Hawkeye

Bird With
Christmas
Trimmings

Hawkeye
USA 2021 6 episodes
November - December 2021

Warning: Some spoilers.

Hawkeye, the latest of the Marvel TV series which link into the Marvel Cinematic Universe films (MCU) tells a story of main protagonist Clint Barton, played once again by Jeremy Renner and, in this one, he’s just trying to get back from New York to his family for Christmas Day. However, he runs into trouble when a girl called Kate Bishop, played by Hailee Steinfeld, who has been training most of her life to be just like Hawkeye after seeing him in action in the Battle Of New York from the end of the first The Avengers film (aka Marvel’s Avengers Assemble to us here in the UK), stumbles on a secret underground auction of equipment left over from the decimated Avengers mansion, as it was after the events of Endgame. Namely, his old Ronin suit and retractable sword, which gets her into trouble when gangs related to many that Ronin wiped out mistake her for Ronin and come after her. So Hawkeye (aka Barton) has to stay in New York and keep the police and gangs at bay while the two try to uncover exactly what’s going on with the people behind the auction and how Kate’s mother, played by the always wonderful Vera Farmiga, is mixed up in things.

It’s an okay and mostly entertaining show I thought. It doesn’t feel in any way important to the way the Marvel universe is being reshaped at the moment but it does cram in some other elements which will lead on to other things... and ties up one small loose end.

For example, we have Alaqua Cox playing deaf/amputee character Echo, who is soon to spin off into her own series, apparently. And we have Florence Pugh reprising her role as the new, prime Black Widow, sister of Natasha, trying to make good on her mission to kill Clint Barton leading directly from  the post credit scene in Black Widow (reviewed here). There are also a bunch of extra characters in the form of LARPers... which if memory serves stands for Live Action Role Players (yeah, I think some of my friends used to go in for this) and a one eyed dog who seems to have a terrific build up and seems like its own loose end, due to the way he meets up with Kate and Hawkeye in the TV show. I felt like the dog character had more of a purpose, perhaps, in an earlier script but maybe that part was jettisoned at some point... who knows?

And the chemistry is good between all the actors. It simmers along quite nicely with the odd, fairly well staged action scenes thrown in when they’re needed to pick up the pace... there’s a great scene where Kate and Hawkeye are getting to know each other in a car chase where she is firing off different borrowed trick arrows as they try and escape from a load of thugs. So, yeah, I loved the Christmas feel of the show and it was entertaining enough but not quite hitting on the right amount of mystery to maybe feel like it was somehow more important in the grand scheme of things.

One of the things it does do, however, is act as yet another tie in to the old, non-MCU versions of some of the characters and bring them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I believe what’s happened with Marvel, after both their acquisition by Disney and then with the latter company also swallowing up Fox, is that they now have control over all... well, almost all... of their former characters. So at the end of both Spiderman Far From Home (reviewed here), Venom - Let There Be Carnage (reviewed here) and, I’m assuming (as I haven’t seen them yet), The Eternals and Spider-Man No Way Home, they’ve started integrating and folding characters and actors from previous non-MCU Marvel films into their own films. This is also the case with Hawkeye in that, when the main villain is revealed to be Kingpin (who it’s pretty obvious was going to put in an appearance in this), then he’s played by Vincent D'Onofrio, another great actor who played him in the old Daredevil TV show (which I’ve also not seen... yet). So, with the recent, possibly quite tenuous, news that Hugh Jackman may also be returning as a Marvel character he made famous in the X-Men films, it looks like we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this bizarre, cross franchise interpolation for a few years to come, I would think.

And, I’ve not much more to say about this other than, it kept me entertained and I had a blast with some of the Christmas references in the show. For instance, when Hawkeye is trying to teach Kate how to throw by aiming at the TV set controls, she hits it and it switches on revealing James Stewart running through Bedford Falls in It’s A Wonderful Life (reviewed here). But my best Christmas moments in the show were musical, when two of my favourite Christmas albums, Christmas In The Stars (The Star Wars Christmas album) and the great Vince Guaraldi’s incredible score to A Charlie Brown Christmas, were both featured as backgrounds to a couple of scenes.

And, yeah, a short review but not much to say about Hawkeye, I think. This one feels like a much smaller piece than some of the recent MCU TV shows but it’s not the least entertaining of them, for sure. I’m now wondering, since the plot thread was resolved in such a way that people who only watch the films will not know that it’s even happened, if we’ll ever be seeing Florence Pugh back as Natasha’s sister in the franchise. Because, presumably, people who haven’t seen this will wonder why she is not trying to kill Hawkeye the next time they meet. I guess we’ll see how popular that kind of move is away from the comic books (where it’s done all the time) when the time comes, no doubt. I think people will be confused.

Captain America - Civil War

The Stark Knight Rises

Captain America - Civil War
2016 USA Directed by Anthony & Joe Russo.
UK cinema release print.

Okay... trying to make this one spoiler free is hard because I can’t talk about specific things which are significant firsts in the cinematic iteration of the Marvel Universe but... I’ll give it a go.

First up, though, I’d like to throw up the familiar caveat on this one that I’ve never read the Civil War storyline in the comics. I think that’s only about ten years old and, frankly, most of the Marvel comics I’ve read date from the very late 1930s (October 1939) through to the 1980s. That being said, my understanding is that this movie is not exactly an adaptation of that storyline anyway. It would need a heck of a lot more characters from the Marvel Universe in it, for example, and the company producing this film doesn’t have the rights to use all of them. So any fans of the comic book which this is ‘inspired by’ may well be a bit angry at the way it’s been approached, is my understanding.

I’m feeling a little conflicted in reviewing this one, to be honest, because my recent reviews of Avengers - Age of Ultron (reviewed by me here) and Ant Man (reviewed by me here) were not all that enthusiastic about the product but I did find that on subsequent viewings I enjoyed them a heck of a lot more and I think, maybe, my brain needs more than one showing to process what’s going on in these and be able to appreciate the finer points of them. So, although I don’t exactly feel like going back for a repeat viewing of this one right now, I won’t be too hard on it here. Although I wasn’t exactly blown away by it, I can tell you that much.

That being said, Captain America - Civil War is far from being a terrible movie and, to be honest, any problems I have with it probably stem from the fact that I was expecting a really great movie and... it really isn’t. What it is, however, is a very good superhero movie which takes the subject seriously, possibly a little too seriously at some points, and therefore doesn’t let the side down when it comes to both credibility in its approach to the sci-fi/fantasy elements and it support and progression of the overall story arc that is unfolding in what has now become known, it seems, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU) in terms of the Phase One, Phase Two and Phase Three movies.

This film deals with a serious issue which is the United Nations trying to put a stop to the vigilante attitude of the super beings who have made themselves the unofficial police of the world, and the thin line between saving as many lives as possible or waiting for a committee to make decisions before you go out and do that... more often than not, a decision which is going to be made way too late to save the lives that needed it. So it’s about Law Vs Justice/doing the right thing with Iron Man, The Vision, Black Widow, Black Panther, War Machine and Spider-Man being hastily recruited to stand for the Law... while Captain America, The Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Ant-Man and, by default, The Winter Soldier... are on the side of the latter. I’d have to say my personal choice would be for doing the right thing over the Law any day but I can appreciate that some strange individuals might not see it the same way. I think the film kinda takes that tack too, actually, because the issue is quickly ignored by Iron Man when the true villain of the movie is revealed (or one of them... I think they’re holding back on revealing the motivations of a couple of characters who are in this movie, as yet).

Actually, the main issue which is the heart of the film, the ‘vigilante mentality’, is something I’ve only personally experienced in comics from DC, in Watchmen (which had a pretty sound movie version) and The Dark Knight Returns (maybe one day somebody will be brave enough to greenlight a movie version of that) so I was surprised that the dialogue and emotional beats of this movie were so well done in the Marvel Universe. And its these quieter scenes which are the best ones of this movie. A lot is revealed in the sub-plot which is actually behind the scenes on the big issue in this film... although I was surprised that it wasn’t spelled out here (maybe they’re waiting for a twist revelation later on down the line). However, we see certain life defining events from the history of one of the Marvel movies’ best loved characters and how it all impacts on modern day events. We also have a nice little scene with a CGI recreation (presumably) of a young version of one of the actors as he shares screen time with his parents... which was a nice touch.

Other nice continuity things are the second appearance of William Hurt as Thaddeus Ross, after his original appearance in The Incredible Hulk. I think he might well be set up as a super villain at some point in these films... and maybe they’ll go with the comics and he’ll eventually become Red Hulk, who knows? This, along with numerous references and a certain kind of closure on one of the characters make for some compelling viewing.

However, it’ the action scenes which, in some cases (not all), suffer quite a bit. There’s lots of hand held, in your face stuff with a quite aggressive editing style but, in certain scenes, there was way too much to take in and the editing was such that, at some points, I was completely unsure of what was going on and what I was looking at. Which is a shame because I think the action scenes on these films are often big draws. And, also, although there was a fair amount of humour in the movie, I felt that it was just a little too sobering and somber as a whole. Granted, the issues being explored in both the converging plots don’t exactly allow for a lot of laughs but I think the scripting for this was... well... it wasn’t having a lot of fun, put it that way.

Black Panther was a lot more successful as a character than I thought he would be, although I did struggle to understand him a lot of the time... the accent was just getting in the way too much for me, I found. That being said, although I’m not particularly looking forward to it, I suspect the idea of giving him a stand alone movie may not be doomed to failure, as I at first thought, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens on that one.

Spider-Man, on the other hand, left me quite torn. All the cast regulars on this... Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr and all the rest of them, are all absolutely brilliant in their roles, as you would expect, As is Daniel Brühl as, a version, of Baron Zemo. He’s always good to watch. Martin Freeman seems completely underused and has a ridiculous American accent but... I think his role hints at more to follow so... maybe this is just a set up. And Tom Holland’s new version of Peter Parker/Spider-Man is equally at home in the mix, displaying great chemistry with the other actors and working well in the situations he finds himself in. He’s great in the role but unfortunately, to my mind at least, that role is not The Amazing Spider-Man.

That is to say, the way this new version is written seems a little too at odds with the character as it was in the early 1960s and, for some reason, the writers seemed to have replaced humourous wise cracks with inquisitive geekiness. Also, as great as Tom Holland is in this, he’s the first version of Peter Parker in cinema that, really, doesn’t look like any of the comic book versions of Peter Parker that I’ve known through the years. Still, hopefully they’re still finding their feet with the character and the writing will evolve a little in his next cinematic outing. That being said, they do introduce a concept in one scene which is something which was very much used in those early days of the comic book and which, I believe, is the first time it’s been used in a cinema version of the character... I won’t say too much about that but, stick around for the post credits scene folks. There are two again on this movie... one in the middle of the end credits and one right at the end.

My other main complaint on this one was Henry Jackman’s score. It’s fine and does what it needs to do and... it’s probably a good stand alone listen too. However, it also highlights one of the continuing failures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe... that of a cohesive musical support via leitmotif. Yeah, I know, different artists and different people doing the inking might be a nice comic book analogy you could use to justify the use of music in these but, honestly, that really doesn’t cut it with me. I thought the last few Brian Tyler scores for the series had some nice work in trying to bring everything under one banner, especially his score with Danny Elfman for Avengers - Age Of Ultron, which I thought really did a lot to weave some of the recent movie’s musical identities together. In this one though, unless I missed, it, there are no straight quotes of the Avengers or Iron Man sub themes and I felt this movie really needed it. As the film progressed, I was more and more missing the familiar musical glue which would have brought me closer to the characters emotionally through the emphasis of their themes but... unless it was buried under the sound mix (and that’s entirely possible), I wasn’t aware of anything that relevant happening with the scoring on this one. And that’s a great shame... it’s a bit of a step backwards, for Marvel, I think. The music to these (and all) movies is pretty important and I wish the producers at Marvel would finally start to take the musical contribution a little more seriously.

Other than all that, though, it’s a fine film. Not great but, as I said, one which will probably get better and have more resonance on subsequent viewings, especially by the time the Avengers Infinity Wars films have both hit the screens. Not quite a classic Marvel movie and not in my top five of this series but, still, a nice time at the cinema. If you’re already into Marvel films then you’ll know you won’t want to miss this one anyway but, to be honest, if you’re not into these films and the way they interlock, you might find yourself having a harder task jumping into them blindly without having seen the previous films, at this stage in the game. Still, looking forward to the next one in the series, Doctor Strange, which should be out in cinemas in the Autumn. That should bring in a whole new element to these films, that’s for sure.

The Avengers

Some Assembly Required

The Avengers 

aka Marvel Avengers Assemble

(aka Iron Man 4, The Incredible Hulk 2, 

Thor 2, Captain America 2)

US  2012

Directed by Joss Whedon

Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: There are going to be some pretty strong spoilers 

assembling themselves in this review... don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Hmmm... Maybe I was setting myself up for something of a fall but when the good word of mouth buzz about the new movie of “Earths Mightiest Superheroes” (as the tag line on the comics always used to read back when I were a lad and directly quoted by Rob Downey Jr in this movie) hit the internet, I was really expecting to like this film a lot more than I actually did. Don’t get me wrong... it’s not a terrible movie by any means and it’s an incredible task to be able to keep this many balls in the air in terms of plot points and multiple characters who all have to be major factors in this kind of film... it just fell a little short of my expectations and disappointed me a fair bit. This is usually something I try not to let happen... have expectations that a film will actually be quite good, that is. I always try to keep my expectations as low as possible to avoid this kind of disappointment but I guess the long slow tease over the last 4 years where The Avengers has been less than covertly promoted in various "slot in" sequences in 5 other films has artificially built up my expectations somewhat. This is, after all, a film which is a sequel to 4 other superhero franchises, where four of this particular team come from.

Maybe that’s my problem with it. All of those four characters - The Invincible Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor and... The... um... and Captain America -  have to have some serious screen time to keep their respective fans happy and, of course, other members of the team (Black Widow who debuted in Iron Man 2 and Hawkeye who made his first on screen appearance in Thor) also need equal amounts of screen time... not to mention Loki and the other regular characters who are returning from some of the previous films... Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, Doctor Selvig and Pepper Potts (regrettably, Natalie Portman’s character is referred to only in the context of a holographic photo). It’s an almost impossible task to cram all those characters into a movie that really, in my opinion, could have done with about three quarters of a hour of judicious editing down, and still have everything flowing the way a good story does... if story is what you’re after.

Truth be told, because of some of this, it’s a movie which does, in places, become a little dull and jaded around the edges without concentrating on any one thing for too long. It’s certainly weatherable because, in spite of all of this, there are some really great, kick ass moments in this movie, but I did find myself clock watching a little before the end of the movie, which is a little unfortunate.

Also, I thought there was a certain inequality in terms of character arc on this one. Thor, for example, appeared almost from nowhere and I still don’t know how he managed to get back to earth after the end of the last movie, when the rainbow bridge from Asgard to Earth was destroyed. Did I miss the explanation somehow through all the visual noise in this movie? Maybe so. 

I thought Captain America, Nick Fury and Hawkeye had a little less progression of character in this one too. Apparently the original three hour cut of this had a lot more of Captain America in it, including one sequence I would have really liked to have seen and which I would have expected to give the character a little more depth. His reunion with his 40s sweetheart from the previous movie (presumably as a very old woman now) was sadly left on the cutting room floor for the theatrical release but I suspect they’ll stick it out on BluRay when the time comes (not that I’m going to be bullied into buying a BluRay player just for this release!).

And to be fair to the Cap, he did get the best line in the movie. Two words when he was giving orders to his superhero army at the final battle of the movie. Just a quick order to a certain green-skinned goliath who more than fulfils this order... “Hulk... Smash!”

On the other hand... some of the main protagonists in the movie did get a much better character arc and sense of progression and, to be fair to the movie, were handled much better...

Black Widow is introduced in what amounts to a remake of the “tied-to-a-chair-fight” in the first Charlie’s Angels movie. Despite all this, the character manages to demonstrate her techniques of prizing the truth from people not once, but twice, over the course of the movie and her back story is fleshed out as something more like the Black Widow I used to know as a lad growing up in the early seventies as opposed to the travesty of the character as she appeared to be in Iron Man 2. As usual, however, Scarlett Johanssen does a pretty good job in the role.

Agent Coulson, although not exactly a major player but certainly a big series regular, is fleshed out a little more and makes the ultimate sacrifice in this movie by dying at the hand of Loki as he fights back (well, hey, look... when I say there are going to be spoilers in a review there’s going to be spoilers... you were duly warned). Perhaps not a major character for some but certainly he has a lot more screen presence than Loki, who is as dull and flat and useless as he was in Thor. Honestly, I don’t understand why people like this character so much because the guy playing him seems to have virtually zero screen presence... what’s up with that?

Tony Stark was pretty great in this. Not only coming up with ways to save the world and also a new way to put his suit on (as you just knew he would) but also, finally answering the big question which has kinda plagued the character since his inception as a guy wearing armour... is he really a hero? Captain America questions Stark’s ability to make a sacrifice for a cause and cites this quality as a true mark of a hero. In the final battle sequence Stark sacrifices himself for the planet and proves himself a hero (and in this sense, man of the match) but, of course, ends up surviving that sacrifice... since we already know Iron Man 3 (aka Iron Man 5 in my book) is due up for shooting soon. Plus we all knew by this point that we hadn’t seen the shot of Hulk catching him yet from the trailer.

And I’m saving the best character for last because, without him, this movie would not have got anything but a big thumbs down from me...

Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk, as played by Mark Ruffalo (I guess nobody wanted to work with Ed Norton again... I hear he’s difficult on set?) really comes through and finally does the character some justice in this movie. I’ve always liked Mark Ruffalo as an actor anyway (seriously check him out in My Life Without Me and In The Cut) but a combination of his acting with some “not half bad” dialogue writing for the character (the original TV Hulk Lou Ferringo does the voice for Hulk on this one but Ruffalo did all the motion capture himself and the CGI Hulk’s features are obviously modelled after Ruffalo) really works wonders and the character positively shines in this one. He plays Banner as a much more confident, in control, kind of person... one who has come to terms with his lot in life and who is at peace with what is obviously a constant raging anger within him (he lets slip near the end that his secret is to be constantly angry all the time, which helps him tame the beast I guess). 

When he’s the Hulk, too, he gets three of the most attention grabbing and “physically” witty scenes in the entire movie. The first is when he and Thor (who he kinda dislikes after a fight with him earlier in the film) take out a load of aliens and they both stand triumphant... there’s some brilliant CGI comic timing as the Hulk does a little side punch into Thor’s head which sends him flying off screen. It’s a bit like a Ren & Stimpy cartoon.

The second standout Hulk moment is where the “evil” Loki starts “monologuing” in front of him about how humans are pathetic and they should all neal to him because he’s a God. Right in the middle of his speech he is interrupted by the Hulk picking him up and battering him all over the place like he’s a limp rag doll. I couldn’t hear Hulk's words to him as he walked off and left him smashed on the ground because the audience was laughing so hard.

The third wicked Hulkout moment is the bit where Iron Man is unconscious, presumed dead. Everyone is all sad and weeping and then Hulk just lets out a big roar right by his face and he wakes up! This was pretty funny.

I really wanted this movie to be more than the sum of it’s parts, especially as some of those parts were really shiny. Alas, I feel The Avengers is less the movie it possibly could have been. That being said... there’s plenty for both comic book afficionados and superhero fans to get their teeth into in this one. Lots of geeky references to old comics but I don’t want to give away too many of them (and I’m still trying to process them all) but I could almost swear there were even a few panels from the legendary four issue mini series Marvels recreated in this one. It’s been over a decade since I read that and the issues aren’t anywhere I could easily get ahold of them for this review (boxes behind boxes behind boxes) but it would be great if somebody reading this could tell me if the waitress looking at the battle from the diner window and her subsequent TV interview footage were taken from this tome. There’s a even an ALIEN reference when Banner is greeted by veteran character actor Harry Dean Stanton (wearing his trademark hat from ALIEN and Paris, Texas) and they get into a conversation about... well... aliens. That was pretty good to see. I would say, however, that the inevitable Stan Lee cameo, which I was waiting for all the film and which didn’t surface until a few minutes before the end, was a little lacking in originality in this one. Probably his worst cameo to date.

Okay so, as you can tell right now, I didn’t love The Avengers but neither did I hate it. Of the six Marvel movies actually made by Marvel Studios themselves so far, I’d say it was my third favourite... far behind the first Iron Man movie and the Thor movie in terms of both quality and entertainment value and into the okay but not so hot status of the other three Marvel Studios movie... Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk and Captain America: The First Avenger. However, like I said before, if you’re into comics and/or superhero movies, you’re really not going to want to miss this one... and if you’re a fan of The Hulk, well this is his best movie. Have a good time with it if you can.