Five Things in 2021

It's that time of year again. Time to reflect on all that has happened and make lists because lists are easy content and the holidays are not a time for columns that require a lot of extra effort.

So, as is tradition, here are five things I really liked this year.

WandaVision

With the pandemic keeping people out of theaters for the bulk of 2020 and 2021, it's been up to Disney+ to keep the ball rolling on the MCU until the big screen features returned.

The year has seen five of these limited series shows premier. "The Falcon and The Winter Soldier" was a fun buddy thriller. "Loki" was the best season of Doctor Who in years. "What If…" was fun romp through some alternate universes, a running theme in Phase 4 it seems. And "Hawkeye" finally gave Clint Barton his due with a holiday-themed adventure.

But while all of those shows have their unique charms, "WandaVision" remains my favorite of the bunch.

I loved how the early episodes took a tour through the history of American sitcoms while leaving bits and pieces of the greater mystery scattered around for viewers to obsess over week after week. Many people seemed inpatient for the show to get on with the magic and modern action, but I would have been perfectly happy to have several more episodes of sitcom storylines.

Either way, the Disney+ entries to the MCU should by no means be considered secondary to their theatrical counterparts. They are, more than anything else, just long movies segmented into weekly installments.

Metroid Dread

I'm cheating here as I haven't actually had a chance to play "Metroid Dread" yet, but I'm still putting it on the list nonetheless.

The Metroid franchise has traditionally been the third part of Nintendo's classic trifecta, alongside Mario and Zelda. While never as big a seller as the other two, the series is still among the most impactful in the industry. After all, there's an entire genre named after it.

Yet recent years have seen little of Samus the space bounty hunter or her alien foes. The series has been practically defunct since 2007, with just a handful of forgettable spin-off games released over the last 14 years.

That changed during a surprise announcement during this year's E3. "Metroid Dread" or Metroid 5, is the first full-fledged new installment to the primary Metroid series in nearly 20 years.

That's must have been a lot of pressure to put on developer MercurySteam, who were behind the 2017 remake of "Metroid II: Return of Samus," but it seems like they were up to the task.

If general reception from the masses is to be believed, the game met and exceeded all expectations, offering all the classic challenge and gameplay of the old school franchise along with the modern graphics and quality of life features today's gamers expect.

"Metroid Dread" not only received virtually universal praise from critics and sold like gangbusters, but it also received a Game of the Year nomination and won Best Action/Adventure Game at this year's Game Awards.

Hopefully this success will encourage Nintendo to maybe not wait decades between installments anymore.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

The idea of a third Ghostbusters movie has been floating around for the better part of thirty years. Various scripts and ideas have been proposed, from direct sequels to spiritual successors, but none of them got off the ground.

Eventually, following the death of Harold Ramis, it felt like a third movie was off the table forever. Sony even went so far as to try and reboot the franchise, but the less said about that attempt the better.

At long last though, the stars have finally aligned. It's taken three decades and a literal generational transition as "Ghostbusters" director Ivan Reitman passed the director's chair to his son, but the world finally got that third movie.

And it was good.

I won't say I wasn't skeptical. The idea of framing the movie around something as cliché as "angsty teenager moves to the middle of nowhere" was not an appealing premise. In spite of that, pretty much everything else about the movie hit the mark. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it hit the notes it needed to, creating a satisfying addition to the original movies and, hopefully, setting up sequels for a new generation.

Arcane

Netflix has been kind of killing it this year, particularly in the world of video game adaptations. Not only did they release a fantastic fourth and final season of "Castlevania" along with a second season of "The Witcher" (though I'm not entirely sure if that counts, but we also received the shockingly well done "Arcane," a prequel series for the ever expanding League of Legends universe.

With a trifecta of great writing, voice acting, and animation, "Arcane" sets a new bar for spin-off media. Even as somebody that has very little familiarity with the League of Legends series, I was able to get invested in the world building and characters.

Nevertheless, the greatest strength of the show is clearly its close connection to its source material.

Whereas most adaptations are created by a third party studio that buys the license for the series in question and creates an entirely new story that may or may not be accurate to the original, "Arcane" was financed directly by Riot Games, effectively making it an in-house production. Similarly, the show was animated by Fortiche Productions, a 3D animation studio that has been creating CGI cinematics for the video game for nearly a decade.

Having that level of familiarity and creative control was likely a key factor in making "Arcane" the standout show it turned out to be.

The only downside to "Arcane" is that quality takes time, so while a second season has been confirmed, it won't be making next year's list as it's due for release after 2022.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

I did not at all expect this movie to make my vaunted list of things I really liked this year.

The first two of Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies are among my least favorite of the MCU. Nothing against Holland himself, but his version of Spider-Man is so unrecognizable that he may as well be playing a different character entirely.

SPOILERS BELOW

Moreover, the only Spider-Man movies I dislike more than the MCU films are the original Raimi trilogy, in no small part because of Tobey Maguire's incessantly whiney take on the character. Only Andrew Garfield's movies have ever left me remotely satisfied, and even those have their issues.

So two misses with Holland on top of the threat of sticking Maguire back into the webs was not in any way an encouraging start for me, even if it meant we also got to see Garfield get a well deserved return.

With all that in mind, this movie somehow managed to achieve the impossible. Not only did this movie coax an entertaining performance out of Tobey Magure, not only did it give Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man the closure he was denied, but this movie ends by stripping away all of the "Iron Man Jr." vibes that have been holding back the MCU's web-head and, finally, setting him up to be the Spider-Man he always should have been.

I went into this movie more out of obligation than anything else, particularly since it looked to be integral to the overall storyline of the MCU. I didn't expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I did and, for the first time in a long time, I'm excited to see what the future holds for the cinematic Spider-Man.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and will definitely be playing Metroid Dread soon.