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.

Dune Part Two

Harkonnen
The Barbarian

Dune Part Two
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
USA/Canada
2024 Warner Brothers
UK Cinema Print

Okay, so I quite liked Denis Villeneuve’s first attempt to film Frank Herbert’s landmark science fiction novel Dune (reviewed here) and, I have to say, I really liked the second one too. People are maybe over hyping this a little and calling Dune Part Two a great masterpiece. I can appreciate it may feel like that due to the epic scale of the production (although, I think that’s something of an illusion) but, out of Villeneuve’s various films I’d say that some of his others, such as Arrival (reviewed here) are much better.

Nevertheless, this is a pretty entertaining film with an incredibly long running time which, honestly, doesn’t feel like anything half as long. The reason I say the epic scale is a bit of an illusion is because, honestly, the majority of this one takes place just on Dune (aka Arrakis) itself... with the only other scenes being set on the worlds of the Emperor and Baron Harkonnen. But they are brief scenes in the scheme of things and, the majority of the action here follows the plight of Paul Atriedes, played pretty well by Timothée Chalamet (I’ll get to that in a minute) and Chani, played wonderfully by Zendaya. So it’s a lot of running around in the sand with some really great guerilla warfare action scenes and lots of stuff like sandworm riding. And it really doesn’t get dull.

Oh... and about that. The special effects in this are great but, UK readers of a certain age will, I’m sure, know exactly what I’m talking about when I say the sandworm riding scenes are like something straight out of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time. It was all I could think of while watching these sequences throughout the movie. So, I also got a lot of smiles mixed in with the drama.

There are a lot of great actors in this including the almost wasted Rebecca Ferguson (that’s just me... I always want her in more scenes no matter what film she’s in), Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård and Charlotte Rampling (who is very underused also, compared to the build up of her role in the first movie). Everyone’s great in this but... I do want to just say something about Chalamet and two other actors in the movie, namely Christopher Walken as the Emperor and Florence Pugh as his daughter. Who are all good in this but, I don’t know, seem a little inappropriately placed, it seems to me.

Okay, so Chalamet is always good in whatever he’s in but, towards the end I don’t think the casting suited him. Lets look at another film series which borrowed heavily from Dune (not to mention a load of other science fiction literature such as Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoomian novels), namely Star Wars. Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy goes through a similar arc in that he goes from being an inexperienced young man who leans into his ‘mystic powers’ and comes out, by the opening of Return Of The Jedi, as a powerful badass who can take down an empire if he so decides. By the end of Dune Part Two, Paul Atreides is in a similar state but, as good as the frenetic fight scene at the end between Chalamet and a psychotic bad guy is... and for all his posturing and ‘using his voice’... well, I just didn’t buy it. It felt undersold to me.

And Christopher Walken, who is absolutely great as always, also felt inappropriately cast... unless the Emperor is supposed to feel like a flimsy old man who doesn’t seem to be able to ever have acquired and held on to the power he has, that is. Why would anyone throw down their allegiance to this guy in the first place, was my main thought in his casting. He was great saying the lines but, like Chalamet, seemed to lack the gravitas his part required... and I’m really surprised to hear myself saying that about the legendary Walken, for sure.

Thirdly... what the heck Florence Pugh? I felt she was being totally misused here as an actress. Literally, from her opening of the film as a kind of a ‘recap girl’ and onwards, she seemed to be just there to provide a narrative clarification for the audience in most (if not all) of her scenes... which is a shame because she’s actually an important bargaining chip in Paul Atreides’ end game.

I also spotted a nice cameo from one of my favourite actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy but, it was literally just a very small scene as a character who won’t enter the narrative properly for another 25 years or so later in the saga. So, yeah, I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing much more of her in the inevitable sequel, to be honest. I looked for her name in the cast list at the end and she wasn’t there so, I thought I’d just imagined it but, no, her own IMDB page confirms her inclusion in this film, for sure.

And, of course, the other big star of the film is Hans Zimmer’s wonderful score, which does provide both atmosphere and gravitas and, honestly, probably makes the film sound more epic than it actually is. I can’t wait to get my hands on a CD release of this one soon (I’m assuming they’ll be releasing one on proper CD... the first movie got two albums, one of which was also a double album, if memory serves). The leitmotif follow through on this one is pretty strong so, at times it does almost feel like they’ve tracked in parts of the previous score... but it works really well and, yeah, hoping to have the opportunity to hear a proper physical release of this one at some point in the near future, for sure.

And I think that’s me done on the quite wonderful Dune Part Two other than to say, the film has something of a cliffhanger ending again so... I hope Villeneuve is called in to direct Dune Messiah pretty soon. I shall be looking forward to it. Also, the film jumps around a bit and, I suspect there was a lot of it cut out from various sequences which, giving Villeneuve’s hatred of showing deleted scenes, I suspect I won’t get to see in my lifetime (although future lovers of cinema might get to see them once the director is dead, is my guess).

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.

Dune Part One

Fremen Popsicle

Dune Part One
aka Dune
USA/Canada 2021
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Warner Brothers

I remember when Denis Villeneuve was first announced as the director of yet another adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. I said at the time that if anyone was going to be able to capture the inherent beauty of a sand planet then, given his track record it was Denis Villeneuve. Even though, at the time, I was still angry at him for attempting to make a sequel to the greatest movie ever made (aka Blade Runner reviewed here) and then making a great looking film which was absolutely unlike the spirit of the original in any way, shape or form (which you can find reviewed by me here).

That being said, I was surprisingly uninterested when this film finally got released and it took some hefty recommendations from my friends to actually bother sitting down and watching this one... despite wanting to hear what Hans Zimmer did with the score. I remember seeing the David Lynch version in the cinemas back in 1984 and being similarly disappointed in it, especially since I knew Lynch was capable of making something as brilliant as Eraserhead. I think I also read the book around a similar time frame and... yeah, I liked the novel well enough but wasn’t a huge fan like my father was. I never got around to reading any of Herbert’s sequels and I still don’t feel the pull of it, to be honest.

However, I did sit down to watch the new version, eventually and... yeah, it’s okay. Not too terrible. Better than Lynch was allowed to get away with at any rate. It’s influences on film properties such as Star Wars are certainly apparent and the special effects departments are good enough now to render the necessary nuts and bolts workings of the universe which the characters inhabit as something fairly credible, it has to be said. It also should be mentioned that the personal shields used by the various fighters in the field are in no way an improvement over the big, blocky, Tron-like effects in the 1984 version (I haven’t bothered watching any of the TV shows of the various novels) and I think they still look a bit lame, to be honest.

We’ve got a star studded cast on this one, of course, including Timothée Chalamet as main protagonist Paul Atriedes, Rebecca Ferguson as his mum, Oscar Isaac as his dad, Zendaya as his Freman love interest (seen mostly in visions with a small amount of running time in this version, since this film only covers roughly the first half of the first novel), Jason Momoa as Duncan (although why there are bagpipes on the score because he’s called Duncan is beyond me), Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Charlotte Rampling. They’re all as solid as you’d expect from them and help carry the story along at a leisurely pace. There have been comments made that Chalamet is a bit wooden in this... well I don’t know the actor at all but I think he actually plays the role with the suitable amount of gravitas and royal burden a role like that should be played so, yeah, I’ve got no complaints and I think much more emotion might have killed his credibility a little, to be honest. I seem to remember that Kyle MacLachlan was accused of something similar back in the day so, yeah, I think this is the right approach to take with the character.

The film is exquisite to look at, as you would expect from a director like Villeneuve and this gives it a kind of epic feel, like a lot of his movies have, even though it’s obviously been truncated to fit the pacing of his take on the story. There are some nice moments and some suspenseful scenes (such as when the remote, silent assassin comes for Paul) and although it is appropriately slow for the source material, it never gets boring... although I’m not sure I could sit through it again anytime soon.

I should shout out that the ornithopters, machines I’ve been reading about for years in various science fiction and fantasy tales (especially some of those by Moorcock), are beautifully rendered on screen and the absolute impossibility of their movement within the confines of a man made object is neatly transcended by the special effects people at least rendering their mechanics in a visually appealing way. I’m not sure the same can be said of the sand worms though and I think I could have done with seeing them a little bit more... Villeneuve tends to hide them in the sand like they’re on an episode of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time and save the full look at one for the last part of the movie.

Zimmer’s score is absolutely fine and, sounding like a lot of his other scores of late... and that’s not meant to be a slight, I actually like this composer a lot and I think that’s just the power of his personal, musical voice coming out. That being said, the Arabian flavour of some of the score did, at times, sound almost like it was tracked in from the 1982 Vangelis score to Blade Runner, to my ears. Again, though, I think I’m just picking up on the distinctive style of the music in certain parts of the Blade Runner score which obviously shares the same inspirational source.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say about this new version of Dune, in all honesty. It was not as boring or as terrible as I was expecting and, all in all (and without having seen the TV version), I’d say it’s certainly the best cinema release version we’ve had of the story thus far. If you’re a fan of the novel... or even of David Lynch’s neutered version of it... then you’ll probably get a kick out of this version so, yeah, don’t sit on the fence on this one like I did. It’s really, as I said, not too terrible.

Spider-Man - Far From Home

Get Parker

Spider-Man - Far From Home
USA 2019 Directed by Jon Watts
UK cinema release print

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Well, Spider-Man - Far From Home is an okay follow up to the various Tom Holland starring Spider-Man movies of recent years. It’s not without its problems though and while various critics have claimed that this film is the first of what many people are calling ‘superhero fatigue’ at the box office... I think we have a while to go before that sets in yet. I think the somewhat muted response to this film is possibly because of the stealth approach to the title character but I’ll get onto that in a minute.

Of the superhero movies released by Marvel so far this year, I’d say this runs second place behind X-Men - Dark Phoenix (reviewed here) but way in front of the ‘so-so but not terrible’ Captain Marvel (reviewed here) and the terribly disappointing Avengers - Endgame (reviewed here)... so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, for this year at least, DC wins the best superhero movie prize with their inappropriately unfaithful (to the original comics) but immensely fun SHAZAM! movie (which I reviewed here).

So... the new Spider-Man has a lot of the stuff which worked from Spider-Man Homecoming (reviewed by me here) tossed in with some excellent performances from Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds and the truly wonderful Zendaya as MJ. There are a lot of old Spider-Man character references in these movies but they’re so changed from the versions of them found in the original source material that, once again, characters are given the names of their comic counterparts only and have nothing of the look and feel of them. It’s a shame but it kinda works if you can forget these were comic book characters.

It looks spectacular but it kinda drags a lot, to be honest and I think the real problem with this for me is that you never really get to see Spider-Man in one of his regular costumes until near the end of the movie. He’s either winging it with a stolen half mask or wearing a ridiculous ‘Night Monkey’ costume and none of it really gives you that Spider-Man vibe that fans of the character may want. This is not to say there’s not a lot of action but it just doesn’t feel like anything great and I also think the lack of human, villanous henchmen during the fight scenes, instead of fighting big monsters which, anyone who knows who Mysterio is from the comics anyway, will know are just smoke and mirrors, just takes things away from having any stake in the characters.

Some good stuff though... Jake Gyllenhaal is great as Mysterio and when you see him finally from a different viewpoint, he switches into Spidey nemesis mode subtly and it’s very well played. Also, bringing back Happy played by Jon Favreau and having him dating Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May is great. Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders are back too and they do some nice stuff between them.

The main meat of the story though, for my money, is the blossoming relationship between Petey and MJ, which really is what this film is all about as far as I’m concerned, along with MJ ‘discovering’ Peter’s secret identity. Alas, once more this doesn’t happen in the same way as the comics, where it turns out that Mary Jane knew he was Spider-Man even before they’d first met... but they at least let MJ figure it out for herself here so, that’s kind of cool.

Now then, there are two post credits scenes here and, unusually for a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, they’re both kinda important in terms of story beats. The first one sees a famous Spider-Man character from a previous version of the franchise (the Sam Raimi series of films) return. Interestingly, since the person playing this character was so good doing it before, they’ve got the same actor back from that earlier franchise. Now, I did kinda thought this was going to happen with the same actor actually... but I thought they might take another couple of films to do it so everybody could forget this person was in it before. Nope, they’ve really gone for it here although, it has to be said, the revelations of this mid-credits cameo may mean that he really can’t be in it a lot in future movies (although he’ll have to be in the next one, for sure). Also, they cut out a nicely done scene which was shown in the trailer for this movie and, with the consequences implied by this first post-credits scene on the future direction of the franchise, it would have made a lot of sense to keep it.

The second and final post credits scene is also something of an eye opener although, it has to be said, I was a little disappointed in the direction Marvel chose to take this. All I’ll say about this one is... you really need to have seen Captain Marvel to really understand what’s going on here.

And... that’s me more or less done on Spider-Man - Far From Home, I think. It’s an okay movie with a nice score by Michael Giacchino which does ‘more of the same’ as the previous Spiderman - Homecoming although, sadly it doesn’t use the old cartoon series music this time around. There are some cleverly thought out, retrofitting link-ins with the various sub-villains here too, with flashbacks to previous MCU movies like Iron Man and Captain America - Civil War. Ultimately, though, this is not enough to elevate it to being a ‘great’ superhero movie... it’s just a nice addition which has its problems but I suspect it will still do some box office (although possibly not as much on repeat performance as the company might be expecting from it... I certainly have no desire to rush back and see it again). I do look forward to seeing how they go about dealing with the challenge they’ve set themselves here in any sequel, though but... I also feel like Marvel really need to raise their game to continue with the unprecedented box office dominance which they’ve managed to hold for over ten years now. Great writing would surely fix this issue. This movie feels like the franchise is getting a little lethargic and, while I had fun, I was certainly underwhelmed too. It’s still worth a watch though... especially if you’re not too hung up on the comic book versions of the characters who are, mostly, not in evidence here.

The Greatest Showman

What a P.T.

The Greatest Showman
USA 2017 20th Century Fox
Directed by Michael Gracey
Blu Ray Zone B

Ahh, Christmas time. That magical time of the year when you’re confronted by the ghost of watching films you really didn’t want to see because you bought them for relations who did. Such is the case with the musical motion picture The Greatest Showman, which stars Hugh Jackman as P. T. Barnum in what I can only describe as a somewhat sympathetic, rose tinted humbuggery version of that man’s life. I think the last time I saw a production about Barnum it was also big on sentiment and less enthusiastic about selling a more genuine embodiment of the spirit of the man but, that’s okay, I guess that kind of sensationalist pursuit is, in some ways, doing just that... in a roundabout way.

That previous time I saw a Barnum musical it was in 1981 at the London Palladium in a stage musical which was literally just called Barnum... and it had Michael Crawford in the title role (I think ex-Carry On star Jim Dale did it in America, if memory serves). And, though it’s not completely fair, especially since The Greatest Showman is in no way an adaptation or remake of that production, I shall do the obvious and make my one and only comparison to the stage show and say... I still remember some of the songs from the 1980s show. The songs in The Greatest Showman seem, somehow, a little flat and unmemorable in comparison.

That being said, I’m going to hedge my bets here and remember I gave a disasterous review to another recent musical, La La Land (you can read it here if you like), only to discover that, once the songs were stuck in my head, I absolutely loved the movie from my second showing onwards and would happily screen it for myself every year if there weren’t so many other movies to watch. And, seeing as I didn’t hate the songs in The Greatest Showman, I’m guessing that they will soon grow on me if I heard them again so, although I’m not likely to get to it anytime soon, I suspect that if I’d waited and wrote this review after a second viewing, it would be more favourable than what I’ve got to say about it this first time around. So sorry but... first impressions will just have to do.

Those impressions being that... it’s not a bad film. It has some nice segues from one scene to another and some clever choreography on some of the musical numbers... such as the scene where Jackman’s Barnum is trying to persuade Zac Efron’s character to join forces with him in a dance at a bar with flying glasses and bottles... or a sequence where Efron dances with his love interest, played by Zendaya using the ropes of her profession as a trapese artist.

And the performances are all fine too... especially Hugh Jackman, who I always find is worth the price of admission, so to speak. Michelle Williams is equally sparkling as Barnum’s wife Charity and Rebecca Ferguson fairly twinkles as famous singer Jenny Lind. There’s also an edge to the writing in terms of giving the characters a less predictable nature and by far my favourite character was a critic who seems to have hated Barnum but here, it seems, is given a little more three dimensionality in terms of the way he reacts to situations and he’s wonderfully brought to life in this by some guy called Paul Sparks. So all well and good and... combined with some nice colour palettes and some beautiful sets... part of me thinks I should maybe have gone to the cinema to see this one.

However, my main problem... and I can see how this could always be a problem when cinematic fantasies have one foot in reality such as biographical pictures... is that the plot seems absurdly simple. This film has less twists and turns than a Roman road and, while I should probably be applauding simplicity in modern cinema... I don’t know, it just seemed to me like there was no real drama to get my teeth into here, no matter how good the performances were. And they were very, very good.

I guess that, while I did invest in the main protagonists to some extent, I never felt like there was much at stake for any of the characters and I just didn’t feel the need to root for them enough. Which is a shame because there was obviously a lot of time and care put into this production. However, that being said, I’m one of only three people I know who didn’t think it was all that people had said it was (my two viewing companions were of the same opinion as me on this one) and everywhere else... well, I’ve not heard a bad word said about it and it’s been very successful. So I’m kinda glad about that since there’s obviously no small amount of work gone into bringing this tale to the screen.

And that’s me done, I’m afraid. The Greatest Showman didn’t really inspire me as much as it might and I wouldn’t whole heartedly recommend it to anyone... much less those who don’t like musicals (I love musicals myself). Not, quite, my cuppa tea but I suspect I may get turned around on that if I ever find myself plonked down in front of it again. Sometimes first impressions aren’t always right and, like I said... hedging my bets.