They seem to holding themselves back.

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GhostBusters: Afterlife – One more rant about Nostalgified remakes

This hot take will be a little out of date by the time it eventually goes up, but I’m sure that by the time it eventually does get posted, I’m sure some other nostalgically charged franchise will get a trailer for their surprise reboot or sequel. Just to pre-warn you all, this is going to be a little bit of a grumpy old man article, more-so than usual anyway, because I’m getting really tired of getting low balled by media companies going for these easy targets.

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Did Ascendance of a Bookworm just “Isekai Catfish” me?

Of the small batch of anime from this previous fall season, one of the shows that jumped out at me was Ascendance of a Bookworm. A genre of show I don’t normally find myself drawn to; an Isekai. Ascendance was atypical of the genre though, as most Isekai I stumble across tend to be power fantasies, this show was not. At least that’s how it started out.

As the series went on, I started to get suspicious of the main character’s “illness” and how the series might take a sharp turn and start to lean into the very aspects of the genre that traditionally turn me off them. It drew me into a series full of warmth, character and charm and then pulled the rug from under me with a good old bit of Pope-choking.

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