Spielberg is right when he says that Netflix movies should be banned from the Oscars.

I think Spielberg is right on the money when he says that Netflix movies should not be eligible for Oscars. They have the Emmy's for that, and should be nominated for Emmy's.

If you didn't know, Steven Spielberg (whom I have called the G.O.A.T. in a previous blog post) was labeled widely by his critics on the internet as "Old man shakes his fist at cloud" for his comments regarding the popular streaming platform, Netflix, and the following comment:

"Once you commit to a television format, you're a TV movie. You certainly, if it's a good show, deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar." Of course he has his reasons, but I'm not going to post them here, relying instead upon your ability to google them if you are interested. What I am going to post is my own opinion, which I think is relevant in the realm of public discourse.

Personally, he's making a lot of sense. Netflix original movies are definitely TV films. I personally applaud Spielberg's effort to keep the cinema experience alive. It's something I legitimately enjoy, and his heart is definitely in the right place. Netflix is gaming the system by releasing movies in Los Angeles just long enough to make them eligible for the Oscars before they are available for America to watch in their pajamas. While many people see this as "the wave of the future" I would like to borrow a quote from Jeff Goldblum in a Spielberg movie called Jurassic Park: "Everybody was in such a hurry to see if they could that no one bothered to even ask if they should." If film makers want the prestige of an Oscar, they should have to jump through the hoops to get it. The bonus is that those of us out here who are interested will have the opportunity to view the work as intended in a theater with the latest sound hardware and four-story screens.

/end rant.

I will let you know how I enjoyed Ready Player One on Monday :).

Why did the Walking Dead deviate so much from the Total War storyline in Robert Kirkman's comics when it was so good?

Jumping the Shark is a term that refers to a Happy Days episode. It's a point-of-no-return kind of place from which every subsequent episode is just bad. In my opinion, The Walking Dead has finally lost it and jumped its own shark. This week's episode was ridiculously bad. Please note that I blame writers...as in bad writing. For all the writers out there reading my words, it probably stings, but the truth shall set you free. Spoilers are ahead.

This week's episode was called "Do Not Send Us Astray." It was just bad. Negan's crew under the leadership of Simon decides to attack Hilltop with their zombie-coated weapons, and they get routed by the Hilltop peeps in pretty rare fashion for this show. But despite all the killing by Rick and company, it doesn't ever appear that Simon's crew diminishes in number even though they showed up in what appeared to be like four trucks. How many frickin' people could there possibly be in four trucks?

And then when some people who were wounded turn into zombies at night, people just blunder into them. "Hey are you okay? I'm going to just go out here and-- w-wait! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! Arrrrggghhh..." and death. Like this happens over and over. Death by zombie bite while I'm just sitting on the couch rolling my eyes. If that's not enough, Hilltop has got no one on guard apparently, and the zombies just walk into the house where the people are all sleeping in a huge communal room. One zombie even frickin' falls down the ENTIRE flight of stairs and no one wakes up. So yeah...more screams... "Arrrggghhh! Aahhhh! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" blah blah blah.

Outside, one of the kids (his name is Henry) grabs a gun and goes into the place where Maggie is holding the Saviors they've taken as prisoners and demands that the one who killed his brother step forward or he'll start killing. Well they rush the kid and he gets knocked over and they all run out and escape. Sigh. Really?

And then this random guy that I don't even remember from any episodes dies and they play the music that they always play when someone dies that a main cast member really liked (this time it's Carol) and Carol looks all sad. But seriously, I don't remember this guy from any episode. Why is Carol even attached to him at all? Why is she looking sad?

There's (of course) no mention of Negan who we last saw with Jadis who honestly has no reason to keep him alive but of course she is doing just that.

This storyline did not have to go this way. I read the "Total War" storyline of The Walking Dead as written by Robert Kirkman. It was good and totally different. Why did they change this storyline? Why did they deviate so far from it to make it just stupid? I hate this idea that in order to entertain readers of the comics, they have to make things "different," especially when "different" is essentially synonymous with "bad."

It's a good thing they don't have any real competition on Sunday night for viewers. Otherwise The Walking Dead would be in a lot of trouble.

Tom Holland may be the most talented male entertainer of his generation.

I'm legitimately impressed with Tom Holland. He kinda dropped into my radar when he was cast for Spiderman: Homecoming and yeah, I thought he got the part because he's quite attractive. But then I started watching some of his other movies to see what all else he's been in, and I've been kind of blown away by the guy's sheer amount of talent.

In the movie Pilgrimage he plays a monk and speaks in what I think is Gaelic for the majority of the movie, and it just rolls off the tongue, looking very genuine the whole time. The whole thing is subtitled too. And I also found out that he was in this BBC production called Wolf Hall that was all about the inside court of Henry VIII. It has a lot of great reviews, and he plays George Cromwell, the son of Thomas Cromwell. His acting is superb, although it probably wasn't much of a stretch considering he has a thick English accent. What is a stretch is that he can bury it so convincingly and speak like an American teen.

He can also dance really well. Like...I mean professionally and on a competitive level. His dance routine on LL. Cool J's Lip Sync Battles was over the top good. And I guess that (to get the part of Spiderman), he did as many back flips as he could (without a trampoline) and nailed the part by blowing away the competition.

He's got all kinds of movies. He's been in thrillers in the middle of winter fighting for his life, he's been a kid caught in one of the most devastating tsunami's of all time, and he's been in several medieval dramas. He was also the star of Billy Elliot, which was a very successful play in England. For someone so young, I don't think I've ever seen the kind of spectrum that he's fielding in an entertainment career. Additionally, he seems to be immune to the curse of child actors who fail when they become adults.

Anyway, Tom Holland reminds me of another famous Tom who went on to do great things: Tom Hanks. I feel like we're about to see another one of that caliber that goes on to change the way in which we view movies and entertainment. Just my two cents I suppose. 

Here are eight passing thoughts I had regarding Pacific Rim Uprising immediately following the Thursday night premiere.

Pacific Rim: Uprising is a pretty solid entertaining popcorn flick. From this point forward, there are spoilers. You have been warned.

It delivers on what it's supposed to deliver on: robots fighting kaiju. I like big monsters so mark check on that one. I like big robots so check on that second part. If you've seen the film, maybe you could weigh in on what worked for you and what didn't work for you. This is really one of those kinds of movies where people are going to have opinions on all kinds of things. So here are my assorted musings :):

1) I liked the enemy jaeger because it had two swords. One sword in the first movie was cool. But two was definitely better. I was not expecting the enemy jaeger to have a kaiju brain in it. That was a pleasant reveal and cast a wider net as far as the story goes.

2) I wanted to see the cool ball weapon with the spikes do more than it did. It looks impressive, and it should be more than just a huge morning star, even if that is what it is. Sidenote: Tokyo getting trashed by kaiju seemed somehow suitably appropriate.

3) Whoah! I wasn't expecting the Newt twist! Did anyone see that? What the hell? I'm not sure how I feel about a hero from the first movie becoming a villain in the second. My friend, Brad, really liked it. But it doesn't sit right with me.

4) I loved how the kaiju got to combine into one larger kaiju. However, it would have been fun if the jaeger's also got to combine into one super huge jaeger. I think that should be the next thing that comes out of this franchise (if there's another sequel).

5) I really liked the gravity whip thing that allowed one of the jaeger's to pull down a skyscraper, or rather...multiple skyscrapers.

6) Scrapper (the small jaeger) was super cute. I loved it, and I loved that it had a crucial role to play in the final battle. It had a lot of unique powers for its overall size.

7) Not a fan of the first hour or so of the movie before things really get going. I get that they needed to do some housekeeping related to the former movie, but it did seem to get a bit tedious. It reminds me a lot of how slow the first half of the 2014 Godzilla reboot was.

8) I miss Guillermo del Toro. The legendary director has a way of making the Jaegers and kaiju just look so huge. Maybe it has to do with his film angles, but everything always felt so big in the first Pacific Rim. The final battle in this one didn't seem to capture that same sense of awe. Maybe it had to do with filming most of the battles at night and in water. Or maybe it was just a combination of all kinds of things that only del Toro knows for certain. Either way, it's plain as day that Guillermo had no hand in the making of the movie.

Are you seeing Pacific Rim: Uprising? Do you plan on seeing it? Do you have expectations? What did you notice in your viewing of the film?

I love looking at these old pictures of the white castle that appeared in the 1983 British fantasy movie called Krull.

Because my brain is random, the other day I was discussing the beautiful white castle (at least I thought it was pretty) that appeared briefly in the fantasy movie, Krull, which was a 1983 British-made movie in the same vein as The Dark Crystal. Some of you who read my blog may have seen it. But I googled pictures of "the white castle" and found some production paintings and the actual black and white pictures someone took of the set for it (which made it very real at that point). It never occurred to me that they actually built the thing. I'd always assumed it was just a fancy matte painting or some kind of special effect. But yeah, they created a whole "miniature" for it...only it wasn't all that tiny. There's a truck in the foreground to give it some scale.

Above is the very cool production painting. The final product looks a lot like this as seen below.

And you can see that the facade of the castle was about twice the height of an actual truck. That's kind of cool, and I imagine that building on that scale may have enabled more detail to be put into the finished piece.

For the balcony section of the white castle in the movie, they actually built a pretty large set piece at Pinewood Studios. Above is what it looked like prior to actors using the set for actual filming.

And then the final product as it appeared in the movie is shown above. I imagine it was quite a bit of work to get it all realized for the film. At least, quite a bit more than I originally had imagined. Just a little bit of silver screen magic, right?

People that have seen Deadpool 2 are comparing it to Alien 3 and what it did for that franchise and this is not good.

There are quite a few movies coming out in the next few months that I want to see. Most immediate are: Pacific Rim 2 (March 22nd), Ready Player One (March 29th), Rampage (April 19th), Avengers: Infinity War (April 26th), Deadpool 2 (May 17th), and Solo: A Star Wars Story (May 24th).  Of these blockbusters, Deadpool 2 has done some acrobatics to land perfectly between Infinity War and the next big Star Wars movie. However, that may be the only good thing about it. I read online that Fox (the studio behind Deadpool 2) has had at least one test screening of the movie, and the responses were "not good." Yikes. :/

I know that reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, but these people who are given early access are a great measure of how a movie may perform. And from everything that people are saying, the audience for Deadpool 2 thought the film was a huge mess with characters that weren't used well (Vanessa from the first movie being one of those) with someone even calling it an Alien 3 blunder. For those of you who don't follow science-fiction movies in a franchise, being compared to "Alien 3" is NOT GOOD. THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT GOOD. Alien 3 was a terrible movie, and a departure from everything that came before it to something that had a wildly different feel. In fact, the franchise hasn't been the same since no matter how many times they've tried to reboot it, reshoe it with Predators, or even branch into expensive and beautiful prequels. If I had to point to a movie that ruined the ultimate potential of the Alien franchise, it would be Alien 3.

So how is Fox responding? Studio execs are "reportedly" stunned and they are trying to figure out if there are some last minute things and changes that can be made in order to salvage it. Hmm. Again, this is definitely not good. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, people. But honestly, did any of us actually think that the story of Wade could be carried successfully unto another movie and not lose a ton of its magic? To even begin to answer this question, we might want to ask, "Why was it so good in the first place?"

Well, it pushed the envelope in a field saturated by superhero movies. Deadpool was different because he was crude, gory, and excessive in all the wrong ways. Another thing that made it good was the clever writing in approaching the story with a non-linear structure. This broke from the standard "origin" followed by "hero fights villain" and "villain is defeated." And the final thing (again just trying to be honest) the movie got "lucky." I don't think any of the makers of Deadpool would have thought that it was going to be as big a commercial success as it was (being rated-R). And when something has lightning strike for it, it's usually because of something else that isn't controllable. Otherwise "viral marketing" would be something that people could strategize and repeat over and over. The thing is, what goes viral and what doesn't is completely random. People don't know how to reproduce that kind of success. And Deadpool just "touched a nerve."

Anyway, it sounds like the sequel is going to be terrible, but I will probably end up seeing it anyway. However, it's kind of sad knowing that it will be terrible when I'm still months away from being able to watch it.

It took three years for Spielberg's team to just get the licensing together for all the properties contained within Ready Player One.

Spielberg spent three years JUST getting all the licenses together to even be allowed to make Ready Player One. And he didn't get all of them. I learned from io9's post yesterday that he couldn't get Ultraman and Star Wars. Think about that...with all of his connections, he still couldn't get all of the licenses that he wanted to get. That just blows my mind. I never would have thought that Ernest Clines "ode to the eighties" would have been a difficult film to create, but it goes down as one of the more difficult ones in history if you measure the amount of red tape one has to cut through to even start filming.

Also, I got challenged by the hive mind of a group I message with the other day that was saying that some early reviewers at SXSW panned Spielberg's Ready Player One adaptation. If you've heard this but don't know why, I want to set you straight. There was a technical glitch in which the sound dropped for a full minute during the Ready Player One showing. A lot of people in the crowd thought this was intentional, and gave the movie terrible reviews because of it. If you remove those reviews out of the equation, it is getting a stellar reception. And some are even saying it is better than the book.

Honestly, when I think about this movie adaptation it doesn't surprise me one bit that the movie will be better than the book. The novel was crammed with nostalgia, but it was heavily reliant on references that (should you be without) are almost impossible to picture because you don't know what they look like. For me, it was an incredible book because I know what the Tomb of Horrors has in it because I've run that D&D module countless times. And I know what a Delorean looks like because I loved Back to the Future. And so on and so forth. People who don't have all that information downloaded into their brain tend to hate Ready Player One (the book). I have no doubt that it will translate much better to them on screen because everything will be right there for them to see.

Here's the latest trailer. I'm so excited for this.

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind would be an impossible movie to make in modern day America.

I recently purchased my tickets for Ready Player One and Pacific Rim 2. These are two movies that I'm excited to see, but for very different reasons. I want to see Pacific Rim 2, because I like big monsters and robots, and it looks like the movie went in a very intriguing direction when it was apparent that Charlie Hunnam would not be back to reprise his role as a Jaeger pilot that saved the world. The fact that they are going with Idris Elba's son is (I think) even better than another show with Charlie Hunnam's "hot shot" character in the pilot seat.

As for Ready Player One? Well, I read the book and reviewed it in a blog post three years ago. If you want to read the review, it's posted HERE. However, the biggest reason I'm looking forward to it is to see if Steven Spielberg (who got back into the director's chair from his semi-retirement) still has the magic. I've said it before HERE, but I think Steven is the G.O.A.T. And I've been educating some teenagers by showing them Spielberg movies at my house about once a month (the teens in question are named David and Moira, which is really nerdy considering that these names are both X-Men characters). Yes, the mom is a huge nerd.

Anyway, the next movie I have scheduled to show these two teens is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's a movie that I really liked as I was growing up. However, in thinking about the film, I suddenly realized that this is not a movie that could be filmed today. To clarify, I'm saying it would be impossible to put to film in today's climate.

For one, it glamorizes a deadbeat dad. Richard Dreyfuss is clearly disenchanted with his own family because they don't want to participate in his alien-driven mania. Does he love his kids? Maybe on some level? But he's not even done with his marriage before he's making moves on a woman who shares his mania for the location of Devil's Tower, and who has lost her son to an alien abduction. Sure, the story offers convenient excuses for Dreyfuss's behavior, but there's no way that wouldn't all get panned to death by reviewers and (I think) there is no way it could even get greenlit today for any kind of budget (whether or not someone like Steven Spielberg was behind it).

Close Encounters also has stellar reviews. However, there's no way people would review the movie the same in today's climate. It would get so many one star reviews it'd make the director's head spin as people trashed it and created negative hashtags on social media for a movie that clearly glorifies all the awful stereotypes of deadbeat dads.

I suppose that what I'm saying is that Close Encounters is an anachronism. It's a masterpiece for the time and place in which it appeared, but to remove it from that period would be to destroy it utterly because the things that made it great would be overwhelmed by its underlying social message. 

Thank you Dave Filoni for a wonderful series finale of Star Wars Rebels because it made me excited about the future of Star Wars again.

The final episode that there will ever be of Star Wars: Rebels created such a "David Filoni" inspired universe of potential that I'm actually excited for the future of the franchise. Knowing now what Disney executives must have known a year or more ago when all of this was being discussed, I can see why episode 8, a.k.a. The Last Jedi, was made. So if you want to hear the ideas that bubbled into my head, please know that there are going to be spoilers from here on out as I discuss the Star Wars: Rebels revelations and what they may mean for the Star Wars universe at large.

So...I get it now. All of the old cast needed to be buried so that new stories could be created with young characters who are alive and well at the end of Star Wars: Rebels. The universe may have lost its last Jedi, but "Jedi" was just a title. It was a name given for people trained in the use of the Force that also had membership within an organization. But even Shakespeare in a universe not so far far away realized that a rose by any other name smelled just as sweet.

Surviving the end of Rebels, which had its curtain call beyond the events of Return of the Jedi are pretty much everyone. The universe has Ezra Bridger doing who knows what (the guy sailed off into hyperspace riding space whales and towing Grand Admiral Thrawn's Star Destroyer along with Grand Admiral Thrawn as his prisoner). Those stories have yet to be created. The galaxy also has Ahsoka Tano, who has incredible training, and who could potentially train Rey, who (in my opinion) is wielding power the equal of Yoda. I mean...all those rocks at the end of the Last Jedi were easily as heavy and massive as an X-Wing, and she didn't look all that strained to be throwing them around.

So what can we expect then in Episode 9 and beyond? I personally think that we're looking at Ezra Bridger and Ahsoka Tano getting cast as live action stars. I think we're going to see the fate of Grand Admiral Thrawn, and somehow he is going to be connected to the remnants of the First Order. And I think we're looking at new force powers that will resemble magic more than they do science fiction. Most people know (by now) that Jedi's were based on fantasy wizards anyway.

I'm hoping that my friend, Kevin Long, will weigh in somewhere in the comments. He's also a fan of the series and has quite a few insights that I value and that I don't pick out myself in my own viewings of the shows.

But yeah, thanks to Dave Filoni I'm excited for Star Wars again!

I think booking a professional massage is the perfect way to celebrate any achievement.

How do you celebrate when you achieve a writing goal/ finish a story?

This is the question that is pondered by the Insecure Writer's Support Group for the March 7th question, and it's a pretty good one. It made me think of a particular scene in the movie, Romancing the Stone:

For those of you that don't know this movie because you are too young to have seen it, the plot is pretty simple (and kinda great):

A single, lonely, romance writer finds herself caught in a wild adventure of her own when her sister calls for her help. She immediately heads to Columbia in search of her sister. Unbeknownst to her, she carries a map to the largest emerald in the world, and there are many people after it. She teams up with Jack, a guy who seems to to have stepped off the cover of one of her books, in hopes to reach Cartagena and her sister.

At the beginning of the movie (where the above gif is taken), she's finishing up a steamy romance and is putting the finishing touches on her story. In tears, she goes about her apartment looking for tissues, doesn't find any, and celebrates anyway by blowing on a note that was intended to remind her to buy more tissues and then some wine and a nice relaxing sit by the fire (if I remember correctly). The next day she drops off the finished manuscript off with her publisher or agent (I'm not sure who it is at this point). Anyway...it's a great representation of how to celebrate finishing a story even if I've never done it that way.

I honestly haven't finished that many stories, and for me, there really isn't a definitive finishing point usually because I need to do (or am compelled to do) rewrites and revisions. I wish it was a matter of "type type type" and "The End." But there is a kind of #selfcare that I do on a regular basis that seems kind of celebratory, and I usually do it whenever I feel particularly good about an accomplishment and that's to book a massage at a local spa. So yeah, I think going to a Japanese spa is what I do to celebrate anything, and that includes finishing a story (if I can even definitively call it that). It's usually a two hour one with side accouterments like a steam room and sauna and my latest favorite: the warm coconut milk drizzle. Yeah, it's as awesome as it sounds.  Seriously, if you guys out there aren't getting massages, it could really change your mood and put you in a zen state for at least a week (give or take life's stressful circumstances).

Thank you for visiting.

I wanted Shape of Water to win Best Picture and it did. I'm super happy now.

Last night, I (like a lot of people) watched the Oscars on ABC. I had my favorites even though I was unable to see all of the Best Picture nominations in a category that was overflowing with deserving films. But I think the one I was behind the most as the night wore on was Guillermo del Toro's Shape of Water. But, I knew that it "could never win," because it was too weird. It was too "out there," and it resonated with me so strongly that nothing I ever loved that was this weird and alien and different could ever be Best Picture material, right? Boy was I wrong. This year the academy embraced the weird. There simply is nothing out there in movies like Shape of Water, and I'm so happy it beat out and won Guillermo del Toro not only a Best Picture Oscar, but an Academy Award for Best Director, something he's been deserving for many years now.

Each of the three characters in Shape of Water really resonated with me. One was a gay man, rejected and shunned by essentially everyone (believe me I know how that feels here in good ole Utah). One was a woman isolated and alone because of her disability, quirkiness, and probably because she didn't feel attractive or ever considered herself to be attractive. I also know what that feels like. And then there was the fish guy who was alone in the world with no family to talk to or anyone else that was like him. Ayep, I know what that feels like as well. I remember when my friend Jake went to see it with his family (hearing me rave about it), and he told me that they were so offended by all the sex that they walked out. I responded (rather snarkily), "It's good that you have that choice because if I could, I'd probably walk out on my life too and pay to see something else." I remember that comment took him aback and we stopped discussing the film together because he could see that I'd tied a lot of my identity to this strange and weird film from Guillermo del Toro, and that I was experiencing things with its story that he was not equipped to ever understand. It was an "agree to disagree" moment. I have these moments often with the Mormon that is Jake.

I couldn't have been happier with the Academy Award for Best Picture this year. For the other categories? I suppose that Gary Oldman was deserving of one given the little bits that I have seen of his Churchill impersonation. It's about time, right? But I also kinda wanted Timothee Chalamet to get an Oscar for Call Me By Your Name. However, (and if I'm being completely honest) I think that in the end, Oldman getting the Oscar was the better choice. Timothee is so young...he needs to do more to earn such a prestigious award. And my feelings toward his Oscar snub may be tied up with the fact that I'm a biased person that was obviously taken with him and his movie. At least I can admit my biases. It's probably a good thing that I don't vote for Oscar-nominated films.

Oh and can I say that Gal Gadot and Tom Holland were the best dressed man and woman at the Academy Awards? I'll include pics of both of them below so you can see (in case you missed the Academy Awards). Spiderman knows how to rock a tuxedo. #justsayin

LOL the Lego Infinity War set just spoiled where the sixth and final infinity stone is and we were right all along.

Everyone on the internet that cared kinda/sorta believed that the last Infinity Stone, a.k.a., the Soul Stone, was going to be found in Wakanda (because the trailers for the movie are all lit up with a huge battle that takes place in Wakanda). But it wasn't ever said to be in Wakanda, and it didn't appear in Black Panther, as I discussed in an earlier post. And Lo and behold, it looks like it definitely is. Here's a picture of the Lego set in question, and I've circled the soul stone in blue paint so it's easy to spot contained in an alien drill which obviously removes it from the ground in Wakanda (that's why the ground is all cracked). 

So now the question is: how does all of this fit together? And for answering that question there are a hundred theories I've read. I'm going to single out one and just quote directly from him...my friend, Tony Hale, who lives over in Oregon. Earlier this week I sent him a message on Facebook about all of this stuff, and he responded with this theory:

"There is a problem with the locations of all the Infinity Stones, and it's this: it puts most of the stones on Earth. I actually think that Odin had the Soul Stone (and all of the other stones) at one point. Hence, the fake gauntlet in his treasury room. I also think Thanos gave Loki the mind stone so that he could put two of the stones near one another, namely the Tesseract (space stone) with the Mind Stone. In the comics, the writers hint that the stones are drawn to each other, and I think that Thanos wanted to get them all into play. So, I think he knew the gauntlet in Odin's treasury was fake, just like Odin obviously knew in addition to one other person: Hela.
    "So let me put it all together for you. When Odin worked with Hela to subvert the universe, he was actually collecting the stones. Partway through collecting them, he realized they were too dangerous together. So he left the Aether (the Reality Stone) with the elves. Odin also left the Power Stone with the remains of the destroyed ancient aliens, until Starlord stumbled across it. The aliens were one of the races destroyed along the way by Hela and Odin. The Mind Stone was never recovered (Thanos starts with it in his "possession"), and I think that Odin had not yet discovered it when he ended his search. The Time Stone (of course) was on Earth, which Odin learned after becoming deified by the Norse men and women. In this aspect, I think that Odin gave the gift of the Soul Stone to the people of Earth, who had deified him. In the comics, Thanos has a love affair with Death, but I think the MCU is not going to go as metaphysical with this character. Instead, they will use their already existing representation of Death in Hela. Well, Hela knew about the fake gauntlet, and she obviously wants to rule the universe. So she found someone devoted to her, filled him with the idea of the Gauntlet, and sent him to get it for her. That's what I think is going on."

It's a nice theory, but it leaves me a little wanting, because I think there are enough clues in Black Panther that the heart-shaped herb does indeed derive its power from the Soul Stone. And the Lego box has a picture of the Soul Stone being drilled from the ground by something heavy enough to crack the surface. Then of course there's the huge fight in Wakanda, which are not Norse people, so they couldn't have been the recipient of the Soul Stone. So yeah...maybe Tony is overthinking this? Maybe the Soul Stone just happened to be in a meteor of vibranium and crashed into the Earth millions of years ago, and it has yet to be extracted. That may end up being the sole explanation of all these questions about vibranium's seemingly endless powers to do fantastical things.

However, Tony does make me think that Hela may (in fact) not be dead and could have survived Asgard's destruction at the hands of Surtr. Maybe she has a role to play in all this to come.

One last piece of information: for those of you that are excited for Avengers: Infinity War, the release date has been moved up a week to Friday, April 27th for a worldwide simultaneous release.