The world of WWE is always interesting and it went through a major shift backstage this year as Chairman Vince McMahon stepped down from the creative and the control of the WWE. As all wrestling fans believed that hell had frozen over, Triple H, aka Paul Levesque, took over the WWE and immediately began making changes and re-signing wrestlers who had been let go. There was a lot of excitement in the world of wrestling and the WWE was on a roll.

Here are our World of WWE Awards.

Male Wrestler of the Year: Roman Reigns (runners-up: Sami Zayn, Seth Rollins, Bobby Lashley). Roman Reigns has been the WWE and Universal Champion for the whole year and he has been involved in the hottest storylines of the year.

Female Wrestler of the Year: Bianca Belair (runners-up: Liv Morgan, Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch). Bianca Belair has been dominating the RAW Women’s Division since regaining her championship at Wrestlemania. She seems to be the female John Cena.

Tag Team of the Year: The Usos (runners-up: Street Profits, RKBro, New Day, The Brawling Brutes). Jey and Jimmy Uso have set the all-time record for the longest Tag Team Championship reign of all time and defeated every one of the runners-up this year. The Usos never fail to deliver an awesome match.

Manager of the Year: Paul Heyman (runners-up: MVP, Scarlett). Technically, he is a “Wise Man.” But that is the general idea of the position and nobody plays his role better than Paul Heyman.

On the Mike: Kevin Owens (runners-up: Bray Wyatt, Paul Heyman, Edge). Kevin Owens has been killing it on the microphone this year. His confrontation with Austin Theory, Roman Reigns and the continuing storyline with Sami Zayn has elevated both Owens and his opponents. KO has been outstanding.

Faction of the Year: The Bloodline (runners-up: The Brawling Brutes, Imperium, The Judgment Day, The OC) The Bloodline group with Roman Reigns, The Usos, Solo Sikoa, Sami Zayn and Paul Heyman has dominated and has been involved in the best work of the year. They win all the time and when they finally go down, it is going to be a huge thing.

Feud of the Year: Cody Rhodes vs. Seth Rollins. (runners-up: Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesner, The Usos vs. Street Profits, Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch) The American Nightmare and The Architect put on three classic matches starting at Wrestlemania this year. Then, Seth took Cody out with a sledgehammer. This was so great.

Underused Performer of the Year: Shayna Basler. Shayna was a killer in NXT. She came to the main roster and immediately lost so much luster. She has just recently been linked with Ronda Rousey and hopefully that will be able to get her back on track.

Comeback of the Year: Cody Rhodes (runners-up: Brey Wyatt, Edge, The OC). Cody’s return at Wrestlemania is so great. It was so sad that he got hurt, but those months of his work was thrilling and the crowd absolutely ate it up.

Celebrity of the Year: Logan Paul. Who thought this guy was going to be good? He turned out incredibly well. His match with The Miz and Roman Reigns was excellent. He is not the typical celebrity.

Heel of the Year: Roman Reigns. Of course.

Face of the Year: Cody Rhodes. He will get one of the best face pops when he returns. Will it match his pop at Wrestlemania?

Storyline of the Year: The Bloodline/Sami Zayn. This has been so compelling and watching it every week was epic. You never knew what was going to happen next. And it is going to pay off BIG TIME.

Best Broadcaster: Pat McAfee. McAfee is so entertaining. He carries himself like a fan and he has helped Michael Cole so much.

Breakout Star: Solo Sikoa. This guy feels like a star in the making. He has been great since coming up from NXT. In fact, he has been so much better on the main roster than he was in NXT, which is not the typical.

Shock of the Year: Cody Rhodes reveals his torn pec at Hell in the Cell. The picture was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe that Cody was still going through with the match vs. Seth Rollins. It was legendary, but, sadly, we haven’t seen him since.

The Expendables Awards are next up for the Year in Review…

Best Expendable Actor in a Film: Glenn Powell (Devotion). Powell is excellent in this film opposite the amazing Jonathan Majors. The film itself was okay.

Best Expendable Voice Over: Antonio Banderas (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish). I haven’t seen this yet, but the trailers look cool. Dolph Lundgren is the runner up for Minions: Rise of Gru.

The Bruce Willis Quantity Over Quality Expendables Award for Most Movies Made: Mel Gibson. Six movies this year for Mel. On the Line, Bandit, Hot Seat, Father Stu, Agent Game, Panama. I did not see any of them.

Expendable Actor Villain of the Year: Antonio Banderas (Uncharted) He played Santiago Moncade who died too quickly. When he went, the movie was definitely hurt.

The Expendable Women’s Wrestling Champion of the Year: Ronda Rousey. Ronda Rousey returned to the WWE and won the Smackdown Women’s Championship a couple of times.

2022 has been a good year. Things at the theater started to move back to normal and there were a ton of streaming films. However, it is always a challenge to choose the EYG Star of the Year because I’m looking for someone who dominated the year. The list was short for 2022, but I did finally make the decision.

EYG Star of the Year

Previous Winners:  Gal Gadot, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jennifer Lawrence, Marvel Studios, J.J. Abrams, Josh Brolin, Damon Lindelof & Regina King, Netflix, Andrew Garfield

The runners-up were:

Florence Pugh was in several films this year and she is consistently good, no matter how good the film she is in was.

Margot Robbie was another solid performer who does well in everything that she does.

Dwayne Johnson is always a bundle of energy and the limited success of Black Adam is right on his back.

2022 EYG Star of the Year….

Tom Cruise

Top Gun: Maverick was the biggest film of 2022 and Tom Cruise’s star power drove the success of the unlikely sequel. I was not a fan of the original Top Gun but Cruise was very charming and carried this film. The truth was that Tom Cruise was a big reason why this movie was as great as it was.

Could he end up the year with an Oscar nomination for his role in Top Gun: Maverick? It is a possibility which is astounding.

One of the few remaining “Movie Stars” in the world, Tom Cruise has his first EYG Star of the Year Award.

The John Carter Memorial Award goes to the biggest flop of the year. A flop does not necessarily mean that the movie is poor. It just means that the film was not a financial success, whether it lost money or whether it didn’t make as much as they thought it should have.

John Carter Memorial Award

Previous winners:  John Carter, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Lone Ranger, A Million Ways to Die in the West, Expendables 3, Jem and the Holograms, Pan, Rock the Casbah, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Robin Hood (2018), Mortal Engines, Playmobil: The Movie, The Rhythm Section, Reminiscence 

In fact, this year is the first time that I am presenting the John Carter Memorial Award to a film that I gave a positive review.

Before we go into that…

Runners-Up: I thought that Morbius was going to win this award. It was a flop twice. Once at the original release and the second time when they thought that the whole meme meant people wanted to see it again. Still, we got a much worse film later. Lightyear did not do well. It was not promoted very well and people were confused. I liked Lightyear though. Fantastic Beasts: Secret of Dumbledore was yet another flop in this series. The Northman was another film that did not quite find the audience that it wanted.

The John Carter Memorial

Award for 2022 goes to…

Strange World

Strange World was a really good movie for me. However, it was not a success monetarily. It is expected to lose upward of $100 million dollars. People did not know what this movie was about. The promotion of Strange World was just terrible, hiding items that they should have been front and center in trailers. They thought that this was an animated Disney flick and that would be enough to attract the audience. It was not. How many people just decided to stay home and wait for it on Disney +?

It only made 12 million in its opening weekend during Thanksgiving and then dropped 60% in week two. There is no two ways around it, Stranger World, even though I enjoyed the film myself, it the John Carter Memorial Award winner of 2022.

Unlike when I was compiling the list for the Gomer Award, when I was looking for the disappointing film of the year, I was having a hard time finding them. I did eventually come up with six possible choices.

The Spider-Man 3 Disappointment of the Year 

Previous Winners:  In the Heart of the Sea, The Snowman, Amazing Spider-Man 2, After Earth, Dark Knight Rises, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Batman v. Superman, Christopher Robin, IT: Chapter Two, Tenet, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins

Runners-Up: The film that ALMOST won this award was Morbius. The only thing about this was I kind of expected it to be bad and that is what eventually happened. The School for Good and Evil was a show on Netflix that I thought was going to be the new generation of Harry Potter. I guess not. Shudder had a film with a character of Edgar Allan Poe called Raven’s Hollow. I love Poe, but this was terrible. Disney’s remake of Pinocchio with Tom Hanks was such a wash. The final runner-up was Jurassic World’s Dominion, which took these dinosaurs, which was across the whole world, and stuck them on an island where our heroes had to try an escape…just like all of them. This could have been an epic conclusion to the series and it just fell flat.

This year’s Spider-Man 3 Disappointment of the Year is…

Halloween Ends

I had gotten excited for this by seeing the trailer. Then, the movie they provided was nothing like the trailer until the last 15 minutes or so. It felt more like a reboot of the series than a finale of the series. The ending with Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie vs. Michael seemed tacked on to another film.

Very disappointing

I started looking at my list of movies for 2022 in search of the Gomer Award winner. The Gomer, named after Gomer Pyle whose catchphrase was ‘Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!’, goes to the film that was the biggest surprise of the year. A film that came out of nowhere… a film that I expected to hate… a film that transcended the viewing experience.

The Gomer for the Biggest Surprise

Previous Gomer Award Winners:  The Gift, Ferdinand, Edge of Tomorrow, We’re the Millers, The Campaign, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Bumblebee, Crawl, Greenland, Free Guy

As I was going through the films, I realized that my notes were filling up. I wound up with 19 films as possible Gomer winners. That was huge! This was easily one of the most surprising years on record.

There are a ton of awesome movies in this category and it was difficult to narrow it down to a winner.

Honorable Mentions: So the Netflix film Slumberland had such a low Rotten Tomatoes score that I did not expect much and yet I had a good time with it. Both The Menu and Violent Night I approached expecting to enjoy them because of the word of mouth, but they made this list because of how much I loved both of them. They are both in consideration for the top ten films of the year. As is RRR, another film that I had no expectations on liking. I disliked the original Top Gun film so I was surprised with how much I enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick. I have never been much of a fan of Adam Sandler so any film he is in that I enjoy is a surprise. This year it was the basketball film, Hustle. The trailers for the film Dog starring Channing Tatum were so overplayed that I had no interest in the movie and yet, it was really quite good. Hulu’s horror film Fresh was one of the most unexpected films of the year. Another film with no expectations was The Outfit, which was so good. There was no way that I was going to like the Minions: Rise of Gru with how much I hated the last Minions movie. And yet I did, who thought it was possible? Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris was another film that I had heard good things about, but I never thought it would interest me. The historical biopic Till featured a powerful performance and left me with an emotional theater experience. The mockumentary When the Screaming Starts followed a serial killer before he became a serial killer. Really funny and dark at the same time. Superman and Batman: Battle of the Super Sons was a DC animation that really engaged me with a couple of characters (Damien Wayne and Jonathan Kent) that I had never cared for much. How could a sequel of a film from 40 years ago be any good? Well, A Christmas Story Christmas pulled it off. The reboot of the Fletch series was great with Confess, Fletch starring Jon Hamm. Barbarian I went into blind and had a great time. Finally, Beast had no chance to be anything good, and yet it was so great with Idris Elba battling a killer lion.

So with all of that, the Gomer Award for 2022 goes to….

Deadstream

There was no way this was going to be good, but with some of the most clever writing of the year, Deadstream took aim at the YouTube culture of live streaming and the reactors that populate the web. Them Deadstream was legitimately funny and frightening. I loved this film from Shudder and the unexpected pleasure of a film that surprised me from the start.

Every year, I see movies in a year that had been released in the year before. Most of the time this is because a film is trying to become eligible for an Academy Award so it releases in like four theaters in New York or Los Angeles and then releases wide in January or February.

A few years ago, I decided to not take those films into consideration for the Best and Worst lists of the current year even though that was the year in which I saw them. Henceforth, this list of Best and Worst Movies of 2021 in 2022 came into being.

However, this year was different. As a follow up to the DailyView that I completed in April, I did what I called The June Swoon. In the June Swoon, I watched a movie that I did not see from 2021 every day in the month of June. It turned out to be 31 movies as I watched two in one day once that month.

That opened this list up dramatically as, instead of having five or six to choose from, I now had almost forty. This led to a top 10 Best Movie of 2021 in 2022 and a top five Worst Movie of 2021 in 2022 list.

Starting with the worst:

Worst Movies of 2021 in 2022

#5. Censor. I don’t remember anything about this one, but I had rated it a “MEH”.

#4. The Protégé. Predictable and a waste of Samuel L. Jackson.

#3. Red Rocket. I found this to be way overrated and boring.

#2. House of Gucci. another film that I just did not like. I could not get into it even though it was considered an Oscar worthy film. Not for me.

#1. Home Sweet Home Alone. I had been warned that this movie was God awful. Both Jeremy Jahns and Dan Murrell reviewed the movie and hated on it. Jeremy gave it his “dogshit” rating and Dan, if I remember correctly, put it at number one on his worst movies list. I still wanted to check it out for myself on Disney +. They were absolutely right. It was terrible and would have contended for the Worst Movie of 2021 Year End list had I watched it during 2021. Having the Home Alone name in the title is an insult to Home Alone 3. Yeah, that one.

Best Movies of 2021 in 2022

#10. The Tragedy of Macbeth. Denzel doing Shakespeare. Plus, the film had the best set and art design of any film last year.

#9. Flee. An animated documentary of an escape from Afghanistan as a child.

#8. Old Henry. A great Western with an exciting and dramatic twist at the end.

#7. Happily. A weird story about couples and someone punishing them for their bad behavior. I had a lot of funwith this one.

#6. Shiva Baby. An unexpectedly good film about a Jewish girl and her family sitting Shiva.

#5. Annette. Another bizarre film, this time with music. Adam Driver chewing up scenery all over the palce.

#4. Cyrano. A classic story also with music. Peter Dinklage as Cyrano is spot on casting.

#3. Summer of Soul. Documentary from The Roots’ Questlove. A look at some of the great music from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.

#2. Bo Burnham: Inside. A comedy film that I tried to watch once, but was having trouble getting into it. During the June Swoon though I loved it. Staying inside during the pandemic for the comedian Bo Burnham created so much amazing comedy.

#1. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar. One of the funniest films of 2021. Another one that I did not find too interesting during 2021 and I was not a fan of the trailer. However, when I watched it for the June Swoon, I loved it.

With the number f comic book movies that come out in a year, a few years ago, this category was added and who was a better person to honor than Christopher Reeve? We then went back to 1989 and awarded winners for every year.

This year, the winner, to me, was clear.

The Christopher Reeve Memorial Comic Book Movie of the Year

Previous Winners: Batman (1989), Dick Tracy (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Batman Returns (1992), Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), The Crow (1994), Batman Forever (1995), The Phantom (1996), Men in Black (1997), Blade (1998), Mystery Men (1999), X-Men (2000), From Hell (2001), Spider-Man (2002), X2: X-Men United (1993), Spider-Man 2 (1994), V for Vendetta (2005), 300 (2006), Superman: Doomsday (2007), The Dark Knight (2008), Watchmen (2009), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), Captain America: First Avenger (2011), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), Captain America: Winter Soldier & Guardians of the Galaxy [tie] (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Logan (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Birds of Prey (2020), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

In 2022, the standout comic book movie…

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Ironically, the first Black Panther movie did not receive the Christopher Reeve Memorial Award. It came out in the same year as Infinity War, which was tough competition. However, that first movie starring Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa was consequential and inspiring for a huge swath of a community. People of color embraced that film and made it one of the most successful films of all time.

Then, in 2020, tragedy struck. Chadwick Boseman died from colon cancer. A cancer that we had no idea he was suffering from. During the filming of Black Panther and Infinity War, he kept that to himself, suffering in silence. The suddenness of the loss took us all by shock.

It caused major problem for the Black Panther sequel, which had been written by writer/director Ryan Coogler already. Everything had now changed. Marvel Studios decided that they would not recast T’Challa and that they would use Wakanda Forever to, not only push the story ahead, but to honor their fallen star.

What Ryan Coogler and the cast of Wakanda Forever accomplished was monumental considering the obstacle that they faced. Wakanda Forever was a triumphant film, filled with real emotion from a cast that loved their ‘king’ but had lost him too young. Wakanda Forever was about grief, but also acceptance.

As the tremendous achievement filled the theaters, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will always have a spot in our hearts moving forward with Shuri (or eventually the young prince T’Challa).

Runners-Up: The Batman, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love & Thunder, Black Adam, Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons

The second year of the Confirmed… or it it Award is here. The award goes to those things that the Internet/talking heads/pundits discuss and talk about, all but claiming it to be a fact despite having no real evidence supporting it. So many people claimed that Mephisto was behind everything in WandaVision that when the demon did not show up, some were disappointed. It was their own out of control expectations that wrecked their viewing habits for that show.

It is an unfortunate result of so many movie talk shows on YouTube that are trying to get clicks. Even those that had a reasonable idea that Mephisto was coming got themselves too wound up over it.

Although not exclusively, it does feel as if the majority of this happens for Marvel Studios’ projects. A good rule of thumb is that it is only true when you hear Kevin Feige say it (or it is leaked by Tom Holland or Alfred Molina)

Confirmed… or is it? Award

Previous Winner: Mephisto is in WandaVision

This year had, once again, plenty examples of this.

Runners-Up: The Leader was coming to She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, The X-Men/mutants were going to be introduced in (fill in the blank here), Upcoming Disney + shows, Spider-Man 4, Dr. Doom is in Wakanda Forever

However, this year’s winner is something that is yet to happen.

2022 Confirmed… or it it Award goes to:

The casting of Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four.

People have been anxiously and impatiently awaiting the reveal of who the four actors will be portraying Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm. There have been literally dozen of rumors about who may be in this ensemble. When John Krasinski appeared as Reed in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it only picked up steam. Krasinski, who has been a popular fan casting for years, was brought into that movie to play an alternate universe version of Reed as fan service. Does that mean that Krasinski is not our stretching genius?

Then, speculation ran rampant that Marvel Studios was going to announce their FF cast at this year’s San Diego Comic Con. Fans guessed and waited. There was a ton of info dropped at SDCC this year including the announcement of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, but there was no sign of the Fantastic Four.

Then, everyone was completely sure that Marvel would reveal this cast at D23, Disney’s own conference. It was all but confirmed that we were getting the cast list at D23 and that they would surely walk out on the stage with Kevin Feige. But, once again, we got nothing.

That’s not completely true. They announced the director for Fantastic Four would be Matt Shakman, who directed the WandaVision series for Disney +.

Does Marvel have these roles cast? Who knows? Until the announcements are official, fans will continue to speculate rampantly.

The world of entertainment today can be a harrowing place. The fact that there are people online, on Twitter, on other social media platforms who believe it is okay to rant and rave about specific details of a movie, TV show or piece of pop culture content.

So to “honor” these Trolls, we here at EYG have instituted the Don’t Feed the Trolls: Insane Internet Rage Scandal of the Year Award into our Year In Review Awards.

Previous winners:

The Don’t Feed the Trolls: Insane Internet Rage Scandal of the Year

Previous Winner:  Baby Yoda eats frog’s eggs (2020), Masters of the Universe: Revelations part one (2021)

2022 had one that absolutely jumped to the forefront of the list because there was so much rage about it. It is sad that a lot of the undercurrent of the rage comes from serious issues such as misogamy and the anti-woke crowd, but this was clearly the standout of the crazy this year.

2022 winner: She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

The Disney + Marvel studios series received so much anger about so many things that it was difficult to remember them all. The CGI triggered several people. The fact that is was a female Hulk drove some mad. The lack of any true “big bad” in the season made many angry. Jennifer Walters did not “earn” her Hulk powers. The episodes were too short. She broke the fourth wall. They ruined the Intelligencia. This was the absolute end of Marvel Studios and the Disney + series are just the next step in the M-She-U.

And, of course, the haters couldn’t just not watch. They had to watch, spew their hatred on Twitter and make YouTube clickbait videos about how terrible the show was.

What was even funnier was that the show knew what kind of buttons it would be pushing and made their series’ villain the Trolls, showing made up Tweets that echoed the real life ones that would come after. The Intelligencia literally ran a hate web site about She-Hulk on the show.

Although everyone has the right to dislike whatever they choose, there were plenty of people who decided this was going to be the worst thing ever before it even aired. It’s okay if you watched the show and decided that it was not for you. Maybe you did not like the humor. Maybe the CGI took you out of it. Maybe you wanted a more consistent throughline of a plot. Though are all reasonable, but it seemed as if people kept watching it so they could hate on it more. Every Thursday evening/Friday morning after the newest episode was dropped on the streaming site videos would pop up on YouTube promoting how bad the show was would appear from the same content creators each week.

Then, don’t get me started on Daredevil’s appearance. People was mad that Daredevil wasn’t showing up. Then they were mad that Marvel Studios ruined Daredevil. Then they were mad that he did not appear more. He had a new costume. He fought with She-Hulk. The WALK OF SHAME!!!! How could they ruin Daredevil like that?

I thought She-Hulk: Attorney at Law was a fun series with some great characters and a top notch actor in Tatiana Maslany as its lead. We had guest stars in Wong, Hulk, Daredevil, Abomination among others. I loved the 4th wall breaks and I think the finale was the most original finale of the year with the appearance of K.E.V.I.N. at Marvel Studios.

I look forward to She-Hulk’s future in the MCU knowing that the Trolls will have plenty to eat upon.