The universe is expanding!
Out of the three shows that are featured in the teaser below, it’s the one with Wanda and Vision that most interests me. I can’t wait to see what happens with those two characters. And, of course, there’s no way I couldn’t smile a little when Loki popped up. His death in Infinity War depressed me almost as much as Black Widow’s death in Endgame.
You would think that I would be super excited about the fact that my favorite MCU character, the Black Widow, is finally getting her own solo film. (That Brie Larson’s anemic Captain Marvel got her solo film before the Black Widow is an injustice that I’ll never get over.) And I guess I am excited. The trailer, which you can watch below, is pretty good. It looks like an attempt to bring some Bourne/007 action to MCU and that would seem like the perfect approach to take to the character.
If I’m less than enthusiastic, it’s because 1) I’m still upset over what happened to the Black Widow in Avengers: Endgame and 2) this film is a prequel as opposed to a sequel. Which means that, despite starring Scarlett Johansson, the film is not going to open with the Natasha coming back to life. (You have to wonder if, with recent events. anyone in the MCU regrets killing off one of their best characters as opposed to letting Jeremy Renner’s archer take the fall.) Florence Pugh, in Black Widow, is playing a character who apparently took over the Black Widow name in the comic books so here’s my fear: the film will feature a mid-credits scene of Florence Pugh at Natasha’s grave, announcing that she’ll carry on her legacy. That’s my fear.
Anyway, here’s the trailer:
Usually, I only share trailers but I simply had to share the first official movie poster for the MCU’s Black Widow, which will be coming out in May of 2020.
Seriously, this is so kickass!
Now, before you read any further, I guess I should say that I’m about share a spoiler from Avengers: Endgame. I think everyone in the world has seen that movie by now and, if you haven’t, you probably don’t care about the MCU or any of that other stuff. But still, just in case, consider this to be your SPOILER WARNING:
I really liked Avengers: Endgame but I do have to admit that it really pissed me off that they killed off Natasha. Storywise, there was no reason to kill off Natasha. If anyone in that scene needed to redeem themselves by sacrificing their life for the greater good, it was Clint! After all, Clint’s the one who spent the past few years going around the world and killing anyone who he felt didn’t deserve to still be alive. (And yes, Clint killed a drug lord at the start of the film and drug lords are evil but he also killed everyone who worked for the drug lord and some of those people were probably decent people who were doing what they had to do to survive or provide for their families.) The whole movie felt like it was set up for Clint to finally prove he deserved to be an Avenger by sacrificing his life. Instead, they killed off Natasha and it just felt totally wrong.
(It also felt rather cynical. Of course, they couldn’t kill Clint. They needed Jeremy Renner around to appear in the show about Hawkeye’s daughter that’s going to be on the new Disney streaming service.)
As the first woman to be prominently featured in multiple MCU films, Natasha was always my favorite Avenger and killing her off before she even got to star in her own movie just felt totally wrong to me. (The fact that Brie Larson’s dull Captain Marvel got her own showcase before the Black Widow will always bug me.) Still, I did take some solace from the fact that, even after Natasha’s death, there was still a Black Widow movie scheduled to come out and Scarlett Johansson would be starring in it.
Of course, then I found out that the Black Widow film is a prequel and it also sounds like the film’s ultimate goal might be to introduce Florence Pugh as the new Black Widow. Don’t get me wrong. Florence Pugh is one of the best actresses around but still, Scarlett Johansson will always be the Black Widow to me and the character’s pointless death will always bother me. So, up until a few minutes ago, I was not quite as enthusiastic about seeing the Black Widow film as you might normally expect me to be.
But, seriously, this poster is freaking perfect. It’s everything you would want a poster for a Black Widow stand alone film to be. I hope the movie itself lives up to fierceness in Natasha’s eyes.
I guess I’ll find out in May!
(Minor Spoilers Below! Read at your own risk.)
So, how long does the no spoiler rule for Avengers: Endgame apply? There’s so much that I want to say about this film but I know that I shouldn’t because, even though it had a monstrous opening weekend, there are still people out there who have not had a chance to see the film. And while this review will have minor spoilers because, otherwise, it would be impossible to write, I’m not going to share any of the major twists or turns.
I will say this. I saw Avengers: Endgame last night and it left me exhausted, angry, sad, exhilarated, and entertained. It’s a gigantic film, with a plot that’s as messy and incident-filled as the cinematic universe in which it takes place. More than just being a sequel or just the latest installment in one of the biggest franchises in cinematic history, Avengers: Endgame is a monument to the limitless depths of the human imagination. It’s a pop cultural masterpiece, one that will make you laugh and make you cheer and, in the end, make you cry. It’s a comic book film with unexpected emotional depth and an ending that will bring a tear to the eye of even the toughest cynic. By all logic, Avengers: Endgame is the type of film that should collapse under its own weight but instead, it’s a film that thrives on its own epic scope. It’s a three-hour film that’s never less than enthralling. Even more importantly, it’s a gift to all of us who have spent the last ten years exploring the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The film itself starts almost immediately after the “Snap” that ended Avengers: Infinity War and we watch as Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner, returning to the franchise after being absent in the previous film) finds himself powerless to keep his family from disintegrating. After often being dismissed as the Avengers’s weak link, both Clint Barton and Jeremy Renner come into their own in the film. As one of two members of the Avengers who does not have super powers, Clint serves as a everyperson character. He’s a reminder that there’s more at stake in Endgame than just the wounded pride of a few super heroes. When Thanos wiped out half the universe, he didn’t just wipe out Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and Groot. He also left very real wounds that will never be healed.
When the film jumps forward by five yeas, we discover that the world is now a much darker place. When we see New York, the once vibrant city is now gray and deserted. Our surviving heroes have all dealt with the Snap in their own way. Clint is now a vigilante, killing anyone who he feels should have been wiped out by Thanos but wasn’t. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) drinks and eats and feels sorry for himself. Captain America (Chris Evans) attends support groups and, in one nicely done scene, listens as a man talks about his fear of entering into his first real relationship in the years since “the Snap.” Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is living as a recluse and is still blaming himself. Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is now an avuncular, huge, and very green scientist. Only Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) remains convinced that the Snap can somehow be undone. She’s right, of course. But doing so will involve some unexpected sacrifices and a lot of time travel….
And that’s as much as I can tell you, other than to say that the film takes full advantage of both the time travel aspects (yes, there are plenty of Back to the Future jokes) and its high-powered cast. With our heroes — which, along with the usual Avengers, also include Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Rocket Racoon (Bradley Cooper) — hopping through time and space, we get a chance to revisit several of the films that led up to Endgame and it’s a thousand times more effective than it has any right to be. Yes, one could argue that the cameos from Robert Redford, Tom Hiddleston, Hayley Atwell, and others were essentially fan service but so what? The fans have certainly earned it and the MCU has earned the chance to take a look back at what it once was and what it has since become.
Indeed, Avengers: Endgame would not work as well as it does if it hadn’t been preceded by 21 entertaining and memorable movies. It’s not just that the MCU feels like a universe that it as alive as our own, one that is full of wonder, mystery, sadness, and love. It’s also that we’ve spent ten years getting to know these characters and, as a result, many of them are much more than just “super heroes” to us. When Tony Stark and Captain America argue over whether it’s even worth trying to undo the Snap, it’s an effective scene because we know the long and complicated history of their relationship. When the Avengers mourn, we mourn with them because we know their pain. We’ve shared their triumphs and their failures. Tony Stark may be a guy in an iron suit but he’s also a man struggling with his own demons and guilt. Steve Rogers may be a nearly 100 year-old super solider but he’s also every single person who has struggled to make the world a better place. As strange as it may be to say about characters known as Iron Man, Captain America, and the Black Widow, we feel like we know each and every one of them. We care about them.
Needless to say, the cast is huge and one of the great things about the film is that previously underused or underestimated performers — like Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, Don Cheadle, and Karen Gillan — all finally get a chance to shine. As always, the heart of the film belongs to Chris Evans while Robert Downey, Jr. provides just enough cynicism to keep things from getting to superficially idealistic. Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo get most of the film’s big laughs, each playing their borderline ludicrous characters with just the right combination of sincerity and humor. Of course, Josh Brolin is back as well and he’s still perfectly evil and arrogant as Thanos. But whereas Thanos was the focus of Infinity War, Endgame focuses on the heroes. If Infinity War acknowledged that evil can triumph, Endgame celebrates the fact that good never surrenders.
As Endgame came to an end, I did find myself wondering what the future is going to hold for the MCU. A part of me wonders how they’re going to top the past ten years or if it’s even possible to do so. Several mainstays of the MCU say goodbye during Endgame and it’s hard to imagine the future films without their presence. It’s been hinted that Captain Marvel is going to be one of the characters holding the next phase of the MCU together and, fortunately, Brie Larson is a quite a bit better in Endgame than she was in her previous MCU film. Hopefully, regardless of what happens in the future, Marvel and Disney will continue to entrust their characters to good directors, like the Russo Brothers, James Gunn, and Taika Waititi. (Wisely, Disney reversed themselves and rehired James Gunn for the next Guardians of the Galaxy film. Of course, Gunn never should have been fired in the first place….)
And that’s really all I can say about Avengers: Endgame right now, other than to recommend that you see it. In fact, everyone in the world needs to hurry up and see it so we can finally start talking about the film without having to post spoiler warnings!
For now, I’ll just say that Avengers: Endgame is a powerful, emotional, and entertaining conclusion to one of the greatest cinematic sagas ever.
Captain Marvel was …. well, it was okay.
I know that’s potentially a controversial opinion. Since the movie was released last week, I’ve seen it described as being the greatest comic book movie ever made. I’ve also seen it described as being, if not the worst film of all time, than certainly the worst chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Really, it depends on who you ask and how they voted in 2016. Myself, I would argue that both sides are incorrect. Captain Marvel is neither the greatest nor the worst movie ever made. Instead …. it’s okay. It’s a middle of the road MCU film, one that has more in common with the first Thor, Ant-Man, and The Incredible Hulk than with Black Panther or Doctor Strange. It has its moments but there’s a reason why everyone’s favorite character is a cat who only has about 15 minutes of screen time.
Brie Larson plays Vers, who is an elite warrior for the Kree Empire. The Kree are an alien race. We know they’re aliens because they have blue blood and their planet looks like a more cheerful version of Blade Runner. The Kree are at war with another group of aliens, the Skrulls. The Skrulls are green shape-shifters and, for some reason, they have Australian accents.
Anyways, Vers can’t remember anything about her past but she’s haunted by nightmares that suggest that she might not be a Kree at all. Instead, she might be an Earthling! Vers gets a chance to investigate that possibility when, while escaping the forces of the Skrull general Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), Vers plummets to Earth and ends up crashing into a Blockbuster Video. Working with a youngish Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Vers sets out to discover the truth about her past.
Ever since this film was first announced, Brie Larson has been the target of a lot of unfair criticism. A lot of it has centered around the fact that Larson rarely smiles in the film but you know what? Brie Larson’s resting bitch face is the most empowering thing about Captain Marvel. Vers is a warrior and she’s on a mission. She has no reason to smile and giggle and jump around like some sort of manic pixie dream girl. When Vers responded to a man telling her to smile by stealing his motorcycle, I wanted to jump up and cheer. I mean, hell yeah! Not only did she refuse to be pushed around but she also got a sweet ride out of it! Seriously, the next guy who tells me that I need to smile more is losing his car.
Actually, regardless of what some people on twitter seem to believe, Vers does smile in the film. She smiles when she’s talking to her best friend, Maria Rambeau (Lashanna Lynch). She smiles when she’s talking to Maria’s daughter, Monica (Akira Akbar). She smiles when there aren’t any men — or Skrulls — around, demanding all of the attention. Both Maria and Vers are smiling because, finally, they can both be themselves. It’s a scene that, like Vers stealing that motorcycle, feels far more honest and empowering than some of the film’s other more obvious and on-the-nose girl power moments. Maria is a rather underused character, which is a shame because the brief scenes between Maria and Vers are some of the best scenes in the film.
That said, I still had mixed feelings about Brie Larson’s overall performance. As good as Larson has been in so many other films, she often comes across as rather wooden and awkward here. Larson delivers almost all of her lines in a rather flat monotone and she’s not helped by some painfully clunky dialogue. Larson’s awkwardness is painfully obvious whenever she shares a scene with more experienced co-stars like Jackson, Mendelsohn, Jude Law, or Annette Bening. Bening practically steals the entire film, to the extent that I would have preferred the film has been about her rather than Vers.
(Again, it’s easy to compare this film to the first Thor. Just as it took the MCU a while to figure out what to do with Thor, one gets the feeling that they’re still not quite sure who Captain Marvel is supposed to be.)
The film’s main weakness is that, when compared to the more recent MCU films. there’s no sense of wonder to Captain Marvel. Compare the blandness of the Kree homeworld to the vivid worlds of Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor: Ragnarok. Ben Mendelsohn brings a little bit of depth to General Talos but, beyond the shape-shifting, there’s not much to the Skrulls, either. When Captain Marvel flies into space, there’s nothing transcendent about the moment. It’s actually kind of boring. Whereas previous MCU films made space feel alive, the universe feels flat in Captain Marvel.
To cite just one example, one of the film’s biggest battle scenes is over the possession of a lunchbox. The villains think that there’s something important in the lunchbox. However, what they don’t know is that Vers has already emptied the lunchbox and is just using it to distract them. For some reason, directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Bolden show Captain Marvel emptying the lunchbox before the big battle. As a result, there’s no stakes to the battle and, from the start, we know that it doesn’t matter who wins. When, after a lengthy fight, the lunchbox is revealed to be empty, Brie Larson mutters a weak one liner that has no impact because there was never any suspense to begin with. This is pretty basic stuff and it’s somewhat shocking that this film manages to screw it up.
Despite those flaws, Captain Marvel is occasionally diverting. Samuel L. Jackson brings flair to even the lamest of lines and Clark Gregg has a welcome cameo as Phil Coulson. Annette Bening plays two different roles and she kicks major ass in both of them. (One of her characters is named Intelligence, which leads to this hilariously awkward exchange of dialogue between Larson and Bening: “Vers.” “Intelligence.”) Despite being buried under a ton of makeup and prosthetics, Ben Mendelsohn does a good job and Jude Law is amusingly arrogant as Vers’s mentor. Hopefully, Lashawn Lynch will get a bigger role in a future MCU film.
And then there’s the cat.
The cat is named Goose and …, well, look, I won’t spoil it. Let’s just say that he’s a very special cat and he steals every scene. In this film, we discover that Nick Fury loves cats, as well he should!
Anyway, Captain Marvel is okay. There’s a few good scenes and there’s a few clunky ones and finally, there’s Goose and that stolen motorcycle. One gets the feeling that the most remembered scenes will probably be the ones that were inserted during the end credits. Captain Marvel will return in Avengers: Endgame and I hope that she doesn’t smile once.
So, I just watched the latest trailer for Avengers: Endgame. Here are a few of my initial thoughts:
First off, people always make jokes about how, while Thor’s a God and Captain America is basically 100 years old but still looks like Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner pretty much only brings a bow and arrow to the fight. But you know what? I was really happy to see Renner return, even if he does have a questionable haircut. And I was even more happy to see that, after being underused in the previous Avengers film, it looks like Scarlett Johannson has got a decent role.
Plus, for at least some of the film, Scarlett’s a redhead again!
I loved the trailer’s use of black-and-white. It added a sense of tragic grandeur to the whole thing.
I’m still traumatized by the end of the Infinity Wars. Yeah, I know that everyone will probably be resurrected and that there’s no way they’d ever kill off Spider-Man for real but seriously, that was hella depressing! “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good….” AGCK!
Captain Marvel shows up at the end and gets Thor’s seal of approval. One wonder if they waited to see this weekend’s box office numbers before deciding to include that scene at the end.
Speaking of which — where’s my review of Captain Marvel? I saw it earlier this week. I’ll be posting it soon.
It’s hard not to notice that Thanos wasn’t in this trailer. Of course, we did see him in the previous teaser.
Finally, I love the fact that Avengers: Endgame and Degrassi share the same tag line. “Whatever it takes!”
Here’s the latest trailer for Avengers: Endgame!
Spider-Man: Homecoming was the Spider-Man that fans have been waiting for. It was able to balance the character of Peter Parker and his alter-ego of Spider-Man. Where the Sam Raimi version was able to make the former stand-out at the cost of the Spider-Man alter, the Marc Webb version swapped the two dynamics. Webb’s version had a great Spider-Man but had a Peter Parker whose moral compass was a bit skewed.
Jon Watt’s Spider-Man and Peter Parker were a nice balance. It helped that the character was now free (to a degree) to play in the huge cinematic sandbox that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Last we saw Spider-Man and Peter Parker, he was dusted just like half the living things in the universe following the Thanos Snap. The question that gets brought up whenever Spider-man: Far From Home, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, gets talked about is does this film take away from the emotional sucker punch that was Avengers: Infinity War and it’s upcoming sequel, Avengers: Endgame.
From this teaser trailer and it’s international version has shown, the question still remains as both teasers mention nothing about the Avengers and keeps the timeline of the film vague enough to make one wonder if this sequel happens before Avengers: Infinity War.
I guess fans will find out on July 5, 2019 when the film is released worldwide.
….and here’s the International Teaser trailer
The first season of The Punisher on Netflix ended up being better than what had been advertised. The series and it’s ultraviolent tone became a divisive factor in how the show was scene.
Some saw it as the true adaptation of the titular character and his anti-hero status within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Others saw it as poor taste considering the rash of mass shootings and gun violence that’s plagued the country the last couple of years.
There was no disagreement in that Jon Bernthal owned and seemed born to play the role of vengeance-fueled and grief-stricken Marine veteran Frank Castle. His portrayal not just of Frank Castle but his vigilante alter-ego, The Punisher, was like watching a force of nature on screen.
It was a no-brainer that a second season of the series would be set into production and Netflix didn’t hesitate. It’s a bit bittersweet knowing that no matter how good season 2 turns out there’s a high probability that this will be the final season of The Punisher on Netflix as every Netflix-produced Marvel show has been cancelled the past year with only the upcoming seasons of The Punisher and Jessica Jones left.
Season 2 is set of a January 18, 2019 release date on Netflix worldwide.
What could inspire the entire world to obsess over 30 seconds of video?
Why, it must be the latest installment in the MCU!
A new 30-second TV spot for Captain Marvel was released earlier today. It’s …. well, to be honest, it’s pretty much more of the same. Hopefully, Captain Marvel will be as powerful as everyone says she is because 50% of the universe was wiped out at the end of the last two MCU films. Seriously, someone needs to do something about that.
Anyway, here’s the new Captain Marvel TV spot, Born Free!
The trailer for the fourth Avengers movie was released earlier today.
The trailer reveals that:
And, to be honest, I think that might be an appropriate title. I loved Infinity War but, after going to the extreme of wiping out 50% of the universe, it’s kind of hard to see how any other film is going to top it. At some point, the MCU bubble is going to pop and, with Chris Evans apparently leaving the role of Captain America after this film, we’ll have to see wait and see what the next phase of the MCU is going to be.
Here’s the trailer!
