Spectacle and Spandex on the Silver Screen

Rubbish villains are kind of the Achilles heel of this entire series, though. Loki aside, most of them have been forgettable and even the better ones don’t get nearly enough screen time to make them a credible threat.

They kidnapped the president because Spoiler - click to showthey had something over the vice-president (his daughter's illness, which they were going to "fix" with extremis) and he would be more favorable to them in terms of funding and military contracts after his ascension when the president was killed.

Re: the Mandarin:
Spoiler - click to showI don't think Killian should have had less screen time, just obscure his purpose a bit more. Have him very obviously be, say, second in command, or something.

Loki aside, most of them have been forgettable and even the better ones don’t get nearly enough screen time to make them a credible threat.

Black Panther's villain, the regrettably-named Erik Killmonger, is the best antagonist in the entire MCU (for my money). But then, that entire movie knocks it out of the park in a way that no other entry in the franchise has managed (except maybe Ragnarok).

It's disappointing that it resorts to the same kind of CGI spectacle that all the others have in the finale, but that's a minor complaint next to all the many, many things it does well.

We ran out of MCU movies so we watched Deadpool. That’s going to take a while to process.

We saw Deadpool 2 on Thursday night. It's pretty much more of the same, emphasis on "more". It's weird, though; for its bigger ambitions on the story and action fronts, the jokes are pretty pedestrian.

Julian Dennison was underplayed in the trailers to the point that I was worried he was going to be rubbish in it, but he was great (albeit just playing Ricky Baker with fire powers).

I thought Deadpool started really well, with great humour and unexpected funny action but by the end of the film it was just another hero Vs badguy to save girlfriend film. It was a bit of a disappointment.

I was surprised it tied into X-Men. I don't know anything about X-Men, apart from a general impression that the films have been really variable in quality. Are they worth watching, or best ignored?

The first two are good, although they do feel slightly embarrassed to be comic book movies; there's a sharp drop in quality after that, though First Class is a temporary spike back to acceptable filmmaking before it goes off the rails again.

Logan is well worth a look though, and I feel like it does a good enough job filling in the blanks that you won't be lost even without seeing the previous Hugh Jackman installments.

For all Zak Snyder's attempts at deconstructing superheroes in film, he's never managed it effectively - a result, I suspect, of using the comic book deconstructions of comic book characters as his template (which most modern comic book movies use as their starting point anyway, so it's not doing anything new for comic book movies) rather than treating the cinematic versions as their own characters and starting from there. James Mangold manages to break down an existing character into something interesting and new (for the screen version anyway) without losing the core of all the previous performances, and it's probably not an accident that he managed it by using arguably the first modern breakout comic-movie superhero.

I am not a fan of the X movies. If you go back and watch X1 or X2 these days I have a feeling you'll be surprised by how bad they are; how dull, dreary and deathly drab they are.

There's so much they could do with them, but they seem singularly incapable of doing anything of any value or worth. The Dark Phoenix movie that's coming up soon seems to have missed the whole point of the Dark Phoenix thing in favor of going 'OH MAN THIS IS A COMIC BOOK ARC THAT SOME PEOPLE THINK IS KINDA IMPORTANT LETS JUST NAME IT AFTER THAT'

They find the least interesting, least fascinating and (perhaps worst of all) least relevant way of viewing the source material and then fart it up on screen once every 5 years to maintain their grip on the rights.

The first X-Men film was huge when it released because it seemed like it was the first decent superhero film. These days it it's just so brief. I think X-Men 2 still holds up. And I enjoyed most of First Class and Days of Future Past. The problems happen when they get to each third film (The Last Stand/Apocalypse) where they don't seem to have any idea how to tell a world-threatening story without it just turning into a CGI shout-off with all the drama of a mid-season Dragonball-z fight.

I have a feeling that at least part of the problem with the X-men films is that the comics are a bloody mess. I read the Dark Phoenix sage a little while back and I was really excited because I had heard so much about it over the years. It was rubbish. And that's one of the high-points.

That being said, you should totally watch Xmen 1 and Xmen 2 so that you get the basis of that world, and then watch the Legion TV series. It is the best thing on TV by a mile and every bit as good as the best of the MCU or Netflix heroes stuff.

The first X-Men film was huge when it released because it seemed like it was the first decent superhero film.

You're clearly forgetting the best superhero movie of all time - Spawn.

I've seen the first season of Legion and it was excellent - and required no previous X-Men knowledge, at least until the point quite late on where it pulled a villain out of nowhere and clearly expected you to know who he was, but even then it didn't spoil things. I'll catch up on the second season once it's all done.

the Legion TV series … is the best thing on TV by a mile and every bit as good as the best of the MCU or Netflix heroes stuff.

I love Legion to bits, but I can see that it could be hard work. It does not give a fuck whether you are ready for what it's serving. I admire its dedication to telling its story the way it wants, with seemingly no consideration for the audience, but I'm always very careful when recommending it to people.

it pulled a villain out of nowhere

Eh, it pulled his name out of nowhere, but I'm not sure that he's any more faithful to the comic character than David Haller himself. I see it more as an Easter egg for comic fans than a relevant detail. My (minor) problem was more the lack of explanation or foreshadowing for why anybody in the show knew who he was.

And you should absolutely get on the secund season. It's tremendous.

I still haven't seen any of Legion. I was hoping it would hit Netflix eventually.

The first X-Men film was huge when it released because it seemed like it was the first decent superhero film.

You're clearly forgetting the best superhero movie of all time - Spawn.

My initial reaction to this was "Spawn wasn't even the best superhero movie that year", but given that 1997 also saw the release of Batman and Robin and Steel, I can't in good faith make that claim.

However, I can say that it wasn't the best comic book movie of 1997.

I'm looking at the 1997 in film Wikipedia article and that was a hell of a year. LA Confidential, Cube, Princess Mononoke, Gattaca, Starship Troopers, Good Will Hunting, Hana-bi…

Or is every year this packed with great, varied movies when viewed in retrospect?

I watched Deadpool yesterday, out of a sense of morbid curiosity, despite suspecting it wouldn't really be my kind of thing; I was right.

It's not awful, I guess, but I was expecting more. I didn't think it was particularly funny, mainly; there were a handful of gags that worked for me, but I don't think I actually laughed out loud at any of them. The action was pretty good, though, and I thought the performances were decent - and some of it was surprisingly emotional, when it wasn't all wank jokes.

Yeah, so a bit of a mixed bag, really.

Batman Vs Superman.

Starts slow, then gets silly, ends up utter nonsense.

That's a charitably positive review of Batman Vs Superman.

Yes, probably.

I feel like if I started digging into its flaws I'd end up with a Luscan style mega rant and anyone who read it would be spending far more time on it than it deserves.

I did like the revelation that Cyborg was made in A Town Called Eureka though.

As if the cinematic Spider-Man wasn't confusing enough for normies, there's a new animated film on the way that's apparently set in an entire parallel universe.

The script is by The Lego Movie's Phil Lord (who's also co-producing with Chris Miller), but that's tempered slightly by the limited (and variable) experiences of the three directors.

On the plus side, it looks incredible when it gets moving (though I'm not totally sold on the chromatic aberration in places), and I really like the sense of humour that's on show here.

I'm up and down on it; it looks phenomenal, but then the action/combat stuff kicks in and I just feel overwhelmed; don't know if that's down to watching it on a phone screen, and maybe it'll be better full-size?

That really does look astonishing. How do they even DO animated films that look like that? I'm assuming it's predominantly CG with either a very effective cel-shading type effect or hand-drawn stuff layered on the top.

It looks like heavily-filtered CGI to me, yeah. The framerate seems deliberately low, too, like they're aiming for a semi-stop-motion kind of look.

Yeah, that looks pretty incredible. The animation reminds me a little of The Incredibles actually.

It looks, in places, like if Telltale finally invested in their engine.

It looks, in places, like if Telltale finally invested in their engine.

And their artists, and their script writers, and their voice actors. But yeah.

Finally caught up with Black Panther which I thought was pretty good with a great ensemble cast.

Was considering going to the cinema tonight to watch Infinity War as it’s still showing but then I saw two tickets would cost £25 and I remembered why I don’t go to the cinema any more. It’s out on Blu-ray in about 8 weeks, I’ll wait.

Meerkat Tuesday/Wednesdays make it a bit more affordable, have you bought any insurance through them recently? If not you can insure yourself for one day's UK travel insurance, costs a couple of quid, and then you're set for a year.

The prices are obscene though. Even if I feel like my Gran saying that.

The Vue near us only charges £6 for a big seat. No idea why it's so cheap but I'm not complaining.

I got the Black Panther blu yesterday - I've gotten into the habit of listening to director's commentaries in the background while I'm working, and I'm quite looking forward to this one.

(On that note, the Logan and Thor Ragnarok commentaries are great.)

I have no idea what percentage of the Thor Ragnarok commentary to believe. The first 20 minutes, I'm pretty sure, is entirely lies; the only thing I fully accept to be true is that his daughter would rather watch Moana.

SDCC's on at the moment, which means trailers.

I'm most excited about Godzilla: King of the Monsters (natch), but it doesn't fit in this thread and I'm not sure we can support an entire kaiju thread, so for now here's the surprisingly good trailer for Aquaman:

Yes, it's goofy as hell, but I don't think there's anybody alive who's got even a surface-level understanding of media who doesn't agree that DC have taken the "dark and gritty" road as far as they realistically can - BvS got slaughtered and Justice League failed to correct the course enough because it was too far into development by the time Warner realised that audiences weren't buying it. But between this and the rumblings about Wonder Woman '84's tone, it seems like they've finally realised that these movies need to have some fun.

And speaking of fun, here's Shazam!, which is basically just Big with superpowers, even down to the mysterious magical origin of the transformation.

I don't care what the internet concesus on this ends up being - I'm totally on board for this, no matter how much it kind of looks like a TV pilot.

Aquaman looks atrocious. Shazam! looks great.

Won't comment on Godzilla, as per the terms of the ceasefire.

Aquaman looks less bad than the other DC films, but still not actually good enough to watch.

Shazam is just Meh. It's a kid finding out he's a superhero. OMG! LOL! selfie! It doesn't look like it will come close to being as worthwhile as the last Spider-man film.

Well I'M commenting on Godzilla, so there.

My Godzilla knowledge is next to zero. The only two I've seen are the weird T-Rex in New York one (which I liked at the time – that's how shit of a fan I am) and the more recent US one.

But when that bit in the waterfall happened, I got shivers. Can't imagine what it made the fanboys do.

The T-Rex in New York one ('98) is actually an okay-to-pretty-good monster movie, it's just a terrible Godzilla (by which I mean the "character"). The most recent US one ('14) is much closer to a "proper" Godzilla than even some of the Japanese films (in my humble gaijin opinion), to the extent that its success in that area gets me past the other issues the film has (though none of them are anything like as egregious as Ninchilla likes to pretend).

There have been thirty-one Godzilla movies over sixty-four years (King of the Monsters will take that to 32, and there's a rumoured sequel to 2016's Shin Godzilla on the way), and they cover the entire length of the quality spectrum (and few fans agree on which films fall where).

Even the best ones are ultimately corny B-movies that suffer even more by ideas that have been muddied as American science fiction got transplanted to Japan before being translated back.

If you can, I do think it's worth watching them all in order, to see the series evolve from an attempt at serious sci-fi into unabashed B-movie schlock, then outright kids' movies, before being aggressively rebooted in the 1980s into a grittier, more "realistic" tone, before the attempts to re-establish the Toho Godzilla as the real Godzilla following the 1998 American film - Godzilla Final Wars, released in 2004, actually has the American Godzilla show up as one of several kaiju that the real Godzilla has to defeat; it's the shortest fight in the franchise's history, lasting about eight seconds. It's soundtracked by a Sum 41 song.

Edit:

Godzilla Millennium, released in 1999, actually has the American Godzilla show up as one of several kaiju that the real Godzilla has to defeat; it's the shortest fight in the franchise's history, lasting about eight seconds. It's soundtracked by a Sum 41 song.

I mean that sounds fantastic. To YouTube!

Coincidentally I stayed at a hotel in Shinjuku last month, that had a giant Godzilla statue smashing the building down. Because Japan.

It was flipping enormous, and roared a Godzilla roar that echoed across the entire neighbourhood once an hour. In the lobby they have a lot of Godzilla stuff, including posters for every film. Except New York T-Rex.

It's soundtracked by a Sum 41 song.

I mean that sounds fantastic.

Yikes

The song is part of the joke - it's aggressive, cheap and very American, at odds with the rest of the score; the (deliberately?) awful CGI Zilla even explodes alongside the lyric "born in the land of the free". It's honestly just surprising they didn't use a song from the '98 movie as well, just to really hammer the point home.

We watched the second season of Jessica Jones this week. It's… not great. The main problem is that it feels that Jessica's hardly in it: the focus throughout is on Trish Walker, and as JJ's square-jawed BFF was easily the worst thing about season 1, it doesn't really work out in the show's favour. (I think the intention is to get the character to where she eventually goes in the comic books, but they sure take their sweet time about it). There's no decent villain, David Tennant is sorely missed, and while there's some good stuff in here - especially Carrie-Anne Moss as conflicted lawyer Jeri Hogarth - it just sort of flails around aimlessly for most of its 13 episodes.

Why are these Marvel Netflix series always 13 episodes anyway? Even the good ones feel stretched out and the bad ones (JJ S2 and Luke Cage S1) feel interminable. They'd all benefit from trimming the fat and cutting the run-time down to 8 or 10 episodes.

Shame really as The Punisher was really good. Still, gotta catch up. Luke Cage S2 up next.

I lost interest about a third of the way into the first episode of the second season of Luke Cage; we finished it, but I've had no interest in going back.

I remember quite liking the second season of Jessica Jones, though - for me, they rank above most of the rest of the Netflix Marvel stuff.

But then I also thought the Punisher was a borderline-offensive snuff-fest that stupidly hobbled its own inevitable sequel, no matter how well Jon Bernthal growled and grimaced his way through. Frank needs to be an antagonist, really - he worked well as that 'dark mirror' to Matt Murdock in the second season of Daredevil, but as a protagonist in his own right he's just not interesting to follow.

I think I stuck with Luke Cage purely because, despite the typically inconsistent anti-hero motivations (hello Punisher!) and powers, I actually found myself quite liking Bushmaster. He’s certainly a shitload more interesting than Luke.

As far as JJ season 2, I suddenly found myself wondering the other day if I’d finished it, which I think says a lot. I worked out I must’ve, but only because I can vaguely remember how, of all people, Malcolm was set up for season 3.

I completely agree on the length of these seasons too - why a streaming service seemingly feels compelled to commit to a standard US TV length season when there’s no need or obligation (and when it’s to the detriment of their product) is beyond me. It doesn’t help that, having started so brilliantly, none of the Netflix series have been better than okay since probably halfway through Daredevil season 2 - I’m not such a fan of Punisher as Gar, even if I do think it’s probably the strongest the Marvel Netflix output has been since Frank finished his stint on DD.

They do 13 episodes because that's what real TV does, and they want so badly to be seen as real TV.

Luke Cage Season 2 is real good.

Yeah, I would say Like Cage season 2 is worth your time.

I liked JJ 2; I liked Punisher, too, and didn't find it as gleeful as aniki describes. Luke Cage 2 was okay; better than the first (fewer "twist" villains that the first season suffered from), but the last couple episodes lost me a bit.

Never mind Shazam or Aquaman the big DC Movie is definetly the Teen Titans movie

Never mind Shazam or Aquaman the big DC Movie is definetly the Teen Titans movie

Yeah, OK. Sold.

The Teen Titans Go! series is actually frequently pretty great, from what I’ve seen (it’s one of the good shows in amongst all the crap my twelve-year-old nephew watches), so I’m pleased but not at all surprised that that looks good.

I finally watched Avengers Infinity War. In many ways I'm not really sure whether it was actually good or not because it wasn't in any way a conventional film: it was more like a series finale with a list of things it needed to accomplish rather than anything that stood on its own merits.

But it did accomplish those things: everyone got their requisite amount of screen time, everyone felt true to their established characters, it looked spectacular, it moved along at a hell of a pace and I enjoyed it immensely. So I guess it was good after all.

Spoiler - click to showInevitably some characters were under-used: Cap and Bucky basically showed up and punched people for a couple of minutes. It was surprisingly heavy on Guardians stuff. Good to see Doctor Strange get his turn in the spotlight though after his middling solo movie. He was much better in this.

As an event though it was undoubtedly unprecedented. We've never seen anything with this amount of star power, with 20 movies' worth of back story and character-building, and I'm not sure we ever will again (apart from the inevitable part 2). However you look at it, this movie (and the entire MCU) are staggering achievements. How the hell they've managed such a consistent tone and quality level across the entire franchise is quite frankly beyond me.

I had no idea what the post-credits scene was supposed to be telling me until I looked it up on the internet.

The sequel's got the harder job:

Spoiler - click to showNo idea how they're going to get out of that one without a massive, unsatisfying reset button.