Now Playing Presents: The Marvel Comic Book Movie Retrospective Series

The avenging angel of Marvel Comics fame comes brilliantly to life in this searing action-adventure thriller! Dolph Lundgren stars as Frank Castle, a veteran cop who loses his entire family to a mafia car bomb. His ex-partner believes Castle survived...

Elektra the warrior survives a near-death experience, becomes an assassin-for-hire, and tries to protect her two latest targets, a single father and his young daughter, from a group of supernatural assassins.

A man blinded in a childhood accident fights crime using his superhumanly-elevated remaining senses.

For years, Blade has fought against the vampires in the cover of the night. But now, after falling into the crosshairs of the FBI, he is forced out into the daylight, where he is driven to join forces with a...

A rare mutation has occurred within the vampire community - The Reaper. A vampire so consumed with an insatiable bloodlust that they prey on vampires as well as humans, transforming victims who are unlucky enough to survive into Reapers themselves....

The Daywalker known as "Blade" - a half-vampire, half-mortal man - becomes the protector of humanity against an underground army of vampires.

Fantastic Four Series Episode 3 With Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 20th Century Fox doubled down on Marvel's First Family, bringing one of the most beloved cosmic storylines from the comics to the big screen. The mysterious Silver Surfer (voiced by The Matrix's Laurence Fishburne) arrives as a harbinger of world-eating Galactus. With bigger effects, higher stakes, and a fan-favorite character finally in live action, this sequel aimed to correct the missteps of the first film and expand the franchise into true cosmic territory. Is the third time a charm for the Four? Arnie, Stuart, and Jakob dive into the spectacle, the tone, and that controversial depiction of Galactus in this chapter of Now Playing Podcast's Marvel retrospective.

During a space voyage, four scientists are altered by cosmic rays: Reed Richards gains the ability to stretch his body; Sue Storm can become invisible; Johnny Storm controls fire; and Ben Grimm is turned into a super-strong … thing. Together,...

The Fantastic Four is an unreleased low-budget feature film completed in 1994. Created to secure copyright to the property, the producers never intended it for release although the director, actors, and other participants were not informed of this fact. It...

Before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Before they were arch-enemies, they were closest of friends, working together with other mutants (some...

After seeking to live a normal life, Logan sets out to avenge the death of his girlfriend by undergoing the mutant Weapon X program and becoming Wolverine.

When a cure is found to treat mutations, lines are drawn amongst the X-Men—led by Professor Charles Xavier—and the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants organised under Xavier's former ally, Magneto.

Professor Charles Xavier and his team of genetically gifted superheroes face a rising tide of anti-mutant sentiment led by Col. William Stryker. Storm, Wolverine and Jean Grey must join their usual nemeses—Magneto and Mystique—to unhinge Stryker's scheme to exterminate all...

Two mutants, Rogue and Wolverine, come to a private academy for their kind whose resident superhero team, the X-Men, must oppose a terrorist organization with similar powers.

A group of young mutants--humans with a genetic variation that gives them superpowers and makes them feared by the population at large--begin training at a school for heroes. Their studies are interrupted when they must rescue one of their number...

Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who one day decides to become a super-hero, even though he has no powers, training or meaningful reason to do so.

Agents of an oil tycoon vanish while exploring a swamp marked for drilling. The local sheriff investigates and faces a Seminole legend come to life: Man-Thing, a shambling swamp-monster whose touch burns those who feel fear.

This book review previously appeared in Issue 11 of Now Playing Podcast's sister podcast Marvelicious Toys. As that show is no longer, the review is published here as part of Now Playing Podcast. As we kick off Now Playing Podcast’s Marvel movie retrospective, Arnie turns to one of the strangest literary artifacts of the 1980s: the novelization of Howard the Duck. Written by humorist Ellis Weiner, this long-out-of-print paperback attempts to adapt George Lucas’s infamous cult film into prose, and in the process becomes something far stranger than a simple tie-in. From Hitchhiker’s Guide-inspired dueling narrators to extended satirical tangents skewering Reagan-era America, the book often seems less interested in Howard’s adventure than in mocking the very idea of adapting it. As Arnie recounts in his review, the result is a self-aware, occasionally hostile, and frequently baffling curiosity that seems to resent both its source material and its readers. Is this novelization a hidden gem for Marvel completists,

A scientific experiment unknowingly brings extraterrestrial life forms to the Earth through a laser beam. First is the cigar smoking drake Howard from the duck's planet. A few kids try to keep him from the greedy scientists and help him...

This was an early Now Playing Podcast review, shorter and spoiler-free. It was not intended to be part of our Avengers Retrospective Series. Marjorie and Arnie return with a mini-review of Iron Man 2. After ranking the original among their favorite films of 2008, expectations are sky high for Tony Stark’s next outing. With Robert Downey Jr. (Less Than Zero) back in the suit, Jon Favreau (Elf) returning to the director’s chair, and a screenplay from Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunder), the ingredients are there for another hit. Add new villains, expanding Marvel universe threads, and more high-tech spectacle, and it seems poised to build on the first film’s success. But does Iron Man 2 soar on its own, or does sequel pressure and franchise setup weigh it down? Marjorie and Arnie suit up to find out whether lightning strikes twice.