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Tag Archives: Superheroes
The WandaVision Finale Helps Us See the Rocky Road to Healing
The world is on fire. We are still very much in the throes of a pandemic that has cost untold human lives and inflicted even more misery. In the midst of all of this, many of us have retreated to the warmth of T.V.’s comfort food, where laughs are plentiful and problems are solved in thirty minutes or less. It’s a preferable alternative, albeit a temporary one, to the hurts and horrors of the real world, providing a little spiritual getaway in tumultuous times to soothe our pains or block them out entirely.
That’s part of why WandaVision has been so resonant and so successful. It certainly helps that the series was one of the very few big releases at a time when the entertainment industry has been collectively holding its breath. And it also doesn’t hurt that the show represents the first big MCU project in eighteen months.
“On a Very Special Episode” and the Painful Truth at the Heart of WandaVision
Caution: This review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for S01E05 of WandaVision
There’s so much to buzz over at WandaVision’s halfway mark. Quicksilver from the X-Men as Quicksilver from the Avengers! Scarlet Witch’s stand-off with Sword! Pitch-perfect 1980s TV spoofs! Bulletproof hot pants!
But here’s the thing that grabbed me the most while watching this “Very Special Episode” — the sequence where Vision confronts Wanda over what’s happening to both of them. That harrowing scene has some extra oomph because of the special effects at play. There’s something eerie about the two of them arguing over the end credits until they stop. And there’s something scary about the couple rising into the air at the same time they’re raising their voices to one another.
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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The First Episode of Iron Fist Can’t Get Past its Uninteresting Lead in “Snow Gives Way”
Not every main character has to be likable, or stay likable for that matter. Plenty of great works in all genres and mediums feature less-than-admirable individuals at their center. But even if the audience doesn’t like the protagonist, he or she still needs to be someone the viewer wants to spend time with. Especially in the early going, your lead has to be someone the audience wants to get to know better, that they want to see face whatever obstacles are in the offing, whether we’re rooting for them to leap over those obstacles or stumble.
That’s Iron Fist’s biggest problem out of the gate. Main character Danny Rand doesn’t do anything so terrible in the show’s first episode. His knocking out security guards and breaking into someone’s home (which, in fairness, used to be his home) is questionable, but fairly par for the course when it comes to superhero stories, especially those involving long-missing orphans (of which there are a surprising number). But after an hour with him — in an episode that runs 56 minutes and would have been better with half that — there’s no good reason to want to hang out with Danny for another twelve.
Posted in Marvel Television Shows, Television
Tagged Danny Rand, Iron Fist, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Netflix, Superheroes, The Defenders
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Suicide Squad Is a 90s Blockbuster in 2016 Clothing
Caution: This review contains major spoilers for Suicide Squad.
Suicide Squad director David Ayer and the brain trust behind D.C. Comics’ nascent cinematic universe achieved something I didn’t think was possible — they managed to produce a 1990s blockbuster in 2016. With the emergence of late sequels like Jurassic World and Independence Day: Resurgence, perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me. But the refurbished, Day-Glo atmosphere of the third entry in the perpetually stumbling DCEU still managed to catch me off guard. I’d anticipated a copycat of Guardians of the Galaxy and its quippy “bad guys gone good” spirit, but I didn’t imagine that M.O. would be filtered through a lens borrowed from twenty years ago.
Nevertheless, all the elements of a Clinton-era blockbuster are firmly present and accounted for: Will Smith gives a standard Will Smith Performance™, one that could have easily been transplanted from Men in Black or, heaven help us, Wild Wild West. There are dry cool action movie lines aplenty. And there’s a cartoony, almost surreal vibe to the entire film, that makes Suicide Squad seem divorced from the attempts at realism embraced in Batman Begins and closer to the cornucopia of neon camp in Batman Forever.
Posted in Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Batman, Comic Book Movies, David Ayer, DCEU, Harley Quinn, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Movie Reviews, Suicide Squad, Superheroes, The Joker, Viola Davis, Will Smith, Zack Snyder
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: “Chaos Theory” – How We Respond When People Change
People change — some because they want to, some because they have to, and some because of factors beyond their control. It’s a fact of life. But people also have relationships with friends, family, and those closest to them. And as a person changes, so too must those relationships. But navigating how those relationships should evolve in the face of those changes can be extremely difficult, and the more drastic the change the harder it is to figure out. That’s the struggle for Melinda May in “Chaos Theory”.
But it’s also what makes her story, and her relationship with Dr. Andrew Garner compelling here. In Season 2’s “Melinda”, the show implied that May herself was so changed by her experiences in Bahrain that it led to the dissolution of her marriage. She was shaken by the events she witnessed, and these experiences made her a different person, putting a strain on her relationship with Dr. Garner.
Then, as this episode’s flashbacks to Hawaii show, May was finally able to move beyond her past and once again find common ground with the man she loves. The last scene in the episode puts too fine a point on it, but when Andrew takes her picture as she gazes off into the horizon, the implication is that May has finally made some kind of peace with who she is and who she wants to be. Then, right after May finds her equilibrium with the man she loves, he’s forced through his own change, by forces neither of them has any control of. And in “Chaos Theory” those nascent changes drive a new wedge between them. It’s tragic, and it’s not hard to understand why May feels like happiness is something meant to elude her.
Posted in Marvel Television Shows, Television
Tagged Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Episode Reviews, Inhumans, Marvel, Melinda May, Superheroes
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