The Streaming-Year 2024

After 2023 was one of the weakest streaming/movie years, my review of 2024 looks better.
But only at first glance. That’s because I filtered extremely radically in advance and didn’t even watch movies that were highly likely to be garbage, not even as a hate watch.
On the other hand, there were two series this year that were so good visually and story-wise that I had to introduce a new tier here: Æsir – (Norse) Divine.

This time, I put the rest of my opinion on streaming/film year 2024 at the end.
This way, you can get to my assessments/opinions of the films and series of 2024 more quickly:

Æ-Tier – Æsir (+S-Tier)

• Arcane League of Legends (S02)
• Twilight of the Gods (S01)

S-Tier – Top of the Top

• The Boys(S04)
  As always, The Boys outdid themselves with each season.
• Creature Commandos (S01)
  The DC surprise of the year.
• Dune: Part Two
• Mr. Birchum
  GenX vs. Woke! – Awesome, I want more of it!
• Shōgun
• The Substance
  „Death Becomes Her“ meets „Dr. Jekyll and mr hyde“ meets „Cronenberg-Body-Horror“ with a touch of „Akira“
• Terminator: Zero
  “Akira Terminator in the Evangelion Shell”. The best Terminator movie since 1991.
• Watchmen Chapter I & II
  One-to-one adaptation of the cult comic – simply ingenious.
  BTW: the music sounds almost like Vangelis’s Blade Runner.

A-Tier – Above average

This is how good entertainment should be. But it can always be better (see above).

• The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist
  Good continuation of the bad guys, unfortunately the twists are too easy to guess. +A-Tier
• Batman Caped Crusader
  After the first episode, I wanted to give up, but it got better – much better.
  Without the gender-switch Penguin and the weak ending, it would be S-Tier, but as it is, it’s only -A-Tier.
• Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
  Better than expected, much better. Pure GenX fanservice.
• The Bikeriders
  Grandfathers of Anarchy. Visually stunning, beautifully(!) old-school, very good story, just a bit heavy on the dialog.
• Blood of Zeus (S02)
  Well done, why didn’t I have S01 on my radar?
• Civil War
  What I miss is a bit more background information, how did the civil war come about, what did the president do, …
• Deadpool & Wolverine
  How did he get through Disney’s DEI ? But unfortunately a bit too much fanservice – at the expense of the story.
• Fallout
• Fly me to the Moon
  Very good start, a bit long in the middle, the end seems a bit forced (fake landing)
• Kite Man – Hell Yeah
  In Harley Quinn, I thought Kite Man was terrible. But the series is much better than expected.
• The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
  80s action Arnie meets the Inglourious Basterds.
  Unfortunately, the middle part is a bit too long, which is why it doesn’t get an S-Tier.
• Suicide Squad ISEKAI
  DC Animation meets Anime
• Those About To Die
  Good ideas, but too many storylines, which means that some characters get lost.
• SolarOpposite (S05) (The Wall )
  Skip the rest and just concentrate only on The Wall
• South Park: The End of Obesity
  Good episodes – but South Park is getting soft – unfortunately….
• Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (S01)
  Good for a game movie, but nothing surprising or new.
  Good story for a TR game, but it is (unfortunately only) TR according to the checklist. -A-Tier.
• Velma (S02)
  Even better than the first season +A-Tier

B- Tier – Well, average.

Entertaining, but nothing you’ll remember or want to watch again.

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
  Quite nice to look at, but somehow it doesn’t have the Mad Max feeling.
• Good Times: Black Again
  Black Life in the 2020s
• Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance
  Visually well done, but the story is a bit weak.
• Masters of the Air
• Star Trek: Lower Desks (S04)
  They got even better with the final season. Unfortunately, you can tell which episodes were written before and after the announcement of the end.
• Reagan
  Good biopic, but for my personal taste, there is too little about his time as president.

C-Tier – Could have been much, much better – a shame

• Alien: Romulus
  Too much fan service! Yes – there is such a thing!
• Borderlands
  Better than expected, but maybe also because I don’t know the game that well.
  With a better ending, it could have been B-tier, but as it is, it’s C-tier.
• Inside Out 2
  Unfortunately, I have to say. But better than feared: -C-tier
• Justice League: Crisis on Infinite EarthsPart 1-3
  In sum, C-tier. But only because Part Three saves it a little. With Part One alone, it would be F-tier
• Secret Level
  Unfortunately not the hoped-for successor to “Love, Death + Robots”.
  Style over substance. Visually over the top, but the stories (roll eyes)…
  they are mostly more like individual scenes, cutscenes.
  And you have to know the games pretty damn well to understand the episodes correctly!
  Especially with the W40K episode, you have to be deep in the lore (deep!)
• Star Trek Discovery (S05)
  Started well, then got a bit repetitive and the resolution was deceptive
  Puls: the attached end to close the series
• Star Trek: Prodigy (S02)
  Too much wibbly wobbly, timey wimey – even for my taste.
  If I have to draw a diagram to keep up with Trek (!), only Mirror-Janeway saves the whole thing from being F-tier.
  Wesley Crusher alone would be FF-tier
• Universal Basic Guys (S01)
  Quite nice – but could have been more.
• X-Men’97
  Better than expected, but too inconsistent. And too many deus ex machina

D-Tier – Let them die…

These series used to be great, but now the authors seem to be running out of ideas…

• Bob’s Burgers (S15/S16)
  It’s been flat for a while now.
• Family Guy (S21/S22)
  This show is flat now, too.
• The Great North (S03)
  It’s frightening how quickly shows can lose their spark these days.
• SolarOpposite (S05) (Korvo and Co.)
  Skip this part and concentrate only on The Wall
• Futurama (S09)
  S07 had such a good and fitting end to the series.
  But Disney had to revive it to make money…
  

F-Tier – scrap

I could have actually saved myself, but I still had hope until the end.

• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
  I really wanted to break off several times. Late Sequels (almost) never work.
  Nothing new; jokes too flat (the only good one is Soul Train).
  Unsuccessful attempt to get old fans to part with their money with cameos.
• Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
  A typical 70s Gojira Movie with 2024 FX and Budget incl. Minira.
• Mulligan (S02)
  Independence Day meets Idiocracy – not thought through to the end and the jokes still don’t hit.
• Sausage Party Foodtopia
  The movie was still quite funny, but this series is more than superfluous.
• Star Wars: The Bad Batch (S03)
  Star Wars died over Endor
• What If… (S03)
  E02 was still quite funny, but the rest… especially the Howard the Duck episode is garbage.
  The MCU died with Tony Stark!

FF-Tier – The dregs

A complete waste of time, I didn’t even finish watching it.

• Hellboy The Crooked Man
  What was THAT!?! A Fan film? You can’t save the fandom like that!
  Even if it’s supposed to be a 1:1 comic book adaptation.
• Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (S01)
  You can try again – NO!
• Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate
  Part 1 was still good – This is unwatchable!!
• Tomorrow+I
  I gave up after episode 2. Good ideas/story and visually very well done.
  But the way the story is told… unbearable. Maybe Asian/Thai eyes see it differently…

NO! – Just NO!

Would actually fit into my scheme, but after reading the reviews, I was not impressed at all.
This saved me a lot of time and money and spared me many disappointments.

• 3 Body Problem
• Agatha All Along
• Argylle
• The Beekeeper
• Damsel
• Echo
• The Fall Guy
• Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
• Gladiator 2
• Joker: Folie à Deux
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Kraven the Hunter
• LISA FRANKENSTEIN
• Madame Web
• Mufasa: The Lion King
• Red One
• Star Wars Skeleton Crew
• Transformers One
• Vaiana 2 
• Venom 3 – The Last Dance

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