On April 26th the last movie of the Avengers franchise will be released. This movie has been highly anticipated since the shocking end to the last Avengers movie, and fans cannot wait to see who will be left standing at the end of Avengers: Endgame.
While this is the last Avengers movie, it is not the last Marvel superhero movie. There are other Marvel movies already being cued up with everyone’s favorite characters from the Marvel Universe. One movie that has been talked about for some time now, and that has been confirmed is coming out in 2020 is “Black Widow”. Black Widow first made her appearance in Avengers and has been in other Marvel movies but has not had a solo film. Fans will be excited to get to know more about her and her backstory. Another film set to release is the Black Panther sequel. The first film broke many records and was nominated for an oscar for best film. The sequel has been highly anticipated since the release of the first movie. Two more sequels are also already confirmed to be coming out in the coming years: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and a Doctor Strange Sequel. Both of these movies joined the franchise later and made their first group appearance in the previous Avengers movie.
Not only are there many movies still in the works to continue to build on the Marvel Universe, but there are also TV shows that are being made. A confirmed show that is being made is “Falcon and Winter Soldier”, as well as “Hawkeye”. These two shows in particular, similar to the Black Widow movie, will be the first solo project for these Avenger members.
While the group movies of the Avengers will be over soon, over the past several years every movie seems to feature at least two or three Avengers. This means that as the Marvel Universe moves forward we will most likely still see the characters that we have fallen in love with since 2010. While Thor doesn’t have his own movie or TV show, there is a good chance that he will make at least one appearance in at least one of these sequels and Television shows.
In the past ten years a trend in Hollywood has taken over blockbuster movies. Studios love to make movie adaptations from popular books or comic books. The bigest and most popular has been superhero movies, both Marvel and DC, with adapting comic books into record breaking movies. The audience for people who are going to see these movie adaptations are broken into two groups: people who have read the book/comic and people who haven’t.
The people who have previously read the book come into the theater with high expectations. They have already pictured every aspect of the story and its world in their heads and are anxious to see how the big screen adapts it. These people are more likely to be let down than the other group because unless you personally made the movie, it won’t be 100% like what you pictured in your head. If fans of the book don’t like the movie than it could impact its sales as the movies reputation spreads by word of mouth. But no matter if the fans of the book like to movie or not, the movie is almost guaranteed to have a big opening weekend if the book has a big fan base. People haven’t seen it yet to form their opinion, and generally people try to go into the movie with an open mind because they know that the movie won’t look exactly like what they are picturing in their head.
People who go to the movie but haven’t read the book are often less critical because they have nothing to compare it to. The movie could generate positive word of mouth reviews from these fans if the movie was good but maybe didn’t follow along well to the book. The problem that these viewers face is if they can fully follow the plot through the entire movie. Some movies assume that the audience at least has a small understanding of the plot or characters before walking into the theater leaving people who didn’t previously read the book with questions.
An example of movie adaptations that did well in the theaters with fans that read and didn’t read the books are the Marvel movies. Now the movies have a three types of viewers: fans who have read the comics and seen all of the movies, fans who have not read the comics but have seen all the movies, and fans who only sporadically watch some of the movies. An example of an adapted movie series that went poorly was the Divergent series. The fan base that read the books were disappointed in the movies portrayals, and it didn’t gain any new fans that did not read the books. The movies did so poorly that the third movie had only a tv release.
Movies that are adapted from books are almost guaranteed to have a big opening weekend and then the feeling that the first couple audiences have will determine the success of the movies. The popularity of the movie also depends on how much it relies on its audience knowing the plot of the book beforehand, the more the audience needs to know about the movie before it starts, generally the worse the movie will do.
Monday is the last day of classes and we all know what that means—finals time. Like any good little student, I’ve perfected my finals studying schedule. I’m a senior, so be warned. This method is not for everyone.
First, I look at everything I have to do. I write every assignment in my planner and make sure to include due dates and a realistic timeline of how long each final assignment will take me to do. Keep in mind the word “realistic” here. There’s nothing worse than pretending it’ll take you three hours to write a paper knowing full well it’ll take you more like six once you fall into that dark hole of the Internet.
Second, write down the dates and times of your final exams in your planner, on your phone calendar, on your hand, whatever works best for you to remember to be there. This is an important step as not taking your exam generally leads to a very poor grade in the class.
Third, and this is my favorite part of my finals study schedule, choose which television show to start unnecessarily binge watching until it becomes really late and semi-stressful to do your work. I usually choose a show that has been on my list for a while or is easy to finish so that once I’m done I won’t have any distractions from my schoolwork. Most of the time this even works.
This year I decided to focus on the Marvel Universe, so I took a dive into Hell’s Kitchen and followed around everyone’s favorite PI, Jessica Jones. The amount of stress it caused me to actually sit there and watch probably didn’t help relieve any of my finals anxiety, but it sure was a hell of a show, and I am in no way upset I spent 10 hours watching it. (See, 10 hours. Totally manageable.)
For those of you who don’t know, Jessica Jones is one of those Netflix original series that makes you glad Netflix started making television instead of just streaming it. It’s really that good. I loved the story. The characters, like almost all superheroes and super villains, are interesting and exciting, lovable and despicable. Krysten Ritter plays Jessica, a truly strong female lead that you can’t help but despise a little bit while you root for her. David Tennant (I know, Doctor Who fans rejoice) is an excellently evil purple-loving Kilgrave who makes you kind of sick to your stomach and at least a little sorry for the way humanity can sometimes act, even in fictional stories. Together, they make one of the best match ups I’ve ever seen in a good versus bad story, and I had the hardest time every time I had to shut my computer before it was over.
You may think, how does this help me pass my exams? Well, the TV watching really doesn’t. It just makes you take a break and relax a little bit at a particularly stressful time in the semester. So I admit it, there is some actual studying in my finals study schedule. Once I’ve finished binge watching my show, I actually get down to business and study it up until finals are over. Maybe I’m just lucky, but so far this schedule has worked well for me. I can’t actually suggest putting off all of your homework and studying until after you watch endless hours of television, but I can tell you that Jessica Jones is a great television show. If you haven’t started it yet, it just might be the perfect addition to your finals study schedule. Tell yourself you’ll use it as a break if you have to. Whatever you need to convince yourself Netflix is not the enemy, because it’s not. It’s just a method to slow down, that’s all.
To those of you who opened this to actually learn some good study methods, I’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to read. However, I really have done very well on my examinations and papers over the past three years, and I think taking some time for yourself is a really good thing. If you don’t want to watch Jessica Jones I understand. (Not really. It’s so good you really just should.) But please, do something to break up your studying so you don’t try to jam everything from the last semester into your brain all at once. Who knows, you might actually learn something that way, and even enjoy these last couple days of classes and exams.
