With the year winding down and just a few weeks left (still plenty of time for more surprises to be fair) let’s look at some of the notable events that occurred this year.
Gaming
Pros:
Red Dead Redemption 2: A world that not only meets the status quo of Rockstar, but exceeds it with the amount of detail, depth of story, and seemingly endless hours of game play (with online still on the way).
Synchronizing online play: Despite some disputes on how it will all work, there has been a rise in cross-platform online play. While Fortnite is currently the only game to work across all platforms, Rocket League, Minecraft, and Hover are examples of games that play with more than the platform you may own them on.
With Microsoft supporting purchases across PC and Xbox with their play anywhere initiative, it looks to be a positive future regardless of your platform of choice.
SSBU: Possibly the final entry in the series (at least with Masahiro Sakari at the helm), this game delivers every single good thing you’ve experienced in a Smash Bros game and then some. Touting an epic proportioned story mode and the largest cast of fighters yet, this is a must grab for any Switch owner out there.
Spider-Man: Although this is only for the PS4, when a Spider-man game is good, it’s great! Everything you could hope for in a sandbox superhero game and a bit more.
Cons:
Tell Tale: The company hit it big years ago with their Walking Dead series and came out with some promising titles after including their takes on Minecraft, Batman, and Game of Thrones. However, their lack of game play variation and poor management saw a very ugly end to the company.
Fall Out 76: This game was either going to be a hit or a miss. Unfortunately, the launch was a huge miss. Between the messy BETA, the amount of glitches, and the over reliance of multiplayer to compensate for the lack of story and NPC’s, the launch has been messy to say the least. It’s now lead many players to wait until Bethesda can provide more incentive to dive into their new Fall Out experiment.
Music
Pros:
Honestly, this has been a great year for music in this writer’s opinion. With releases like Kid Cudi’s Kids See Ghost,Anderson Paak’s Oxnard, Pusha T’s Daytona, Idles Joy as an Act of Resistance, Portal’s Ion, Sophie’s Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, Kanye’s Ye, and Brockhampton’s Iridescence to name a few album titles there was really at least two albums in most genres this year that were great to amazing to listen to.
Cons:
The cons aren’t long in length, aside from some inflated drama with celebrities, the biggest hits came in those who passed in 2018. One of the most tragic losses being that of Mac Miller who passed away due to an accidental overdose. Mac Miller’s untimely passing was felt by many, and his positive influence on the world will be missed even by those who never got the chance to meet him.
Cinema and Showtime
Pros:
Marvel, hands down the current king on the super hero genre and Infinity War was a true epic to everything that had come before, with more to come this next year. Worth catching in the theaters and a fresh take on the whole Avengers formula.
Broly is coming, again. With the mixed success of Dragon Ball Super, a new movie is on its way and while it has yet to hit, the impact of the trailers alone is palpable and is promising an anime movie release to rival that of the Pokémon franchise.
Whether it’s via broadcast or streaming service, television shows may be at its peak right now. The only real problem is there may be too much worthwhile content. It’s hard to keep up with things on Netflix, Hulu, and network shows from Fox, NBC, Showtime and so on.
With a controversial split between Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy’s director James Gunn, Warner Bros. wasted no time in penning Gunn as the new director of the sequel to Suicide Squad. One of the silver linings of the fall out is the sequel to one of DC’s bigger disappointments is getting a promising upgrade in direction.
Cons:
Marvel is also on the con side of things. The whole franchise is huge and has plans to keep growing, but the burn out can be felt by some casual movie goers and fans alike.
To bookend the Marvel expansion issue, is the seeming end of the Netflix Marvel universe with the end of Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and Daredevil, all announced this year. It’s not too surprising considering Disney is now going forward with their own streaming service, but is still a blow to those that enjoyed what some of these series offered on the service.
YouTube may not be considered a television or movie source (at least not legally), but it is becoming harder for new content creators to be interested in coming to the site. YouTube’s ability to pay its creators has been coming under repeated scrutiny over the past few years it does not seem to be heading for a positive resolution, especially with the EU’s Article 13 (see more here). There is some worry about any appeal to this platform’s future.
Conclusion
All in all it has been an eventful year yet again in all types of ways. We had so much to be thankful for with new groud breaking in all areas of pop culture. The bad always comes with the good and it can only be taken in stride as we continue to see and enjoy the innovation in what we as consumers enjoy so much. We can only hope for more of the good (without more of the bad) as 2019 quickly approaches. So lets say a so long to 2018 and embrace the new year with open arms.
Embrace the New Year and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest news @tehlunchboxpub!
Gaylene A. is the lead artist and contributing writer for Teh Lunchbox Publications! For all your news, up to date information, previews, and reviews on the entertainment world, keep it here on tehlunchboxpub.wordpress.com and LIKE and FOLLOW us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitch!
scary he didn’t mean a deadly weapon that you can’t take down when it gets out of control. Don’t worry I’m not going to give away anymore, go see it because it’s that amazing.
one week and I still check the dark corners before bed! None of the jump scares were false, they each lead to something terrifying.
the movie (don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt the quality of the movie itself but we’ll get to that later). It doesn’t help that if you blink you kind of miss the entire back story of two of the more important characters in Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) Maximoff. Also, there were some instances that saw plot points from the first movie being rehashed (and is even covertly mentioned by one of the characters) and keeps this movie from distinguishing itself from the former as a more original entity. Besides a couple other small scenes that seemed a bit unnecessary or could have been done better, the movie flows pretty seamlessly.
as you could find to fill this role. While some may have found his mannerisms a bit too humanistic, I would remind them that this is a different story with different core aspects and therefore Ultron’s character reflects that quite a bit. By extension, the inclusion of Vision (Paul Bettany) was almost, if not, just as important and show stealing to me. The stark contrast in the characters and their ideals made for great moments at times in the more tense scenes. He really became one of my favorite characters by the time the whole thing was over.
And What would the movie be without a big action sequence, I mean c’mon, this is still an action movie right? Was it big? Yeah it was! Did it raise the stakes from the first movie? Definitely! It was what everyone was waiting for and did not disappoint. So much of the action was vivid, clean, and looked as if it were ripped right off the pages of a comic book. The tone was refreshingly different and It definitely brought the feeling of desperation among the heroes. Many of times there was a question of what was gonna happen next, because the tension mounted with every passing scene. Every character gets a piece of the action, but unlike the last time the end is a bit different.
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Predestination stars Ethan Hawke (in what seems like his millionth movie role) as a time travel agent on his final mission to stop a criminal from committing a terrorist attack in 1975 New York that involves![wp_ss_20150123_0001[1]](https://tehlunchboxpub.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wp_ss_20150123_00011-e1422063847603.png)
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avel and sci-fi along with mystery. Not only that but The cast is very small with the majority of the time being afforded to Ethan Hawke’s character who spends the majority of his time as undercover as a barkeeper and actress Sarah Snook who plays a pivotal role (really the most important role) as well. Because of this the movie has to do a good job of making the plot move without becoming stale and it definitely does that. I think Ethan Hawke has carved a real niche for himself in movies like this as he seems to take them quite often and look comfortable doing them Both actors (especially Sarah) did a great job of carrying the film and do real justice to their interactions on-screen. There are so many moving parts but because the characters are so far and few, it was condensed making the movie easier to follow.![wp_ss_20150123_0005[1]](https://tehlunchboxpub.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wp_ss_20150123_00051-e1422064247844.png?w=300&h=141)
ason to watch. The deeper you get into the movie the, more you realize that what you thought you knew well… isn’t what you thought you knew (as crazy as that sentence sounds, it is the truth). Now it does have it’s share of dialogue to begin with but it is far from mundane and is actually quite charming because it’s a moment with two individuals and is much more of a setup for what is to come. Once the plot truly sets in motion, that is where you’re trying to remember what you picked up on in the first half to figure out what is gonna happen. However, what sets this movie apart from others is that you can only figure out so much before something else hits you to change almost everything you thought before. I know it may sound like the movie is too complex but it really isn’t.![wp_ss_20150121_0009[1]](https://tehlunchboxpub.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wp_ss_20150121_00091-e1421878560526.png)
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The acting felt right at home as I really was a fan of Joaq![wp_ss_20150121_0005[1]](https://tehlunchboxpub.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wp_ss_20150121_00051-e1421878768124.png?w=300&h=247)
uin Phoenix as Doc. He was a hippy in every sense of the word without glorifying it or becoming a caricature of the image in the way that other movies seem to do. He was level-headed, but always functioned with a sense of urgency and played up the intelligence of his character very well. He also did sooo many drugs in the movie. You almost wonder how he did anything at all. Between his and Josh Brolin’s character Lieutenant “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, there was consistent dialogue both humorous and not so humorous. In fact much of the movie was unexpectedly funny. They really made it feel like this noir style of movie and that in and of itself is a plus as well. I even enjoyed Owen Wilson’s as Coy Harlingen and I thought I would never say that about any role he plays.![wp_ss_20150121_0010[1]](https://tehlunchboxpub.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wp_ss_20150121_00101-e1421880739246.png?w=401&h=198)
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