Loki Season 2

Loki Cokey

Loki Season 2
USA 2023
Marvel/Disney
6 episodes 

Okay, so I’ve finally caught up with Loki Series Two and the good news is... it’s markedly better than the first series. It might be because all of the episodes here are directed by the great Benson and Moorhead but, given the absolute state of Disney’s Marvel TV shows (not to mention the Star Wars franchise they’re also currently ruining), it counts for a lot, I think, that this follow up series is any good at all.

Once again, this one stars Tom Hiddleston, reprising his role as the multiversal variant of Loki who split off from the regular timeline in Avengers Endgame (reviewed here) and, also returning are most of his co-stars. These include the brilliant Sophia Di Martini as a female variant Loki, Owen Wilson as Mobius, Wunmi Musaku and Gugu Mbatha-Raw and... Jonathan Majors as ‘the big bad’. We also have a new regular, the delightful time scientist OB (aka Ourouboris) played by legendary actor Ke Huy Quan… aka a grown up Short Round from Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, who also won an Oscar last year for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (reviewed here).

Now, if you remember my review of the first series of Loki (reviewed here), you will remember I said it had one weakness which was to introduce or re-enforce Jonathan Majors (from Ant-Man And The Wasp - Quantumania, reviewed here) as the ultimate threat to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so all the episodes seemed ultimately to play second fiddle to that idea. And the post credits on one of the Marvel movies featuring that actor along with Loki and Mobius, I forget which one now, dovetails into an episode here.

Well, there’s a similar weak point here. Now that Majors has been found guilty of spousal abuse and effectively cancelled, it’s pretty clear that he can no longer go on to be the future lead villain of what, I assume would be, a future Avengers movie. So, although Majors is in this a lot, mostly playing a much nicer template variant named after the original comics company that became Marvel… Timely… this series is very much involved in a single story arc to eradicate him as the big bad of the future, effectively writing him out of any future Marvel movies and TV projects. So the whole of the series pretty much just serves this resolution… albeit in the most twisted way imaginable.

That being said, it’s certainly a very fun and fast paced series despite, like the first one, not having many action sequences… even less I would say. But it doesn’t matter because it’s lightning fast and though a lot of it is expository dialogue, most of which I didn’t understand a word of by the final episode, it never gets dull and the performances of the high calibre actors involved certainly carries it. Also, although I clearly should have watched this before going to see Deadpool And Wolverine (reviewed here), it didn’t really matter that it includes one of the lead characters in a position of Time Variance Agency authority, which she hasn’t yet attained here.

Ultimately, then, I really enjoyed this second series of Loki way more than the first and, though I’m sure it’s almost certain that Loki himself will return (in films for sure and maybe even a third series), this one doesn’t leave things on a cliff hanger… it has a definitive ending. Which is a bit unusual for modern Marvel I must say. And no episode here has any kind of post credits sequence attached to it… so I am grateful to latch onto those small mercies while I can.

Kraven The Hunter

Join Kraven’s 
Hew Ground

Kraven The Hunter
UK/Iceland/Canada/USA 2024
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Columbia UK Blu Ray

Warning: This one has all the spoilers.

I think the suits in Hollywood are having trouble scratching their heads and wondering why their movie version of Kraven The Hunter failed. Well, pandemic aside, I saw pretty much every Marvel movie at the cinema whether I wanted to or not because I knew I’d really need to get a review of it up on my blog... and even I didn’t manage to catch this movie at the cinema. And the answer to why it failed at the box office is three fold and simple... and I say this because, now I’ve finally caught up to it (authenticity to the characters aside) it’s actually a pretty good movie. 

Okay, this movie failed because: Firstly it was following on from two other Columbia branded Marvel movies in the same year, the not well received Madame Web (reviewed here) and the okay but worst in the series Venom - The Last Dance (reviewed here)... which didn’t do it much favours, they should have maybe left an eight month gap between films. Secondly, the trailers for this thing looked terrible and, I’m pretty sure people my age, who remember the character from the 1960s and 70s, were a little baffled as to how a major villain from The Amazing Spider-Man comic was a) in a movie without Spider-Man and b) being portrayed as some kind of anti-hero rather than the bad guy he always was... and perhaps the comic character changed in the 90s or after but, yeah, this is not the Kraven I know (the Kraven I knew best was from the time when he joined The Sinister Six and also from the model kit I had as a kid, of Spider-Man perched on a wooden bannister, webbing a fallen Kraven on the floor). 

And even then, I would still have been up for catching this thing at the cinema and, I certainly planned to... but it was released mid-December 2024 and, I’m sorry, studio bosses need to realise that in the lead up to Christmas, when people are still buying and wrapping presents, not to mention writing and sending cards... and in the downtime just after when people are seeing friends and family... nope, people are not going to be interested in trying to plan their life around the stupidly inappropriate times these things are being shown at in the cinema. So, yeah, I believe that’s why this film failed and made such a loss for the company. 

Which is a shame because, as I said, it’s not a bad movie.

The film starts off  really strongly with Kraven (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) infiltrating a maximum security prison in order to kill the leader of a drugs/weapons cartel. After escaping we flash back to his childhood, with his brother and his dad (played by Russell Crowe) where we get his origin... which is contentious. In the comics he was just a relatively strong guy who was an expert hunter (which is why J. Jonah Jameson originally hired him to hunt Spider-Man) but, in this version of the story he’s given a potion to heal his wounds while simultaneously having the blood of a lion enter his system... all of which brings him back to life and gives him superhuman powers (oh, right, Marvel science then). Again, maybe this origin was retrofitted into the comics at some point but, if it was, I’m unaware of it. 

And then he becomes a kind of assassin who goes around taking out all the bad guys and, annually, checking in on his brother whom he deserted when they were kids. And then, as a result of him killing the guy at the start of the film, the global gangs are in a power struggle which also includes Kraven’s gang boss dad and results in his brother getting kidnapped.

And... it’s mostly pretty good. I’m saying that again because I’m going to talk about the bad stuff now and I don’t really want it to overshadow the positive stuff.

The thing is, there’s a woman who is Kraven’s pilot and we only see her from behind near the start of the movie and then, later, she’s referenced as she gives his leading lady, Calypso (played by Ariana DeBose) a lift to the jungle to meet up with him. So she’s obviously being kept in the shadows so she can be revealed as somebody important from the Marvel universe later in the movie... but that doesn’t happen. She just vanishes from the movie with no more mention of her (and we never get to see her face properly). So... I know this film had a somewhat troubled production and had to have some reshoots so, I’m wondering now if this big reveal was maybe cut to save for a later, never to be made sequel?

Secondly, the main villain here is The Rhino... another Spider-Man villain in a movie where the web head is nowhere to be seen. Okay, in the comics this was just a big guy in a Rhino onesy and, that would have suited me fine. Here, he’s just someone who can transform himself into a were-rhino when he taps into certain drugs. It all looks pretty awful guys. 

Thirdly... and I saw this coming a mile off because his talent for voice mimicry is highlighted throughout the movie.... Kraven’s brother becomes a third Spider-Man villain, The Chameleon, at the end of the film. And he does it by, in a completely dumbfounding and unexplained fashion, transforming into different people when required. I mean, literally morphing into them at will. What nonsense! In the comics he was a guy with a metal head who would slip realistic, latex masks over his noggin and mimic their voices to become them. Which sounds bad, I know but, heck, Tom Cruise and co have been doing that in nearly every Mission Impossible movie made so, yeah, they could have gotten away with it here too. And also, because it’s obviously planned for a potential sequel (again, this looks like it will never happen) then it’s just treated as a throwaway scene too... it doesn’t really work, in all honesty. 

And that’s me pretty much done with Kraven The Hunter. An actually pretty good film, despite those negatives and, I have to say I had a pretty good time with most of it. If you are a fan of action movies with a fair amount of violence and a little bit of goriness, then it’s worth giving a go. But I don’t think the franchise is going anywhere after this one, alas. 

Thunderbolts*

The Mild Bunch

Thunderbolts*
Directed by Jake Schreier
USA 2025
Marvel Disney
UK Cinema Release Print - IMAX version

Warning: Yeah, there’s some spoilerage here... big one at the end.

Thunderbolts* is the final part of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic universe and it’s almost but, not quite, a good film too. This one involves straggling characters from previous films and TV shows coming together to form a ‘rag tag’ group of C-list Marvels going up against a larger power and, ultimately, winning the day... in a fashion.

So we have the brilliant Florence Pugh being interesting as ex-Black Widow Yelena (sister of Natasha), David Harbour returning as her father, the hilarious Red Guardian, Sebastian Stan back as main staple character Bucky Barnes (still a million miles away from the Bucky I know from the comics but a pretty good character and actor, nonetheless), Wyatt Russell (son of Kurt) as failed Captain America substitute gone rogue American Agent, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster (also from Black Widow, reviewed here and Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr (from Ant-Man And The Wasp, reviewed here). All working for and against (it gets blurry) the MCU TV and movie character Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

And I’m telling you now, don’t get too attached to these characters until half an hour has passed because the one I was most interested in seeing developed as a character gets killed very early in the film (I won’t reveal who here, though)*. We also have, spoiler alert, Lewis Pullman playing Bob (aka The Sentry and The Void)... I’ve not read any of the comics of this character so can’t tell you if he’s a good version of him or not.

What I can tell you is that I was really engaged with this movie and having a good time for the first three quarters... which involved setting up the characters, trapping them all in an armoured bunker and following them as they escape and make their way back to New York for a final reckoning. Alas, the last quarter of the movie seemed pretty dire to me and really took the wind out of my sails. As soon as they’re back in New York, things got both ridiculous and dull. For me anyway.

So, I didn’t quite like this as much as the last Marvel movie, Captain America - Brave New World (reviewed here) but I do like the characters better. Although, it has to be said, the dialogue writing on this  was not a patch on any of their previous appearances.

There are a couple of problems with it.

For instance, the film starts out with Florence Pugh jumping off the second tallest building in the world and she fought to do this sequence for real herself (pulling a page from Tom Cruise’s book) and, yeah, she really does it. The down side is that I’m telling you this because, if you didn’t know this, you wouldn’t have been able to tell. It looks like a stunt double doing it due to the way it’s cut and lack of close ups on her face. If you’re going to throw your lead actress off such a tall building for a movie, then you might as well shoot it to make it recognisable as such, no?

Another thing is that, while it has a nice gritty aesthetic for the majority of the movie, there’s a certain point... a big battle scene where we first meet The Sentry in his ridiculous costume... where the aesthetic is just clashing with the action on screen. The result was... and to be fair I would have thought of this no matter how the rest of the movie was filmed... I sat there in the cinema thinking, for a good few minutes, that I was watching Superman IV - The Quest For Peace. Honestly, The Sentry to me just looked like Nuclear Man from that unfortunate movie. It popped me right out of the film and I had a hard time climbing back into it. It also didn’t help that the resolution of the film reminded me of Ang Lee’s muddled ending of Hulk. It’s all about fighting your inner demons folks, right? A more philosophically based internal battle was not the conclusion this movie needed. At least, I didn’t think it worked that well.

Now, one of the things the trailers and even the IMAX countdown opening were pushing was the next movie in the MCU (which comes out in a couple of months)... and there are two post credits scenes in this one. All I’m saying is, if you want to be surprised by the second one then, seriously, don’t look at the music credits on this movie (it’s a complete spoiler). What it also does, in my opinion, is take the wind out of the sails of the reveal of the time period of the next movie by throwing out the term ‘interdimensional’. I mean, I expected the next movie would be a multiverse movie anyway (and the trailers look terrible) but this is pretty much confirmed here.

Finally, you’ll notice that the title of Thunderbolts* has an asterisk on it. Now I’m sure there must have been some people wondering what this means but, I’m sure there must have been as many people thinking... “no, please don’t do the obvious here because this would be such bad news for the franchise". But, yes, they totally go there with the whole asterisk thing and, well, it kind of takes away hope for decent screen time for certain returning characters in future installments, in a way. All I’m saying is... I'm guessing Purdey and Gambit will not be turning up in the future of the franchise (and if you’re British you’ll probably know exactly what I’m saying here).

And that concludes my review of Thunderbolts*. Starts off good, continues that way for a while... has a terrible last act. But it was nice seeing Yelena and Red Guardian again... although there seems to be no explanation for the absence of Rachel Weisz here (did I miss something in a TV show?).

*Although it’s not stopped the marketing team from adding that character into a scene that doesn’t include said person for some of the publicity shots... see above.

Madame Web

Uncle Ben’s
Responsibility

Madame Web
Directed by S.J. Clarkson
USA/Canada
2024 Sony/Columbia
UK Cinema Print

Warning: Some spoilers, if you care enough.

Hmm... okay, Madame Web is the first of three Sony films released this year as part of their extended Spider-Man universe. You would think that now they have absconded again with the rights to the character, that they would, at least, feature Spider-Man in these three stories but... oh no. Or rather, actually, yes kinda in this one but... okay I’ll get to that in a minute. The film stars Dakota Johnson as the titular character (although she’s never once referred to as that in the film... which makes total sense when you see the movie) and, due to shenanigans involving her birth and special powers she doesn’t realise she had (like Diana in the first Wonder Woman movie), she is trying to protect three ‘teenage’ girls from the movie’s main villain, who sees future versions of them killing him at some unspecified point. When I say teenage... Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor and Sydney Sweeney are all in their twenties, the latter only a few ears away from 30 but, still, it’s Hollywoodland and they’re all supposed to be between about 16-18, it seems to me.

Anyhow... the movie itself has got some of the worst reviews (bearing in mind it wasn’t even screened for critics) I’ve heard for a Marvel related movie but, I have to say, though it’s inferior to almost any of the MCU branded Marvel films, it’s actually not the disaster that people are reporting it to be. Saying that though, I can totally see why it has got that reaction because the structure of the movie promises way more than it gives in terms of what the content of the film is actually going to be... the people making this weren’t that smart not to realise what they did, I think.

So, yeah, Johnson’s character is someone who gets brief glimpses of the very near future, like a very strong deja vu, so she can change things just before they are supposed to happen. So the director will sometimes use a big sound (like a champagne cork being pulled) or sometimes, quite cleverly, a distinctive camera movement, to usher in a replay of the events as they are about to repeat. And although it’s an obvious concoction the first time she does it, it is done pretty well throughout and the visual and audio shorthand built on those key aspects does the job very well.

You also have a couple of good performances, especially Sydney Sweeney (who was so brilliant in last year’s Reality, reviewed here), who really does well with facial expressions and so on to make her ‘bizarrely teen’ teenager come to life in quite sophisticated ways. However, although there are some good and likeable performances here, the structure of the film undermines a lot of the work being done.

Here’s the thing, all the stuff in the trailers where the three girls are in costume and using their spider powers are... just seen as brief, visions of the future in the heads of both the title character and the villain. So there are maybe three brief moments, maybe totalling less than a minute and a half, where you see the girls in costume, at some undetermined future date. In fact, whatever superpowers the three ‘teens’ do acquire... they don’t get them in this movie. It’s for some ‘future’ movie which, I’m guessing, might not even get made... and with Dakota Johnson jokingly downplaying the movie when she’s supposed to be promoting it, I’m guessing the four leads would have to be locked into contracts before they return to those characters. Which may well be the case actually but, I’m guessing this movie won’t be doing the numbers enough to make the next film worth making. This is obviously, like the up and coming Venom 3 and Kraven The Hunter movies, supposed to be leading to the Sinister Six, which started happening (again, it’s Sony’s second lead in after the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies) in Morbius (reviewed here)... when Morbius and Michael Keaton’s Vulture character met at the post-credits on that film. But, if the other two perform badly (I suspect Venom will do well but I can’t see the new Kraven doing much better than Morbius), then that may still not happen.

To that end though, there are some really bizarre references to the Spider-Man universe in this film... asides from the Spider powered natives in the Amazon plus the main villain all dressing pretty similarly to Spider-Man. The thing is, though, Sony are making references and shouting them out while simultaneously keeping a lid on things a little with their linking materials. If you are a Spider-Man fan and are not distracted by the visuals, you’ll ‘get’ who a couple of the characters are supposed to be... and one of them is teased but not named, even though fans will know exactly who he is.

The main action of the movie takes place in 2003 and I couldn’t figure out why they did this. Until Dakota Johnson’s character Cassie, a paramedic, calls her partner by name. He’s... drum roll... Ben Parker. Yeah, that’s right... future Uncle Ben. And the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ line, which has been a core Spider-Man ingredient since his first comic book appearance in 1962, is dangled about like crazy in slightly reworded terms. And, that’s not all... Ben’s sister is pregnant and the girls are trying to protect her so she can give birth at the end of the movie. Casual viewers won’t twig it because he’s not named (despite an earlier ‘guess the name of the baby’ scene calling attention to it in the most obvious manner) but by the end of the film she gives birth to Peter Parker... aka Spider-Man. I guess the actor who was/is supposed to be playing that role in ‘films to come’ for Sony is not yet decided, is my guess. Or... you know... not yet given a big enough pay hike to return to that role.

But the biggest problem with the film, as I eluded to earlier, is the fact that it keeps telegraphing the gals suiting up and being super heroes... and so this is what the audience is expecting to happen at some point in the movie. So many people may not be aware that the climactic action scene is exactly that until it's over, I’m guessing, because they are waiting for the superhero element to come into play. It never does and that’s why I suspect we’ve had the huge negative reviews on this. It’s just an overly complicated set up for a film to come (with a poor ending, it has to be said). But, like I said, it’s not a terrible movie... just an unsatisfying one so, yeah, I can totally understand why it’s getting the word-of-mouth that it has. Madame Web is not a crowd pleaser but it’s also not as bad as, say, Morbius was so... there’s that. I had an okay time with it... I’d probably watch it again. Just not anytime soon. Maybe worth watching to see how it locks into the next few Sony Spider-movies perhaps but, there’s absolutely no post-credits scene on this one so, something tells me that rug may have already been pulled.

My 2500th Blog Post

 

Where Are All
The Heroes?

2500th Blog

For my 2500th Blog Post I thought I’d have a look at the current cinematic battleground for two competing comic book companies, Marvel and DC... giving my views on just what is happening with these two behemoth’s in 2024. And I don’t mean specifically movies based on comic books (which can be a whole other thing)... I mean super hero movies, which are the dominant strand of that genre, to be sure.

So... is superhero fatigue really setting in?

I know it did for some people around about seven years ago, when regular Marvel/DC consuming friends and acquaintances I know just stopped going to see either company’s movies. I am, I guess, a hanger on but, I think it’s about to get really interesting sometime next year. So, musicals and westerns are two genres I can think of off-hand which were huge with cinema audiences at one stage but, though they’re still occasionally made, the box office for these things dropped considerably (some decades ago) and getting one greenlit in either category seems like the exception to the rule these days.

Now, here’s the thing... Marvel and DC haven’t got a lot going on this year. DC are busy turning their back on all the good work they’ve been doing for the last decade or so by rebooting the franchise completely (a foolish decision in my humble opinion), sometime for a 2025 Superman movie to kick it all off again. So that means the only film they have coming, in October of this year (at time of writing) is the stand alone, non DC universe sequel Joker - Folie à Deux. Marvel are kind of in a similar situation in that they have only one pure Marvel Cinematic Universe movie coming up this year, a sequel to two non-MCU movies... namely Deadpool 3. Now, there are also three of Sony’s sideways Marvel spin offs coming in 2024 but they’re all based on supporting characters from another character’s comics (all of them being Spider-Man, in this case) and so they’re a) not closely associated with the MCU brand of Marvel and b) not exactly top tier characters... so we have movies of Madame Web, Kraven The Hunter (why, for goodness sake, do this classic Spider-Man villain without Spider-Man?) and, what may possibly be the only successful one of the lot... Venom 3.

And none of those are guaranteed successes (even Deadpool 3, if they handle it badly). Now, the studios are making it known (probably with a degree of exaggeration) that the writer and actor strikes affected their plans badly but... I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I think what’s going on is bad box office. Off the top of my head, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 (reviewed here) was the only superhero movie that made any real money (enough to be considered a strong success to the company, at least). Other live action Marvel and DC movies of 2023 such as Shazam - Fury Of The Gods (reviewed here), Ant Man And The Wasp - Quantumania (reviewed here), The Flash (reviewed here), The Marvels (reviewed here), Blue Beetle (reviewed here) and Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom (reviewed here)... were all big failures from what I can make out.

But hold on a minute... I say big failures but I’m talking about money because, as far as I’m concerned, we got some of the most interesting superhero movies of the lot last year. I mean, okay, The Flash and Quantumania were pretty dire but, all of those other ones I mentioned, actually had a lot going for them (very surprisingly, in the case of Blue Beetle) but, it doesn’t matter because most of them got a hard, critical mauling (not from me) and did terrible business (again, relative to the greedy expectations of the companies bankrolling them, at least).

So I’m guessing the lesson learned by these two giant corporations is... time for a soft reboot (or in DC’s case, a hard reboot, it would seem) to try and get things back on track. After all, quality movies do not make for quality box office and, in the case of the 2023 slate of superhero movies... that certainly was true. So cinematically, 2024 is going to feel very strange and desolate. I’m guessing there will be a lot more bigger budget horror movies stepping up to fill that superhero void and I’m guessing that these will also start to receive mixed to negative reviews before long (horror movies definitely seem to have a cyclic nature in terms of their box office success from decade to decade... usually when the world governments are having some kind of crisis, which means their box office foothold has been particularly strong for a while now).

Are we, then, finally reaching the end of an era for the superhero genre? The fatigue that keeps getting predicted? Well, I hope not but then again, in the period between the 1930s to the mid 1960s, I bet people thought westerns and musicals would be popular forever. So who can say just how things will roll but, beware, things like physical media releases could be in jeopardy too if these superhero movies continue to fail and studio heads (as they often do) see this as a sign of certain revenue streams failing because of the quality of the product (as opposed to what is just a lack of interest in that product). Time will tell, I guess.

In the meantime, that marked my 2500th blog post so, whether you’ve read all of them or just this one, thanks so much for taking the time to peruse.

Doctor Who - The Fourth Doctor Anthology

Meep Throat

Doctor Who -
The Fourth Doctor Anthology
Panini Comics
ISBN: 9781804911587

This is a somewhat timely reprint of all the Tom Baker likeness comic strips that appeared in the original Doctor Who Weekly and subsequent Doctor Who Monthly comics in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before he changed to Peter Davidson in the strip. And when I say timely I mean, strategically marketed to come out and grab the cash at the best possible time, when readers like me will be wanting to reacquaint themselves with one Pat Mills story in particular, The Star Beast. Because, at time of writing, a modern TV adaptation of that particular strip, which ran over a few weeks, will be screening in just a few days as episode one of the new 14th Doctor 60 year anniversary specials.

I used to love the comic and I still, if moths haven’t got to them, have the first 70 or so issues up in the loft somewhere. I remember reading these issues the first time around and being completely hooked on them from the opening story (in particular). Revisiting them now, it’s certainly easy to see why. They had the absolute cream of the crop of British creative talent working on these and most, if not all, of the writers were doing the same job on Britain’s greatest comic (and in their words, the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic) 2000AD... which I also have the first thousand or so issues of, stashed away in boxes. So these stories are brought to you by giants like writers Pat Mills (the creator of 2000AD), John Wagner (co-creator of Judge Dredd) and Steve Parkhouse... not to mention artists such as Dave Gibbons and, for one brief but memorably stylised story featuring an old style Cyberman straight out of the William Hartnell story The Tenth Planet, Mike McMahon (who drew the greatest Judge Dredd strips ever... although, arguably, the same could be said of Brian Bolland).

And yeah, you can tell it’s all these 2000AD people writing this for what was, then, the British arm of Marvel, because the stories are absolutely packed chock full of action but also two very tell tale things... they are full of ideas worked into the world building and, they are equally full of dark humour coupled with brilliantly terrible puns (both visual and verbal). Not to mention, they wear their influences very much on their sleeves sometimes in terms of riffing (or let’s face it, stealing) from famous pop culture franchises.

For instance, the story Dragon’s Claw deals with the warriors of the Shaolin Temple and the myth of the 18 Bronze Men (who featured in a fair few kung fu movies) is woven into the plot. Although, in this version, the 18 Bronze Men turn out to be Sontaran warriors. Similarly, an excellent story called City Of The Damned, where a planet is ruled by leaders who have wiped out all emotional reaction from the population, must surely have taken it’s inspiration from George Lucas’ early film THX1138.

There are even a few things which directly tie it up to 2000AD stories a few times, such as the mention of a ‘Shuggy Hall’ in the story Dogs Of Doom... Shuggy was a kind of ‘crazy snooker/pool’ game played in Mega City One from the world of Judge Dredd. And in my favourite of these stories, which opens this collection, The Iron Legion (which deals with a mechanical robot army based on the Roman Empire invading parts of the galaxy, controlled by an evil race of alien entities), there’s an old broken down Robot called Vesuvias and, honestly, he’s not a far cry from Walter The Wobot, Judge Dredd’s robot butler in the early days of 2000AD.

The stories presented here range from longer, multi part stories to one off, self contained tales but, the majority of them are hits rather than misses even now, I would say. As for The Star Beast, with Beep The Meep and the alien Wraiths hunting him... well, I remembered it well so I must have liked it back in the day but, it just seems to me now like the twist in the character (which I saw coming even in my early teens) is very obvious and, that story doesn’t have too much else going for it, to be honest. Also, I’m really not sure how the story can be fleshed out to take up more than around 15 minutes of screen time so I’m guessing the TV version of The Star Beast will be padded with a lot of the falling out from the surprise regeneration at the end of the last show, The Power Of The Doctor (reviewed here) and a shaky, possibly temporary resolution (of sorts) to the Doctor/Donna problem.

That being said, anything written by Pat Mills is always going to be worth a look so I remain hopeful and, regarding Doctor Who - The Fourth Doctor Anthology, I remain grateful that these wonderful strips have gotten a beautiful reprint at the best possible time. I loved revisiting these stories and they’re definitely worth tracking down if you’ve never read them before.

Spider-Man - Across The Spider-Verse

Webs Are Flowing
Out Like Endless
Rain Into A Paper Cup

Spider-Man -
Across The Spider-Verse
Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos,
Kemp Powers & Justin K. Thompson
USA  2023 Sony/Marvel
UK cinema release print

Warning: Yep, there will be plenty of spoilers here.

Spider-Man - Across The Spider-Verse is the direct sequel to Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (reviewed here) and has been made back to back with its sequel, Spider-Man - Beyond The Spider-Verse, which comes out in cinemas this coming March 2024. So, yeah, if you’re expecting this one to end with an unresolved story plus a cliffhanger, you’d be absolutely right. In fact, don’t even bother sitting through the end credits on this one because, surprisingly, this one has no mid or post-credits scenes on it.

Now, I quite liked the first Spider-Verse movie, even though I had no idea who this Miles Morales was and, yeah, it took me by surprise. This second one also managed to take me by surprise because, after the densely packed previous installment, I really didn’t expect this one to be much more than a disappointing repeat of the first one at best. Well, I was completely wrong because... and I don’t often say this or take this kind of statement about new movies all that kindly or credibly but... this one is at least as good as the first movie, if not better.

The story on this one follows on from the post credits sequence of the last one, where Spider-Man 2099 (played here by Oscar Isaac) seems to be monitoring the state of the multiverse. However, Miles Morales (played by Shameik Moore), it turns out, is not even supposed to be the Spider-Man for his version of reality because, as it turns out, the spider that bit him in the first movie was actually from another dimension and this, plus a couple of other things happening, including a hilarious new villain called The Spot, have set up the interconnecting universes on a crash collision and, long story short, Miles father has to die to avoid a catastrophic incident. Cue many, many different multidimensional incarnations of Spider-Man trying to stop Miles from returning to his own dimension to save his dad from imminent destruction.

The film looks great, employing different animation styles and colour palettes throughout. It also has a superb voice cast including Hailee Steinfeld returning as Gwen Stacey, aka Spider-Gwen and various other actors, sometimes returning from other related Marvel movies. Such as J K Simmons once again returning briefly as J Jonah Jameson and, in a wonderful live action moment, Peggy Lu reprising her Mrs. Chen role from the two Venom movies. Biggest shout out, though, goes to the superb performance put in by Daniel Kaluuya as the British Spider-Punk. And, of course, all these wonderful performances wouldn’t be possible without the brilliant writers who make both the dialogue and story superb. Note to Hollywood... pay the damn writers who are, at time of writing, on strike. Get your priorities right here!

Now, I heard a review of the film which pointed out that there was a lot of stuff being thrown at the audience all at once but, underneath all that visual chaos, the film has a warm, beating heart which enables you to care about the main protagonists. I’d say yes to the second point but, honestly, this one didn’t hit me as much of an information overload of a spectacle as the first. There are a lot of visual and audio jokes for sure but I think I caught most of them and this one seemed, if anything, to make a lot more sense than I thought it would. To the extent that the big twist reveal near the end of the movie, such as it was, came as no surprise to me by that point in the story.

However, it was a logical story beat so it didn’t disappoint me as such and, that particular villain reveal aside, I also loved that another villainish character in this movie is as much one of the heroes as he is a villain. But his complex psychological needs to ‘parent’ what’s going on in the Spider-Verse kinda turns him into a villain too.

The film would be nothing, of course, without Daniel Pemberton’s follow up score to his wonderful job in the first movie and I am keeping my fingers crossed that some company will release this one on a proper CD at some point and, not just stick with a useless electronic download of the score.

And I think that’s me pretty much done with Spider-Man - Across The Spider-Verse. I absolutely expected it to be, well, not that great but, I absolutely loved it and will be first in line when the third movie comes out early next year. Would recommend this to anyone who loves the various Marvel characters and a script that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Good stuff.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3

Quill Life

Guardians Of
The Galaxy Vol. 3
Directed by James Gunn
United States/Canada/New Zealand  
2023 Marvel
UK cinema release print

Warning: There’s a spoiler in here in terms of regular character's mortality rate... you might want to steer clear if you don’t want to know.

Okay... the gang’s all here, again, for the third ‘stand alone’ installment of Marvel’s cosmic adventurers, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. Well, I say ‘stand alone’ but, honestly, unless you’ve seen both Avengers Infinity War and Avengers End Game, you’re going to be totally lost on stuff like the relationship between Chris Pratt’s Peter ‘Star Lord’ Quill character and Zoe Saldana’s Gamora. Quick recap for those who missed it... after half the Guardians were temporarily lost to the Thanos blip, before which Gamora was killed by her adopted father, a version of her character from an earlier timeline was split off into the current ‘real’ timeline but before a time when she gelled with the group and became Quill’s girlfriend.

Joining Pratt and Saldana are the regulars like Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon, the brilliant Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer, Vin Diesel as Groot, Sean Gunn as Kraglin and, of course, the illustrious Karen Gillan as Gamora’s sister Nebula. Sylvester Stallone also returns in this one... and Will Pouter shows up as the long teased Adam Warlock character. They’ve also expanded the role of Cosmo... who everybody must realise (and it’s made even more implicit here) is the Marvel version of Laika, the first dog in space. She has a lot of good scenes in this one and I really enjoyed her character here.

And the whole film is... pretty good, actually.

My track record with the Guardians Of The Galaxy films is not so great. I kinda liked the first movie but, honestly, the second one was truly awful. I only properly warmed to them when they were absolutely great in Avengers Infinity War but, well, yeah, the less said about their Christmas special last year the better. I do have a review of that one but didn’t manage to get it up before the end of the 2022 Christmas season so, I’m holding that one for December this year. This one though is... pretty good. Not as good as thier Infinity War appearances but, of the three cinema released movies with their collective name in the title, I’d have to say this is easily the best one.

This one has a dark heart too, with an opening which leaves the Guardians in a tragic state of imbalance and going on a quest to try and save the life of Rocket, who is left in a coma. While he’s in that coma we get regular flashbacks to how he got from being a simple racoon from Earth to what he is now (think space vivisectionists). The film is full of the usual action, good dialogue and... yeah okay, the usual unfortunate needle dropped songs which show a certain taste on behalf of the production team that certainly doesn’t gel with my own, alas.

The stakes are high but, they’re not the usual ‘universe is in peril’ kind of stakes we usually see thrown at these characters. Instead, each of their missions as they occur are arrived at due to their personal jeopardy. They are all there for their friends in a way, due to Rocket’s back story, he couldn’t be. That being said, although the trailers teased Star Lord’s seemingly lifeless body being carried by Mantis (something which actually occurs pretty early on in the film’s running time), this film has none of the regular characters dying, despite the marketing saying this is the Guardian’s last outing... which I didn’t expect. I mean, they trailer teased it so it looks like we’d lose Peter Quill at some point... so I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be one the cards at all. But I was also expecting at least three of the other characters to die but, no, they’re all alive and well at the end and the actors are easily able to drop in en masse or individually in any future Marvel movies, should the wage packet be sufficiently convincing. Indeed the last of the post-credits scenes already stated that a certain character will definitely be returning at some point. so, yeah, there’s that.

All in all then, a short review for a movie with the only real problem* that, at two and a half hours, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 seems like it might have benefited from having a much leaner edit. But it’s just fine as it is and my favourite character here, by a country mile, was Cosmo (aka Laika) the Russian space dog. And, yes, for those who want to know, Howard The Duck gets another cameo in this one. 

* Actually, having slept on this review, I realise there is another BIG continuity problem with the film. Peter Quill left Earth with a boy and clearly hasn't kept up with Eath culture, as evidenced by him askeing Spider-Man if Footloose is still the greatest movie ever, in Avengers Infinity War. How come, then, he can throw an insult which includes a reference to Robocop, a film made long after he'd departed from Earth culture? Makes no sense! Bad writing.

She Hulk - Attorney At Law

Sensational Savage

She Hulk - Attorney At Law
2022 USA Marvel
9 episodes

Warning: If you read all these spoilers and complain about it after, I’m gonna rip up all your X-Men comics!

I’ve always has a soft spot for She-Hulk (or Shulkie, as she is often affectionately known). I first got into her when I was trying to recover from crippling RSI about 30 years ago and comic books were the only things I could keep held open at the time... so I rediscovered my comic book youth and also picked up a lot of old titles I’d missed out on, via a much better choice of shops where you could buy reasonably priced back issues than you could find these days. So I read... and this is the extent of my ‘old school’ She-Hulk knowledge... the first two incarnations of the comic book and the graphic novel which popped up between the two.

Now, a quick history of the character, as far as my experiences of her are... in the late 1970s, Stan Lee created the comic book The Savage She-Hulk, where Bruce Banner’s cousin, Jennifer Walters, gets a blood transfusion and manifests as a female version of Marvel’s popular The Incredible Hulk. Lee created the character to stop Universal, who were successful with their TV show based on the property, from spinning off their own female character which they would own outright, independent of Marvel. So while the initial, relatively short run of The Savage She-Hulk was pretty awful... in all honesty... it at least served it’s function. But then came a graphic novel entitled The Sensational She-Hulk, followed by a second attempt at the character, initially created by the hottest comic book sensation of the time, John Byrne... and that incarnation stuck and was a lot more successful.

This version of the character was breaking the fourth wall and talking to both the readers, not to mention her artists and writers, constantly... a long time before Deadpool was doing similar stuff. Indeed, the first cover has Shulkie talking directly to the readers and threatening to come and rip up their X-Men comics if they don’t buy her book this time around. The cover was parodied in an almost identical duplicate for the very last issue of this much longer, much more successful run... where Shulkie was declaring she was about to make good on her threat.

And the character was a complete joy to read and so, I was pretty cynical when Marvel launched a TV series, starring the excellent Tatiana Maslany as the central character. I thought, unless this character starts to frequently break the fourth wall, not to mention completely obliterating it by the final episode, then this would not be a good adaptation. Fortunately, I was dead wrong... this is probably the most ‘in the spirit of the original comic’ adaptation that Marvel have done for their MCU TV shows and, probably, for their movies too. Although Maslany doesn’t look a whole lot like the Jennifer Walters I knew, she’s got the character pitch perfect and her co-stars such as Ginger Gonzago and Renée Goldsberry are brilliant.

Asides from having a lot of references, some of them quite clever, to comics and pop culture in general, there are also a host of characters from the MCU (and former, reconstituted MCU) movies and films who cameo, quite strongly and significantly, in various episodes. So, of course you get Mark Ruffalo back as Jeniffer’s notorious cousin, accidentally infecting her with his virus to a lesser degree (she can change to her She-Hulk personality at will, retaining all her consciousness and intelligence... it’s literally just a physical transformation), there’s Tim Roth in quite a few episodes as Emil Blonsky, aka The Abomination (who tried to kill Edward Norton’s version of Banner in The Incredible Hulk movie, before Ruffalo replaced the actor), Charlie Cox as Daredevil and also, in some wonderful moments, Benedict Wong back as Wong from the Doctor Strange movies.

And Roth is absolutely hilarious as Blonsky, who has changed and become an ‘in touch with your feelings’ self help guru, who Jen has to defend and get out of prison. It also shows us exactly why he was battling Wong in a fight club in a cameo moment in Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (reviewed here). And everyone is great in this with about three main plot threads which all come together in the final episode (Jen even gets to have sex with Daredevil and now seems to be his new, regular girlfriend). And there’s even a beautifully ‘on topic’ reference (alas, not in any of the Daredevil scenes) of the term ‘fridging’, which is a popular shorthand saying for lazy ‘kill the girlfriend’ motivation story arcs which originated from something that happened in a Daredevil comic decades ago, if memory serves.

And, of course, the last episode truly lived up to my expectations when She-Hulk does not like the way her final episode is shaping up, criticising the lame way in which Marvel shows and films end with big confrontational battles, which somehow bury the loose plot ends and so, in fine She-Hulk fashion, she exits the episode through the Disney+ Marvel menu of the streaming channel and breaks out to go and have a word with the writers in the studio and the ‘robot’ head of the company K.E.V.I.N (obviously a reference to Kevin Feige... I would have preferred the actual person to make an appearance as he would have done in the comics) and gets her ending rewritten, exactly how she wants it. It’s hot stuff and I can see why lots of Marvel fan boys were whining and getting angry at the show, especially the last episode. All that really shows, though, is that they’re totally ignorant of the character and maybe they should have actually read some of the John Byrne issues to find out what they were letting themselves in for... at the very least.

Heck, the last episode even has a beautiful parody remake of the old The Incredible Hulk TV show opening title sequence... which was great and brought a smile to my face... especially the “Don’t make me angry... you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” line, which the show used to re-run in the titles every week. The whole thing is incredibly well done comedy and, yeah, it’s a different tone from the majority of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (other than Deadpool, obviously). I just had a wonderful time with it. My only real problem is that they didn't recreate the notorious 'naked skipping rope' sequence inspired by the fan letters in the comic book but, yeah, hopefully some day. I doubt, given the uproar the show caused, that there will be a second series but, yeah, I live in hope. She-Hulk Attorney At Law certainly deserves to keep going and I hope Marvel realise that they have made some interesting art here and not just go down the 'follow the money' route, so to speak. Good job to everyone involved and, yeah, a big recommendation from me here.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Modok She Wrote

Ant-Man and
the Wasp: Quantumania
USA 2023 Directed by Peyton  Reed
Marvel/Disney
UK cinema release print

This is going to be a very quick shout out to the new Ant-Man/Wasp movie because, well, it’s basically fine and not the train wreck I had been led to believe by many critics, it has to be said. Ant-Man And The Wasp - Quantumania is actually one of the stronger of the recent Marvel films as far as I’m concerned, easily beating out the likes of Black Panther - Wakanda Forever (reviewed here) and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (reviewed here)... but, you know, I loved Eternals (reviewed here) so, don’t take my word for it.

Once again we have Paul Rudd playing the Scott Lang incarnation of Ant-Man, Evangeline Lily playing the Hope Van Dyne incarnation of The Wasp, Michael Douglas as Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man) and Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne (the original Wasp) but, we also have yet another new actress playing the grown up version of Ant-Man’s daughter Cassie (the always watchable Kathryn Newton and... none of the other much loved characters from the previous, stand alone Ant-Man films. There is, however, one returning actor from the first one who is basically a henchman to this movie’s main villain Kang The Conqueror (played by Jonathan Majors). I’m not going to say who the character is but, he’s been refashioned into a version of one of Marvel’s more ridiculous looking villains from the comics and, well, he wasn’t supposed to be the character he was playing in the first movie, truth be told (it’s complicated)... but I won’t say any more of that because, you know, spoilers.

This one is a lot different from the majority of previous movies which had Ant-Man as a character in them. Yes, it’s a superhero movie and features many people doing fantastic, superpowered fighty things but... it has to be said that this one more resembles a Star Wars movie than most anything else and, yeah, it’s certainly not the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to jump into a more space opera style yarn (although, technically, nobody is in space... it’s just the quantum realm). And I’m not knocking it... if anyone is staying true to their comic book roots by going down this road, then certainly Marvel probably have the most right to (and possibly DC but, let’s not make this review a comparison war).

And it’s also fairly well done and, as I said, basically fine. Even cleverly handled in terms of the origins of one of the big deus ex machina moments in the movie, for sure. It’s fairly entertaining and has a lot of humour, as you’d expect from an Ant-Man movie. One thing which did bug me, if you’ll pardon the expression, is that Marvel no longer have the rights to The Micronauts toys and the characters in the comics they wrote about them in the 1970s and 80s. I used to love those (both the comics and the toys) and, certainly, the quantum realm which has already become so essential to the way the MCU goes forward, pretty much started off life as the Microverse as far as I’m concerned. I mean, the spirit of those comics is certainly here in the way it’s been put together but, how great would it have been if Baron Karza and Arcturus Rann were facing off against each other in this one?

Oh, one of the big criticisms I heard levelled at this movie was that some people had difficulty understanding it. I was expecting to be in the same boat but, no, this is not a complicated movie and I am baffled as to what people think needs explaining here. It seems pretty clear to me... just remember the other 30 plus MCU films which came out before this and you should have no trouble following it.

The other complaint I’ve seen about this is that it deals with the Multiverse and therefore nothing has any consequence. Well... again I’m left thinking I saw a different cut of the movie somehow. This film does touch on the multiverse but, so very little of it, maybe a minute or two of post credits scenes, actually takes place in another facet of the multiverse. This movie really isn’t about the multiverse at all.... which we’ve all seen before in at least two Marvel movies and once TV show so, it would be nothing new if it was (even DC are getting into the multiverse act later this year and, again, that’s fine, they’ve earned the right to do that from their comics over the years... the two companies have pretty much different versions of everything the other does anyway). But, no, this one’s firmly set in the quantum realm and although the multiverse is mentioned a lot... it doesn’t really feature too much in the story, for sure... apart from a scene where it’s used to explain the idea of ‘possible alternate versions of oneself in a fairly blatant, visual way.

And that’s me done on this one. Ant-Man And The Wasp - Quantumania is basically an entertaining evening at the cinema, has some great actors, moves at a fairly good pace and has some nice musical glue by the series’ regular composer Christophe Beck (which, once again alas, has not been released on a proper CD at time of writing this). But, yeah, it’s a nice looking movie and I certainly didn’t mind it at all... make of that what you will.

Ms. Marvel

Candid Kamala

Ms. Marvel
USA June - July 2022
Six episodes

Okay, so Ms. Marvel is yet another of these Disney Marvel TV shows, which I am really finding a bit hit and miss but, really not as miss as the Star Wars shows they are really screwing up with. And, I’m happy to report, that Ms. Marvel, both the show and the character, are a delightful addition to the current crop of Marvel TV shows... definitely one of the better ones they’ve produced so far, for sure.

Now, this is not the Ms. Marvel I know... or knew. I remember when Ms. Marvel was announced as a new comic book when I was a kid... it was around the same time, or maybe just before, they announced the Spider-Woman comic and it seemed like a big thing for Marvel to be trying to create more female super-hero characters, back in the late 1970s. The fact that it was considered by many to be a specific attempt to reach a female target audience (hey... anyone remember Dazzler?) really says much about the times we were living in those days. And there were already plenty of female superheroes and villains around by then anyway, put out by most of the main comic book companies but, still, it seemed like a very definite audience grab at the time. However, Ms. Marvel in those days was the version of her known as Carol Danvers, who many people will know got promoted to being yet another incarnation of Captain Marvel, a little ahead of when her movie came out (reviewed by me here). So this show isn’t based on that Ms. Marvel.

This one is actually based on the fourth character to inherit the mantle of Ms. Marvel in the comics, namely Kamala Khan, played here by Iman Vellani (I’ll get back to this actress in a minute). This makes her, as the Marvel comics, the first Muslim superhero. And, although the general storyline is a little weak in places... which I kinda expect with ‘origin’ stories anyway (that’s why I always wish film and TV franchises wouldn’t start off with such a thing)... it’s actually got a lot going for it.

For a start, it’s very colourful throughout... the art department do some great stuff here. Also, it’s got a very fresh feeling, almost 1960s temperament to it in terms of using visual expressionism and experimentation to elabourate on some of the action... such as texts from one character to another appearing as writing, written in various scripts on various objects on a set... or drawings or graffiti in the background coming to life in animated form to help illustrate the points being put forward by somebody, to add weight to their words. It’s a nice approach and it helps the story, such as it is, zip along at a mostly hasty pace, which keeps thing fresh and, hooray, never as boring as certain other of the Marvel shows at certain points.

And the big and completely unexpected trump card, at least as far as I was concerned, is Marvel’s secret weapon here... the actress playing the main lead, aka Iman Vellani. I say surprising because this is her first ever role and, frankly, there’s no messing here, she knocks it out of the park right from the word go with her truly bubbly personality and extremely expressive eyes. For a 20 year old actress in her first part, let alone such a big part, she really does do wonders and I’m now looking forward to her teaming up with Carol Danver’s Captain Marvel in next year’s feature film The Marvels, for sure (with that in mind, make sure you stick around for the mid end credits scene at the end of the last episode here, if you want to see Brie Larson back in action). This actress needs more roles offered to her fast, in my opinion.

I do have a couple of things which disappointed a little so, I guess I might as well mention them. Okay, so yay for her being the first Muslim superhero represented on screen and all that but the whole religion of the character seems to be highlighted at every opportunity. I don’t see that many Christian or Catholic (for example) movies or shows doing that unless they are deliberately meant to be highlighting that element of the story. I’ve got nothing against it but it does seem rather rammed down everyone’s throats here a little, I thought.

Secondly, she has a support group, all of whom know who she is and they’re ready to help her. I’ve noticed that a lot of superhero shows over the past ten years or so have gone down this route and, honestly, why can’t we go back to having a lone superhero just doing her/his own thing rather than all the ‘guy in the chair’ characters that seem to be everywhere nowadays. Even Superman somehow has Lois Lane in on the act and helping out lately... what the heck? It just seems a little bit of an overdone cliché at this point, to be honest but, hey, them’s the breaks I guess.

All in all though, I thought Ms. Marvel was one of the more fun and refreshing shows put out by ‘Disney branded Marvel’ and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing the absolutely ‘marvel-lous’ Iman Vellani strutting her stuff on the big screen MCU sometime soon. I’m not quite sure why this particular show has got lower ratings and a negative reputation compared to the others but... don’t believe it! This show is well worth a watch. More like this please.

Thor - Love And Thunder

From Her To Eternity

Thor - Love And Thunder
Australia/USA  2022
Directed by Taika Waititi
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Electrifying spoilers within.

Right then. This is going to be a fairly short review, I think. Not because I didn’t like Thor - Love And Thunder... on the contrary, I loved it... but because it’s really hard, sometimes, to come up with things to say when the movie you’ve just watched is damn near perfect in every way. Now I know I’m in the minority here, judging by talk on the internet... and I know a lot of people didn’t like Eternals either (another truly great Marvel movie, which I reviewed here). I do find a lot of Marvel films a bit hit and miss, to be honest but, seriously, I think this new Thor may be the best movie from Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as it stands so far. When Marvel get things right... they really get things right.

Okay, so this one is something you can watch without having seen any of the recent Marvel movies after Avengers Endgame. After a brilliant prologue, where we see the origins of the film’s main villain, Gorr The God Butcherer, played by Christian Bale, this one starts off properly as Endgame left things. We have Thor tagging along with the Guardians Of The Galaxy and a wonderful and very strong set up scene which sees Thor inheriting two, giant, screaming space goats. I kept thinking to myself... this is such a strong opening, it’s got to go down hill from here... but no. The movie just keeps going from strength to strength as we have two initial separate story strands starting off... one being Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Kevin (director Taika Waititi back as the comic relief rock creature) leaving the Guardians with the quest of finding the God killer, a trail that leads them back to new Asgard.

Meanwhile, Thor’s ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (played once again by Natalie Portman) is dying of stage four cancer. While trying to fight this, she is called by the shattered remains of Thor’s old hammer Mjonir, in New Asgard, which reassembles itself and turns her into a female version of Thor. But when she doesn’t have the hammer and she reverts back to her Jane Foster alter ego, she still finds herself dying of cancer. So, everybody suddenly finds themselves back at New Asgard on Earth, ruled over by Valkyrie (once again played by Tessa Thompson) when Gorr attacks but fails to kill them... he does, however, kidnap all the children as bait for Thor and his gang, so he can obtain Thor’s second hammer, Stormbreaker, which will allow him to gain access to the character of Eternity. Now, Eternity looks pretty much like he did in the comics but, Marvel are mixing thing up again since he was not originally a Thor character but a character from the original Doctor Strange strip... Eternity making his debut there in Strange Tales Issue 138.

And there you have it. There’s lots of good stuff happening in this and it’s mostly, pretty much, played as high comedy again, with even Matt Damon and Sam Neill returning as the Asgardian actors portraying Loki and Odin. That being said, there’s a warm beating heart at the film’s centre in the rekindled relationship building between Thor and Jane but, even a moment of high tragedy near the end of the movie, is still seen as pretty much upbeat the way it’s played here by the director. Although it’s simultaneously quite brutal and pulls the rug from under audience members like myself, who can see the solution to the big problem at the heart of the movie being put together piece by piece, only to have it taken away at the eleventh hour (but stay for the second of the post credits scenes to give a little more closure to the fate of one of the characters, for sure).

Another high comedy moment is when Thor and co go to Omnipotence City (where all the Gods hang out and plan for their big orgy)... in order to raise an army. I’m not exactly a fan of Russel Crowe but he does a pretty good, comical version of Zeus for this film, it has to be said.

And, yeah, that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say on this one, for the reasons explained in my opening paragraph (Katrin, if you’re reading this one backwards again, please jump to the beginning for closure on this sentence). Thor - Love And Thunder, like the previous Thor movie Ragnarok, wallows in its own levity and tears down the comic book gatekeepers of this world while still respecting the material on which it is based and managing to be completely entertaining in the process. It’s not hyperbole when I say that this is probably the best stand alone Thor movie yet... and I love the bit at the end which says, Thor will return... like he’s James Bond or Fu Manchu. Nice movie, not deserving of the critical drubbing it’s gotten in any way shape or form (indeed, I saw it at a screening with a fairly small audience but there was a round of applause when the credits started to role). Don't miss this one.

Moon Knight

Konshuentious
Objector

Moon Knight
Stream date: March - May 2022
Six Episodes.

Warning: Yes, there are spoilers entombed here.

I apologise in advance for what is probably going to be a very short review of the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe (a misnomer now, surely?) TV show Moon Knight. I’ve not read any of the various incarnations of Moon Knight in the comics over the years. I have a friend who was an avid fan of the character throughout the 1970s and 1980s and he always used to explain that the character was pretty much the Marvel equivalent of Batman. Therefore, since he always knows his stuff about this kind of thing, I’m going to have to assume that this version of the character is probably based on one of the much later, revamped iterations of Moon Knight.

The show starts of with Oscar Isaac, who is frankly the one thing which really saves this show and makes the whole thing watchable (you can tell I was a little disappointed by this one already, can’t you?). He plays Steven Grant, a troubled individual with an accent apparently based on that of my home town of Enfield (yeah... not sure about that, to be honest... we don’t have accents mate!) and a pleasant, comic relief style manner. He works for the British Museum and talks to a living statue in his lunch hours... even though, it turns out, that he seems to walk out of said museum and somehow finds himself directly in Trafalgar Square (which is a good five or ten minutes and a few blocks over).

However, he also has a split personality of which he is not aware... this other being Marc Spector, who apparently created Steven to shield himself from certain traumatic events over the years. To complicate matters further, Marc is also the living avatar of ‘justice seeking’ Egyptian God Konshu (voiced by F. Murray Abraham) who also, like Marc, turns up when Steven blacks out and relinquishes his body. Marc (but not Steven... kinda) is married to Layla, played by May Calamawy... but Marc has tried to lose her for her own protection in the upcoming battle with a bad guy, Arthur Harrow, played by Ethan Hawke who, I dunno, seems somehow wasted in the role I would say. Harrow is trying to release another Egyptian God which will spell doom for the vast majority of mankind but, first, Steven has to find himself and then the two sides of Marc’s personality need to find balance to be able to become a threat to Harrow...

And so on. And, it starts out really great but, by the time it came around to the second episode, where various of these little plot details were being set up, I started to really not care anymore. It was just a confusing mess of a plot until, sometime around episode 5, the majority of the plot points I just explained in the paragraph above became a lot clearer. I won’t deny that the slow and surprising reveal of those elements are a good deal of why I kept watching but, frankly, if it wasn’t for Oscar Isaac’s absolutely brilliant performance as Londoner Steve, then I may not have made it through all the episodes. And I say that even though I’ve always held a keen layman’s interest in Egyptology.

The action is okayish, with the running joke of Steven suddenly blacking out and returning to consciousness having bashed up all his enemies and having gotten himself out of whatever life threatening situation he’d gotten into. The chemistry between Oscar Isaac and, um, himself is pretty good too, it has to be said.

And there were some good things in it including a comical Hippopotamus Goddess, a silly costume for whenever the Steven Grant side of Spektor’s personality summons his Konshu avatar and, even some nice little nods to the comics such as a hospital named after the legendary Bill Sienkiewicz.

However, it has to be said that, by the time the sixth episode rolled around, I just wanted it to stop. The finale was a quickly won resolution which leant on the whole ‘blacking out’ trope to both pull the rug from under the audience by revealing that there is a third personality locked in Marc Spector’s brain and also to skimp from having to show the audience just how Moon Knight and his new superhero partner in crime (his wife as the avatar of the hippopotamus Goddess) actually defeated the bad guys. And on top of this there was a post credits sequence which reveals a little more about this other, ruthless version of Spector, waiting in the wings as a puppet to a less than morally black and white Konshu.

And, yeah, it was an okay show but it didn’t feel that linked to, or invested in, the Marvel universe (I did spot what I thought was a link to an upcoming Marvel show but, since nobody on the internet is talking about it, I’ll keep quiet about it for a bit in case I got the wrong end of the stick) and it didn’t feel like much of it would have any consequence to future iterations of the MCU. Moon Knight was entertaining enough and, honestly, just made me realise what an amazing actor Oscar Isaac (who is also one of the show’s producers) actually is but, yeah, it’s not exactly essential viewing, I would say.

My 2200th Post - Netflix Gets Chilled

Netflix Gets Chilled

Is The Digital Dream
Already Dying Or Shifting?

Hi all,

Thanks for reading what is, my 2200th Blog Post for NUTS4R2. Due to two batches of recent news specifically about the digital streaming channel Netflix, I thought I’d take the opportunity in this post to write a little follow up to my 13 Year Anniversary Post back in March about the future (or lack of) Physical Media (which you can read right here if you like). In that article I also painted a fairly bleak picture about various creative companies who are, at present, funding riskier projects (of which Netflix happens to be a prime example) and where I saw them a bit later down the road, when they possibly stop being able to take risks... and the future of film as an art form looking decidedly darker.

The thing is, these two pieces of news from Netflix made me wonder if we’re accelerating into that state way quicker than I thought. Now I’m not sure what the answer to that is but, these are the two bits of news which became apparent since I wrote that little article...

One, Netflix announced a huge drop off in subscribers to their channel and, two, as of yesterday (at time of writing this... so a little under two weeks from when I go live with this post) they have announced a large number of lay offs (mostly in America) as cuts are made, presumably as a considered response to the shrinkage of their customer base, which they are projecting will lose a lot more subscribers for a period of the near future.

Okay, so I’m not quite that naive to assume this is the end of Netflix by a long chalk but, lets have a look at what might be going on here, just for fun. First of all... I can’t believe this is just happening to Netflix... I’m sure most of their competitors may well be feeling the pinch of people opting out too... but Netflix is a big share of the market so, they’re probably feeling it a little more. Now, when I first heard the news about the customer drop off, I assumed this was just localised to my home country, the UK. And it made sense with the extreme costs of living crisis we are suddenly in (brought on by an incredibly bad government), that people would just begin to choose eating over subscribing to a television channel if they want to live. So I was a little surprised when I discovered that this trend is affecting US customers too.

So then, what’s happening? Well, with an abundance of channels all giving exclusive options, I’m guessing people are trying to pare down the number of individual subscriptions to different companies they have contracts with because, well... because it’s expensive. I suspect Disney+, because it has Marvel and Star Wars on its books, will be winning out and possibly even gaining from the fall off of, not only Netflix customers but all the other channels. If you’re left with only enough money to stream from one channel, then Star Wars and Marvel are going to be the things people feel they can’t do without... for now (okay, I’ll get to that point in a minute). So, yeah, what this means at present is... I suspect everything is going to quickly go the way of the ‘assured blockbuster’ route (which Disney almost have a Monopoly on... thank goodness Warner Brothers has a hold of DC) as the customers are definitely voting with their wallets. I may be wrong but... yeah, I think this is what’s happening.

Now, one of the things companies like Netflix (and indeed Disney+ when it comes for their time in a slump) will blame is the huge amount of pirate channels on the internet, where their content can be viewed for free in HD, with no loss of quality. But, well, my view on video piracy and what it’s become has not changed over the decades. If people could afford to pay for these digital channels then the majority of the customer base would do so, I believe. However, many of them can’t afford to so they go to the pirate stations (and if the pandemic has demonstrated very clearly, these things are incredibly easy to find now). If you manage to close down every single pirate station (which, frankly, I suspect would be an impossible task) then don’t expect a sudden, huge uptake in customers. You might get maybe a few but what this really means is... there will be much less pairs of eyes on your films. And you may say that’s fine because people weren’t paying for that privilege anyway but, guess what? Many fewer eyes on your film means much less cultural presence for your film and, therefore, the slippery slide to the drop off of people watching... and remembering... your legacy of movies.

Another point is... Disney+ won’t always be the winners. They are for now and this should last for at least another decade (although the speed of the drop of from Netflix makes me consider the possibility that it could be around the corner quicker than I think) but, well, have you seen what Disney have doing to their big properties? We all love Star Wars but the new prequels and sequels have been hit and miss and certainly have diluted the brand considerably. A brand which has been corroded even more by multiple TV spin offs. I've not watched any of Obi Wan Kenobi yet but, my cousin who is a big Star Wars fan assures me it's pretty dire. I'll still watch it. Marvel is not quite in such a bad state but, well, I went and saw Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness at the cinema recently (you can find my review here) and, had I not seen the WandaVision TV show (reviewed here), which it feels like it’s a sequel to, I think I probably wouldn’t have had a clue about what was going on with Wanda’s mindset by that point. So, I suspect after not a few more years, the interest in people turning up for these kinds of properties may be dropping off quite a bit... but it’s been fun while it’s lasted (I would have loved seeing all this stuff as a kid).

So do I think the world of online digital streaming is dying already. Hmm... probably not yet but it is, I think, already beginning to mutate into something far less creative and palatable much quicker than I was expecting, to be honest. And from there we can all watch the slow, creeping downfall which, alas, will change the way we think of movies and TV forever, if I’m not very much mistaken.

Anyway, that’s 2200 blog posts down... thanks for reading.