Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Dead Retconning

Spider-Man Brand New Day
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
USA/Canada/UK/Germany 2026
Columbia Studios
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: A whole webful of spoilers in this one. You were warned!

Well I was fully expecting Spider-Man: Brand New Day to be absolutely terrible but, instead, I found myself pleasantly surprised by this movie. If a little confused about the direction it takes. Or make that very confused. 

Okay, so all that stuff in Spider-Man: No Way Home where the whole world forgot who Peter Parker was, surely must have been to give Columbia Pictures, who wanted Spider-Man back for their own films, a brand new start and, presumably, to not have them have to pick up the cheques for certain regular actors in the current Spider-Man continuity but... nope. I suspect that was the idea when that film was released... to allow Columbia to sever all ties with the Disney owned Marvel but, I dunno, something must have happened. Maybe a studio or department head left or, heck, given the failure of most of their other Spider-Man spin offs such as Morbius (reviewed here), Madame Web (reviewed here) and Kraven The Hunter (reviewed here), perhaps they finally realised they can’t make a profitable Spider-Man movie without Marvel’s involvement. 

Good move because I’m already hearing this latest one is breaking all box office expectations and, the way this film plays out, it looks like Marvel and Columbia have made a truce and are ready to loan all their toys out to each other and let each other play in their backyards for a while. And from here on in I’m going into spoiler territory folks so... again... you were warned. 

So we have Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon back as Peter Parker, MJ and Ned Leeds respectively. And the long game on the story beats seems to be to somehow reset this small unit back to what it was in the MCU films. I mean, it doesn’t completely reset to the status quo but you can certainly see how it can only be a matter of time. 

And, also joining them from the Marvel Cinematic Universe are Florence Pugh as... well, I guess she’s Black Widow now, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk and Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle (aka The Punisher). However, here’s the big spoiler, people... making her MCU/Columbia character debut in this film we have Sadie Sink as... Jean Grey. Yup... Marvel Girl herself is in this after having previously been played by both Famke Janssen and Sophie Turner in a number of different X-Men films each. And not only that, she’s kind of set up as the main villain in this movie... two things wrong with that, as far as I’m concerned.

Firstly, the character is mostly portrayed as dark and damaged in exactly the same kind of way that Lewis Pullman’s character in Thunderbolts* was. Which means that it could be very easy for Marvel to... for the third time in the cinema and when they deem fit... do a more convincing version of the Dark Phoenix storyline. Which means, if they do that, another character which will very much be needed in the MCU’s new X-Men line up just made her debut here. 

Secondly, we all know that for many years (decades) before that storyline which has her become a danger and threat to the entire universe, resulting in her death (if memory serves, before the inevitable comic book style resurrection some time later), she was actually one of the good guys... er gals... as one of the original The Uncanny X-Men. So, yeah, once the audience realise who she is playing... well it’s then that most of them will surely realise that the villain is a huge red herring and that the real villain is, of course, Damage Control. Alas, once again in MCU continuity, this organisation is not being headed up by Tyne Daley as it was in Spider-Man: Homecoming (reviewed here). So yeah, bad things are afoot with Damage Control but, effectively, the main villainess of the movie is Jean Grey, as a kind of surrogate villain. 

But, it’s a nice film and has a good warm heart at its centre. Oh... and if people were upset by Spider-Man: No Way Home (reviewed here) in that it killed off Aunt May... well she’s still dead but Marisa Tomei is back to play out a flashback sequence which actually has a big impact to the resolution of the story arc here, actually. 

And there are some other politics at play too, I think. I don’t like where they’ve left Bruce Banner’s conclusion here and I am hoping they’ve put him in this place because it makes sense to have him there when needed a few years down the line. Probably a political move on the part of the two studios, I would think.

But, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a pretty good film, all told... having some heart breakingly good performances and completely destroying my expectations, I’m glad to say. They’ve even brought back composer Michael Giacchino to score it but, he does a strange thing here. I think the four years which have passed in loneliness for Peter Parker must be the reason why he’s adjusted the leitmotif for the character. He’s stripped his main, six note theme down to just four notes. simplifying it for the whole of the movie until, with certain resolutions down the line, he returns to the old six note theme in the end credits sequence. Nice.

As always with the Marvel movies this one has a post-credits sequence and, it’s non-commital enough to have an ending which tells you one specific thing without giving anything away. And that’s to show that Spider-Man has gone into space and is on another planet. Which could be a hint to the next stand alone movie or... well... it could mean that we’ll be seeing Tom Holland again in either Avengers: Doomsday this December or, more likely, Avengers: Secret Wars in December 2027. And that’s it. I was expecting Columbia to fumble the ball big time with the Spider-Man franchise but Spider-Man: Brand New Day really does deliver the goods (and is still a lot better than Spider-Man: Far From Home (reviewed here). ‘Nuff Said!

*No, sorry, that asterisk wasn’t for the reader, it’s just part of the title of the movie. Relax.

Captain America - Brave New World

Adamantium Lives

Captain America -
Brave New World
Directed by Julius Onah
USA 2025
Marvel
UK cinema release print.

Well now, it looks like I’m out of step with ‘popular opinion’ on a movie again... which isn’t always a bad way to be, I guess. At least I’m bringing a different perspective to the table. After an extended break (barring Deadpool & Wolverine, which doesn’t really count and is reviewed here), the Marvel Cinematic Universe returns to cinemas with Captain America - Brave New World, which has Anthony Mackie returning as The Falcon and taking up the legacy of Captain America, which Steve Rogers passed on to him at the end of Avengers - Endgame (reviewed here) and which he fought to keep in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier (reviewed by me here). And early word from both critics and preview audiences alike are saying it’s a mess of a movie. And I’m here to tell you it’s not.

Indeed, I’d say this one is right up there with Eternals (reviewed here) and The Marvels (reviewed here) in terms of being one of the better Marvel Cinematic universe films of recent years. Although, not everyone agrees with me about those two either, it has to be said.

But I also mention Eternals because it ties in with the Celestial growing inside Earth which was disabled at the end of that film. Here, it’s known to humanity as Celestial Island and all the countries want it because it’s a rich source of a powerful new metal, finally making its proper debut in the MCU (kinda, sorta... yeah, not sure about this, it brings about continuity contradictions, methinks)... aka Adamantium (yeah, you know, the stuff Wolverine’s skeleton is coated with). So we have Harrison Ford stepping into the shoes of the great William Hurt (who died but played the character in many of the other Marvel movies, starting with The Incredible Hulk), as Thunderbolt Ross, who is trying to make a treaty around the mineral with Japan and a few other countries. I was hoping for a crossover moment when I realised Celestial Island was in Japanese waters... you know, like Captain America VS Mothra... but it was not to be.

Also around are various other characters such as the main bad guy played by Tim Blake Nelson and also the former, black super soldier, who had been incarcerated by the US government for many years (as seen in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier). All I can say is, I didn’t realise before that this part was played by Carl Lumbly (an actor I’d thought long dead). He’s actually looking very different to the role in which I watched him for years on TV, as Detective Petrie in Cagney And Lacey. We also have Danny Ramirez as the new, trainee Falcon and Ruth Bat-Seraph as the President’s aide, who happens to also be an ex-Black Widow.

And I don’t see why it’s getting the reviews it’s been getting. The actors and action sequences are all great and this one doesn’t have, compared to many of the MCU movies just lately, a huge amount of character reveals and cameos from other parts of the general franchise bleeding through here (and the two we do get seem somehow less relevant, I thought). Instead we have a simple but adult story... hey, much like you might get in a 1980s version of a Marvel comic book... which involves Manchurian Candidate style mind control, a gamma irradiated president (since it’s in most of the trailers, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say Thunderbolt Ross turns into Red Hulk) and a shady government conspiracy embedded in the movies from the early days of the MCU as a source for the shenanigans in this movie.

It all looks good though and, I have to say, I really enjoyed this one. I won’t mention the score because, as ‘the mouse’ owned Marvel seem to be doing lately, it’s not had a proper CD release (only crappy digital junk) so I don’t feel it deserves a mention if the company aren’t even bothering to put it out in the only format which best serves music (honestly, if these companies won’t put proper CDs out, they don’t deserve to have music in their movies... ‘nuff said). 

There’s not much more to say about Captain America - Brave New World other than I was on the edge of my seat quite a lot of the time and I was amazed they managed to turn Thunderbolt Ross into a genuinely sympathetic character by the end of the movie. There is one post credits scene right at the end but, honestly, it doesn’t really add anything other than trying to build hyperbole for future releases and I could have done without it. However, I really liked this one and think it’s a good addition to the MCU, for sure.

Deadpool & Wolverine

Penny Deadpool

Deadpool & Wolverine
Directed by Shawn Levy
USA/Canada/Australia/
New Zealand 2024
Marvel
UK cinema cut.

Warning: Some very slight spoilers.

Well, Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t terrible.

Sadly, that’s one of the most complimentary things I can say about it. Discounting the appearance of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (reviewed by me here), for me this new one if the weakest of the Deadpool films. It has its problems but, it moves so fast that a lot of people probably won’t notice and I’d be surprised if this wasn’t one of the biggest box office openings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films (yeah, I’m sure this one will be quite popular with people).

Okay, positive things first because, as much as there are negatives there are good things to say too. So Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as the title characters have great chemistry and the film is filled with great actors and also some interesting cameo appearances from past Marvel characters (not all of them from the MCU versions of the movies). And there are some funny one liners dotted around which Reynolds delivers in his usual Bug Bunnyish manner and it’s all good fun, to a point.

It’s got a very strong opening... and a very strong first half hour it has to be said, including a title sequence battle royale where, after digging up Wolverine’s rotting corpse from the grave left after his death in Logan (reviewed here) and finding he hasn’t regenerated, he gets into a fight with a weird time agency (I think the same one from the Loki TV show) and kills many of them in very gory ways using various bones from the skeleton of Logan as weapons.

We then get embroiled in a story where Deadpool is tasked with helping to kill off his dwindling timeline (which is decaying because of the death of Logan, who is apparently that timeline’s ‘anchor being’ )... but instead he grabs a Wolverine from another timeline to save is own universe and friends while trying to fight off the film’s two villains... played for laughs by Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Paradox and played startlingly seriously, by the scene stealing Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova.

Right from the outset the film is loaded with constant swear words and lots and lots of Marvel and non-Marvel pop culture references... and sometimes these hit really well and other times they don’t. But here’s the thing... while the film starts off as charming and it certainly has its heart in the right place, all the endless allusions to other movies and the constant fighting seem to be there to distract from the simplicity of the story and... well... it all felt like padding, to be honest. The first three quarters of an hour or so of this kind of thing is great but, yeah, after that initial set up it just gets, um, kind of dull. And while there are a lot of characters from the previous two films (along side some other notable appearances), my favourite character from the second movie, Domino, is curiously absent.

So, spectacular for sure and there’s certainly a lot of CGI blood spilled... yeah, I prefer practical effects myself but with a film with this much gory action, the alternative would have taken far too long and really hurt the budget (is my guess)... but, no.

Also, there are a lot of needle drop songs in this (and also melodic references to scores like Silvestri’s one for The Avengers) but it would have helped me personally if I’d have recognised more than just a couple of them, I think. I mean, I recognised Jimmy Durante and I think one of them maybe Madonna. That's kinda it on the song references for me.

And, truth be told, although I certainly liked the film, I did find myself checking my watch long before the end. Now, the film didn’t turn out to be the big ‘MCU reset button’ I was expecting it to be and part of me is glad and part of me isn’t. I mean, okay, we now have a variation of Wolverine that can be recalled when the big tentpole Marvel features start coming again (which is not necessary now we have the concept of a multiverse carried into the movies anyway) but ultimately, despite lots of rumblings that this would change the shape of the MCU, it really does seem to be a movie with no real stakes or consequences. This coupled with the fact that Deadpool’s regenerative powers seem to work in an entirely different manner to how they worked in the last two movies really left me cold, if not a little confused.

The trailer campaign didn’t help it much either. When I was watching it I felt like I’d already seen most of the scenes referenced in the last few months. So there were some surprises but... not so many of them. Where the trailers really let it down, though, is in the big, climactic scene where two of the lead characters (look, I’m trying to skirt around the danger zone with this in terms of spoilers, okay) appear to have met their matter/anti-matter end and died. However, in the trailer there are scenes where they appear together in it which haven’t turned up yet so you know... you kinda do know... that these two are going to make it out alive and kicking. So they kinda killed that one themselves.

And, yeah, that’s me done with this one, I think. Deadpool & Wolverine is going to hit big and will make a lot of people happy. Sadly, I didn’t get on with it nearly as much as I thought I would but, there’s always a chance that it might grow on me at some point in the future, for sure (I might find it easier to process the second time around). So, yeah, I’ll try it again when it comes out on Blu Ray (and goes into the sales), I think.

MCU

Some
Assembly Required

MCU - The Reign
Of Marvel Studios
by Joanna Robinson,
Dave Gonzales & Gavin Edwards
Headline Books
ISBN:  97811472270733

To say that the new book MCU, subtitled The Reign Of Marvel Studios, is an unauthorised look at the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be to skew into understatement somewhat. In an introduction, the writers reveal that, after a number of interviews with various players in the history of the famous studio, Disney (who now own the studio) told everyone to stop talking to the writers. I think they must have got wind that this wasn’t going to be a puff piece and, like many of the characters who make up the MCU, would not be pulling any punches.

Perhaps a better subtitle for the novel would be The Rise And Fall Of Marvel Studios because, as the book comes to a close somewhere after the flop that was Ant-Man Quantumania (perhaps deservedly so) and a little before the flop of The Marvels (which was less deserved, as far as I’m concerned), it’s definitely painting a less than idyllic picture of the culture of the studios, where they are today and, well, while 2024 is going to be a weird year for all iterations of the Marvel movies based on their comic books released by different companies (see my 2500th Blog Post here for clarification on that matter), I think they’re going to have to really rework all their plans quite a bit to try and resurrect themselves to return to their former box office pull, it seems to me. A reinvention may well be in order, I suspect.

Okay, so the book is an interesting one. It doesn’t just deal with the MCU branded Marvel movies in the opening of the book... which is split into five multi chapter sections, Phase Zero through to Phase Four, reflecting the chronological stage in time with the marketed ‘phases’ of the Marvel Cinematic Universe... it also deals with other movies (most of which would be swallowed or folded into the MCU much later) and talks about some of the people behind them. Indeed, it’s a well written book and the writers introduce you to key players in the MCU and beyond, introducing people like Avi Arad and the influential Kevin Feige into the mix and showing you just how they fit into things.

And it’s a compelling tome because, while there’s tonnes of stuff I knew from my constant monitoring of Twitter about various stories (well, monitoring is a strong word, the stories just appeared in my timeline because they are well loved movies), it’s all very much encapsulated here in one place and, there’s also plenty of stuff I didn’t know too. For instance, there are some times in the history of these movies where the studio really rolled the dice and risked total bankruptcy to get the resources they needed to make the movies they believed in. Such as mortgaging the rights to most of their own characters for the money to make the first Iron Man... a risk that definitely paid off big time.

And there’s stuff I didn’t know such as the ending of that particular movie being rewritten and recreated in the editing room and with some reshoots to completely change it and give it more of a climactic finale. There’s also the disturbing, to me, element... considering just how good some of the Marvel movies are... of that thing where people off the cuff say... oh, they just made that movie to sell toys. Unfortunately, it turns out that’s completely true in the upper echelons. Iron Man and Hulk were picked to be the stars of the first two MCU films purely because a bunch of kids they play tested thought they would be the coolest characters to buy as toys. Indeed, there’s huge tension throughout most of the history of the studio, since Marvel was bought by Toy Biz before these films, between the creatives and the head suit who didn’t even want female superheroes or characters in the movies because the historical wisdom suggested kids don’t buy female action figures (and, yes, that’s exactly why there were none to few Black Widow toys tying into the first couple of Avengers movies, with the character being replaced in play sets with other figures riding her motorbike). Thankfully, it transpired that Feige and others managed to push back on the inclusion of female characters and a fair few other issues so that, while the majority of the Marvel movies were definitely kickstarted for what they call their ‘toyetic’ value, quality films were still made from the beginnings of these projects.

Another thing which surprised me was the way the artists drawing spectacular visions of Marvel characters out before each film’s conception were dictating scenes which would be in the movies, rather than the other way around. I’m surprised that none of the writers of this book realised (or at least stated that they did) that this is actually a parallel to the way respected Marvel maven Stan Lee used to write the original comics, what he called the ‘Marvel method’, where after a basic storyline was given, the artists would be free to come up with their own panels and Stan and others would then put the dialogue on over the bubbles and tie it all together retrospectively.

And there’s a lot of stuff that people who have followed the studio’s trials and tribulations will recognise in some form. For instance, Edward Norton and Joss Whedon don’t particularly come off very well here. And you get the feeling that some, if not many, lessons were learned from writer/director Edgar Wright’s original, legendary Ant-Man script... which led to some bitterness, for sure. The effect of Covid on the later shoots is also detailed, as are the various spats between the studio and it’s creative talent both behind and in front of the camera. James Gunn’s firing and re-hiring, for example... or the row about simultaneous streaming and theatrical releases as a result of the pandemic that rightly brought actors like Scarlett Johansson out to start law suits against the company. Not to mention the bankruptcy of various special effects companies like Rhythm And Hues, put out of business by being locked into absurdly agreed, low fees for effects work that was, for companies like Marvel, a constantly moveable feast. I suspect that’s still playing out right now because, hmm, I haven’t seen the third Spiderverse movie debuting this April as originally stated... not to mention the number of MCU titles now pushed back to next year.

Another thing I found interesting was the reveal on various intricacies and machinations of just who Spider-Man belongs to in any given film (it’s Sony) and how the MCU movies which feature him were actually negotiated as big profit makers for Sony rather than Marvel, who were helping to bankroll them (although they were, themselves, raking in money on the toys associated with these films). And I also learned about a newish thing instigated by Marvel for character creators called the Special Characters Contract... and how that is also sometimes abused to maintain low payments to some of the creators of the original characters in the comic book universe.

And that’s me done with MCU - The Reign Of Marvel Studios, I think. It’s not ever going to be able to look at all the product they’ve put out in any great detail (it's already well over 400 pages long) but the casual reader like myself will find that it’s very well written and lays out how some of these movies and deals are put together in an easy to understand fashion. And pay heed, future readers. After the end notes of the book start, don’t just assume you’ve come to the end because, to mimic the style of the post and mid-end credits scenes in the MCU movies themselves, the writers have hidden an extra chapter right in the middle of this section... which is a nice touch. I really enjoyed this book and, all I can say is... I hope the writers would consider putting together a similarly themed tome for the DC Cinematic Universe at some point. That’s also a book I’d love to read.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special 2022

Christmas Bacon

Guardians Of The
Galaxy Holiday Special 2022
Directed by James Gunn
2022

A quick note... I’m writing this very brief review in  the last days of Christmas 2022 and so it’s probably bad timing to put this one up before 2023. I’m going to pre-empt myself here and say that, by the time this review is published in December 2023, I will have already seen and reviewed Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 3 for the site (right here). Therefore, any character arcs and terminations (which I suspect will be the case) are not yet known to me as I’m writing these words... so please read this in that context since, I’m sure some of the things in this might seem a little contradictory by the time this review sees the light of day.

Okay, so we have a specific Marvel Christmas special this year (as opposed to a Christmas TV miniseries such as Hawkeye... reviewed here). I have to say that I’m the only member of my household who actually thought this was any good and the only one who stuck with it properly until the end (even though it’s only 41 minutes long). There are a few bad things about it and also some good stuff. And this is going to be a fairly short review so, let’s look at the good stuff first.

Okay, so we have the film starting on a flashback sequence done in a late 1970s/early 1980s variant of rotoscoping animation, telling of how Yondu (played by Michael Rooker) ruined Peter Quill’s Christmas. So, yeah, the start looks deliberately cheap. Quill, aka Starlord, is once again played by Chris Pratt and he’s joined by series regulars Vin Diesel as Groot, David Bautista as Drax, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon, Pom Klementieff as Mantis and Sean Gunn as Kraglin. Once Mantis and Drax are told this story, it switches into live action and the two pledge to bring Christmas back into Starlord’s life... by travelling to Earth and kidnapping Peter’s longstanding childhood hero in the GOTG series of films... Kevin Bacon, in order to present him to Peter as a christmas present. Comedy shenanigans ensue and Bacon eventually finds himself hanging out with the Guardians on their newly acquired base on Knowwhere (following on from Avengers Endgame).

There are some nice jokes, some songs (mostly terrible, although I liked the first one... nobody else in the house did), some tiny comic action sequences and... a bit of sentiment here and there. It’s pleasant and mostly harmless fun and, yeah, I guess for me that’s fine but I think others in the household wanted a lot more from it.

There’s some bad stuff too, though... but the one thing I will bring up in that context is Groot. I mean... what? What happened to the CGI stuff? Did they use it or not because, frankly, if looks like someone wearing a bad Groot costume for most of the time. It just looks cheap and horrible and I can’t help but think that maybe more extensive use of CGI effects might have been planned but either money or, perhaps more likely, time... was not on the side of the crew here? Yeah, I don’t know why but it just felt wrong. I’m hoping this is not the same kind of effect/look they’re going to be going for in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 when it comes out... but if it is, you’ll certainly already know that by the time this review sees the light of day on this blog.

Countering that though, Mantis seemed a little less subdued as a character and given much more to do, asides from being revealed to Peter as being his half sister. She was great in this. I could have done with seeing a lot more of Nebula and Rocket though, truth be told.

And, yeah, that’s me done with Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special 2022... it was basically fine but, certainly in my household, I was in the minority. Most people here seemed to think it was pretty rubbish so, whatever, I certainly think it was by far the best of the stand alone Guardians Of The Galaxy adventures though*... which, to be fair, isn’t saying much but, no, again, it’s basically fine.

*Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 is better than all of them by a long chalk, it turned out.

The Marvels

If Anyone Can...
Kamala Khan!

The Marvels
Directed by Nia DaCosta
USA Marvel/Disney 2023
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some slight spoilerage.

Well now, when The Marvels was announced I was up for it because I quite like Brie Larson and her performance in Captain Marvel (reviewed here) and her appearances in a few other Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. However, since then I’d seen a number of the Disney controlled Marvel TV shows... you know, those ones of varying quality which they seem to be using to help dilute the impact of their purchased Marvel brand in much the same way as they are draining all the life from their purchased Star Wars franchise. 

However, Ms. Marvel (reviewed here) was one of their few really great shows (along with their absolutely fantastic She-Hulk Attorney At Law show... reviewed here). One of the reasons for that success, apart from the quirky tone of the show, was the introduction of ‘never been in anything before’ actress Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel and, well, she proved herself a powerhouse of an actress in that show and she does the same here, reprising her Kamala Khan role in both the actress’ and character’s feature film debut.

But wait... there’s more. See, this film is a combined sequel to, not only Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel but, also, the TV show WandaVision (reviewed here). In that show, the grown up version of Monica Rambeau from Captain Marvel was introduced in the form of actress Teyonah Parris, whose character gained superpowers from her experiences trying to unravel the intricacies of WandaVision... so she returns as a third ‘Marvel’ in the movie, teamed up with the other two and under the leadership of... well, of course... Nick Fury, as played once more by Samuel L. Jackson. I mentioned in yesterday’s review of the somewhat unremarkable Secret Invasion (reviewed here) that I was struggling my way through that one so I could be more prepared for the continuity of this movie but, as it happens, you don’t need to have seen Secret Invasion to fully understand this movie (although I would suggest you do catch up with Ms. Marvel before watching this one, if you haven’t already seen that show).

So, anyway, this film seems to have divided critics and audiences alike.... which gave me some hope, actually, because if there’s one thing I’ve noticed over the last few years it's that, if there’s a good movie with something to say and produced in an individual and interesting way, then modern first-run audiences aren’t going to respond kindly to that, they want exactly the same old same old, time and time again. The Marvels has a lot of familiar elements for sure but, it’s also got its own quirkiness and, thankfully, midst all that, it totally allows Vellani to inhabit her full-on Kamala Khan game, a character who recaps the audience with one of those wild, animated notebook sequences which were part and parcel of the TV show.

There’s a lot packed into this movie from Khan’s integration into bigger events within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the drama between Carol Danvers’ (aka Captain Marvel) seeming abandonment of Monica at a young age. Plus there’s all the usual Marvel action you would expect from the studio... including a certain kind of self sacrifice in one of the crucial scenes at the end (which is given a mid-credits sequel set up with some other Marvel characters you may recognise). And there’s even a wonderful section of the movie where all the inhabitants of a planet communicate through song so, yeah, there’s a ‘musical element to the movie also... which I loved. Plus, cats.

That’s right. Cats. Lots of cats.

So remember the cosmic space cat from Captain Marvel who ingested people with tentacles that came from out of its mouth and who was kind of responsible for Nick Fury’s eye injury in this current version of the character? Well, he’s back and so are... well, I don’t want to spoil it so much. Let me just say that there’s one chaotic cat-centric scene in the movie which is needle dropped with Barbara Streisand singing Memory from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and just leave it at that. It’s rare for me to find myself actually laughing out loud in a cinema (even and especially during a full blown comedy) but there were a few moments in this movie when I did so, yeah, I would say The Marvels is one of the better of the MCU movies for sure. I hope this one hits Blu Ray soon because I want to grab it as soon as possible. Had a good time with this one.

Secret Invasion

Furiouser And Furiouser

Secret Invasion
USA June - July 2023
Six episodes
Marvel/Disney

Yeah, okay... I watched yet another Marvel TV series, this one based on their Secret Invasion comics. Now I’ve not read those but I’m guessing this is just the title that’s been borrowed here because the comics had absolutely loads of the Marvel super-hero characters in it (Spider-Man and The Avengers to name just a few) and was a big crossover event. Instead this show is trying... and not succeeding awfully well... to do a cold war spy drama like what you would get back in the 1960s which, to be fair, is exactly what they were doing in the sixties when the war comic Sgt. Fury And His Howling Commandos was transformed by the cinematic scene into Nick Fury - Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

So we have Samuel L. Jackson reprising his role as Nick Fury and it follows on from the events depicted in Captain Marvel (reviewed here)... so we have Ben Mendelsohn returning as the Skrull Talos. These two have some great dialogue scenes together. Olivia Coleman does very well in a role somewhat reminiscent of the one she played in the TV show Citadel and she really shines in her scenes. Emilia Clarke does pretty well too, as Talos’ estranged daughter and Charlayne Woodard does a good job as Fury’s Skrull lover. But that’s about it as far as what’s good about the show goes.

Firstly, the show starts off with Martin Freeman reprising his role from the Marvel films except, the last time we saw him in Black Panther - Wakanda Forever (reviewed here) he ended up a fugitive from justice so... what the heck he’s doing here as a friendly agent (and also a Skrull pretending to be him) is anybody’s guess but, continuity totally seems to have got screwed here.

And this is basically a spy game with a faction of the shape shifting Skrulls wanting to take over the planet after what they see as a lack of commitment from Fury and Talos, infiltrating government and trying to start World War Three so they can inherit the planet after the humans have all wiped themselves out. So it’s doubles or rather, a game of ‘spot which one is really a Skrull’ for six episodes and it gets old really quickly. The Mission Impossible films barely get away with the ‘mask’ shenanigans these days but they do it better than what’s on offer here, for sure. And the stakes are kinda lost when you know anyone could be a Skrull... Whose death is real? Who is actually someone else etc? For instance, when Don Cheadle returns as Rhodey and fires Nick Shield, it’s obvious he’s a Skrull so why does it take everybody else a number of episodes to realise that?

So... it’s not a terrible series and there were some nice moments in it but, yeah, it does kinda fail to capture that whole spy movie feel that Captain America - The Winter Soldier (reviewed here) got right for a lot of its running time. To give an example which is probably quite telling, when I started to watch this the people who I usually watch the Marvel shows with told me that they no longer wanted to see anymore after the first episode... they thought it was that bad. I myself took a couple of months just to get through watching the first three episodes so... it wasn’t a ‘must see’ show for me. In fact, the only reason I binged the last three episodes is because The Marvels hits cinemas very soon (review coming tomorrow) and I wanted to make sure I understood where everyone is supposed to be in play at the start of that... although, if the continuity follow through is as bad as it is here, I guess it kinda doesn’t matter after all.

And that’s kinda where I’m at on this one. A fairly short review, I know but... I really don’t have much to say about it. The actors all did a fine job in Secret Invasion but, excepting a few dialogue scenes, they weren’t being supported by good writing on the story beats and it shows. Not the disaster it’s been made out to be by some for sure but, also just not as interesting as a cold war espionage story should be, I would say.

Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness

Stephen Things

Doctor Strange And
The Multiverse Of Madness
USA  2022 Directed by San Raimi
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Yeah, this’ll have some spoilers.

Okay... this is going to be a fairly brief review, I think. It’s not that I didn’t like Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness... I did (and it might still grow on me some more). It’s a fine film and certainly an example of what is, currently, a typical Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. With more in the same vein teased in the first of the mid and post credits scenes. But I wasn’t exactly bowled over by it either... which is a shame because I think Sam Raimi can be a good director (I don’t think it’s his fault, for the record, as to why I had a less positive reaction to it than I'd expected) and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Marvel character of Doctor Stephen Strange.

The plot in this one deals... not with fall out from Spiderman No Way Home (reviewed here) as you would expect (although Spidey does get a quick mention)...in fact, it turns out that this film was originally supposed to have been released before that one. Nope, this one has a definite plot device of its own to cause alarm in one of the facets of the multiverse that Strange travels to. I said there would be spoilers in this review and so, if you want to avoid them, stop reading now...

It’s not a secret that joining regulars returning from the original Doctor Strange MCU film (reviewed here)... including  Benedict Cumberbatch (as Doctor Strange), Benedict Wong (as Wong), Rachel McAdams as Dr. Palmer and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Baron Mordo... is Elizabeth Olsen, reprising her role as Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch. Well, this film is pretty much kick started from fallout from her TV show WandaVision (reviewed here) but, instead of being a heroic character as she became after a brief stint as a villain at the end of Avengers Age Of Ultron (reviewed here), she actually reveals herself from very early on to be the main villain of the piece. It is she who is trying to get hold of new MCU character America Chavaz (played really nicely here by Xochitl Gomez). Chavez can travel through the multiverse but Wanda wants to kill her and take her powers to travel to a variant universe where she has children instead... which actually makes less sense than you might think, since she can piggy back into other versions of herself anyway.

It all gets a bit fraught and we get to see some guest character appearances, in different versions of their previous Marvel selves, along with new actors playing other variants. So Patrick Stewart enters the MCU as yet another version of Professor X (this film apparently marks the character’s fourth death on screen as played by Stewart), Hayley Atwell as Captain Peggy Carter (but a new superhero variant where she’s a kind of Captain Britain character who was in the What If? cartoon series) and John Krasinski as Reed Richards (yep, a multiverse variant of Mr. Fantastic also gets his MCU debut here)... plus a few others. And all of them die pretty horrible deaths at the hands of Wanda, it has to be said, although this is in no way a horror film, as some delicate parents have suggested (it’s a 12A certificate over here, for goodness sake and probably could have gotten away as a PG). True, there’s a person whose head implodes and another cut in half but, yeah, it’s all pretty bloodless for the most part (including those specific scenes), it has to be said.

It was fairly entertaining but the text was extremely dense and, on the way home from the cinema I was reflecting on why it mostly failed to connect with me. Well, despite a couple of scenes featuring Bruce Campbell (it’s a Raimi movie, so of course), there’s really not much humour in it. I mean, sure, some of the characters act in a humourous manner sometimes but, yeah, the script is not loaded with amusing dialogue and one liners like, say, the recent Spider-Man and Avengers movies. The film has a lot of gravitas and sometimes I felt like the writers were beating the audience over the head with the weight of the emotional consequences for various characters when they maybe should have injected a little more fun into things.

Raimi regular Danny Elfman was trying his best with the score here but, while he does include Michael Giacchino’s excellent leitmotif for the Stephen Strange character, it’s mostly very subtly done when, honestly, we needed that familiar theme to pop up way more often in the film, I think. It’s an okay score but, again, not much chance of me really finding out just how good or bad it is because, at time of writing, Hollywood Records have only released it on a useless electronic download and not on a physical CD... so this is another modern movie score I won’t be able to listen to properly, alas.

The first of the post-credits scenes, technically a mid credits scene, sets up another movie as a woman confronts Strange on a New York street and opens a portal to take him, once again, into another part of the multiverse. Well, this scene disappointed me because, when I saw the woman I was thinking to myself... “... please don’t be Clea, please don’t be Clea”. But then I checked the IMDB and, sure enough, this character is supposed to be the first appearance of Clea in the MCU. Frankly, she has none of the look and gothic impact of Doctor Strange’s future wife (and niece of the Dread Dormammu, if memory serves) and, yeah, she looks just like every other Marvel superhero clone (in fact, she looks more like the original version of Valkyrie in the comics). So I felt a bit deflated after that.

And that’s me done on Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness... which really does feel like a sequel to WandaVision more than anything else, truth be told. If you like the usual Marvel movies you will probably like this and, I certainly didn’t hate this one. However, all I will say is that, for residents of the UK, this is not the best of the multiverse movies at cinemas at present. For a much more entertaining look at alternate realities, check out my review of this one here.

Spider-Man - No Way Home

Home From Home

Spider-Man - No Way Home
USA  2021 Directed by Jon Watts
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Here be big spoilers right from the start... because there’s not much to talk about in this movie other than the central premise/gimmick.

Okay, so first my congratulations to Marvel for getting a film out which has appealed to enough people that it’s literally made billions of dollars in cinema box office in the middle of a pandemic (which still isn’t anywhere over yet... as I’m sure we’ll all find out fairly soon). As for me... well Spider-Man - No Way Home wasn’t a great Marvel movie and it wasn’t a terrible one. It’s about on a par with the last one in the series, Spider-Man - Far From Home (reviewed here) but, at least in this one we see the Spider-Man costume more prominently. In fact we see a number of different costume variants from different versions of, not just the most recent films in which Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has appeared in but also, yeah, spoilers people, we see the versions from the previous two iterations of Columbia’s Spider-Man movies.

So Holland is back alongside Zendaya as MJ (who’s not actually named Mary Jane as everyone had assumed), Jacob Batalon as Ned, Jon Favreau as Happy, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange and Benedict Wong as Wong... among a whole host of other regulars from the series. It ties in some of the post-credits scenes in previous movies such as Far From Home and Venom - Let There Be Carnage (reviewed here) and allows them to make more sense because this one is definitely playing around with the idea of multiverses... I guess the studio heads were staggered by the box office of Spider-Man - Into The Spiderverse (reviewed here) and wanted to sort out something similar in a live action version. So J K Simmons returning as J Jonah Jameson at the end of Far From Home makes sense now because this iteration of the character is not the same as the one in the Sam Raimi films... he just happens to look like his multiversal counterpart.

Okay, so what that means, thanks to a screwed up spell when Peter Parker asks Doctor Strange to remedy the problems that Jameson has made for him, is we have various villains... and heroes... from the previous two Spider-Man franchises continuing their story points in the part of the ‘multiverse’ we are familiar with from the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) films. So, yeah, we have Willem Dafoe as The Green Goblin, Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus, Jamie Foxx as Electro, Thomas Haden Church as The Sandman and Rhys Ifans as The Lizard. Plus, of course, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield portraying the previous versions of Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man), who are on hand to lend the Tom Holland incarnation some assistance when he loses someone close to him and finds himself in his darkest hour.

And, I will probably get a lot more out of it the second time around but, although I don’t feel all that impressed by this one... which makes absolutely no sense in the way it leaves the characters at the end (I’m hoping they clear up their ‘lack of common sense’ mess in the up and coming Doctor Strange movie)... the film has it’s fair share of up and down moments... more up I am happy to say.

My biggest down moment was Jamie Foxx. I’m sure he’s a great actor and it’s really not his fault that the way his Electro character is written sucks, in both this and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (reviewed here). I used to love that character in the original comics but, yeah, this just isn’t him. However, there were a couple of nice ‘blink and you’ll miss them’ electricity strikes around his head during at least two points which were deliberately reminiscent of the head piece of his costume in the proper 1960s comics at least. I was also somewhat disappointed that Tyne Daley didn’t show up as part of the Damage Control team this time around, as she did in Spider-Man Homecoming (reviewed here) ... which is a shame. Did they drop her from the line-up?

All the other characters were mostly handled well, especially Alfred Molina, injecting the Doctor Octopus role with as much sympathy as he did the first time around in Spider-man 2. Willem Dafoe is also absolutely awesome here and, thankfully, mostly unencumbered by that terrible helmet he wore in Spider-Man (although it does turn up briefly). Thomas Haden Church as Sandman is equally multi-dimensional in terms of his character’s dynamic and reversal in this, like a reflection of what happens with Molina’s character here. The Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man (reviewed here)  is, perhaps, a little different to how I remembered him, however, especially in the design of the character.

There are also some nice moments with Maguire and Garfield as the two other Spider-Men. One moment which is really emotional is when, when it comes to the MJ character in the film, is when the Garfield version manages to save her from the death he accidentally inflicted on his girlfriend Gwen Stacey in similar circumstances in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Also, there’s a fan pleasing moment when the writers address the issue of whether the mutant Tobey Maguire version of the character shoots webbing from his penis or not... which is something audiences have been asking since his first go in the role in Spider-Man, of course. Yeah, they get a lot of mileage out of his mutant DNA in this one, actually, in terms of the humour of the film.

There’s a large dose of tragedy in the film too. Not just with the death of a major character in the series (yeah, I’m not giving that away too) but with the totally nonsensical ‘how can Peter Parker even get money out of a bank to pay the rent now’ way the ending leaves the central three characters of the MCU Peter Parker, MJ and Ned Leeds in at the film’s conclusion. Now, when I first rumbled they were going to go all multiversal at the end of No Way Home, I was pretty sure they would set this up to eject Spider-Man from the future MCU films... or at least Tom Holland’s iteration of it (there’s a couched reference to Miles Morales in the movie so, it’s obviously on their mind). The ending of the movie definitely sets up a future for the series where Tom Holland’s Spider-Man either does, or perhaps doesn’t, return in future movies. I suspect the answer to that one won’t come soon (and I think it will be a bit of an elephant in the room in the upcoming Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness too, since it’s pretty much a direct sequel to this one in terms of the set up, at least judging from the trailer used as the second of the post-credits scenes here)... Holland has expressed an interest in not returning so I suspect some hasty salary negotiations are being looked at (or not... Marvel have a track record now for replacing characters with different actors, I believe... Roadie, for example, or Howard Stark and Bruce Banner come to mind).

Ultimately, Spider-Man No Way Home is an entertaining movie for what it is... a big attempt at a multiversal crossover cash grab that, apparently, has certainly succeeded in that. I didn’t hate it and I suspect I’ll grow to like it more over time (if they manage to make sense of their ending in future MCU movies). There are some good bits, there are some clunky bits (“You are AMAZING!"... geddit) but, overall, it’s nice seeing the winning team of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange together again (although Strange is not in it as much as you might think). So, yeah, if you liked the other MCU Spider-Man films, not to mention the previous franchises, you’ll probably have a relatively good time with this one, I would say. I still think Homecoming is the best one in this trilogy, though.

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.

Venom - Let There Be Carnage

Carnage Hall

Venom - Let There Be Carnage
USA/UK/Canada 2021
Directed by Andy Serkis
Marvel Studios/Columbia

Warning: Slight spoilers
concerning the mid-post-credits scene.

The first Venom movie (reviewed here) really shouldn’t have worked at all. Without the Spider-Man character as a catalyst for the look of the ‘suit’ that is Venom, it really doesn’t make much sense, either. However, despite the bizarre gymnastics to get the character into a stand alone film and giving him a totally new origin story (which, as I said, makes no sense), the first movie was a really fun, good time at the cinema... so I was more than happy to reacquaint myself with the character for a second movie.

The film once again stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom and Michelle Williams as his ex-girlfriend... and, as teased in the post-credits scene of the last movie, we have Woody Harrelson back as serial killer Cletus Kasady. Kasady becomes Carnage in this move in the most totally unlikely and unconvincing way, it has to be said. The film also features modern Miss Moneypenny Naomie Harris as a version of Shriek from the comics.

So all well and good and I’m here to say that the sequel, Venom - Let There Be Carnage, is a fun if frothy and insubstantial sequel to the first movie (well, even more insubstantial than the first movie at any rate). Certainly, the film is all about the humour as Eddie Brock and Venom try to live with each other and much of the film’s comedy comes from them trying to work out a few kinks in the symbiotic relationship. So there’s a scene played for laughs where Venom is trying to cook up a breakfast for Eddie to cheer him up after he has been heartbroken by the impending marriage of his ex, where he practically wrecks everything in the kitchen in the pursuit of culinary delight. There’s also a nicely done ‘break up’ scene where the two have a massive argument and go their separate ways in the movie for a while, just as Carnage comes into play and Cletus/Carnage is hunting down Eddie for a quick fix of revenge.

And it’s all... fine. Just fine.

It’s also, maybe, a bit of a mess. There’s nothing much but gloss and, coupled with the fact that the movie runs for just over an hour and a half, which is a nice running length for a movie normally, it feels like it’s finished before it’s even begun properly. The resolution, such as it is, just feels one or two set pieces light before you should be getting to that point and maybe, it turns out, a two hour running time is best suited to movies with big, modern, mythical characters. Which is strange because the action all feels epic but the scope of the story does not. Very little actually happens which is why it’s lucky we have some great performances to carry the movie by the likes of Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson here. Without actors of this pedigree, I suspect that this movie might have really dragged.

I still don’t think the imagination is quite there for the alien symbiotes in these movies though. Venom, as CGI and fluid a character as he is, still feels like some guy standing around in a suit (even if, you know, he isn’t) and, okay, the precedent has been set for that character in the previous movie so it’s fine to go with that here. But, the real problem is that Carnage, who always looked really ragged, edgy and dangerous in the comics (at least from the cover art that I remember) really doesn’t look all that different from Venom in the movie. He’s red and a little more scrappy for sure but, I felt they really needed to go to town a little bit more on the visualisation of the character in this to give him a more distinctive feel. I just felt he needed to be a bit more splintered from reality and all over the place but, still, the character works fine as a psychotic version of Venom to an extent and it looks fine on screen... it just doesn’t really feel as perilous as Harrelson’s pitch perfect reading as human serial killer Kasady, it has to be said.

But it’s still a nice blend of comedy and action and the scenes with Peggy Lu playing the grocery shop owner Mrs. Chen build on the ones from the first movie and should definitely make you smile. There’s also an extra added dimension to where things go at the end of the movie. While Venom is trying to show Eddie some of the things it knows about the universe at the end of the movie, something happens to them which transports them to a different aspect of the multiverse and they end up in a hotel room watching J. Jonah Jameson’s reveal that Peter Parker is Spider-Man... a different look at one of the post credits scenes from Spider-Man - Far From Home. Which means two things. One, the Venom moves are officially crossing over with the current Marvel Cinematic Universe and two, the various multiverses are beginning to collide. I can’t guess for sure as to whether this happens before Doctor Strange messes up the spell in the next movie... after all, this could be a reason that original post-credits scene happened but, saying that, going by the first trailer for Spider-Man No Way Home, the spell appears to get cast as a reaction to something similar happening in the first place so... yeah, I guess the jury’s out on that one.

Anyway, speculation aside, if you liked the initial stand alone Venom movie then you should have an okay time with Venom - Let There Be Carnage. It doesn’t have a great deal going for it but it is suitably entertaining and that’s more than enough reason to go see a movie anyway, right? So it’s fine.

Loki

Low Key Ending

Loki - Season 1
June 9th to July 14th 2021
6 episodes

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Wow, you know, this one was almost a great TV show, it has to be said. It has one huge problem which, at least temporarily, kinda puts a damper on things but, yeah, for the most part this was highly entertaining and a much more interesting, if paranoid, take on the Marvel Cinematic Universe... or, you know, the Marvel Dodgy Internet Streaming Universe as it’s now become, as Disney try and milk and dilute all their newish acquisitions to squeeze the maximum profit out of them (although I did appreciate the oblique reference to Captain Hook in one of the episodes in this show).

Loki follows the further antics of the ‘split away’ variant version of Loki, played once again by Tom Hiddleston, after he diverges from the established timeline during the addition to the epilogue scene, so to speak, of The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble, reviewed here), as shown in the time heist sequence in Avengers Endgame (reviewed here). It reruns some of that scene and then continues after Loki escapes, thus branching off into a new variant timeline, before his future adventures leading to his ultimate demise at the hands of Thanos ever happened. But then, straight away, he is captured by agents of the seemingly all powerful TVA (the Time Variance Authority) and it gets all ‘Brazil at it’s most Kafkaesque’ for a while as he is processed and, unlike many of his allies, instead of being disposed of in ways I won’t mention due to spoilers and things we find out later in the story, he instead gets recruited to help Agent Mobius, played by Owen Wilson.

So a ‘dangerous variant’ of Loki, one of many it turns out, is taking out various TVA agents through time and stopping them from fulfilling their ultimate purpose... which is to police the one true timeline and prune any variances which might branch off into alternate timelines. After working through some trust issues, Loki and Mobius team up with the wonderful, troublesome variant they have been pursuing... Sylvie, played brilliantly by Sophia Di Martino. The chemistry between these three actors and their co-stars is absolutely amazing, I must say and the writing on this show is, mostly pretty good too... with a caveat.

Okay, so one of the things I liked about this is that it’s a heavyish look at the concept of time travel and how you would police such a thing. It’s pure science fiction and, unlike a lot of the Marvel films, which to be fair aren’t always all out explosion fests, this one doesn’t have a heck of a lot of action. Which is not a bad thing because this still has some pacing to it and there’s usually one fight or chase per episode, for those who crave such things.

There are also some very nice moments which depict other variants of characters in different guises... so there’s an alligator Loki, for example and, if you look at a small part of the screen in a particular digital tracking shot in one episode, when Thor’s hammer has just left the top of the screen it’s followed by a little ‘jumping frog’ version of Thor. Another great inclusion for, mostly just one episode apart from an epilogue and also a flashback recap, is Richard E. Grant who plays yet another variant of Loki and... this version of the character is costumed very, very closely to the version of him in the original Thor comics from the 1960s. Which was a nice thought. Also, it took her a while to get back to the franchise after her appearance in a couple of early episodes of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D but Jaimie Alexander returns to the franchise as Lady Sif (apparently she’ll also be in the upcoming Thor - Love And Thunder movie too, which is good that she’s rejoining the series of films where her character debuted). So that was a nice surprise.

And then there’s the big problem with the series... the last episode. Things build up to a revelation and climax and... well... the answer to the whole plot of the thing takes forever and involves a lot of boring expository dialogue which I could really have done without. We already knew at this point that the series was being renewed for a second season and that may or may not be where this one continues but, certainly, it might also continue in the upcoming Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness movie and, quite possible, even the new Spider-Man - No Way Home movie scheduled for the end of the year (I say scheduled because the coronavirus pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon). So, yeah, nothing is really resolved and we’re left with a cliffhanger, of sorts which, given that I suspect it could be a while for even a second series to get sorted, is a bit of a downer... especially since this last one was a really boring episode when the rest of the show had been really cool.

And that’s more or less it. The music is good but, yeah, no CD release so I’m not investing any time thinking about this stuff anymore... quite often these days I’ll pass on a film or a TV show because there’s no CD of the soundtrack coming out and, yeah, whether I’ll bother getting around to the second series myself is anybody’s guess, if Marvel are going to keep just releasing dodgy downloads of the music instead of the real thing (and the same goes for a Blu Ray release... if it’s not physical then it really isn’t there).

Loki was, for the most part, quite a cool TV show which got incredible dull in the last episode but, may or may not continue from where it left off when we eventually get to a second season. I’m getting a little tired of trying to guess what Marvel’s never ending long term plans for the characters in these kinds of things are, though, so I’m feeling less invested in the whole MCU of late. I guess we’ll see what happens at some point.

Spider-Man - Homecoming

Fifty Shades Parker

Spider-Man - Homecoming
2017 USA Directed by Jon Watts 
UK cinema release print.

One of the things they’ve managed to do in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), in the nine years since it’s been going in the current incarnation of it, is to take some second tier Marvel characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Ant-Man and Thor and do something truly wonderful with them in their cinematic incarnations that, as far as the other non-MCU franchises go, they have emerged triumphant and very much become the first tier characters that they never quite managed to be in the comic books... outshining the majority of the films produced from genuine top tier characters like Spider-Man and The X-Men.

However, when they made a deal for the movie rights to the Spider-Man character so they can use him in conjunction with another company and bring him into the MCU proper... well, they made a real good go of it with his debut appearance in Captain America - Civil War (reviewed here) and one of the positive things I’ll say about both that movie and this one, Spider-Man - Homecoming, is that they have managed to take a character who has already headlined, in different incarnations, a number of big budget theatrical releases and still find a way to breathe new life into the character. Although you’ve seen it all before in terms of the Spider-Man character... you also haven’t, in that they manage to side step the strengths and weaknesses of previous versions and change things up enough that the character feels like a new MCU character. Rather than, say, a stray from another movie.

What this means, though, is that a lot of the things that people loved about the original comics are thrown out with the radioactive bathwater and I think some audience members, myself included to a certain degree, might find it a bit of a shame. I’ve only ever read the first hundred or so issues of the original comic myself but what I’m trying to say here is, if you are looking for a version of the character which finally matches the way he and his supporting cast are in the comic books then look no further than... the 1967 animated TV show because, honestly, that’s probably the closest thing you’ll find. So all of you classic spider-fans are forewarned... this isn’t like the version you remember from the comics.

For instance, the character’s Spider sense isn’t mentioned once here and seems to have been replaced by the voice of Jennifer Connelly as his ‘in suit’ computer on the costume which Tony Stark has manufactured for him. Which has a nice continuity in some ways because Connelly is married to Paul Betany who played the voice of Jarvis in the original Iron Man suit before he was ‘evolved’ into the live-action character of The Vision in Avengers - Age Of Ultron (reviewed here).

So yeah, there are some things which I feel are mis-steps in the new film. Mainly in the casting and characterisations.

For example, we finally have a version of Betty Brant in this version but, instead of looking like the character should look (done so well but without the star billing that Peter Parker’s original love interest should have had in what amounted to cameos in the Sam Raimi versions), she is way too young and has blonde hair instead of her classic look. Flash Thompson, instead of looking like his namesake Flash Gordon looks anything but and Pete’s other love interest from the early days, Liz Allen, rather than being the drop dead blonde from the comics, is 'beyond brunette'. In fact, I’m not sure that even was supposed to be Liz Allen because of the ‘thing’ which comes to light later on in the movie which, I surely won’t spoil for you here. As for MJ? Well here’s she’s not a Mary at all... instead she's Michelle so... don’t know where their heading with that one. Face it tiger... we don’t know quite where that jackpot is coming from as yet. So it’s all a bit of a mess although, it has to be said, the actors and actresses involved in bringing them to life here are all pretty likeable and watchable... so there’s that.

Tom Holland is pretty cool in the role, doing what he’s doing and, so is Jacob Batalon as his best friend Ned. Then there’s the usual MCU characters creeping in here who really work well with Holland’s portrayal, including the always watchable Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark and his former Iron Man director Jon Favreau reprising his Happy Hogan role. There’s also a great little cameo near the end of the movie by someone who I really didn’t think we’d be seeing return to the MCU franchise and that was a great little moment but... again, won’t mention who that is because I don’t want to spoil it.

So there’s all that and, of course, we have the truly brilliant Michael Keaton playing The Vulture as the main bad guy in this one. Now, this version of the character is, again, nothing like the one who made his debut in the pages of the third issue of Spider-Man’s comic book history, The Amazing Spider-Man Issue 2 from 1963... but the spirit of the character is in tact to a certain extent, although Keaton manages to play him with a lot more sympathy and I was really pleased that Marvel have continued with their uncanny knack for casting just the right people for the right roles because, as you’d expect from Keaton, his performance here is amazing. Especially in a certain scene in a car journey when a certain penny finally drops (aided by a nice moment in the way his face is lit) and you can see the wheels turning in his mind.

The film is a real hoot too. It’s crackingly paced, whizzing by very fast so that you won’t necessarily have time to catch your breath and notice certain weaker points of the film like how it fits into the timeline of the current crop of Marvel movies...

It starts off extremely strongly with a pre-credits sequence showing why Keaton’s version of Adrian Toomes decided to become The Vulture and it’s a sequence starting off in the wake of the big alien battle at the end of the first Avengers movie (which I reviewed here). It also has Tyne Daley (Yeah, that’s Lacey from Cagney And Lacey right there!) as the comic book character Ms. Anne Marie Hoag in a nice moment where the Marvel movies finally acknowledge the existence of Damage Control, the people who clean up after various superheroes have wrecked the place in their battles and who have turned up in a number of comic book series' over the years. We then come to one of those other kinds of problems I alluded to a couple of paragraphs ago in that the rest of the pre-credits... and the movie proper...  takes place eight years on from the events at the end of that first Avengers movie. So you do the maths then. The first Avengers movie came out and was, presumably, set in 2012... that’s only five years ago in reality, right? So why the heck they chose to set this film (and presumably Captain America - Civil War) in the year 2020 is beyond me. Especially since it has a major ‘this doesn't make any sense’ knock on effect in terms of the other movies in the series.

However, like I said, it’s not the kind of movie you’re going to enjoy if you get mired in both expertise in adaptation and continuity logic. Let’s forgive it for now and move on...

The film continues to open strongly post credits with a big excerpt from Peter Parker’s video diary as an alternate, ‘first person’ version of his involvement of the events in Captain America - Civil War and we take that as our starting point for a movie which continues to be strong and totally entertaining all the way through. It sets the tone nicely and gives the title character a good starting point to launch and swing into action from and it’s truly a nice and unexpected touch. There’s also another little unexpected thing later on in the film which I really should have seen coming but I didn’t. This seems to be a bit of a rare year for movies taking me by surprise, it seems, what with the awesome Wonder Woman (reviewed here) also managing to pull the rug from under me (for the most part). It has to be said that the thing I wasn’t expecting here, which I have alluded to twice already (hopefully without potential ‘blind’ audience members noticing it) relies on the kind of silly, clichéd movie continuity that you would almost always only find in a Hollywood movie but.. that’s okay too. I don’t mind being fooled by these things every now and again... love it, in fact. Even though I was particularly dense on this one.

Another great strength of the movie is that it doesn’t feel like the MCU have just borrowed the character to plug into their own movie and are now returning the favour. This film is completely integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe like all the other films in that particular franchise and it doesn’t feel like any of the characters have been thoughtlessly added on. The various Avengers characters like the, kind of, appearance of Captain America (you saw some of that in the trailer for this movie so it’s not a spoiler) and the old Avengers tower and the new Avengers ‘mansion’ are all in here for a reason... well mostly... and feel like a natural element of the film and the story line/characterisation... so that’s pretty good. There’s also a major event that happens to Iron Man, in a way, which will obviously need to be alluded to in future Avengers movies, for sure.

And all of this is good stuff.

Another good thing is Michael Giacchino’s inclusion of a newly arranged version of the 1967 animated Spider-Man TV show theme tune which plays here over the Marvel logo at the start (it’s the version which you could see the recording session from in that video which surfaced on the internet a few months ago). As for the rest of the score... well I really like Giacchino but I was hoping he’d use that old theme throughout on this and I was having real trouble with the main Spider-Man theme here because it really sounded familiar from somewhere else... although I couldn’t quit place it. There are  few moments where he seems to be subtly referencing the old TV show theme here but, as far as I could hear, the pay off to that never materialised... at least not in the way I wanted it to. That being said, “as far as I could hear” is an apt comment, I feel, because this really was a movie where the score was maybe dialled down too much and wasn’t allowed to properly compete with the noisy, explosive action scenes when they were scored. So, yeah, looking forward to giving the CD a spin when it arrives so I can hear the score properly, to be honest.

And that’s that. The film is an absolute blast and, although it has an absolutely awful end credits animation which really seems to dumb down the characters completely in about as inappropriate a manner as you can imagine, Spider-Man - Homecoming is a really enjoyable piece of modern popcorn fodder and fans of the MCU films should like this one. There are two ‘post credits’ sequences for the film... one half way through which is actually quite relevant to the future of the Spider-Man movies, in one way or another, followed by one right at the end of the credits which is... completely irrelevant and which some people may well feel is not worth staying on for. Irrelevance aside, though, the movie gets a big recommendation from me... with the caveat that fans of the character as he appeared in the proper comics of the 1960s and early 1970s might have a hard time adapting to what Marvel have decided to do with him here. It is, however, a humdinger of a web spinner.