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Category Archives: Superhero Movies
Black Widow Keeps It in the Family for Natasha’s Last Ride
We’re at a point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where when a film is set matters as much as where. Past MCU outings have planted flags in 1942, 1995, 2023, and everywhere in between. More to the point, who’s alive (not to mention who’s on speaking terms) varies with each jump across the timeline. So when an adventure is set can tell the audience plenty before the story’s even started.
Black Widow, then, is set very deliberately after the events of Captain America: Civil War (or most of them, anyway). The story seizes on a time when Natasha Romanoff had just witnessed the break-up of one found family, as the Avengers split over the Sokovia accords. Their divide makes it even harder for her to process the break-up of another — a group of undercover Russian spies she lived with as a child a la The Americans.
Avengers: Endgame Is an Unprecedented Achievement in Cinema, Not Just Superhero Cinema
Stop and consider the magnitude of this achievement for a moment. Avengers: Endgame is not just a film. It is not just the “season finale” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is the culmination of eleven years of multifaceted storytelling, somehow managing to balance dozens of characters, tie off story threads that have stretched and intersected over the past decade, and craft a final challenge worthy of being the capstone to this mega-franchise. That it happened at all, let alone that this saga ends on a note so poignant, funny, and exhilarating, is an absolute miracle — or at least, if you’ll pardon the expression, a marvel.
Posted in Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Black Widow, Captain America, Comic Book Movies, Film Reviews, Iron Man, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Superheroes, Thanos
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Captain Marvel Is a Throwback to the Earliest MCU Films, Even as It Breaks New Ground
Captain Marvel is essentially a “Phase One” MCU film. That’s not a bad thing! The original dose of pre-Avengers movies hit doubles more often than they hit home runs, but each was enjoyable on its own terms and managed to nicely establish its main character. The journeys in these introductory films are clearly meant to be personal ones, as much about a hero becoming who they’re meant to be as they are about defeating some forgettable bad guy. That’s certainly true for Captain Marvel, where the nominally cataclysmic stakes (already diminished by the period setting) take a backseat to the audience getting to know this new character and her path to self-actualization.
Posted in Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Captain Marvel, Film Reviews, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Nick Fury
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Defines Miles Morales at the Same Time It Defines Spider-Man
I’ve seen a lot of Spider-Man. From the three versions of the character who’ve graced the silver screen in recent years, to scores of different animated series, to an endless font of video games and shorts and other material, Marvel and its licensees have given us countless versions of The Webhead. Some kept Spidey in New York, while others sent him off into space. Some framed him as an untested kid in high school, while others made him an accomplished young adult. Some narrowed his world to a localized ecosystem of characters and conflicts, and others expanded to encompass the whole of the Marvel Universe.
But all of them starred Peter Parker as Spider-Man. And as I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, that process of repeat adaptation can’t help but raise the question — what makes each of these characters Spider-Man as we know him? What is the connective tissue that lets each of these adaptations feel of a piece with one another and recognizable as stories about the same character? Is it just the suit, or the web-slinging, or the quips, or is there something more there?
Posted in Animated Films, Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Film Reviews, Marvel, Miles Morales, Peter Parker, Spider-Man
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Stan Lee Was the Icon We Needed Him to Be
The Stan Lee moment that stands out to me isn’t from one of his many famed cameos, or his legendary backpage columns, or his colorful promotional appearances. It’s from a short-lived television show called Who Wants To Be A Superhero? Stan was the master of ceremonies on the series, an effort to tap into the waning days of the reality T.V. show craze. Each week, a coterie of costume-clad hopefuls would compete to have the characters they created and cosplayed enshrined in a comic book by Stan “The Man” himself.
The Dark Knight and the Dangerous Legacy of the Charismatic Villain
The Joker had left an indelible mark on pop culture long before Heath Ledger assumed the role. He’s one of the few super villains to be consistently featured on merchandise going as far back as the 1960s. His classic semi-origin story in 1998’s Batman: The Killing Joke spurred a dramatic shift in the medium that left fans demanding more of its darkness in their comics. The Joker’s place in the cultural firmament was enough to lure the likes of Jack Nicholson to portray the character on the silver screen. For decades, despite his myriad misdeeds and sizable body count, The Joker nevertheless garnered a consistent crowd of acolytes who saw him as a sort of harlequin antihero.
Posted in Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Batman, Christopher Nolan, Essays, Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Joker
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Deadpool 2 Has the (Blood and) Guts to Be Silly in its Superheroic Spoof
I don’t come to a Deadpool movie for the plot. The first film that featured the “Merc with a Mouth” was a hilarious, take-no-prisoners romp when it was poking fun at conventional superhero flicks, and a duller indulgence when it was aping them. The second film dutifully follows in those same, blood-stained footsteps. Deadpool 2 is a blast when its title character is making mischief or joking around and more tedious when it’s trying to wring some pathos out of his otherwise irreverent tale.
Posted in Movies, Superhero Movies
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Avengers: Infinity War and the Choice between Love and Victory
Caution: This review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Avengers: Infinity War.
Before Joss Whedon made 2012’s The Avengers and changed the caped crossover game forever, he created an arguably even more influential T.V. show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Despite its gothic overtones, Buffy had the rhythms of a superhero story, with special powers, recurring villains, and big deaths and resurrections. And in one particularly significant season finale [spoilers for a 15-year-old episode of television], Whedon gave his protagonist a choice: save the universe or save someone you love.
Buffy’s conflict had the same sort of stakes as Avengers: Infinity War, even if the contours were a bit different. A mad god was on the loose and threatening to destroy all of creation. To bring that apocalypse to fruition, she needed to use Buffy’s sister who was, through some magical mishegoss, the key to this grand undoing. When that threat reached a crisis point, friend and foe alike advised Buffy to make a hard choice and sacrifice her sister for the good of all mankind. But Buffy, undeterred, decided to find another way, to rally her allies and fight this evil, rather than capitulate to it.
Posted in Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thanos, The Avengers, Trolley Problem
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Krypton 101: A Brief History of Superman’s Home Planet
Andrew joins ace T.V. writer Clint Worthington and Cameron Cuffe, star of the new series Krypton, to discuss the different versions of Superman’s home world on the page and screen over the years.
Black Panther Makes the MCU a Deeper, Richer Place
Black Panther doesn’t have the aura of a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Yes, it features allies and enemies we’ve met in prior outings like Age of Ultron and Civil War. Yes, it has a jovial vibe throughout its cast that buoys heavier moments. And yes, it has the mandatory, climactic third act battle, draped in CGI and stuffed with the usual fanfare.
But Black Panther also stands apart from the rest of Marvel’s offerings on the silver screen. It is unabashedly Afrocentric in its focus and in its approach. It is a forthrightly political film, meditating on the legacy of colonialism, the oppression of people of color around the world, and the push and pull of calls for isolationism and for global activism. Though squeezed into the standard hero movie structure, Black Panther takes its audience to a different space, one untouched by the rest of the world and, in some ways, untouched by the broader cinematic universe the film exists within, which gives the movie its unassuming strength.
