FISCHER: Five good things from 2024

It’s that time again.

With the year coming to a close, let’s take a look back and go over some of the highlights of movies, television, and video games that came out in 2024.

I wouldn’t call this a “Top Five” list by any means, as this list is confined to only things I actually managed to get around to watching. Still, it’s five things that really stood out that maybe you might want to check out, too.

‘Hazbin Hotel’

“Wicked” may be the musical of the moment, but it’s the soundtrack of this animated dark comedy that’s been running through my head all year. Originating as a short video on YouTube, “Hazbin Hotel” was picked up by Amazon Prime and given a wide release to critical acclaim.

Focused on the unrelentingly optimistic Princess of Hell and her mission to rehabilitate her friend group of self-destructive sinners, “Hazbin Hotel” offers real character drama and a deeply intriguing plot to unfold once you look past the crass jokes and catchy musical numbers.

X-Men ’97

This was an unanticipated hit.

Knowing Marvel Studio’s television track record I didn’t have high hopes for this continuation of the early 90s Saturday Morning Cartoon, but what could have been a shameless cash-grab banking on exploiting nostalgia ended up being an Emmy-worthy, if not winning, home run.

With only 10 episodes to work with, the show speedruns through some of the X-Men’s most impactful storylines at a breakneck pace, but not so much so that the story suffers for it or loses the balance between the fantastical super-hero adventures the X-Men go on and the real-world prejudices they stand against.

Fallout

I wouldn’t call myself a fan of the Fallout franchise. I’ve never played a Fallout game. I have no strong feelings about its story or setting.

But Amazon Prime scored another win this year with a pitch-perfect adaptation of the post-apocalyptic action comedy. Much like last year’s “Twisted Metal,” “Fallout” doesn’t just adapt the unapologetic gore and casual brutality of the Fallout universe, but also managed to cleverly incorporate the actual mechanics of the video game into the plot in a way you might not even notice.

The hardest part about making a video game adaptation is making something suitable for general audiences without compromising the source material and “Fallout” strikes that balance brilliantly.

Hundreds of Beavers

My favorite movie this year wasn’t a big budget superhero spectacle or an epic high fantasy adventure. Instead, the best movie I’ve watched this year is an independent comedy about a 19th century trapper trying to woo a pretty girl by capturing, as the title suggests, hundreds of beavers.

Stylized like a silent movie of the 1920s, the film is like a live-action Looney Tune cartoon that gets weirder and wilder as it goes.

Technically, the movie was first shown in 2022, but it got a video-on-demand release this year so that’s where I’m counting it.

Marvel Rivals

I’ve already recently written about “Marvel Rivals,” so I won’t go into much more depth about it here, but this was another unexpected surprise.

I never thought I’d be into a free-to-play hero shooter, much less one based on a licensed property, but here we are. I’m thoroughly enjoying learning the game’s new characters and am constantly impressed by how they’ve adapted unique super powers into mechanically viable abilities.

Other than probably needing some kind of role-queue and the obvious overpoweredness of Jeff the Land Shark’s ultimate ability, there’s shockingly little to criticize about the game.

Honorable Mentions

Honorable mentions go to “Baldur’s Gate 3,” a game that deserved to be on my list last year but I didn’t play it until this year. “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth,” a game that deserves to be on my list this year, but I won’t play it until it hits PC next year. “Alone in the Dark,” a good, but not great, survival/horror game that gets points for simply being a good survival/horror game in an underserved genre. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which probably deserved to be on the list but three Marvel products seemed excessive. And finally “Nosferatu,” a movie that I hope deserves to be on this list, but since it comes out tomorrow I obviously can’t justify giving it more than a nod.

So there we go. Five great things that happened this year.

Next week we’ll see what we’ve got to look forward to in 2025.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and hopes next year is as good for him as this year has been for the X-Men.