Michael*

Perhaps needless to say, 2020 has been a strange old year so far. I might just have another quick look at my news feed in the hope that nothing odd has happened in the last half hour... Never mind.

Newcomer Iman Vellani will be playing the title character in Ms. Marvel, a particularly interesting piece of casting since Feige has previously stated that Kamala Khan will play a part in the movies at some point as well.

Remember where you heard it first.

To answer the question though, because I just realised that I completely skipped over it, I'm not sure the move towards a Hollywood-style soundtrack in MGS5 really suited the material all that much. The end result felt more like an overview of war in the 1980s than a showcase of the characters and ideas in the game, which sort of seemed deliberate, but the drama and power of the previous soundtracks was a big miss.

Not that it would have been on the cards for anyone other than Samuel L. Jackson to play Nick Fury (unless it was David Hasselhoff again), he's apparently now been confirmed to reprise the role in the previously announced series. Truthfully, I can't think of many narrative dots in Fury's arc that demand explicit connections, but I could get behind a tightly-plotted series about surveillance and systems fighting systems. Throw in some Agents of SHIELD continuity for good measure, job's a good'un.

The chop will probably come for Cocu at Wayne Rooney's Derby with the inevitable defeat to Norwich next week, but in all likelihood Wayne Rooney's Derby will still push for promotion in a manner not seen since Frank Lampard's Derby. Seriously though, it's surely only now a matter of time before we see Young Master Wayne installed as PM. Player-manager that is, the last thing Britain needs at this critical time is a hideously unqualified Prime Minister. Ahem.

I often go back and forth on whether I think MGS1 or Snake Eater has the best soundtrack, even the menu music for 1 is fantastic, right down to the gunshot sound you hear when you select a new game. Also criminally underrated I thought was the music for the old VR Missions disc, it has some of the original Metal Gear 1 and 2 tunes remixed while still staying true to their synth aesthetics.

Yeah, if the current rumours are to be believed, as well as Metal Gear Solids (Metal Gears Solid?) 2, 3 and 4 eventually getting the Tony Hawk remastering treatment, MGS1 will arrive first as a complete next-gen remake, presumably with the FOX engine. Konami, for it's part, doesn't seem to have a clue how to properly move the series forward in Kojima's absence. At this point, Sony buying their development division would make so much sense. Perhaps as part of the deal they could keep the rights to make their pachinko machines based on the franchises.

Ole's at the wheel but sadly still only has his provisional.

Earlier in the year, I spent a few quid on an old PS3 copy of Metal Gear Legacy Collection, specifically to sample the ports of Metal Gear 1 and 2. Man alive, do they ever feel clunky today. Peace Walker on the other hand (after Kojima saying it was basically MGS4 in all but name) was a good inclusion, it had about the same visual fidelity as MGS2 and 3 and really didn't deserve to be stuck on a handheld platform forever. With a ground-up reimagining of MGS1 believed to be bound for PS5 at some point, it might pave the way for perhaps the last true fan request (Metal Gear 1 and 2 remade with the MGS5 engine) to be fulfilled one day.

I must confess, I'm more excited for Widow now than I was when it was first announced. I don't know how much of that is just general scarcity of content, but I do quite like that it seemingly represents a shift from MCU continuity into perhaps more self-contained stories.

Yeah, in fairness the WandaVision trailer did rather huge numbers, so it looks like the demand is still there. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

I'd love to see them shoot it in traditional martial arts fashion, that could be the way this thing differentiates itself from the rest of Marvel's output. Although to serve a character purporting to be such a deadly martial artist, the choreography would need to be on roughly the same level as something like John Wick.

Without explicitly saying it, they've pretty much acknowledged that the release of Mulan to Disney+ was a flop, although I don't think MCU fans would follow suit by skipping out on Black Widow were it given the same treatment. Even as it stands, although this is of course a much longer delay, it's hard not to consider the timescale optimistic. It even seems somewhat speculative to assume movie theaters will still exist by then.

So, given the array of postponements just recently announced, it would appear that the MCU is taking 2020 off. Unsurprising really, but it does make Endgame feel even more like an actual ending (with Spider-Man: Far From Home as a coda), which makes me wonder how many people might view it that way and kind of stop paying attention now. We shall see. Be that as it may though, this boasts a talented cast and could be a promising step forward for Marvel, both in its diversity and its apparent commitment to a relatively obscure property.

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings Release Date: July 9, 2021 (US) Director: Destin Daniel Cretton Cast Simu Liu - Shang-Chi Tony Leung - The Mandarin Fala Chen - Leiko Wu Michelle Yeoh Awkwafina Benedict Wong Ronny Chieng Florian Munteanu

Fair play on the Watchmen and Succession sweeps. I know Schitt's Creek is well liked but whether it deserved to go seven for seven is probably debatable, especially with regard to directing. Although I didn't really have a specific horse in the race, it's not something the show was ever particularly noted for.

This apparently won't now be released into the wild until the end of May 2021 which, not that I'm keeping tabs or anything, is more than a full year removed from the pre-Covid date of May gone. Consequently, Shang-Chi is moving from May to July and Eternals from February to November.

Villa made hard work of it tonight, but that was a game they would perhaps have lost last season and on a relative off-day for Grealish no less. Has it been a satisfactory window for you, Fred? From an outsider's perspective, it looks as though a comfortable mid-table finish could be within reach. I'd like to see Watkins step up after a dynamite season for Brentford.

This might be the first MCU project where I feel like I can't tell the direction the story is going, which is great. Naturally I suppose the question for many fans will be how much and how quickly the trippy classic sitcom imagery gives way to Marvel's more established visual style, but for me, the crazier they go with their ideas for the series, the better.

We also have our first official trailer, for WandaVision.

She-Hulk has added Tatiana Maslany who, having appeared in mostly thankless supporting parts since starring in Orphan Black, really deserved a plum role. Overall, it sounds like they're lining up some good people for this, so I hope they come up with something good.

Yeah, I think in an era of television where everything is so heavily serialised, I don't mind the idea of having each episode delivering a self-contained story. That way, taken out of the Wars context, it could stand on its own as half-decent science fiction and not try too hard to answer questions that nobody asked. Usually, explaining away all the origins and motives (not only in this franchise, in many others too) of every character succeeds only in making them feel more like CGI or people running around in costumes, and to me the appeal of the series was always the way it captured the imagination.

Indeed, the timelines have never really been what you'd call concrete. It might have worked if, like in S1, the stories took place in remote locations and on the fringes of society, far away from the concerns of those people, or perhaps if the Jedi had remained as a network of loosely affiliated warriors or monks. However with the Lucas prequels portraying them essentially as a government-sponsored cult who swanned about negotiating tax policies, it stretches suspension of disbelief just that little bit too far for me. It would be like if two decades from now, no one believed that the Church of England existed. In fairness, it probably doesn't help that, with the extended universe and whatnot, it seems like there's a Jedi in hiding on every other planet, and that the Empire didn't so much kill them as just pull them all out of a rolodex.

It sort of puts me in mind of that almost certainly mythical story about James Cameron pitching Aliens by just drawing an "S" at the end of the title and then turning it into a dollar sign. Part of me imagines Favreau in the pitch to Disney, writing Yoda on a chalkboard, pausing for effect, and writing Baby in front of it. It's hard to imagine any meaningful info on Yoda's homeworld or species being forthcoming in S2, although I must confess, I'm not sure if that's a journey I'd be down for taking anyway. Some things are just best left alone.