Category Archives: MCU

Spooky Season Conclusion: Agatha All Along

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Disney+ released the final two episodes of Agatha All Along Wednesday night completing the series just one day before Halloween.

Agatha All Along continues the story of Agatha Harkness, a witch from colonial times, that attempted to steal the powers of the Scarlet Witch and when best by that former Avenger found herself enchanted to never remember herself and live out her life in the small New Jersey Town of Westview.

Marvel Studios

Agatha opens with Agatha believing herself to be Agnes an overworked homicide detective when a chance encounter with an unnamed teenage boy breaks the spell. Together the Teen and Agatha assemble a coven in order to walk the witch’s road a mystical quest that, if the witch survives, grants the witch what is missing most from their lives. However, there are secrets, betrayals, and unimaginable dangers along the road and before the end truths and unspoken identities will change everything and everyone who treads that dangerous trail.

Created and show run by Jac Shaeffer, who was a principal creative behind WandaVision the preceding series in this storyline, Agatha All Along is a creative, inspired, and entertaining journey. Eschewing, for the most part, massive CGI fueled combat, the battles in Agatha are ones of the soul and of character which the series presents in spades.

Harkness remains a selfish and bitter villain with a flair for the sarcastic cutting remark so ably deployed by actor Kathryn Hahn. Joe Locke as the unnamed Teen pulls off a performance that late in the series shows surprising depth as his secrets are revealed. Rounding out the cast of the series is Aubrey Plaza as Rio a former lover and enemy of Agatha’s, Patti Lupone as an ancient witch possessing a unique relationship with time, Ali Ahn as Alice a witch that specializes in protection magics but suffering under a familial curse, Sasheer Zamata as Jen a potions witch who magic has been taken by an unknown enemy, and Debra Jo Rupp reprising her role from WandaVision.

Agatha All Along is a series that revels in its femininity, its queerness, and its celebration of a ‘superhero’ story that isn’t fixated on masculine muscles. It is well worth the watch.

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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: Deadpool and Wolverine

Marvel Studios/Disney

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After thoroughly enjoying Deadpool and Deadpool 2 I was quite looking forward to Deadpool and Wolverine. Friday night I sacrificed a couple of hours of sleep by attending a late screening of the film at my local AMC and with the seat fully reclined laid back to enjoy the show.

I would have been happier with the sleep.

I can say with all honesty that the screening of Deadpool and Wolverine elicited just one emotion from me: boredom.

The credits list five writers for the screenplay and man oh man does it show. The film is wildly inconsistent lacking in any unifying vision, theme, or structure. It is almost as disrespectful to the Deadpool stories that preceded it as Alien 3 was to Aliens.

Characters exist within the context of the relationships if you break the relationships, you break the character. Deadpool and Wolverine shatters the relationships between Wade Wilson and the previous characters of the franchise.

The nature of Wade’s relationships with the various secondary characters is a crucial element in Wade’s own character. Mind you all these characters are present in the film, in a group scene that has all the emotion of a checklist.

The character disrespected the most, whose transformation is so at odds with their earlier incarnation is beggars belief to accept them as the same character is of course Vanessa.

Introduced in the first film Deadpool’s love interest Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) became an instant favorite for many people. Her sex worker character was neither tragic nor possessed of the trite and cliche ‘heart of gold’ but rather a suitable and equal foil for Wade Wilson’s massive presence. She had the vitality and sprit to occupy the screen and hold her own. The second film’s ending was reshot to satisfy audiences who were unwilling to accept such a dynamic character’s death for mere protagonist motivation points.

In Deadpool and Wolverine Vanessa now an office worker and manager has had all of that fire extinguished. The changes to her character is presented as the reason for the changes to Wade’s but are so totally at odds with what has been established as to make it all utterly meaningless.

Without the loving and interesting character relationships, Deadpool and Wolverine is simply meta references, gags, and pointless combat lacking in all tension.

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On RDJ’s Return to the MCU

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At the San Diego Comic Con, it was announced after much speculation that the critical role of Dr Doom for the Fantastic Four will be played by Robert Downey jr. This set off debate and speculation about strange possible connections between Tony Stark and Dr Victor von Doom.

Dudes, RDJ is what is technically known as an actor, people skilled in performing characters in fiction. Characters plural.

It used to be much more accepted by audiences that an actor stepping into a role even in a continuing franchise was a new person even if that actor had played someone different in the same franchise before.

Granted this was much more common in television than in film but it was true in film as well. Charles Grey could both be Bond’s contact in one film and then Blofeld in another. Maud Adams could be Bond’s girl in two different movies, and no one asked how she survived her death in the earlier entry because she is playing different characters.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has recycled actor in earlier production. Gemma Chan is both a Kree Warrior and an eternal robot. Alfie Woodward is both a street level criminal and a mother who worked hard for the state department putting her sun Charlie through school. Michell Yeoh is both a Ravager and an elder is a mystic Asian village. Robert Downey jr, while being the most high-profile actor to play two utterly critical and central roles, is following in an established performing arts tradition.

RDJ is a talented actor able to inhabit a number of unique characters. His turn in Oppenheimeris fantastic and I look forward to his portrayal of the vain, villainous, and compelling Dr Doom.

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Masters of the Air Rekindled my Annoyance with The Eternals

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(Minor Spoilers follow)

In the final episode of Masters of the Air Major ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal (Nate Mann) after being rescued by the Soviet Army following the crash of his B-17 sees with his own eyes a death camp that the Nazis had operated. This naturally has a massive impact on the pilot, but the scene also reawakened an irritation I had with the superhero film The Eternals.

The conceit of The Eternals is that a small group of immortal being and the source of many myths and legends have live with humanity from before history shaping and guiding our development. One of these beings is Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) whose particular gift to humanity is teaching us technology.

Phastos’ faith in humanity is shattered with our use of technology and this is exemplified in the movie by having him break down crying amid the rubble of Hiroshima.

Yes, the nuclear bombs kill hundreds of thousands. Yes, they were the very cutting edge of science and technology at the time. But millions were murdered by the Nazis in Europe, millions. Their murders did not end the war, their murders were the point of the war. Murder on such a scale is impossible with the technology of industrialization. The vast incomprehensible scale of it is only achievable with the industrial revolution.

One can argue the terrible ‘trolley problem’ of ending the war in the Pacific with nuclear weapons. Would it have been more moral to forego the atomic attacks and launch a ground invasion that would have almost certainly cost far more lives? That’s a debate that cannot be resolved because it is a personal value judgement, but the slaughter of the innocent in camps built only for death? That is undebatable. That is a clear and perverse corruption of technology and that is what should have shattered Phastos belief in humanity.

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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: Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania

 

 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe released its 31st feature film with Ant-man & The Wasp: Quantumania boasting an impressive cast, a fantastic adventure, a realty-twisting setting, and lacking in emotional weight.

As shown in the trailer, our heroes as pulled into the fantasy setting of the Quantum Realm by an ill-advised experiment and there must discover a way home while dealing with a new threat to the MCU.

Directed by Payton reed who helmed the previous two, and quite enjoyed, Ant-Man entries into the MCU, and written by Jeff Loveness, as his feature film screenwriting debut, Quantumania has action but feels empty. The element that had elevated MCU movies above other attempts at silver screen adaptations of comic book heroes is the devotions to characters and story. Even,

Disney Studios

or perhaps more importantly, the lighter films such as the Ant-Man franchise have never forgotten that it is related characters with relatable issues that engaged the audiences. In the first film Scott Lang certainly battles and defeats villainous characters but it is in healing his relationship with his family that mattered. In the second movie family again is at the heart of the story with the rescue of Janet from the Quantum Realm and the found family of Bill Foster and Ghost.

Quantumania has no such theme. The characters enter and exit their adventure unchanged, showing no arc, no growth, no emotional scars for their challenges. This movie, like a bad Bond, is all plot (How do we escape? How do we win?) and no story (Who are we and what does this matters to us?).

Screenwriter C. Robert Cargill who wrote the first Doctor Strange film when asked about how much integrating he was told to do for that movie reported that the directive was write the best Doctor Strange movie he could, and the studio would worry about how it all fit into the MCU.

Quantumania feels the exact opposite of that. It is all set-up, exposition, and establishment for further franchise forays and sacrifices everything on the screen that might resonate with an audience for that overarching goal.

When I walked out of Quantumania and had lunch with my sweetie-wife I placed this film in the third quarter of the MCU’s feature film but as the days have passed and less and less of the film remains in my head to any impact, I must categorize this is belonging in the lowest quarter of the MCU. I have seen worse big budget massively produced movies but for Marvel this is a miss.

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Spooky Movie #6: Werewolf by Night

 

Marvel comics has a history stretching back the 60s. In those decades of world building and market chasing as part of their unified universe of heroes and villains the have explored every genre of storytelling including horror. With the Disney + release of Werewolf by Night they bring horror into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Werewolf by Night is helmed by first time director Michael Giacchino, though he is best known as a film score composer whose works include the fanfare that plays with the Marvel Studios logo. Written by Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron the Disney + special follows a group of ‘monster hunters’ gathered to compete to claim a powerful artifact, the Bloodstone. A monster ‘unlike any that they have face before’ has been released onto the grounds of a grand estate with the bloodstone imbedded into it. To win a hunter must not only best the beast and claim the stone but also survive the other hunters.

Presented in black-and-white to invoke the sensation of classic Universal horror, and to mitigate the blood splattered violence, the just under an hour special does a fine job of capturing a mood and atmosphere that plays well for fans of cinematic horror. The filmmakers carried their ‘old school’ presentation to entertaining ends with the inclusion of ‘cue marks.’ These are dark or white ovals that flash in the upper righthand corner of the frame to alert projectionist that a reel change was nearing and to prep the second projector. Even in the mid 1980s when I worked in a local movie theater the cue marks had passed out of relevance as the film projectors massive platters that contained the entire film on a single reel.

Aside from a title card with silhouettes of the Avengers there is no direct reference to other characters of the MCU though the production is officially a part of the franchise and introduces comic characters to this aspect of the Marvel universe.

Werewolf by Night is a fun, slightly scary, entry into the MCU and well worth the less than an hour it takes to view. An excellent episode to watch during this season.

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The Unlearned Lesson of Black Panther

2018’s Black Panther, written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, and directed by Coogler, was Marvel’s expansion in Afrofuturism exploring a mythical African kingdom, Wakanda, with incredibly advanced comic-book technology and wholly untouched by historical colonialism. An incredible box office success Black Panther gave a new myth to millions around the world while exploring the theme that isolationism, both for individuals and nations, solves no problems but merely leaves them to fester and grow. Its lesson that through interconnectedness can we heal the harms of the past is a valuable one.

However, there is another lesson in the plot of the film that none of the characters learned or even took note of its existence.

(Some spoilers follow)

After Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan) defeats T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) in ritual combat and claims the throne of Wakanda as his own he launches a campaign to wage war on the rest of the world seeking to ‘liberate’ the African diaspora around the globe. (I place ‘liberate’ in quote because his statement that ‘the sun will never set on the Wakandan Empire’ makes clear not only the historical analogy that he has become the colonizers he so despises but that liberty’ is far from his goal.)

Despite the Wakandan royal court knowledge that this will lead to millions upon millions of deaths around the world King Killmonger’s plan is put into immediate action. The King of Wakanda is an absolute monarch, ruling by decree and without any limitation.

T’Challa and the other heroes of the tale foil Killmonger’s plan for a global war and return the film’s protagonist to the throne.

But there is no hint in this film or the ones that followed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that the Wakandans even took notice that an absolute monarch is a plan for disaster.

Never create a political power you aren’t willing to see in the hands of your enemy.

There are other kingdoms in the marvel Universe, the films have already introduced us to Asgard, and it certainly looks like the sequel to Black Panther will introduce thew kingdom of Atlantis and it is doubtful that either will see limitations of the king’s authority, but Wakanda and Black Panther is different than those other stories and settings. Black Panther is a commentary on the real world, real history, and real evil that was visited upon the African continent. While superheroes with their magical and physics defying powers are modern fairytales and myth if you make such a direct and applicable statement on modern political systems and power then ignoring the dangers of absolute monarchy, of too much power concentrated into one person hands, is a disservice.

The unlearned lesson of Black Panther is power must be distributed and checked or will eventually be abused.

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