A very funny, very actiony, very enjoyable way to wile away a couple of hours. NO SPOILERS.
3.5 Acting 4.5 Production 3.5 Story 4.0 OVERALL with a ♥
We went to see Deadpool & Wolverine on Friday (opening weekend) night. I kind of pushed for it — we’ve enjoyed the DP movies in the past (usually to our surprise), but the rest of the fam didn’t seem enthused — until we were watching it.
Deadpool & Wolverine. Their relationship is … complicated.
I run very hot and cold on Deadpool in the comics. I tend to take my storytelling fairly seriously, and DP — along with “fan favorites” like Ambush Bug and the Impossible Man and Mr Mxyzptlyk and G’nort and even Lobo — are intrinsically silly characters that I usually get tired of pretty quickly.
I’ve also got only a moderate tolerance for Wolverine, as one of these characters who is so over-used it isn’t even funny.
Live action is a little difference, since movies with a given character tend to come out far less frequently. I enjoyed the first couple of Deadpool movies, despite myself, and Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. So I figured … this should probably be worth a go.
And, in fact, this movie is a very, very fun (and bloody) romp through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, tying together narrative lines from the previous Deadpool movies (with plenty of flashbacks and talky-talk for those who don’t remember that far back), things having to do with Wolverine movies (with the same caveats), recent doings in the MCU, and plenty of Fourth Wall commentary about 20th Century Fox, Disney, and whatever else turns out to be funny.
There’s a plot or three here, much more coherent than you might imagine, especially with a zany character like Deadpool, slathered with a Church Spring Picnic-full of Easter Eggs, and much capering about the Marvel multiverse (with plenty of meta commentary). There are even some lengthy serious moments! And character advancement!
But there are really two things about this movie that stand out (speaking broadly and non-spoilery). First, is that it’s fun. Well, unless you dislike F-bombs, and find huge gouts of CG blood disturbing. I was usually smiling, and I was laughing out loud (embarrassingly so) more than once.
And second, it is a HUGE love letter to the 20th Century Fox Marvel movies — various iterations of the Fantastic Four, Daredevil & Elektra, and, of course, the X-Men. With the Disney acquisition of Fox’s movie properties, they are able to — and actually do — some delightful things, even as they fade into the multiverse.
Good times. I look forward to getting this one on Blu-Ray so I can pause a thousand times and point and laugh some more.
I enjoyed myself.
Besties — as much as that might mean for either of them.
The latest MCU film is a disappointing, sloppy jumble. But it’s also a lot of fun in enough places to make it worthwhile.
Seen in the theater this evening in 2-D. Not much SPOILERy, beyond what you can see in the TV ads.
3.5 Acting 3.0 Production 2.5 Story 3.0 OVERALL with a ♥
This movie was always going to be fighting an up-hill battle. Between constant media reports about “super-hero fatigue” from movie-goers, MCU and/or comics fans who have their very strong opinions about who should be allowed in the super-hero club, and people who disdain Marvel (and Disney) on some sort of principle, any MCU film that is less than perfection is going to take a very loud drubbing.
And, yes, this film is definitely less than perfection.
(To be fair, there are a lot of critics, and sites, that have good things to say about the movie. That there is still a very vocal contingent touting this as yet another sign that the MCU is inexorably spiraling into the toilet speaks to me more about the folk saying that than the movie itself.)
You will probably hear, somewhere, the line that “The Marvels is less than the sum of its parts,” and there’s something to be said for that. This is a movie that went through a major restructuring (from a Captain Marvel sequel to this three-fer) and never quite got put back together correctly. It feels like it needed about three more runs through the writers room, honing and focusing a scattergun storyline and smoothing the oddly frantic jerkiness of its pace, while giving decent attention and story and opportunity for its three protagonists.
Its also the shortest MCU film yet, which seems odd for a movie focused on a trio of heroes, and that dichotomy shows in missed (or edited-out) moments that could have made a big difference in the feel of the piece.
At the same time, and I’m going to bold this: The Marvels is a lot of fun, and there were enough positive moments to outweigh the negative ones for both me and my wife (who is far less a Marvel enthusiast than I am). It is at its best when being relatively light-hearted, even a bit silly (net-net, I think the controversial “musical” scene works), but falls flat when giving us overly-melodramatic emotional conflicts or trying to build stakes for the overall villainous plot.
The original film trailer actually captures some of the better tonal moments.
Interestingly, the final trailer plays up the “serious” super-hero side of things:
The Acting (and the Story)
Kamala is living the dream.
Let’s start with those protagonists. Best of the list has to be Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, doing a bang-up follow-on to her Ms Marvel TV mini-series and leaning whole-heartedly into fan-girling her idol, Captain Marvel. Actress and character both brighten up everything when on-screen, and the substantial inclusion of her family makes it all the more delightful.
Her story seems to be about trying to prove herself, getting validation as a super-hero from her idol, and maybe enduring some sobering-up moments to show it’s not all skittle and beer behind the spandex. Those aspects never quote connected the dots for me — I could see the outlines there, hints and indications, but in the rush to wrap up the film, it never quite gelled.
Carol, please don’t bring your cat to work.
I liked Brie Larson in the original Captain Marvel, a lot more than some folk seem to. She could be a bit strident, but there was justification for it all down the line, and there was no doubt she was a strong character. Here she’s facing a very real tale of dealing with the consequences of her actions, both with her Earth family (Monica in particular) and with her previously-unseen actions toward the Kree.
That tale of consequences should be super-powerful, something that rarely gets highlighted in super-hero fare, and maybe in a solo film it would have been. Instead, it means too often that Carol Danvers came off to my mind as weak and emotional and apologetic far too frequently. Her eventual efforts to Do The Right Thing and Fix the Problems She Created come too late and feel too brief, like checking a box to solve the problem. Maybe, hopefully, there was more left on the virtual cutting room floor.
Not Captain Marvel, Spectrum, or Photon. Just Monica.
Which then brings us to Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau. After an initial setup (as a child) in Captain Marvel, and an unexpected heroic power bump in WandaVision, this movie takes that teed-up, defined character and …
… does nothing of substance with her except for a very fun mid-credits scene. Monica comes off too often here as whiny, untrained, entitled, uncertain, and for the most part unpleasant, except when she’s called upon to be the movie’s Voice of Expository SCIENCE, and when she finally gets around to becoming a hero. The character, and actress both deserve better.
Dar-Benn is … not good. Not just morally, but as an antagonist.
Every hero needs a villain, and with three heroes we should have a villain that is three times as good, right. Unfortunately, Zawe Ashton, for all her impressive resume, is directed here as a third-rater Kree leader/villain, Dar-Benn.
Given her background and the situation on Hala, there are a lot of interesting ways you could have done that character. An admirably do-or-die patriot for her people that you could almost appreciate as a noble enemy. Or maybe a victim of madness in the face of her race’s impending death, someone you can feel sorry for and hope that she will be helped.
Instead, she comes off as just a “mean girl,” animated more by petty resentment toward Captain Marvel than a deep-seated philosophical stand or a fiery-hot desperation. Her scheme is crazy to begin with, and turning it into revenge tour on Carol just makes it feel more not-in-a-good-way silly. As such, Dar-Benn ends up weakening every scene she opens her mouth in, and keeps a lot of the “serious” aspects of the film from gathering any weight.
The rest of the supporting cast is workable — some random SABER agents, a handsome prince, a Skrull emperor, and, of course, Samuel L Jackson drawing a tidy paycheck for a very pedestrian Nick Fury rendition.
But, again, as legit as all those disappointing elements are, we still had fun. Keep remembering that.
This and That
The backdrop for all this has problems as well. There are some decent VFX, in my opinion — but also some not-very-good ones as well. The hex-grid hyperspace effect from the Guardians movies is still here, but both more simplified and more oddly tactile than before. Okay, fine.
On the other hand, some of the fixed sets (on the initial planet, on the Kree ship) are pretty disappointing, and feel like visual sacrifices were made to make them convenient locations for big battles.
That said, the fight choreographing with three protagonists — especially against the villain, especially when they are body-location-swapping — is very neatly done. Indeed, the whole quantum entanglement / body-location-swapping thing works far better than it should, to both humorous and action effect (see the Original Trailer, above, for examples).
Music-wise, aside from the Captain Marvel primary theme, and the “musical” scene, the soundtrack varies from mediocre to hackneyed. Laura Karpman has an amazing resume and I liked her work on “What If …?” but here the music is conspicuously, distractingly conventional.
Random other thoughts which I will try to keep not-too-spoily:
* So what exactly is Earth’s tech level these day? Apparently we have full-fledged space stations, with energy-cable space elevators, and instantaneous cross-galactic comm units, and recognized and active hyperspace gates. With no discernable difference to the people of Earth.
* On the other hand, the galaxy (or galactic neighborhood) sure seems awfully small. We have a limited number of hyperspace gates, and no indication that anyone but the Kree, the Skrulls (previously), and Earth are out there using them (or worrying about the problems occurring with them). I realize we weren’t going to see a Guardians cameo, but it makes the playground feel a bit cramped and unambitious.
* As always, very much appreciate that Ms Marvel’s costume aligns in style with her comic book version, and that it is “modest” in a non-frumpy way.
* Monica’s costume was unimaginative at best — though I did enjoy the under-arm sashes that the water people offered her, as a call-back to her original goofy comic book uniform.
* My problem with the “musical” scene was not its existence, but that the music was very Earth-conventional in chords and other musical structures. It didn’t feel intriguingly alien, it felt pedestrian Bollywood.
* Whatever happened to the water planet? Sorry, no time to consider that planetary ecological disaster, too bad, so sad.
* Nice to see Valkyrie’s too-brief cameo, but not only it feel way too much like almost-literal deus ex machina to solve a plot issue, but it was a solution to a plot issue that might have made a very big difference in a recent MCU TV show. Crikey.
* I loved the flerkin stuff. All the flerkin stuff. Kamala and the flerkin. Nick and the flerkin. Flerkins in space. So much fun. (Okay, all maybe except the question of why Carol flies through space, into danger, with Goose on her shoulder; it seemed more plot-driven than logical.)
* My wife suggested that SABER’s Employee Assistance Program was going to get a lot of heavy demand for the next few years.
* WTF happened to the other bangle at the end? No, seriously. Horrifying continuity gaffe or a last-minute edit of a cut scene that didn’t get explained (or CGed) in the final edition.
* Man, I sure hope we don’t have a new invasive species problem here on Earth.
Bottom Line
This movie feels like it suffered from too-choppy writing, even with the highly publicized reshoots, exacerbated by a far shorter run time than it deserved.
As a result, character development and coherent plotting, not to mention the opportunity to take a breath from constant planet-hopping, were all in short supply.
It still has plenty of good moments, though, and I don’t mind the somewhat light-hearted, even whimsical nature of much of the film. Not taking itself too seriously was honestly not a bad thing; the movie’s weaknesses came up when it tried to be more serious and started dropping things all over the place.
I can see watching this movie again, though not at theater prices. Maybe on Blu-Ray when it comes out.
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A previous version of this review appeared on Letterboxd.
3.5 Acting 4.0 Production 4.0 Story 4.0 OVERALL with a ♥
This, this, is a Suicide Squad movie. This is what was advertised and promised for the first one (such a piece of dreck).
Light-hearted except when being murderous. Light-hearted even when murderous. Bloody humor, and humorous blood. Enough smattering of character trauma and systemic corruption and even apocalyptic threats to make the mass murderers actually seem like heroes to root for.
The selection of characters, from the conventional to the quirky, was lovingly done. The nature of the Squad (high, random mortality rate) is respected. You’ve got bad guys, kinda bad guys, and bad guys who manage to be sympathetic. It literally hits all the notes that make up the best Suicide Squad tales, nearly all of which was missing in the 2016 film as released.
Heck, we even get a decent Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). Who is actually the same actor from the 2016 film. Which in turn shows you how much a difference writing and direction make.
All the actors though, from the famous (Margot Robbie, John Cena, Idris Elba, Viola Davis, Peter Capaldi) to the relatively obscure do their job splendidly. There’s nothing too deep here demanded; it’s not “King Lear.” But to the extent that they are there, they do rock-solid jobs.
The story as full narrative is pretty straightforward, the magic being in the thousand little details, character asides, and overall zaniness.
The production values are remarkably high: great stunts, flawless CG (big and small), an excellent sound track, and gorgeous, expansive sets.
Throw in an delightful BBEG villain (delightfully rendered), and it makes just a freaking fun movie.
If I have to be critical about one thing, it’s that Davis’ Amanda Waller gets just a bit too shrill and out of control. Playing the control team for laughs doesn’t work quite as much for me as for some, but it was, at least, done well.
And I’ll give them those flaws in return for getting that fabulous Harley break-out, flowers and all.
In short? This film, in a small way, redeems the DCEU, it makes up for the 2017 Suicide Squad (or allows it to be well and truly forgotten), but best of all, it bodes well for James Gunn’s shepherding of the rebooted DCU in the years to come.
I love this take on old action-adventure paperback covers.
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This review, in an earlier version, was posted to LetterBoxd.
4.0 Acting 4.5 Production 4.0 Story 4.5 OVERALL (with a ♥)
Wonder Woman remains a delightful movie — hopeful and brave where Man of Steel is fearful and reserved, graceful and loving where Batman vs Superman is brutal and distrusting.
It’s not without flaws. The battle with the BBEG feels too unreal, and reuses too many moves, and ultimately David Thewlis makes a much better Sir Patrick than CGI-enhanced Ares.
But that said, there’s very fine stuff going on. Gail Godot nails Diana’s passion, confidence, determination, and strange blend of sophistication and naivete. She is a warrior — but, ultimately, like the Amazons, she is even more a protector. She punches, she stabs, but even more she shields. The more she learns that, the greater she becomes.
Sameer, Steve, Diana, the Chief, and Charlie
But we also get a great supporting cast for Diana: an overprotective Mom (no, really, lying about stuff to shield your child from what is inevitably going to come rarely works out well) and a so-very-buff extended family; Chris Pine’s noble, knowing, naïve (complementing these traits in Diana) Steve Trevor; the three amigos, demonstrating men aren’t all bad (and can be, in fact, victims as well); and indeed pretty much everyone in the cast who, with good writing by Allan Heinberg and excellent direction from Patty Jenkins, make for a much richer and enjoyable experience than any of its DCEU predecessors.
The fight choreography is amazing (except when it gets a scosh too CG), the period placement is excellent, and the Horror of War aspect is properly played. This is one of the only DCEU films I’d put in the Top Ten of super-hero flicks I’ve seen to date.
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This review was in an earlier form posted on LetterBoxd.
Also on LetterBoxd, my previoustwo viewing reviews.
That looks like a fun, exciting, kinda zany movie! Looking forward to it!
I don’t have a lot more to say about “Suicide Squad” (the 2016 edition) that I haven’t previously said on previous watches. It keeps dragging me back though, out of love for the concept and for at least some of the characters — and then leaves me to wake up the next morning, in a bathtub full of ice, missing a kidney.
I will confess that it gets a bit better with rewatching, turning into a sort of popcorn movie you can enjoy / groan at with friends. Once you expect the erratic editing of two or three “creative” visions blerged together, and the subsequent oddities of character development and herky-jerky plotline, it stops being quite as bothersome.
Acting-wise, this thing is all over the map. There are some good points — Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller is properly sociopathic, even if the denouement with her feels way out of character. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn is delightful even if the story sexualizes her to a ridonculous degree. Jay Hernandez’ Diablo is lovely, if underserved.
On the other hand Jai Courtney’s Boomerang, Adam Beech’s Slipknot, Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag, and Cara Delevingne’s Enchantress are evidence of something profoundly wrong in the casting, acting, writing, and/or directing.
Will Smith plays Will Smith, as always. He does a decent job of it here, even with the tonal chaos.
Oooh, fun and pretty and light and artsy. Looks like a great movie!
I actually don’t mind Jared Leto’s Joker (method acting shenanigans aside). I don’t think it’s my favorite Joker of all time, but it’s a legit interpretation. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of it got left on the cutting room floor, rendering a good third of the movie’s narrative interest kaput. They either needed to make this a Joker/Harley movie, or cut the Joker/Harley stuff way back; they instead made decisions with a machete (very Joker-like) and duct tape, ending up with the worst of both worlds.
The other actors are simply reading from Tropes for Dummies, and we’ll leave it there.
Muddied stakes, plot threads that come up then disappear, dizzying tonal shifts, FX that range from fairly cool to conventional to just plain bad … it just all ranges from somewhat interesting (the introductory backstories, while they last) to teeth-grindingly frustrating.
As a reminder, this is what we were promised in the trailer:
I really wish we’d gotten to see that movie. Instead, we got the (supposedly grimdark) movie WB already had in the can from Ayer, lots of panicky meetings by WB execs about the critical drubbing that BvSDoJ got, reshoots and re-edits and fun adverts like this, all to give us something that shows the coherency of mood and tempo and narrative dependability of … well, of the Joker.
Ah, well. Nothing that more bourbon can’t fix.
Again, looks like brightly colored fun! I want to see that movie!
UPDATE: With that perverse sense of timing that the universe sometimes has, rumors are once again a-swirl that we might get the “Ayer Cut” of SS16 released by WB, the version Ayer had put together before all the studio interference made it into the dog’s breakfast it ended up as. Will that actually happen? Will it produce a more coherent (if more relentlessly gritty) film? Who knows?
If “Man of Steel” was a gorgeous movie with some deep flaws, BvSDoJ is a movie with a bundle of flaws and a few gorgeous moments. Originally meant to be a Batman movie, then retooled to introduce and unite the Trinity of the Justice League (Get it? “Dawn of Justice”? Yeah, I know …), the whole thing is a muddled mess, focused on a very old trope: “What if the bad guy got the good guys to fight each other, but then they have to get together to fight an even bigger bad guy?”
Which is like Issue 1 or 2 of every comic book ever.
As MoS gave us a Superman haunted with fear of rejection, BvSDoJ gives us a Batman haunted with terrible, terrible anger. Ben Affleck’s Bats lives in/under a shell of a manor, perpetually reminded (by himself) of, apparently, Robin’s death at the hands of the Joker. He’s become a “Watchmen”-style character, raging and brutal, branding villains with his insignia.
He’s also full of anger at Superman for the damage and killing done during the Zod battle in Metropolis, esp. how it impacted the people in his large Metropolis office.
Not surprisingly, Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor (quite nicely played, for my money) plays the two of them off against each other — Supes looking to stop a violent, savage vigilante, Bats looking to stop a god-monster-in-waiting.
Luthor overplays his hand (of course) and kidnaps the only surviving parent in the cast, Martha Kent, and uses that as the final lever to force Superman into a lethal battle with Batman, who is now in powered armor and armed with a Kryptonite-tipped spear. Big, violent battle ensues, which ends only when we all (characters included) realize the coincidence of both Bats and Supes’ mothers being named “Martha,” which stops the battle, still-weirdly enough.
Which is okay, because it’s time for them to shrug off their dire injuries and bitter feuding and join their new BFF Wonder Woman in fighting Doomsday, a Kryptonian revenant resurrected by Lex using General Zod’s body and some of his own blood. Go figure.
At least we still have that Kryptonite-tipped spear! Bet that will come in handy!
Oh, and Superman dies. Bravely. Very sad. The world mourns. We get to escape from the theater.
A few more thoughts:
¶ Zack Snyder has some mordant, if facile, things to say about celebrity.
In fact, this is a far less thoughtful, far more shallow film than MoS. And while the former was (of course) mostly fought in bright daylight, this one is (of course) mostly fought in claustrophobic night darkness, which ends up highlighting the exploding cars, etc., far more. It is a film lit by flames, and just as ephemeral.
¶ “No one stays good in this world.” (eyeroll)
¶ “Bruce Wayne / Batman is a law & order fascist” was bold and interesting and fresh when Frank Miller did it in “The Dark Knight Returns” in 1986. Affleck’s Batman comes across thirty years later as less a hero, more someone to be scared of (whether you are innocent or not).
¶ The “Martha!” reveal is … so bad. So cheesy.
¶ Cavill is so frowny, so, so frowny, so much of the time. Much more so than in Man of Steel. Result: he looks like an angry god. Way to play into the type you’re trying not to be, Clark.
¶ Yay for the Wonder Woman music.
That said, Diana’s presence here is never fleshed out quite enough. I mean, her name’s not on the movie, but she plays a pretty prominent role. I could just ask for a bit of clarification as to what she’s doing, even if this was before her own solo effort.
“Oh, crap, all these posters are too depressing! We better paste Wonder Woman and some sunlight into one of them!”
¶ Again with the zillions of dollars of “Disaster Porn” damage. Yeesh. Maybe Bruce Wayne will appreciate it more this time, since he’s in the middle of causing it.
¶ Superman’s nigh-instantaneous transition from “super-powered guy that we’re a bit unsure about because he’s an alien and was part of a battle that nearly destroyed a city” to being the subject of a state funeral feels a bit weird. I realize it’s part of Snyder’s Superman-as-Christ thing, but it needed more build-up. I mean — how do the people of Metropolis feel about the guy who was recently involved in demolishing half of the city on two different occasions getting a big fancy-dancy send-off?
This is a film that could really need a “Two Years Later” caption.
¶ I already mentioned I was cool with Eisenberg’s variation on how we normally see Luthor, even if he’s channeling the Joker a bit much. But having Luthor blood be part of the “mix” to create Doomsday was silly — though not as silly as trying to tie it to all into Apokalipsian hi-jinx via Steppenwolf as yet another “Hey, wait until you see the really cool Justice League movie coming real soon” forced promo.
Net-net, someone took the “Two superheroes meet for the first time, so of course they fight” dial and cranked it up to 11. Snyder does try to give some rationale for the hostilities — unfortunately, 90% of it boils down to Batman being a big, violent asshole, which ends up meaning that when it comes down to Batman v. Superman, the audience is going to have a favorite.
(Wonder Woman, of course. Which is why more recent posters for the movie highlight her prominently.)
This was my second watch of BvSDoJ. I don’t anticipate a third time.
In Color! (Which is pretty desaturated most of the time in the actual film.)
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This review was, in a previous revision, posted on Letterboxd.
My first-viewing of Batman vs Superman is reviewed here.
Good Lord. It’s been a decade since this film came out. That feels … way too long (it was just yesterday! or the day before!) and way too short (this movie has been one of the definitions of super-hero films forever).
A brief digression
So … the infamous Zack Snyder flick that started the whole … Zack Snyder DC thing. Stray thoughts scribbled during viewing.
So here’s my 30-second Zack Snyder thing. I loved Watchmen. I enjoyed and appreciated 300. I’ve had problems with all of the DCEU stuff he’s done that I’ve seen because it’s been relentlessly grim — or, when hopeful, it’s been about hope in a sea of grimness and human frailty. Administered with a bunch of (truly beautiful) explosions.
I would rather not watch a DCEU that Zack Snyder was running. That’s an aesthetic choice, not a moral judgment.
I’m also of the opinion that an activist core of Snyder fans (in the most fanatical meaning of the term) did more to bring down the DCEU than either Snyder or people who had creative visions different from Snyder.
Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the movie?
¶ The whole thing sets up life-as-struggle, starting with Lara-El suffering through the first childbirth in centuries on Krypton, alongside her husband, Russell Crowe as Jor-El, Action Scientist!
(To be fair, Russell Crowe makes for a great Action Scientist. It’s just that Superman’s origin tale is usually more talky-shouty than punchy-kicky.)
The presentation of Krypton and Kal’s origin is nicely re-imagined, with some new bits to add to the standard narrative.
¶ “He’ll be a god to him.” The movie tees up its conflict of Clark-as-alien-monster vs Clark-as-Christ vs Clark-as-human early. And often.
¶ Kevin Costner does a decent job as a Jonathan Kent who is … a man driven by fear, but love, but fear. Scared for his kid (based on how bad humanity is), to the point of being willing to sacrifice his own life to keep his son’s identity from being exposed.
This was a red flag for me. Jonathan Kent should be inspirational. What he’s inspiring here is Clark staying in the closet.
¶ Trademark Snyder serious HDR-level contrast, with dimmed/tinted light, deep shadow, and suppressed color.
¶ I mean, bottom line, this movie is like a Superman story, but one framed to be sad, depressing, cynical, and unhappy. Yes, it all ends (mostly) well. The accusations that Zack Snyder doesn’t believe in super-heroes is wrong. But he also doesn’t love myth, and wants to complicate every tale with shadows and disappointment and flaws and cynicism and fear.
This is an Elseworlds tale of Clark Kent’s life as a tragedy.
¶ Clark is meant to be a force for good. But here he’s been raised in isolation, alone, fearful. He spends the first part of the movie as much in hiding as anything else. His dad really did a number on him.
Henry Cavill as Superman
¶ Given the film, Cavil really does a hell of a job. Big bravo there.
¶ And, for what it’s worth, the movie is beautifully crafted. The visualizations, the FX, all of it is done with a dear love for portraying the worlds that are encompassed. Big bravos there, too.
¶ “If the world figures out who you are, they will reject you.” Thanks, Dad.
¶ “I’m worried they’ll take you away from me.” Oh, Martha …
¶ The very powerfully visual connection between Jesus (in stained glass) and Kal-El in the pew is … a bit on the nose.
¶ Mad props to Edna Mode: the capes in this film look … dorky. It’s all so hyper-focused, high-contrast, gritty-reality feeling of a film, that someone wearing a cape (esp. when it’s not blowing in slow motion) looks goofy.
¶ The one FX shot that looked unreal: the CGI Kryptonian ship jets away from the human military defenders, blowing sand and dust in their face in a reverse shot … and nobody told the extras to flinch.
Michael Shannon as General Zod
¶ Michael Shannon really does a fine job as Zod. He’s a bad guy, clearly, but he very much fits that “Everyone is a hero in their own head” mold, and his speech about being existentially, genetically tasked to protect Krypton, and how that’s now been taken from him, is beautifully done (and beautifully chilling).
But why, WHY, if we have Zod, do we not have as the female and big male Kryptonians who get into prominent duke-outs, Ursa and Non. WHY?
¶ While the movie is criticized (not without justification) for the Disaster Porn of the Kryptonian attack and the El/Zod fight in Metropolis, it’s worth noting that it’s the US military that fires the first cityscape-destroying shot in Smallville.
¶ Best human touch of the film: MAGNETIC PHOTO ALBUMS from the Kent farm for the win.
¶ With all due respect to the Daily Planet, I’ve visited New York City: nobody has a vista that shows everything going on in the city like the offices of the Planet.
¶ Nice parallel struggle between Kal El vs the World Machine and Perry White trying to save his intern.
¶ As mentioned above, Disaster Porn. The visual destruction and implied multi-thousand body count in Metropolis is beautifully crafted, fits with the story, and is very, very real, except for the lack of bodies and the weeks of sifting the rubble to find them.
¶ Sorry. Spidey failing to save Gwen has made me very sensitive to the physics and physiological impact of Superman rescuing a lot of people laterally at super-sonic speed.
¶ “They say it’s all down-hill after the first kiss.” This move is, if not actually deeply cynical, set in a deeply cynical world. Also, after the mass destruction, Clark smooching Lois just calls to mind Niven’s classic essay, “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.”
¶ Superman kills Zod. That was the breaking point for a lot of people, and with reason. It violates the mythic role of Superman. The point of which is not that Superman would never kill anyone, but that no writer would ever put Superman in a position that to kill someone is the only solution.
Yes, yes, we want “impact.” We want this to be burned indelibly into Clark’s mind as the most horrible moment of his life (the mass casualties around him notwithstanding). Which might make more sense if we got him moping around with guilt for the rest of this and the next few movies he was in. Except that doesn’t happen, so … I guess it wasn’t the most horrible moment in his life.
¶ After all that disaster porn, plus some murder, the denouement moment with the US military feels … unjustifiably glib and light-hearted.
Net-net, a thoughtfully and beautifully crafted film that fails to satisfy me because I simply don’t accept the tone, the message, the forced narrative. “Man of Steel” is a gorgeous diamond with deep, value-draining flaws.
Do you want to know more?
An earlier version of this review appeared on LetterBoxd.
My review from my first viewing is also on LetterBoxd.
A last look before the DCEU goes off to the recycle bin of movie history
To be fair, I’ve never been a big fan of DC’s movie-driven logo, either.
UPDATES BELOW
Given it’s slow, tottering, if self-inflicted, demise, and with a fresh DC Universe coming on line (which I face with both anticipation and dread), I thought I would take the opportunity while my wife is away this week to watch (in a few cases rewatch) the DCEU.
I’ll kick that off by asking, once again, what the heck this is:
While the initial appearance of a standard DCEU intro clip for all its movies got me excited peering at the fuzzy images in the final tableau to figure out who they were, I very quickly got kind of ticked off that they weren’t actually making use of the characters in the form they were making movies of them.
That’s not Henry Cavill as Superman. That’s certainly not Superman’s suit. (What is with those gauntlets, people?) That’s definitely not Jason Momoa’s Aquaman. Nor is it Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern (own it, DC!).
This is, in fact, your father’s Aquaman.
Now, obviously, they are meant to be generic versions of these super-heroes, perhaps alluding to DC’s rumored liberality with how their characters are visually represented in comics. But why introduce an Aquaman movie — heck, an Aquaman sequel movie — with an image of Aquaman that doesn’t align with the movie the audience is about to see? Especially when only a small percent of that audience has ever seen or read the comic book version of Aquaman?
Branding, people! That’s why you have this universe in the first place!
(Marvel, for all its sins, understands this. It’s studio intro is, itself, too long, but there’s never any doubt that it’s focused on the MCU, complete with scripts, and, more brilliantly, it evolves with time as new movies come out.)
Anyway, with that off my chest for likely the last time, on with the movies!
Update!
And, eleven movie (re)watches later, I am done.
Here’s an index to the reviews here on the blog, linked to the individual entries. Due to time constraints, I did not rewatch Aquaman (2018) or the first Shazam! (2019); I have included links to my previos Letterboxd review to them.
* 4-hour event; ** Did not rewatch; numbers from previous viewing
Do I have any conclusions from all this?
¶ The above judgments are my own; your mileage almost certainly varies.
It is ironic (and wholly unintended) that the top two and bottom two are Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad films.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed some movies I hadn’t seen before, and also by how much I disliked some of the movies I hadn’t seen before.
¶ The DCEU ultimately failed because there wasn’t a strong leader guiding the creative and meta-creative process, creating an actual shared world, analogous to a Kevin Feige on the Marvel side of things. They had Zack Snyder, who wanted that role, and de facto sort of held it (but never officially, in WB’s eyes), but whose vision was not shared by a majority of the viewing audience (just a very vocal and dedicated fraction of it).
As a result, the DCEU became more about creative wrangling, toxic fandom, and nameless suits in the studio trying to micromanage creativity in the worst possible way: as a reaction to the previous film released, not in pursuit of a coherent narrative. “Order, counter-order, disorder” became the DCEU way, and the desire to create movies people would want to watch was thrown overboard in trying to avoid more losses.
¶ Executive turnover at WB didn’t help things any. Some of these movies went through three different regimes at the studio, each with its own priority, budgeting, and desire to tinker. Creativity and good movie-making is not improved by all that.
¶ The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic — in terms of delaying movies, delaying the release date of movies (surely the plague will be over then and people will want to go out to the movies!), and the mish-mosh of theatrical and streaming releases certainly hurt any creative momentum and net profits.
¶ Ironically, just as I do my (re)watch, one of the ultimate DCEU films is finally dropping into theaters, Blue Beetle, and its predecessor, the much lambasted The Flash, falls into streaming in a week. Aquaman 2, assuming it is ever released and isn’t simply written off for taxes by WB, comes out later this year.
A more-than-worthy successor to the first film, full of fun, drama, and spectacle.
I won’t talk specifics, but this is a sequel that is at least an equal of the first film, possibly its superior.
By having a commitment to a third film, the creative team could lean into richness of characterization, and creating a cast with depth and texture. Presumably the production was all of a continuum (the third film comes out next year), and that allowed some powerful development to be teed up and fulfilled.
Visually, the film is stunning, playing with color, texture, medium, style, focus and orientation. The animation is amazing in its variety and quality, truly cinematic in everything from quiet dialogue scenes to crazy four-dimensional action sequences.
Writing-wise, the story arguably more complex than Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — again, leaning into having two films to follow up from that first film. But the through-lines are strong — growth, autonomy, destiny, truth, lies, identity. All the primary characters (and there are several) face challenges and conflicts, sometimes with each other. The dive into Spider-Man lore and creating a meta-narrative out of is brilliant.
At the same time, as serious as things get (and they do get damned serious), there is also a tremendous amount of fun, playing with a vast array of Spider-folk (many from canon, many invented for the purpose), as well as others people and places. That contrast between fun and wonder and gut-wrenching drama makes this a pretty special movie, even without its merits as animation or as a super-hero tale.
The music isn’t necessarily my personal cuppa, but it works with the imagery and the action. The voice talent, as with the first film, is top-notch.
All in all, I couldn’t ask for anything better, other than that “To Be Continued” at the end.
This review first appeared, in an earlier form, on Dropbox.
(NO SPOILERS) A fun, frenetic, somewhat frightening finish to the GotG saga.
The Series in Review
GotG 1 was about a band of misfits thrown together by chance to form a family. There was humor, and there was banter, and there was some crazy space stuff, and there were some dark moments, too, but it was a great intro.
GotG 2 was about challenging that family, re-defining it, expanding it. But it was also about cranking up the already-high level of humor to 12, and going bananas with the special effects. It had some serious threads, too (salute to Yondu), but it was overall pretty frothy.
(Insert a few other appearances here and there — holiday specials, cameos in other MCU movies, and so forth. Fun, but relatively shallow, leaning into the tropes, music, the mayhem, and the humor. )
GotG 3 … brings us back to the first installment in a good blend of tone. It’s dark in a lot of places, especially toward the beginning, to the point of being sort of even grim in tone. I would hesitate to bring a kid to this one, and people sensitive to body horror should probably steer clear.
Repeating that note: this is NOT kid-friendly.
The violence, suffering, and (I’ll use the word with consideration) atrocities that are shown or hinted at, and the level of (cartoon) violence in some of the battles, are very intense for an MCU film.
But it’s not gratuitously not-kid-friendly
A lot of the more gut-wrenching stuff is setting the stakes, teeing up the villain and one of our hero’s reactions toward him. That ties into a theme here: paying off past outstanding threads, some going all the way back to the beginning of Vol. 1 (Quill’s flight from his Earth family, and the tight-lipped secrets of Rocket’s origins), others being shaped neatly for the other characters.
It’s not always comfortable to watch, but it serves the narrative.
By the end, after trial, travail, confronting old ghosts and getting ready to confront new ones, we reach a satisfying set of reasons as to why this is the final volume of the Guardians, at least as we know them. Stories are wrapped up — or, if not wrapped up, set on new courses, some of which we may never see, others of which … who knows?
Heroes need a villain
The MCU hasn’t always done well with villains, and GotG as a series is an example of that. Vol. 1’s Ronan (Lee Pace) was a grim non-entity (and a lackey at that). Vol. 2’s Ego was, with the rest of the movie, equal parts humor and jerk.
The main heavy here is (I doubt this is a spoiler) the High Evolutionary, a self-created mad genius of great power and greater ambition to produce perfection in living things. What that looks like, what he’s willing to do, re-do, discard, try again, etc., makes him in his own way a deeper, darker adversary than your Thanos or your Ultron (or Ego, for that matter), perhaps because in some ways his motivation reverberates off of too many of humanity’s own darker moments.
But it also tees up a bunch of Marvel backstory fun, including places and groups that the High Evolutionary of the comics is associated with (i.e., Easter Eggs a-plenty here). The HE of Marvel Comics has always been a mix as a villain — very much the “everyone is a hero of his own story” and more of a bad guy because of his dispassionate pursuit of perfection than because of twirling mustachios. The HE here (Chukwudi Iwuji) plays up the zeal and ego a lot more, and it works pretty darned well.
Indeed, all the actors play their roles well, in parts great and small. There are no real weak links in this ensemble. And I have to give a big shout-out to Bradley Cooper, whose voice work for Rocket is a key to so much here, and carries so much of the (superbly animated) character.
The Special Effects
Fun and detailed and much more transparent, in many ways, than in Vol. 1 and 2. Practical, makeup (a world record in prosthetics), and CGI all blend together delightfully and such that I really stopped noticing it, even with creatures and characters that were a mixture or were all-CG.
We watched in the theater in 2D. There was stuff that I’m sure was very cool in 3D, but it wasn’t necessary to pay the extra money or headache.
The Music
The film score was done by John Murphy, replacing Tyler Bates from Vol. 1-2. The ever-present pop songs seem to have trended a bit more modern (though there are still some good rock classics in there).
Openings and Closings
The Marvel Studios opening sequence is a tribute to the GotG, rather than the current standard. It’s nicely done.
There are two credits scenes, at the usual spots. Both are worth watching for their own reasons (esp. since the credits themselves are a nicely done scrap book of photos — from the movies and not — of the characters we’ve come to know and love over the series.
A few minor bits of glee
1. After getting just a passing glimpse in the Collector’s collection, I am so glad to see Cosmo the Space Dog getting some decent screen time.
2. Rocket learning his secret origin — not just the origin that he remembered but never wanted to talk about (and with reason), but the origin behind that — was delightful, esp. in its payoff.
A few minor quibbles
1. I’ve follow Adam Warlock’s career from the beginning (as the cosmic “HIM”) to his Roy Thomas Counter-Earth Christ-figure days, to becoming another Jim Starlin cosmically wise / clever / menacing type. Will Poulter’s rendition here is pretty much nothing like any of those, which is kind of a pity — but the character does line up well both with his Vol. 2 origins and with the general theme of the Guardians.
2. I love the Guardians comic-style uniforms, and to the extent that they have been trying to be an organized force to protect the galaxy, sure, makes sense. That said, they do seem to come out of nowhere during the film.
Overall
I was a bit worried about Vol. 3 continuing the trends from Vol. 2 (make it louder! make it funnier! make it more psychodelic!), but James Gunn has made a movie that is both a great wrap for the saga, send-off for our characters, and a good film in its own right. Bravo.
Taika Waititi continues his droll, irreverent take on gods and super-heroes. Which is kind of a problem.
There’s much to enjoy in Taika Waititi’s new MCU movie, Thor: Blood & Thunder (a/k/a Thor 4). It’s visually brilliant, at the very least, and Waititi carries on with some success his droll fun-poking of the literary realm of gods and superheroes from the previous installment, Thor: Ragnarok (a/k/a Thor 3).
That is part of my problem with this film. While Waititi has mostly avoided the most common sin of sequels (taking what worked the first time and focusing solely on that, dialed up to 12), he isn’t completely immune to it. Thor 4 is too in love with its titular character being an unaware parody of a hero, bold and brash and unaware of any of the people around him or the consequences of his actions, juggling ex-girlfriends and ex-weapons with equal ineptness.
My wife — who was not enthused about going to “another Jane Foster movie” — pointed out something important afterward. Thor, as a character, is always about growth and maturity. In Thor 1, Thor learns to be worthy as a leader, not a selfish little boy. In Thor 2, he figures out how to be in a relationship. In Thor 3 (by Waititi!), he learns to be a king. In the Avengers films, he learns about teamwork and, ultimately, about accepting his own limitations.
The problem is that few of those lessons are allowed to take and carry on to the next film. The Thor of Thor 3 spends much of his time being a self-centered oaf, but the death of his father, and of his comrades, and the need to save the people of Asgard, drive him to new heights. Even the traumas of the Infinity War saga on the Avengers side of things, and the goofiness of his time with the Guardians, don’t explain the irresponsible dolt that he starts out as in Thor 4 and, for the most part, remains.
Thor 4 is centered on two sagas from the comics. The first — created by Jason Aaron and artist Esad Ribic — is the saga of Gorr, the God Butcher, a man who is let down by his people’s gods and who gets the power to punish them — and, as a new cause, all the layabout deities who take and take but never actually come through when asked for help in return. This is a remarkably dark saga in the comics, touching on personal relationships with the divine and theodicy, the profound question of why bad things happen to good people in a cosmos supposedly ruled by all-good, all-power divine power.
For the most part, though, Waititi plays it for wry laughs, and for what kind of cool special effects battles can be devised around Gorr’s use of the necrosword and shadows. Gorr ends up with sort of a Tim Burton style of scariness, a bogey-man rather than an existential terror, but the tragedy of his life, and of the actions he takes, and even of Thor facing the idea of times when he didn’t live up to the needs of his own followers — it’s all largely lost for the vast majority of the movie, book-ended by the introduction sequence and the sweet but too-late what-you-really-want message at the end.
The other original storyline here (also created by Jason Aaron) is the saga of Jane Foster as Thor–how she takes up that mantle, and what it means to be splitting her life between uber-powerful god-hero and chemo-weakened mortal cancer patient — especially when it becomes clear that all the Asgardian hi-jinx are neutralizing the chemo (but not the cancer), meaning that, at length, Jane Foster the human will be no more, leaving only Jane Foster the Thor — and what does that actually mean for her?
Jane’s story gets a bit more play here than Gorr’s — modified for the much different situation in the MCU — but it’s again blunted by the need to keep everything quirky and amusing, for Jane to be trying to figure out her catch phrase, for Jane to deal with her ex-boyfriend, the other Thor. The cancer, for most of the center of the movie, is merely a convenient way for her to be weakened at inopportune times. And Natalie Portman’s make-up never makes her look more than a little bit ill.
We end up spending far too much time in this film in humorous set pieces, all of them fun, but all of them consuming ruinous amounts of run time. The stage players of New Asgard (now become a cruise line stop), giving us minutes of recap of just a portion of Thor 3. Endless exposition or commentary by Korg (voiced by Waititi). The Gorr-justifying insouciance of Omnipotence City. Thor doing something or another in an oafish, thoughtless, laughable fashion.
It’s almost all of it funny and played successfully for laughs, but in the end it feels more like a series of really successful SNL skits poking fun at Thor than at a movie actually about him (and Jane, and Valkyrie, and Korg, and a bunch of kids, and Gorr, too). The film spends too much time not taking its subject seriously, aside from those bookend scenes, and so it’s hard to take it seriously when it actually does try to engage our sympathies at the end, with Jane making decisions about her fate, and Gorr doing the same, and Thor learning what’s really important in life (until, one presumes, next movie, when he’ll quite possibly be back to being a goofball).
With goats, of course.
Chris Hemsworth plays Thor well as far as he’s given to do so. He has the heroic and the goofy down pat (and should, after nine film outings), and I just wish he got to do more of the dramatic moments we’ve seen him in from the beginning of the saga. Natalie Portman’s more a mixed bag. Her rom-com moments feel weird and awkward, but she makes a fine hero. Christian Bale’s Gorr does well with what he’s given, shining in both his initial and final scenes, but hampered too much in-between, relegated to a kinda-scary action villain living in the shadows.
To be fair, it’s not all — or even mostly — actually bad. The make-up is amazing. There are some stunning set pieces (Omnipotence City and the small moon they battle on stand out), visually rich and gorgeous, and (while we didn’t) possibly worth the cost of a 3D showing. And, honestly, the very ending of the film was one of the most satisfying MCU endings in quite a while. (The two mid/end credit scenes weren’t bad, either.) Beyond that, like I said, Waititi’s irreverent humor, and how it translates to the screen, aided by some decent acting talent, works on its own terms.
And, just to say it, we loved the goats.
The goats are GOATs
And, net-net, I enjoyed Thor 4, especially scene by scene. It’s in its overall tone and structure that things didn’t quite gel for me. I will absolutely watch it again in the future, but for the moment I’m left feeling a bit unsatisfied, as if a promised banquet turned out to be all beautifully-baked sweets, and I had been hoping for some juicy steak.
While imperfect, the questions raised and the focus on people, not powers, impressed me
No Spoilers, Sweetie
So, bottom line: I liked Eternals.
Not get-the-tatoo loved it, though there there were parts that I loved. But I had a very fine time for my money in the theater, and have no regrets over time or money.
The Good
For my money, this is one of the most thoughtful, and thought-provoking, films in the MCU. While other super-hero tales have given us moral quandaries, they’ve often been pretty binary “hero’s choices” — do I save X or Y; do I meet my date or stop the bank robbery; do I stomp the bad guy or save the falling plane?
The issues the Eternals deal with are existential ones, with questions of loyalty and love, of purpose, of destiny and pre-destiny, duty, of sacrifice, of service to God, service to humanity, service to family (or families).
While there are structural and other aspects of the film that blunt some of those questions, they are very real, and they get dealt with in different (sometimes very different) ways by different characters.
Remember how Captain America: Civil War felt a bit facile in how it teed up the superhero vs superhero conflict? This movie doesn’t. The decisions made (and sometimes regretted) are organic to the characters and their situations. This movie will always have a special place for me because of that.
This film has plenty of action and adventure, but for the most part it avoids two overdone cliches in MCU movies:
disaster porn of cities turned into rubble in the course of super-hero villain battles
giant climactic battles of Our Hero(es) vs hordes of CGI villains.
Or, y’know, both
While there is a Major Threat to Humanity that gets dealt with, ultimately the final conflicts in the film are driven not how many CGI baddies can we pew-pew to pieces, but by those moral questions above, and how the characters reacted to them.
This is a movie primarily about people, not a movie about powers.
The movie is visually lovely, both in terms of a global span of settings, and regarding some set pieces that were truly awe-inspiring.
Also on the visual side of things, given their common origins (if differing specialties), I appreciated the common motifs in their powers and technology. There was sufficient commonality to understand the ties between the characters, but enough distinction to appreciate their differences.
Thena gets all the flashy stuff, but all the Eternals’ tech / power expresses in these gold threads and circles
“I did not see that coming,” I thought to myself a good half-dozen times in the film. There are a lot of unexpected twists, most of them quite good. It is a much less linear film than a lot of the MCU.
People emote in this film. People emote a lot. Strong men cry. So do strong women. I am sure that really bugged some of the folk decrying this film, but, again, people not powers.
The Not-So-Good
This movie ramps up very slowly, and ramps down very slowly.
We get a lot of exposition starting off, lots and lots, with tons of flashbacks spanning human history, and then, once we start getting some stakes going, it takes a loooong time to get the band back together.
The individual pieces are done well, and it’s understandable the amount of time things take, given the scope of what we’re addressing, but it feels slow; I was really wondering at points how they were going to end all this, given the time they were taking setting it up. (That they were able to run to 2:37 is a big reason for this — and, since I usually complain about films being cut too short, I suppose I shouldn’t complain much here.)
(My wife, on the other hand, thought it was all well-handled to provide info on all the characters involved. So there’s that.)
On the tail end, we have a long set of denouements, many of them very talkie, some of them very hand-wavy in terms of addressing loose ends. I don’t know what I would necessarily cut there, but I was feeling a bit impatient.
In-between, being something brand-new in the MCU (and, honestly, brand-new in general, as much of this doesn’t follow anything related to Jack Kirby’s Eternals) ends up requiring several pallets of exposition to be dropped in at various times, especially as the protagonists learn things that have been hidden from them or that contrast with earlier infodumps. While interesting, and individually handled decently, it sometimes made things drag.
There are two mid/post-credit scenes, for those wondering if you need to run to the bathroom. Unfortunately, those feel very tacked on, and introduce three MCU characters for future consumption. I was not a fan of any of the introductions, to be honest. I’ll talk more about them in post-spoilers days.
While the Eternals cast is more diverse, the Celestials all kind of looked alike.
Kirby’s Celestials
As a side note, my wife noted that it was really awkward when the various Eternals hug each other, because their shoulder pads always get in the way.
The Okay
This movie has a huge ensemble — ten members of the Eternals, plus supporting players. It’s impossible to give them all equal time, let alone the time each deserves.
That said, the movie does a decent job of it. There’s a distinct narrative focus on Sersi, with narrative rings circling around her, getting their various turns. While I could use a lot more of practically everyone, most of the characters do get moments in the sun that help us to know them and appreciate them.
Rather understated, don’t you think?
As noted, this is not Jack Kirby’s Eternals, but core themes — the Van Danikenesque space gods and super-heroic basis for myths, the names and themes of the individuals, etc. — remain in place. Frankly, I’m fine with that. Kirby’s imagination was amazing, but his writing was full of bombast makes Shakespeare feel subdued.
FWIW, I don’t think Kirby would have had a problem with this film. Indeed, I think it would have inspired him to write a dozen new crazy comics.
The actual origins of the Eternals was significantly shifted from the comics, something I felt disappointment about when it got shoved in my face during the initial screen text. But what was devised in its place successfully drove the rest of the plot, so I’m good with it..
Another non-Kirby aspect I’m fine with is the diversity of the cast. As reference, here’s how they looked back in the day:
Makkari, Thena, Kro, Sersi, Ikarus’ girlfriend Margo, and Ikarus.
Lots of pasty-white (except for the one Deviant there). The same was true for pretty much all the main Eternals cast in Kirby’s day. Most of them men, too, except Thena and Sersi.
Whereas the movie gives us lots of strong women who aren’t dressed in bathing suits. Lots of races and ethnicities, as would be appropriate for beings set forth to interact with the breadth of humanity. Even (gasp) non-het sexual orientation.
None of it felt forced, or weird, or clashing with the original in context of the story. Yet sooooo many fanbois are outraged by these changes. Wonder why?
(In my opinion, if it pisses off Russia and the Middle East, that’s probably a good thing.)
This is the true kick-off of the Cosmic phase of the MCU, as show in both the very nature of this film and its tales of the Celestials and their shenanigans, and in how things wrap up at the end (esp. that first in-credits sequence). We’ve touched a bit on that theme previously, with Captain Marvel and the Guardians of the Galaxy film, but I expect to see a lot more starscapes in the MCU future.
Just a reminder that the “Knowhere” space outpost in GotG is the *head of a Celestial* that is being *mined from within.* Yeesh.
That said, this movie felt oddly detached from the MCU, and its few connections felt a bit forced. It really was very much a stand-alone film, with a couple of exceptions (one of which ended up a significant feature of someone’s motivations). To be sure, my wife, not a Marvel fan, thought that was fine, eliminating the “Oh, you won’t get this if you don’t read the comics or rewatch the movies a dozen times.”
That occurring-in-a vacuum did feel a little strange to me at times, but I also largely didn’t miss it.
Net-Net
I think this movie got a lot of early dumping upon for a few reasons:
Too many film critics dislike the popularity of super-hero films in general, and the MCU (egads! Disney!) in particular. Throw in an Academy-award winning director “slumming,” and their reaction is going to be particularly harsh.
For the fanboi crowd, Eternals is too feeling, too morally complex, and too willing to resolve problems in ways that don’t involve fisticuffs and pew-pews. (It may also have too many strong women and too much diversity for some of their tastes.)
For me, I found those all to be strengths. I mean, I like a good rock-em sock-em, comics-faithful, simplistic-redemption-arc film as much as the next person (I maintain that the original Iron Man is one of the best supers films ever).
But this film was also refreshing, in not providing easy answers, or even easy-to-judge characters. Each of the Eternals faces difficult decisions in the movie, makes (or chooses to dodge, or changes their mind on) those decisions, and doesn’t always get it right, because big, difficult, moral decisions rarely end up with a big red or green light next to them to immediately let you know you made the right one.
It sometimes takes a long time to learn you picked a Zonk behind Curtain Number 3.
Eternals is by no means a perfect move. It is (if unavoidably) verbose in its setup, and dragging in its wrap-up. It handles some elements clumsily. Some characters got a short shrift. Some of it feels melodramatic at times (though Kirby would probably smile at those elements).
But it’s a good film, a great kickoff to bigger things in the MCU and maybe some more sophisticated directions, and I’m really curious as to what happens next.
Some vocal bros sure seem to be constantly threatened by strong female heroes.
I honestly don’t get the Captain Marvel / Carol Danvers / Brie Larson hate thing, be it in comic books or the movies. I never have. It just always feels like it boils down to horrible resentment and fear of strong women who recognize themselves as such.
That observation was inspired by yet another article — “Comic Book Fans Reject Captain Marvel | Cosmic Book News“– with that theme. “Everyone hates the Captain Marvel because she sucks and she hates men and Marvel is ruining my childhood.” But I’ve been reading this kind of “analysis” for years, ever since (a) Carol got her new name and outfit and (b) she got her own MCU movie announced, too.
Brie Larson as the MCU’s Captain Marvel
And I find that outlets that actually echo those sentiments tend to be a click-baity toxic stew of such feelings, largely just amplifying a relatively small number of hating, if vocal, broflakes, who seemingly can’t stand the very concept of a superhero who can trade punches (or energy blasts) with the best of them, but is a girl, and almost certainly has girl cooties.
(I’ve taken to asking Google News to exclude those media outlets, since I rarely find myself in agreement with any of their other pronouncements, including, frequently, how Zack Snyder is a cinematic god.)
Is Captain Marvel (comic or movie) my bestest ever experience? No. I think the character (originally as Ms Marvel) has rung through too many changes over the years (female version of a male hero, early feminist icon, bathing suit-wearing flying brick, amnesiac victim, hyperpowered cosmic hero, alcoholic … then, finally, as Captain Marvel, fearless pilot and icon for girls).
Alex Ross does a nice, if incomplete, survey of Carol Danvers’ outfits over the years
That current iteration of the character in comics has gone through a series of writers and artists and, well, series, and attracted both fierce fans and fierce detractors, but only so-so readership. I’ve bought its various incarnations because I’ve enjoyed it, but I’ve never put it at top-of-stack as the best thing of the week.
(That the comic has gone through multiple volumes and directions and creative team is much hallooed by the character’s critics, as in the original article noted, without any consciousness of how many other characters and titles go through similar things without being condemned as a threat to All that is Right and Good (and, of course, Masculine).)
But I can say, “Hey, this is only good, not great” without the need to pin down a binary “best of breed” or “dirty mongrel” … perhaps because I don’t see Captain Marvel as a threat to my ego or the rest of my comic book / movie franchise experience. I can see a comic / movie starring a strong woman — one who’s not showing a whole bunch of skin, at that — and not feel like my masculinity is being threatened, let alone attacked.
Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel was supposed to be a tentpole for the next wave of Marvel movies, something that COVID-19 put into a tailspin. It’s strong but not blockbusting performance may have also led to the next installment pivoting to not being another Carol solo film, but The Marvels, which will include two other related characters: Monica Rambeau (seen getting her powers in WandaVision), who in the comics held the Captain Marvel name for a while*, and Kamala Khan (a teen who in the comics got powers and took on the moniker of Ms Marvel).
I hope that’s all setting up a whole bunch of new goodness, not a response to dudes who think Captain Marvel doesn’t fit their toxic view of womanhood.
* Short history lesson: The first superhero named Captain Marvel was originally a knock-off of Superman back in the 1930s, published by Fawcett. DC ended up suing Fawcett over it, quashing the comic, and eventually buying the rights to the character. Meanwhile Marvel decided it should have a character by that name, obviously and created its own Captain Marvel, a Kree spy who “went native” and defended Earth. Carol Danvers was a character in his book, and eventually got exposed to McGuffin technology, and became the similarly-powered Ms Marvel. DC started up its Captain Marvel comic again, though usually not as part of its mainstream universe. Marvel, who couldn’t make a huge commercial go of its Captain Marvel, killed him off with cancer (great comic), but realized it needed to keep the name in use in order to defend the trademark. So Monica Rambeau got created to be called Captain Marvel, though she later changed her hero name to Photon. Various other Captains Marvel showed up in Marvel, until someone had the obvious idea a few years back of renaming Ms Marvel to Captain Marvel, putting an end to all that. Meanwhile, DC finally agreed to rename their Captain Marvel to the name he invoked to trigger his powers, Shazam. And now you know. And knowing’s half the battle.
Captains Marvel: Marvel’s Kree Mar-Vell; Carol Danvers; and Fawcett Comics’ Billy Batson Captain Marvel, now called Shazam.
This bloody take on four-color teen heroes is even better, and bloodier, on-screen.
Yeah, there are spoilers here. Sorry. TL;DR: Bloody, but good.
I was a big follower of Robert Kirkman’s Invincible from Day 1 to its conclusion, and I have a complete set of the graphic novels. So I was both looking forward to, and prepared for, the animated series airing on Amazon Prime.
Sort of.
On one level, Invincible is the tale of a high school kid who finally inherits the super-powers he expected from his dad, a Superman-type called Omni-Man. The tale is full of teen angst, learning capabilities, trying to mature, dealing with girlfriends and best friends and having to duck out (yet again) to save the world. It’s conventional in a lot of ways, but well done for all that.
It’s like Riverdale, only with super-powers
The other level is a darker story, of nothing being what it seems. The various other heroes we meet are full of egos, short tempers, and bad personalities. The Global Defense Agency, run by Cecil Stedman, is big picture enough that it engages in sketchy behavior to maintain world order. And, after a relatively idyllic first episode of Mark gaining and learning about his powers, training with his dad, and getting both a costume and a code name …
… his father, Omni-Man, ambushes and kills the Justice League-esque Guardians of the Globe.
And not in a “ha-ha, secret death gas that quietly and cleanly makes them softly collapse” kind of way. It’s a bloody, brutal, flesh-crunching, ichor-spattering, dismembering sort of battle. Superman taking out the Justice League, any way he can. Which Kirkman’s original comic did, but which has a greater impact in animation than on the still page.
Omni-Man has a bad day
That sets the tone for Invincible — a lot of “normal” comic book action, but, when violence occurs, a brutality that is hypothetically realistic (what would it look like if Superman punched someone in the face with all his strength?) but also shocking in its gore factor.
This is a comic book series not for kids. R-rated, at the very least.
That said, it all works, at least for me. The tension between that juxtaposition, the mystery of why Omni-Man killed those super-heroes, and if, and how, his guilt will be unveiled, and what that will mean for his marriage and to his son, Mark — that’s hanging over the season like a sword, and when it finally drops, it is utterly a game-changer, and about has violent as you can imagine a fight between a really pissed-off Superman and an equally angry Superboy could be.
The show all also a rare opportunity for a creator — Robert Kirkman (of Walking Dead fame) — to collaborate on redoing a major opus of his for a new medium and to clean up and improve his story. Which he actually does. As I got into the series, I went back and reread those early graphic novels. Kirkman maintains all the dramatic beats and characters and challenges, but he largely improves on them, tightens them up, makes them work as a coherent tale. Distractions get trimmed. Core development gets better focus. Time frames are accelerated/compressed. Some ethnic diversity gets introduced in some key roles (on screen and in the voice work). It’s overall a better tale in this retelling.
Mark’s sometimes-girlfriend Amber gets recast to add diversity. She’s also rewritten as a better, stronger character.
Invincible is not for everyone. My sainted wife dealt with the series gamely until the final installment. Graphic super-hero violence is on display — not gratuitously, nor incessantly, but, like real-world violence (and this is sort of the point) slamming onto the scene just when you least expect it. Kirkman wants to address what it means when someone throws a bus full of people, or demolishes a building, or what happens when an alien invasion lands downtown and those aren’t convenient “disintegrators” they’re wielding.
And not all stories have happy endings.
But he also wants to give us coming of age tales, teens with power figuring out what those abilities mean, how they should or shouldn’t use them, and why, and what sort of codes of morality they’re going to adopt as they get faced with life-and-death decisions. Mark, as Invincible, is the focus here, but there’s a large cast, and everyone has moral and ethical dilemmas they have to face.
Some of the (large) cast of Invincible. Kirkman does great names.
The animation, from Korea, is top-notch, and very much in line with the original artwork by Ryan Ottley and Cory Walker. The voice talent is good (even if some of the casting doesn’t altogether work for me), and the story fully engaged me, even knowing where things were leading.
Invincible and Atom Eve, comic artInvincible and Atom Eve, animated. They did a great job with the clean style from the comics (except that Eve’s chest logo usually looked like it was a Venus symbol with an X on it, not with an electron cloud).
Looking forward to Season 2. If you have Amazon Prime, and don’t mind some impactful (but meaningful) gore, it’s highly recommended. Rating:
For all the pain and angst, the joy Mark has while flying is always a great thing to see.
Goodreads, where I do my book logging, has a nifty little widget to show what reading I logged over the year. It shows I read 138 books, for a total of 33,007 pages. Which sounds much more impressive than it actually is, since it (a) includes the page count for audiobooks, and (b) includes graphic novels which, while potentially literary, read much faster. Indeed, of those 138, a little over half (76) were graphic novels.
The audiobook count was down this year. I only listen to those in the car and, working for home and not vacationing at all, my driving time has been pretty limited.
But besides audiobooks, my overall reading this year was higher than last year. Yay, pandemic!
The most popular book I read in 2020 was The Fellowship of the Ring (3.1 million other people on Goodreads have logged that one). The least popular was Nice Guys Finish Seventh by Ralph Keyes, an interesting book on misquotations (only 45 other people have logged it).
I tend to rate things high — Goodreads says my average rating is 4. Some books I gave 5-star ratings I gave to this year:
Phil Foglio, Queens and Pirates (Girl Genius, Second Journey #5) – mad science hilarity
In older stuff, series I (re)read and offer top marks to include Ed Brubaker’s Gotham Central, Joe Straczynski’s run on Thor, Jason Aaron’s Thor run, Judd Winick’s Hilo, Brian Bendis’ Jessica Jones books, and Garth Ennis’ Preacher series.
None of the above counts some fine 4-star books (of all sorts) I enjoyed this year.
I don’t know that I read more or less this year than last, but the overall tally looks pretty impressive. Here’s my tally, courtesy of GoodReads (and a lot of work of my own putting the information in).
That shows up (currently) as 100 books read; that includes 50 graphic novels, along with 42 text novels (22 of them re-reads) and 8 audiobooks (non-fiction). Notable series I dove into the first time this year: Novik’s Temeraire series (in progress) and a good chunk of Lee’s Liaden books. Also reread all of Peters’ Cadfael mysteries and Zelazy’s Amber works.
There were also 2-3 virtual longboxes worth of comic books.
Seth Rogan’s adaptation of the irreverent comic had great moments, but never quite gelled.
We finally finished (a couple of months after the fact) AMC’s TV adaptation of Garth Ennis’ comic book series, Preacher.
The central trio, back in Season 1
Long story short, the 4-season adaptation is a bit of a hot mess, full of many great moments (quite a few of them, but by no means all, lifted or adapted from the original), but as a coherent story it suffers even more than the original.
Ennis wrote an odd but moving (and arguably insightful) paean to America, using hyperbolic sex and violence and iconoclastic religion to provide a old-style Western romance in modern clothing. Written in 3-6 issue arcs (to allow for trade paperback collection), the tale sometimes felt fragmented, but still progressed along narrative about Jesse Custer, his lethal girlfriend Tulip, and their vampiric and right bastard friend Cassidy.
Seth Rogan (Executive Producer) and company faced an insane challenge to mirror the scope and over-the-topness of the original, coupled with, well, the need to maintain a budget (which, for example, dictated keeping kinda-sorta to a single setting per season).
The central trio, as drawn by comic book artist Steve Dillon
The result a show that felt like a lot of great parts, cut-and-pasted together — plotlines that meandered, events and narratives that seemed locked into a given season without following through (or following through only weakly) in subsequent seasons, characters that came and went or faded in and out, just …
Eugene “Arseface” Root, acted heroically by Ian Colletti
Well, it didn’t keep me from enjoying what I was watching. The music/sound, the cinematography, and, in particular, the actors were all great. Dominic Cooper, Ruth Negga, and Joe Gilgun owned the roles of Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy (and kudos to Negga who genuinely made me forget the comic book Tulip was a blond white woman). Graham McTavish as the Saint of Killers, Pip Torrens as Starr, and (massive makeup-sympathy shout-out to) Ian Colletti as Eugene … the casting was all just excellent.
The parts were solid, but the whole … well, in the end, it was never quite clear what the TV series Preacher was about. The perils of absolute power, the dangers of hubris, the negligence (if not malignity) of God, the perversity of the universe, the power of friendship … there’s a palpable effort to make it all seem coherent and meaningful in the last episode, drawing in bits from the original (and some great scenes), but by then it’s too late.
Which is a reason why, though I’ve read the graphic novel series a half-dozen times, I won’t be re-watching the TV series any time soon. It was a fine experience while it lasted, and on an episode-by-episode basis, full of talent and imagination, but it never quite made it as a coherent story.
A tip of the hat, though. I’d have considered the series unmakeable. That we got something as good as this should be considered a triumph for the company. I wish it had been better, but I can imagine so many ways it could have been worse.
Oooh. Love “Stumptown” and love Cobie Smulders, so this might get me watching network TV this fall. https://t.co/OoMSIvdMob #Stumptown
“Stumptown” is a great comic series by Greg Rucka (with able realistic art by Matthew Southworth, sort of a Portland-based noir detective tale. I’m tickled pink that it’s been picked up as a TV series. Here’s hoping ABC does it justice.
(No spoilers in this post. I can’t vouch for the comments.)
I enjoy the Marvel super-hero movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has almost always managed to please, to a great or lesser extent. There have been films I’ve been less enchanted with (Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 come to mind), but even they had some bright moments.
So I went to Avengers: Endgame expecting to enjoy myself, thinking that this climatic Avengers movie will hit the needed emotional notes, blend tragedy and triumph, sacrifice and heroism, and probably wrap up one or more of the iconic characters in a satisfying, contract-closing, oh-my-god-no-more-extreme-conditioning way. There would be a few cameos, a few call to mind of past films, the good guys would triumph, there’d be a funeral, and we’d end on a note of hope for the future.
I trusted Kevin Feige and the Russo Brothers and Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and the actors and Alan Silvestri and all the production crew would give us that.
They gave me that, cranked up to 12.
Avengers: Endgame poster
And not in a “loud, obnoxious” fashion, but as in hitting every single note they needed to, and the several more that I really hadn’t realized I wanted, and a few additional ones I never thought I’d see, and doing it in virtuoso fashion. I’ve never seen a franchise movie that more organically integrated the cameos it felt it had to have, to the extent that they weren’t just shout-outs, but key parts of the plot. I’ve never seen a franchise movie that called back to its predecessors in a way that wasn’t a cheat or fan service, but as a necessary and delightful way to make this movie’s plot all the richer.
We’ve got characters — heroes and villains — acting intelligently, reasonably, in line with their motivations. We have heroic, epic goings-on that most of the time feel like that’s exactly how it should happen.
While not everything is perfect in Avengers: Endgame (and surely I’ll be having those debates with folk in the future), even the imperfections are still okay, and the rest of it is wonderful.
The movie ran for three hours and one minute … and it didn’t feel like it. They used the time to establish mood, to explain motivation, to provide a chance for action to be balanced with consideration, and to give the cast members the time they need to bring their characters forward or to an end. Characters follow a path that makes sense for them — some of their stories come to a close, while others have new beginnings opened up for them, in a variety of ways. If Marvel never made another movie again (no!), I could find this a fitting conclusion for most of these people.
My hat’s off to the creative team. I expected to enjoy myself. I didn’t expect something this good.
Overall rating:
It’s not “Casablanca,” but it’s superb at what it does.
(Note: the immediate post-movie credits are a lot fun. There is no post-credit scene, thought here is a … brief … thing at the end, which I’m sure people will be debating about. It’s worth sitting in the cinema while the credits role, both to appreciate the talent that went into the film, and to unwind a bit.)
Disney has canceled Fox’s “Mouse Guard” adaptation
While there’s been plenty of nerd glee over Disney’s acquisition of Fox’s movie properties — X-Men and FF in the MCU, huzzah! — it’s not all good news.
Disney has canceled Fox’s adaptation of the fantastic comic series, The Mouse Guard, only weeks before it was to begin production. The movie, which had lined up the voice talents Idris Elba, Andy Serkis, and a number of other noteworthies, was considered to not quite fit into either Disney’s portfolio or where they intend to move the Fox studios line to (more PG-13 and R-rated films).
The Mouse Guard is referred to as “Game of Thrones with mice,” which is about 60% inaccurate. It is an extended saga of tribes of forest creatures with varying levels of medieval technology, focused primarily on the extended realm of field mice and the elite guard that serves as rangers, protectors, and warriors. Written and drawn by David Petersen, it’s beautifully illustrated stuff, with some strong story lines, and I was very much looking forward to what they were going to do with it in a feature film.
While unfortunate, Disney is letting the producers shop the property around, and some other studios have expressed an interest. So, like the doughty mice of its story, it’s Not Dead Yet.
