Marvel Zombies Franchise

Halloween Month Movie Marathon starts on Monday! But i'm giving you a review a few days early, since it's not a movie (or video game). Hmm... Maybe I should change the title to Halloween Month Media Marathon.

Marvel Zombies is a collection of comic mini-series involving an alternate reality where all the Marvel superheroes become zombies and end up terrorizing the world instead of saving it.

In this universe, a random super-powered man appears and falls from the sky in New York. When Captain America and his team of Avengers arrive to the scene, he ends up bitten by the man and immediately suffers an insatiable hunger for flesh. He turns on his own Avengers, infecting them as well. With superheroes rapidly turning into zombies, the planet quickly falls to their craving for flesh and blood.

Marvel's version of zombies are not the brain-dead type; on the contrary, they maintain their original minds, memories, and superpowers, able to essentially "live" the same as they did before becoming infected. They are considered undead, as they no longer need to breathe or eat. And they don't suffer if/when their bodies rot or are torn apart. However, they suffer an insatiable hunger that overpowers all rational thought, causing them to binge on living flesh before coming back to their senses. They are only free of the hunger for a few moments before the pain and desire start gnawing at them again.

This is a very dark universe in the Marvel continuity. You experience the story from the perspective of the super-powered zombies as they deal with the horror of their new-found cravings. Superheroes become the plague that ends the world, and they won't stop until they've consumed all flesh in the entire multiverse. The end to the original storyline explains how it all started, which is a shocking and sad revelation.

I absolutely love this series of comic books! They're well worth the read. Definitely a unique take on the concept of zombies. If Marvel made a live action movie out of this story, that would be the greatest thing ever!

Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

I just finished watching Pacific Rim: Uprising. It was way better than I expected! And I went in with some pretty high expectations too.

When the first Pacific Rim came out, I thought, "Finally! Giant mech/monster movies have progressed to the point where a live-action Neon Genesis Evangelion can finally be made! (That project's been on indefinite hold since 2003, by the way)

With this movie, all I could think of is, "This looks like it borrowed a lot from NGE. I mean, A LOT." No spoilers, but if you've watched NGE, you'll get a very familiar vibe watching this movie.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

I just saw Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. It was excellent! A fun movie from start to finish. I love how they included a bunch of video game tropes into the world, like NPCs repeating their one line over and over.

No spoilers, but I caught two subtle references to the original Jumanji, marking this a definite sequel, not a remake or reboot. I'd highly recommend it!

Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)

I finally got around to watching Zathura, the unofficial sequel to Jumanji. (Only took me 12 years)

This film was actually pretty great! I don't know why it did so poorly when it came out. Probably because it was following on the heels of Jumanji and was essentially Jumanji in space. Also, despite its original book version, the movie makes no reference whatsoever to Jumanji, which probably made people think it was just a clone rip-off.

I'd highly recommend checking it out! I'm about to go see the new film, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. It looks pretty awesome!

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

I saw Star Wars Episode VIII today. It was excellent! I especially love how they included a lot of humor in this one. Star Wars has always been an action/adventure drama, so it was nice to have some funny lines and witty banter.

Spoiler: C3PO's red arm is never explained. Despite all the attention he brought to it in episode VII.

Horror Movie Tribute

Thank you all for sticking with me through another Halloween Month marathon. Next year I'll try switching it up by reviewing mostly horror genre video games. I gotta make use of the 800+ Steam games in my library somehow.

In celebration of Halloween, here's a tribute to the horror movie genre, set to the music of Muse. Which is suiting, as I use Muse as my soundtrack while reading the Marvel Zombies comic book series. How many of these movies have you seen?

Alan Wake (2010)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! For my final Halloween Month review, I'm going to look at the video game Alan Wake.

Alan Wake is a best-selling psychological thriller author who has had a writer's block for 2 years. His wife arranges for them to take a vacation in the small mountain town of Bright Falls, WA, in hopes of giving him some time away from it all to refocus and overcome his writer's block. While getting settled at their cabin on a small lake island, his wife cries out for help. Alan witnesses her being sucked into the lake and dives in after her.

Alan wakes up a week later, having regained consciousness after crashing his car in the woods. He has no memory of the past week or how he got there. But he's being chased through the woods by shadowy figures trying to kill him. He learns he can eliminate the figures by shining a flashlight on them and uses it to escape them. While running through the woods, he finds scattered pages of a manuscript titled Departure that has his name on it. Has he been typing a manuscript this past week? And what happened to his wife? And why do the townsfolk insist that his cabin hasn't existed in years?

This psychological thriller plays out like a TV series, with 6 "episodes," each ending on a cliffhanger to draw you into the next. It reminds me of old supernatural thriller books my mother and I used to read when I was a kid, and they do an excellent job of making a fascinating story about a thriller author stuck in his own real-life thriller adventure. While playing through this game, all I could think of is that, if my mother played video games, she would absolutely love this game. It was beautiful, well-told, and addicting to play.

If you haven't played this game before, you can get a PC or Xbox 360 copy from Amazon for around $16. I highly recommend it!