My only concern with that She Hulk finale is that
Spoiler - click to showMarvel is just lampshading the – very valid – criticisms of its storylines and characters rather than intending to do anything meaningful about them
but otherwise I loved everything about it.
Is it just me, or are more and more movies nowadays feeling like they could use another draft or two before shooting? I've got the benefit of hindsight, obviously, but the last few films I've seen definitely felt like they had at least one subplot underbaked.
Thor: Love and Thunder is definitely one of them.
We watched this last night and I came here to post pretty much exactly this. Somehow this movie feels unfinished, like they strung enough jokes together to make it last two hours and then just edited it together and kicked it out the door.
In its defence, the first half is pretty funny, although it's increasingly hard to reconcile Thor's earlier characterisation with his most recent incarnation as a moron. (He actually fits in quite well with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and it's a shame we haven't seen more of that). Natalie Portman gets to redeem her bored-as-shit performance from Thor 2 and complete no-show in Thor 3 with a movie where she actually looks like she's having more fun than anyone. And Russell Crowe's camp Greek Zeus is the clear highlight.
But the actual story barely exists, Christian Bale appears to think he's in a different movie completely, somehow it's a comedy movie with a cancer subplot, it plays its deus ex machina (the Necrosword) in the first five minutes, and overall it feels like you could have got entirely separate movies out of (a) Asgardians of the Galaxy (b) Jane Foster the Mighty Thor (c) Gorr the God Butcher and ramming them all together into two hours of slapstick did nobody any favours.
It's not terrible by any means but like most Phase 4 stuff it just feels terribly inconsequential.
it's increasingly hard to reconcile Thor's earlier characterisation with his most recent incarnation as a moron
Yeah, L&T definitely took it too far – in Ragnarok he was a bit goofy, but well-intentioned and capable. Love and Thunder made him an inept idiot.
Yes, please. Now. Please. Thanks. Now. Now please.
Across the Spider-Verse is… a lot.
Visually it one-ups the original by a considerable distance, but I can't help feeling the plot is a little too complicated. It spends a notable percentage of its runtime recapping and recontextualising the first film, and while that does pay off by the time the credits roll, it feels a little overstuffed in places.
It's really good, though.
We just saw it this evening, and although I don't necessarily agree that the plot is complicated, they do spend a very long part of the film obscuring what, exactly, the plot is.
It really is great. So many little touches and references, but none of them heavy-handed or clunky - it just feels big and bonkers in a strangely organic way.
I'm obsessed with Gwen's opening drum solo. Is it on the soundtrack? Please let it be on the soundtrack…
It's the end of the first track on the album.
Gwen is a non-event of a character and the first 20 minutes sags because of it, but once Miles is on the screen it thrums along nicely. I think it's too overstuffed to the point of indulgence in bits, but when it's good there isn't much to touch it. Joyful and brilliant and in many ways it really now shows up the Marvel films for the soulless vessels they are these days. Spiderman is glib and funny when it needs to be, but because it isn't a 15 a minute quipathon it really earns the more tender moments too.
I ordered the first film on bluray as I want to rewatch it - I don't think this was quite as good, but I could be wrong. Going to be hell of a trilogy either way.
I watched into the spiderverse this afternoon as a refresh for going to see the new one tomorrow. Into the spiderverse was even better than I remembered. Just fantastic.
We watched Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania last night, which was fairly enjoyable despite being just two hours of characters shouting exposition at each other while CGI went on in the background.
The MCU really seems to be in a tailspin at the moment, doesn't it? I remember when these things used to be character-driven but honestly Quantumania could have featured any group of characters as they just existed to move the plot from one place to the next. Ant-Man movies used to be about a funny guy who could go really small and do funny things (he rides ants! He fights bad guys on toy train sets! He goes down the plughole!) but all he did in this was get really big and punch stuff, which is nowhere near as much fun.
It was still better than Black Panther: Wakanda (Goes On) Forever, which had the potential to be a snappy 90-minute movie about Wakandans vs Fishmen but ended up bogged down in nearly three hours of self-important sludge and the studio demanding that the token white guy should get loads of screen time. The latest TV show, Secret Invasion, has got reviews so poor I don't think I'm even going to bother watching it.
There's a sliver of hope, I guess: Quantumania at least felt like it was kicking off the Kang storyline properly, which might bring some of these things together (part of the problem of Phase 4 is that everything was so disconnected, even when it introduced new characters you would never know when you would see them again). But it's all seriously lacking in momentum at the moment, I'm not sure any of the upcoming movies or shows will be able to turn this thing around.
There's meant to be a lot more Kang in the upcoming second season of Loki as well, but given all the accusations around Majors at the moment, it all feels a bit fraught. Marvel's complete lack of comment on the situation is probably meant to be reassuring, but it honestly reads as mild panic.
We watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 last night. It's pretty good! It does less undermining of itself than some (especially more recent) Marvel fare, and sticks the landing pretty well.
I particularly liked that Gunn didn't just Spoiler - click to showundo the Gamora reset stuff, where I think a less confident film would have had them back together at the end; though Quill's repeated petulant insistence that she "doesnt remember" the last few years does.grate a little, like he's too dumb to realise that she doesn't remember it because it never happened for her.
Also, Adam Warlock could have been really annoying, but Will Poulter's performance was so full of eager honesty, he was actually quite charming.
I decided it's time to get caught up with the last year or so of MCU so I spent the evening rewatching the first two episodes of Loki season 1. It's nonsense but it's exactly the sort of nonsense that I love.
We saw The Marvels last week. I really liked it a lot.
Short version: Iman Vellani is worth the ticket price all by herself as far as I'm concerned.
It's a little weighted down by the now-necessary MCU lore – though the impact of this is lessened by the relatively short 105-minute runtime – but I actually thought its core plot was impressively self-contained despite technically being a sequel to at least four other movies and TV shows (Ms Marvel, Captain Marvel, Wandavision and Secret Invasion), so the critical complaints about its convoluted plot struck me as a little odd.
But even you were to think it's one of the weaker Marvel offerings, I hope you'd agree it's certainly much more watchable and enjoyable than Quantumania, the last Doctor Strange thing, Wakanda Forever or Love and Thunder, all of which were flabby, over-CGI'd and emotionally empty.
So season 1 of Loki is just brilliant.
Quantumania was fine. Felt a bit like i had stumbled into a made-for-TV Saturday afternoon kids movie that Lucy and Robin were watching.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is currently paused 20 minutes from the end but I have loved it so far.
Season 1 of Loki was good. Season 2 is… not. Which is a bit of a shame.
I didn't like Guardians 3. I just don't think you can recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the first one. Everything in G3 feels forced.
Rewatched Constantine the other day, which was actually pretty good in a mid 00s sort of way. I know it's not Marvel (is it? It's a DC line of comics maybe?) but I found it infinitely more creative and watchable than the sort of tuneless dirge that the Marvel superhero films have become.
The Constantine film is good, even if it's not the John Constantine of the comics.
Halfway through season 2 of Loki now and it's totally lost the relentless pace of the first series.
Ok, Loki won me back. That finale was incredible!
I found Loki s2 felt weirdly wheel-spinning in the back half, but yeah, the finale brought it together really well.