Films and Feelings

    I'm going on the record to say that, even with the devastation wrought upon Wanda's character in "Multiverse of Madness," WandaVision is one of the best things we've gotten from any stage of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And that has to be the main reason why Marvel enlisted Matt Shakman to pilot their premiere Fantastic 4 film (stealing him away from Star Trek 4 ...), the film that was going to rescue the studio from their post-"Endgame" stupor. There are probably all sorts of soundbites about this being the first real version of the story to get the machine to work, and I wouldn't disagree.     But in the context of Marvel's larger rehabilitation,  The  Fantastic 4: First Steps reads less like the great MCU reset and more like an elaborate gymnastics routine, an attempt to splice Marvel's Thanos era with its Not-Iron-Man era. Graciously, this works better than it sounds on paper, but it does kind of purchase this at the expense of ...

      I feel like it's essential that I establish early on in this review that this marks my first time seeing a Superman movie in theaters.      The Zack Snyder saga was actually in swing while I was in high school and college--back when I was in what most would consider in the target audience for these films--but that kind of passed by me without my attention.      And I'll be clear that I take no specific pride in this. I wasn't really avoiding the films by any means. My buddies all just went to see them without me while I was at a church youth-camp, and I just didn't bother catching up until much, much later.  I'm disclosing all this to lay down that I don't really have any nostalgic partiality to the Superman story. Most of my context for the mythology comes from its echoes on larger pop culture.     I know, for example, that Clark Kent was raised in a smalltown farm community with his adopted parents, and it was them who...

       Ever since Star Lord and company discoed onto the scene in 2014, Marvel has basically been trying to chase the Guardians of the Galaxy high. And ever since we entered Disney+ era, that meant spray painting every project with a skittles color palette. And no situation couldn't be improved with a joke-- any joke.      The premise of Marvel's newest film, Thunderbolts* , even bears some cursory resemblances to Gunn's film: it's an ensemble piece about former criminals trying to make good. But it winds up taking the opposite lessons from "Guardians" that movies like "Love and Thunder" tried to pilfer. And in the process, it actually becomes the first movie to successfully implement the Guardians of the Galaxy magic in a long time.     In a world that has moved on from the Avengers, six B-level heroes, many of whom have criminal history, are put in a position to take down a shared enemy. What begins as a non-aggression pact transforms in...

I've heard the news: Marvel is bringing back both the Russo brothers and even Robert Downey Jr. That is apparently what Co-President of Marvel Studios, Louis D'Esposito meant when he said that they had "learned their lesson" after a disastrous 2023 and were going to get their output back on track ... As is often the case in Hollywood, Marvel has deflected to the conclusion that what actually made their movies great wasn't carefully finessed storytelling, but a laundry list of factors, like you can just plug Robert Downey Jr. into whatever movie, and that movie will strike gold. There are obviously a number of developments at work both within larger Hollywood and Marvel specifically that are feeding into Marvel at present, such that I can't really begin to guess whether 2025 will be the year that Marvel makes its grand comeback, or if bringing back not-Iron-Man will have anything to do with it. But I would be remiss not to acknowledge that this retreat into...