Stardust Is A Good Old Fashioned Fantasy Romp And A Highly Entertaining One At That!

Among his numerous hallmarks as a director, Matthew Vaughn loves to play fast and loose with the comic books and graphic novels he adapts into movies. More often than not, Vaughn will basically just run with the core concept of what he's adapting into a film to better suit his own interests and desires most notably in turning Mark Millar's grim Kingsman graphic novel into a breezy Bond homage. Even X-Men: First Class, his feature most faithful to its source material, took liberties with what it was adapting and this tendency of Vaughn's is on full display in his first ever directorial effort, Stardust, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman graphic novel that's far more family-friendly than its source material.

The Defenders Is Way More Tedious Than It Should Be. At Least Jessica Jones Is Around.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD Y'ALL

And so we come to the culmination of that original pact Marvel Television made with Netflix, the one that stated Marvel's TV arm would provide the streaming service with 13-episode long seasons of four different superhero shows and then all of those individual superheroes would meet up in an 8-episode long miniseries The Defenders (the original plan has now expanded to accommodate additional seasons of each of the shows as well as a Punisher spin-off). That original plan got off to a great start with the first seasons of Daredevil and especially Jessica Jones, but since then the Marvel/Netflix stuff has been heavily flawed in quality (at best) and The Defenders continues the more middle-of-the-road artistic trajectory of the recent fare created by this collaboration.

Daredevil Episodes 3+4 Review

The release structure of all Netflix programming allows for certain television storytelling freedoms; like Cable shows, with all 13 episodes out at once, there's no need for Netflix programs to have entities like story recaps of past episodes for viewers who missed last weeks episode. This also has an influence on story and character progressions, as the various plotlines on the show tend to last for far more than one single episode.

Daredevil Episodes 1+2 Review

Dare To Go Beyond Expectations

It's kind of fitting that Marvel Studios and Netflix have come together for a television program, considering how they're two entertainment companies changing the face of entertainment today. Both had plans that sounded crazy when they first started; creating a shared universe across multiple films and a streaming service dedicated to original film and television content may seem commonplace today, but they most surely were not even five years ago.