Category Archives: Superhero

Movie Review: Fantastic Four: First Steps

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After three previous attempts and a merger of studios to bring the film rights back to Marvel Studios, there is yet another shot at bringing the exploits of comics’ first family to the larger-than-life screen. The Fantastic Four is this time titled Fantastic Four: First Steps.

First published in 1961, The Fantastic Four is a quartet of heroes with very public identities and celebrity status in the comic book continuum. Though a popular franchise for over 60 years, the group has struggled to find a successful silver screen adaptation. The filmmakers with this reboot have elected to jettison more conventional approaches for a bold vision.

Marvel Studios

Fantastic Four: First Steps drops the audience into a parallel universe where the family of superheroes are already not only known but honored globally for their exploits and bravery. It is an alternate 1960s, and the production is drenched in retro-futurism—a future that people of the 60s envisioned but never came to pass, colorful and optimistic. The team’s ‘origin’ is quickly recounted as backstory for a television special. How scientist Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), pilot Ben Grimm (Eben Moss-Bachrach), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), and her brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) ventured into space and returned changed, imbued with amazing powers. In addition to eschewing recreating their origin, the filmmakers also steered clear of the team’s most notorious opponent, Dr. Doom. Instead, they are confronted by the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), Herald to the god-like being Galactus (Ralph Ineson), whose insatiable hunger drives him to consume planets teeming with life. Galactus is presented in the film as he was in the source material—a kaiju-sized humanoid in fantastic armor. The Silver Surfer has selected Earth as Galactus’ next victim, and the Fantastic Four attempt to negotiate with the god-like being. But when Galactus demands a price too high for the team to personally pay, Earth is set as his next target, and the world turns on its former heroes.

Fantastic Four: First Steps, in my opinion, is a mid-tier Marvel Cinematic Universe entry. Not as weak as some of the franchise films, but also nowhere near the excellence of its best. The script has four credited writers for both screenplay and story, and the final product is a bit muddled, showing what was likely a turbulent development and production. The cast is good, with Pascal and Kirby being outright terrific. Julia Garner plays enigmatic well and has one of the best ‘cheer’ moments in the feature. I think most of my issues—and why this film did not enthrall me completely—stem from the world-building of the alternate Earth failing to convince. It is not the retro-futurism that I found unconvincing (that I looked forward to), but some of the human aspects that were baked into the world that I found beyond my ability to accept. In Iron Man 2, it was stated that Stark ‘privatized world peace’—one moment of hyperbole that could be and should be ignored. Here, a similar concept is baked into this world’s canon.

Still, I did not regret venturing out to the theater for a fun, bright, and optimistic superhero film far from the dark and grounded miasma of cynicism.

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Superman and Assimilation

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James Gunn’s relaunching of a film franchise based upon DC comic book heroes has begun with his Superman and in these politically charged and patently insane partisan times it of course has launched a million takes.

Sonny Bunch, culture editor for The Bulwark, an online home and community for displaced former Republicans and centrist Democrats, recently revealed that his interpretation of this variant of the character was to see it as a conservative character, principally due to Clark Kent’s end-to-end assimilation as an immigrant of American culture and values.

This is, of course, a ludicrous interpretation. Clark Kent AKA Kal-El, rocketed to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton as an infant.  Assimilation implies, quite strongly, the discarding of some of a person’s former cultural practices and traditions while adopting the same from their new home’s culture. Kal-El carried with him none of that planet’s culture and was raised in the heartland of American as the only culture he knew. This was no more assimilation than it is for any person born and raised in Kansas.

But assimilation is a Trojan Horse argument, meant to ‘other’ the immigrant and as such make it easier to treat them as non-persons, which of course makes it easier to be cruel and uncaring.

America is an idea, and anyone can become an American, but that process does not at all require them to reject everything of their former culture and it never has. American culture is an amalgam of cultures from around the globe, our food, our holidays, our practices are not and never have been just one thing, one culture, one idea.

The poisonous idea at the heart of MAGA and its hatred of ‘DEI’ is the idea that there is one way and only one way to be American. It is the desire to use a great metal stamp to force everyone into a single mold, a single form and to fear and hate anything that resists that process.

Nothing is more ‘Big Brother’ than MAGA.

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Movie Review: Superman (2025)

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Writer/Director James Gunn and cinematographer Henry Braham powerfully diverts from the grim, grounded, and gritty aesthetic of recent DC Comics superhero film gives the audience in Superman a colorful and gloriously goofy rendition of the iconic ‘Man of Steel.’ A trailer featuring the super canine ‘Krypto’ coming to a battered and beaten Superman sets the tone audiences should expect with this movie.

Eschewing re-harvesting the overly tilled fields of the character’s origin story or Marvel Studios’ course of building a cinematic universe element by element introduced in features focused on individual character Gunn drops the audience into a comic inspired universe already in progress and populated by ‘metahumans.’

DC Studios

What writers refer to as ‘the inciting incident’, Superman’s (David Corenswet) intercession into a war and losing in a battle against a new supervillain, happens before the film even starts the character crashing into the frame beaten and defeated. Gunn skips many of the familiar beats found in stories of these characters, hurling the audience into a film where Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) is already aware of his dual identity, allowing the story to focus on their relationship instead of secret identity shenanigans.

This new DC Cinematic Universe is one where the heroes of the ‘Silver Age’ are already present and active. Gunn, rightly, in my opinion, understands that the audience, after 17 years of the MCU, is ready to accept a world of comic book characters without the need to establish and detail each and every origin. As such the Guy Gardner Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) simply fly into their scenes without the scrip stopping to explain them.

Quickly the plot develops as manipulated public opinion turns against Superman and the hero finds himself questioning his purpose on Earth and the challenges doing the right thing in a complex morally grey world. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) fueled by a fiery envy and hatred to destroy Superman is here presented in a composite of attributes that the character has exhibited in various media, he is scientifically and technologically brilliant, a billionaire businessman, politically influential, as well as having a predilection for land and its ownership.

There are a number of nods and references to 1978’s Superman The Movie, most notably even in the trailer is that the score by John Murphy and David Fleming is inspired and around the well-known theme written by the legendary John Williams. There are more subtle callbacks, in the background of one scene Perry White (Wendell Pierce) can be heard shouting ‘Don’t call me Chief!’ This Lex Luthor has a large number of people assisting his villainous plot including one referred named Otis a nice Easter egg but one that is expanded in the credits where his surname is revealed to be ‘Berg.’

There is a major change in the canon of the character, one on which a great deal of the plot revolves about that is sure to upset some fans. To avoid spoilers, I cannot reveal it here but when it unfolds people familiar with the history and lore of Superman will see it. Personally, I was fine with it, but others may not be.

James Gunn’s Superman is about as far as one can get in tone and style from Nolan’s Batman Begins, but both are crafted by talented director/writers who knew exactly the kind of film that they wanted to see on the screen. It was a fun frolic but one with heart and soul and a powerful theme that we are not tools of our parents designs but of our own.

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The Accidental Hero of Superman ’78– Otis

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WB Studios

I was 17 years old and in my senior year of high school when Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie hit the screens in the United States. Despite never being a deep fan of the comic books and possessing only a surface knowledge of the character, this was still a movie that I rode my bicycle a couple of miles to the local twin cinema to see. I can recall quite vividly pumping the pedals quite hard and fast with John Williams’ icon score replaying in my head as I went home from that screening. While not as campy as the Batman television series of 1966 and a far cry from the grounded, gritty DC superhero movies of the ‘Snyderverse’ to come in the next century, Superman: The Movie set a high bar for superhero films in general, and Christopher Reeve’s excellent portrayal as Clark Kent/Superman remains in the minds of many unmatched.

What is surprising is that after 47 years, the number of people who do not quite grasp that the plot of the film and its resolution rotates around the fumbling failure of one henchman.

Otis (Ned Beatty), while a seductively costumed and faux-injured Ms. Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine) distracts the Army’s security detail escorting a nuclear-armed ICBM, alters the missile’s targeting at the behest of his supervillain boss, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman.) Later, Lex learns that Otis bungled his assignment inputting only three updated coordinates instead of the required four. When it comes to the second missile, this time being transported and guarded by the US Navy, it is Ms. Teschmacher whom Lex sends to corrupt the missile’s targeting, ensuring it hits his intended target: the San Andreas Fault line to create ‘New West Coast’ that he will own and control.

Lex Luthor’s plan is when both missiles are launched Superman, due the missiles divergent courses, will be able to intercept only one. But to ensure even that outcome does not come to pass, he chains lethal kryptonite to Superman and drops him in a pool to drown.

When Ms. Teschmacher learns that the other missile will detonate its nuclear warhead over her mother’s town of Hackensack, New Jersey, she betrays Lex Luthor and rescues Superman but only after he promises to save her mother first.

It seems an idiotic mistake for Lex Luthor to send his expendable nuclear warhead to the hometown of his expendable girlfriend but of course that was never Lex’s plan. That missile is the one whose targeting was charged by the bumbling Otis, who failed to input the coordinates correctly. Because it was not the warhead that would create the ‘New West Coast’ Lex never bothered to correct that mistake leading to the targeting of Hackensack and Ms. Teschmacher’s betrayal.

Without Otis’ ineptitude, Superman would have perished, and Lex Luthor’s plan would have succeeded. Otis is the accidental hero of Superman: The Movie.

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Series Review: The Penguin

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2022 saw the release of Matt Reeves’ interpretation of the classic DC Comics character Batman. Taking a more film noir approach the movie emphasized Batman as a detective over the character as a martial artist. The movie also introduced us the Colin Ferrell as Oswald Cobb, The Penguin. Reimagined as a lower class criminal hungry to make a name for himself and now HBO/Max has released a limited series focusing on the character.

HBO/Max

The series opens just weeks after the events of The Batman, the underworld is in chaos following the downfall of its leading mafia bosses, the poorest areas of Gotham are devastated by disaster, and corruption remains king in the city and its administration. Oz, (Colin Farrell) doesn’t so much seize the opportunity created by the chaos as his hand is forced due to his impulsive nature and fragile pride. Scrambling to stay ahead of vicious gangsters including Sofia Falcone (Cristin Miliot) recently released from Arkham Asylum, and the consequences of his own poorly thought-out actions Oz has only on his side a naive street kid, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), left homeless by disaster and Oz’s own mother slowly succumbing to a terrible wasting neurological disease.

Where The Batman lived with the constraints of an MPAA PG-13 rating, The Penguin thrives as a gritty R-rating equivalent, awash with language and violence that is only tolerated by the rarest of comic book movies. The series is part organized crime thriller with only a single shot to drive home that this is the home of Batman and deep character study of a people trapped and formed by their tragic histories.

The past weekend Colin Farrel took home a Golden Globe for his performance in The Penguin. Farrell is utterly transformed not only by the magical make-up effects that hold up even under insanely tight close-ups but by Farrell’s own fantastic performance. His voice, his accent, his physicality all belong to a man named Oswald Cobb (yest that changed it from Cobbelpot.) and it’s a powerful and moving depiction of a man that can charm and lie and always has his own best interests at heart.

Cristin Milioti, a performed I was unfamiliar with before this series, is another stand out talent in a cast packed with talent. With the subtlest facial expressions she informs the audience that this character’s mental health is always in question and the danger she presents is never far from the surface.

The Penguin is an outstanding series that twists and turns as it walks the viewer into the hell that is Gotham’s underworld where hope has long since died.

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Who is it at Disney/Marvel That Hates Sex?

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It’s been a few weeks since I watched Deadpool & Wolverine and the short comings of that film continue to live in my head, particularly the radical changes to some of the characters such as Vanessa.

A friend of mine, Tom, suggest in a replay that the changes to her profession and nature were dictated by studio notes I think he has a high chance of being right on that.

Marvel Studios/Disney

When Vanessa was introduced in Deadpool she was a sex worker. Not a glamorous, oh so sophisticated idealized version such as the actress role on Firefly, but a woman who sold sexual unions for cash. She was tough, took charge of her own life, and made her own decisions. The roman between her and Wade Wilson was the beating heart of the film. Their reunion at the end the emotional payoff for the audience. Though I have quibbles that in the final act her character was presented a little too ‘girlfriend passive’ for my tastes and shortchanged her a bit.

In the sequel she was so beloved that test audience reactions forced the denouement that resurrected her. Vanessa was a passionate, forceful, and importantly to her character, a sexual person in charge of her own agency.

All of that was stripped away in Deadpool & Wolverine with her character reduced to off screen motivations and her life shrunk to an office drone. All of the fire and every aspect of her sexual passion stripped away to leave nothing but an empty shell of a character.

But it was not just Vanessa who lost their mojo. Wade Wilson in both preceding films presented as a man secure in his quite fluid sexuality. In addition to his passion and deep love for Vanessa Wade displayed deep sexual attraction and flirtation with people across the gender spectrum.

Aside from a single fourth wall break this was removed from the character. The film neutered Wilson as thoroughly as it had Vanessa.

It is clear that Disney/Marvel in willing to continue the R-rated franchise tolerated violence and splattered blood what it dictated that could not exist is open, healthy, and vigorous sexuality.

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Movie Review: The Marvels

Marvel Studios

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Marvel Cinematic Universe films come sin several flavors and tones, from the intensely personal and dramatic such as Captain America: Civil War, the thematically serious such as Black Panther and its critique of both colonialism and ethno-isolation, to the comedic and lighthearted such as Ant-Man. 2023’s The Marvels, while resenting world-ending threats for humanity, falls cleaning and intentionally into the light and comedic category.

As a side effect of a magical device entangles the power of Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) the three women are forced into an oddball partnership to stop the murderous revenge rampage of Kree warrior Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) bitter from the fall out of Captain Marvel’s ending the Kree wars and domination depicted in the film Captain Marvel. Supporting characters include Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Kamala’s immediate family introduced in the limited series Ms. Marvel.

The ‘mismatched partners’ is a classic genre of cinema and while that sort of story is often a two-hander, screenwriters Nia DaCosta, who also directs, Egan McDonnell, and Elissa Karaski juggled the competing needs of the ‘forced partner’ comedic tones with the serious world dying stakes that are often a requirement of superhero movies, and the family conflicts quite well. The Marvels is principally a comedy, one that finds its humor in familial relations, both blooded family and the found variety. Any doubts about the intentional comedic tone are dispelled by the tongue in cheek use of the song Memory from the musical Cats. The difficult problems of exposition dealing with characters entering the theatrical world who were created in the streaming series format is handled with quick amusing lines. (You got your powers walking through a witch’s hex? Yup.)

The cast is uniformly good and talented, handling the FX work and the comedic character beats with equal skill. The cinematography by Sean Bobbit is perfectly adequate capturing the sequences with enough flair to have some emotional impact but not quite reaches truly impressive levels.

While The Marvels will not reach the heights of becoming one of my favorite 5 MCU movies it is certainly well cemented in the upper half of this franchise and with a running time under two hours it makes for a pleasant and fun distraction.

The Marvels is currently playing in theaters and well worth the trip to see it on the impressive big screen.

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“Magical” Effects in ‘Soft’ Science Fiction

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‘Hard Science Fiction is the sub-genre where no detail contradicts the know laws of physics.  in this there is no faster than Light travel or communication or any form of telepathic psychic ability. It is a rigorous artform practiced by only a few. Once you diverge away from ‘Hard’ SF and into less rigorous applications of scientific fact and theory the art because far wider, encompassing everything from Star Trek the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Often at some point a piece will require some extraordinary effect that upends expectations, introducing new and often unreproducible effects. What is interesting is that in various historical periods there has often been a consensus on what can produce these transformative events.

In the first few decades of the 20th century ‘Rays’, light beyond the visible spectrum, were a common fantastical effect. In 1931’s Frankenstein, Victor boasts of discovering a ray beyond the violet and ultraviolet, a ray that first brought life and one which he harnesses to give life to his creation. In Captain America: The First Avenger is the writers tip their hat to Frankenstein and use a period appropriate ‘Vita Rays’ as per of the process that created Captain America.

By the post-war era ‘rays’ had become a tired trope and in the new atomic age ‘Radiation,’ which really were rays all along, because the empowering effect that grew insects and people to impossible proportions, created powerful mutant abilities, reanimated the dead to cannibalize the living, and endowed several comic book superheroes with the flashier abilities.

Radiation, like the rays before them, eventually passed out of favor as the magic system of less than demanding science fiction stories.

What replaced ‘radiation’ as our go to we need something fantastic to happen here effect?

Quantum Mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics, and in particular the many worlds interpretation of wave form collapse, had been used the furious wave hands and craft stories are in effect blatantly impossible. You want a ‘rational’ reason why the devil is in a jar of goo in the basement of a Los Angeles Catholic Church? Quantum Mechanics. You need a method of time travel to collect some shiny stones and reverse the villain’s victory? Quantum Mechanics. You want a musical episode where the characters react to diegetic musical and sing their truths? Quantum Mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics is no more likely to induce a ‘musical universe’ than gamma radiation is to transform a normal man into an eight-foot tall several hundred-pound monster. These are artifacts of very soft science-fiction employed to wave hands past the impossibility of it all in order to deploy the story the writers want to tell. As long as we remember that these stories are not reality, not a possible future, but the modern equivalent of ‘Once Upon A Time…’ then we can enjoy them for the myths that they are and remember that truth that matters in these stories is not the science but the emotions of the human condition.

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Series Review: Secret Invasion

Marvel Studios.

Thirty years after the events of Captain Marvel Nick Fury and Carol Danvers, now aware that the
shapeshifting Skrulls had been the oppressed and not the oppressors and had promised to find
the aliens a world to be their new home, it is revealed that the search for a home has failed and some Skrulls are intent on removing humanity from the Earth and taking it as their own. Secret Invasionfollows Nick Fury as he attempts to save the Earth and humanity from the rebel Skrulls and their genocidal plot.

While Secret Invasion did not actively repulse me as did some non-MCU series such as The Rigand Silo, it failed to engage or enthrall my attention and failed as an example of its subgenre the MCU rendition of a spy story.

Spy fiction exists along a spectrum with Ian Fleming’s super-spy James Bond, filled with gadgets, glamor, and megalomaniacal villains at one end and John le Carré’s George Smiley’s world of disloyalty, moral compromises, and cynicism at the other. Secret Invasion however seems to exist outside of the spectrum, playing closer to the superhero nature of its universe and ignoring the spy element of its central protagonist, Nick Fury. The series is neither the clear good vs evil romp that many Bond plots are nor does it delve beyond the surface concerning the moral costs and corruption of intelligence work. Without either element the series floats from set piece to set piece, each other its own escalating stakes but missing the essential tones that creates genre. This is not a failing due to due to the story being placed within the MCU, WandaVision embraced, exploited, and satirized the American sitcom genre while still exploring grief, destiny, and superpowers. Captain American: The Winter Soldier, while remaining an extension of Steve Rodgers’s MCU journey, captured the paranoia and feel of a 70s political thriller. Secret Invasion’s failure at genre leaves it lackluster and pointless, serving only to setup other franchise entries and having no essential reason for its own existence.

In addition to its failing as a spy genre Secret Invasion also presented plot inconsistencies that undermine the show’s suspension of disbelief. For 30 years Captain Marvel and Fury has searched for a new home for the Skrull population and failed to find a single planet for them. Really? In a universe as teaming with life among the star, see all the aliens represented in Guardians of the Galaxyfranchise, which also posits that there are abandoned habitable worlds, the failure to discover a place for the Skrulls becomes a leap of logic too great for a setting that includes magic and talking trees.

For a story about shapeshifting aliens and a secret world-wide threat, Secret Invasion does so little with this element that it is utterly lacking in paranoia. The story doesn’t utilize the concept that everyone is suspect because anyone might be the worst person to interact with. Bond usually had the ‘bad Bond girl,’ le Carré is rife with ‘who can you trust?’ issues but Secret Invasion rarely employs such a rich plot point and when it does it lacks any real weight.

Secret Invasion is not bad, but neither it is good. Of the newest television series, I have added to my recent watching it is the least interesting. I do not regret the time I spent with the series, but I shall not be looking to experience it again as I did with Loki or WandaVision.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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Movie Review: Sisu

Subzero Film Entertainment Stage 6 Films Good Chaos

 

The words Sisu is Finnish and denotes a grim determination in the face of overwhelming odds. It combines stoicism, perseverance, and making the most of limited resources to struggle to the very end without surrender. Developed as a concept during Finland’s 1939 bitter war with the Soviet Union it has become an element, a proud one, of the Finns national character.

Sisu is also a 2023 Finnish action movie now playing in theaters.

Set in the Lapland region of Finland during the closing months of the world war II, Sisufollows Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) a former Finnish special forces commando and now gold prospector. Having discovered a ludicrously rich vein of gold Korpi is beset by retreating Nazi soldiers evacuating to Norway following Finland’s separate peace with the USSR. Naturally the Nazis attempt to steal the gold and murder Korpi and his little dog sparking an hour and a half of bloody, gory, revenge, (Don’t fret the dog is fine.) as Korpi slaughters Nazis and frees women that they have taken as sex slaves.

Despite the gore, the dismembered limbs, the clouds of blood from exploding Nazis I describe Sisu as cartoonish violence. This is not a feature you attend with an eye towards realism. Reality visited screenwriter and director Jalmari Helander, glanced at the script in progress, and took its leave. At no point in the movie did I have the slightest doubt to Korpi’s eventual triumph. It simply isn’t that kind of flick. This is a movie where you leave your higher logical functions at home and revel in the inventive slaughtering of fascists. If you have a delicate stomach or suspension of disbelief, then this movie is not for you.

Helander directs Sisu with a firm solid hand aided by cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos’ stark yet beautiful capturing of Lapland’s desolate beauty.

Sisu is not for everyone but for those that it is for it should strike a very pleasant nerve.

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