Well, Agents of SHIELD is officially the first superhero show I follow to come back from mid-season hiatus.
Agents of SHIELD: "Broken Promises" - As Fitz and Radcliffe go to clear the memory of Aida the LMD, she turns on the team, looking for the Darkhold and taking over the system at SHIELD. Meanwhile, a senator deals with her brother, who's recently emerged from terrigenesis as an Inhuman.
Agents of SHIELD: "The Patriot" - As Coulson fights with Daisy, Mack and director Jeffrey Mace, he discovers a secret about the new director. Fitz experiments with Aida's decapitated head.
Gotham: "Ghosts" - Falcone calls for a hit on James, Lee realizes the effects of the virus that affected her fiance, Penguin begins seeing visions of his father, Gordon and Bullock discovers that the Indian Hill experiments are not ended.
Lucifer: "Stewardess Interruptus" - As Chloe investigates the murders of two former lovers of Lucifer, Lucifer discovers that he's just a simple hookup. Mazikeen tries to discover her personal identity.
Here's some stuff I watched over the break I haven't blogged about...
Fantastic 4: World's Greatest Heroes - This animated series gives a CG/anime hybrid take on the Fantastic Four, going for a point where the FF are well-established and have adopted new costumes. The characterizations are spot on, the stories fun and although some plots are inspired by stories from the comics, they aren't just animating the comics. A nice touch is having HERBIE as Reed's AI assistant, and virtually everything with Johnny is hilarious. It lasted for only one season, so anyone looking to pick it up should ignore the volume collections and just get the 4-disc "Season 1" collection.
The Punisher (1989) - Released only overseas, this movie brought Frank Castle to the big screen in the most typical standard 80s action/slasher movie where Frank and the baddies mow baddies down, hostages are involved. Worth a watch for fans of the Punisher and Marvel in film, but nothing very special except that it was made by the movie studio that had bought up Marvel Entertainment at the time.
Ghost Rider (2007) Extended Edition - More fun than I remembered, Nicholas Cage stars as stunt rider Johnny Blaze, who made a deal with the Devil, who gives him supernatural powers when he comes to cash that deal in when he needs to deal with his son, who wants to unleash hell on earth. I do think that some parts get too goofy and that some shots exist solely to showcase CG effects, though.
The Punisher (2004) Extended Edition - A much better version of the Punisher explores Frank's human side and eases up on the extreme violence, despite some very intense moments. It explores how Frank lost his family and eventually got revenge on the people who did it. Some parts of the story felt a little underdeveloped, though.
The Punisher: Dirty Laundry (2012) - There's trouble on the streets as Frank Castle tries to do his laundry, finally, he has to get involved. This was a short film that's solely online and appeared at some comic conventions featuring Thomas Jane—2004's Punisher—returning to the role.
Daredevil (2003) - Mostly a pretty good movie about the blind lawyer turned vigilante (Ben Affleck) who defends Hell's Kitchen from the Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan) and Bullseye (Colin Farrell). The big downside is how they included and handled the character of Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner) as her character ultimately doesn't mean much to the movie. Fun thing is that Jon Favreau appears as Foggy Nelson, and he would later direct the first two Iron Man films and play Happy Hogan in the MCU.
Finally, this was a rewatch I did on a whim...
Fantastic Four (2005) Extended Edition - This movie and its sequel get a lot of flack, but honestly, they're just fun movie versions of the Fantastic Four. The big problem is entirely how they handled Doctor Doom. Anyway, the extended edition adds a few more fun scenes, but also a number of good scenes that further develop the characters of Ben, Johnny and Sue. I especially loved an added scene of Sue looking at fanmail from (presumably) a little girl.
I might also want to mention I regularly listen to the Fantasticast podcast, which goes over all of the appearances of the Fantastic Four in comics as well as doing bonuses talking about other media appearances. As a perk for their Patreon backers, they offered an audio commentary for Fantastic Four (2015)/Fant4stic. Since I contribute a little, I decided to do the audio commentary experience. While I can't recommend the film, I can recommend this fan audio commentary, which opted to try to understand what the film attempted to do rather than just rant about how much they didn't like the movie. It's not to say they made it out to be a good movie, but instead of just complaining or "taking the piss" (which these guys would likely do well).
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