Review: Spider-Man - Across The Spider-Verse

Spider-Man:
Across The Spider-Verse
Cert: PG / 134 mins / Dir. Joaquim Dos Santos / Trailer

It's an odd one alright. I complain quite vociferously about the lack of new available content at my local 'small' five-screen cinema, while simultaneously seeming to ignore popular mainstream releases which should by all accounts be right up my alley. There are fatigue-related reasons that Sony's new Spider-Man movie opened at the beginning of June and it's taken me six weeks to get round to watching it.

While I didn't actively dislike its predecessor Into The Spider-Verse, the film was definitely saddled with the burden of being Sony's Spider-Man rather than Marvel's one. And Sony's output is increasingly like a 1980s pop band touring provincial venues with only one original member, and they're not even the best part of the band but they are somehow the one who won the legal rights to use the name. The 2018 animated feature was too long, too messy, too loud and with too much shit thrown at the wall in an attempt to make something stick.

With all this in mind then, I can confidently report that Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse is at least tonally consistent as a sequel.

MILES

The storyline follows on from last time, with Earth-1610's Miles Morales being back in his own world and struggling to find a trajectory as he nears the end of high school while moonlighting as Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Earth-65's Gwen Stacy battles with her own issues as Spider-Woman, living with a father who's unaware of her secret identity and determined to catch 'The Spider' for the murder of Peter Parker. But when a Renaissance version of The Vulture starts tearing through the multiverse, the multiversal 'Spider-Society' is tasked to stop him - which will mean reluctantly recruiting Morales to help...

In theory this is all fine; in practice it's too much simultaneous Content™ again. Visuals which would look outstanding for a three-minute music video become utterly exhausting over two hours. Each and every frame here is a work of art, they just make no sense when they're strung together too maniacally to keep track of. There's more detail than the eye can follow through the film's hyperactive editing, and the whole thing turns into the visual equivalent of white noise. Ironically for a film this active, it creates a soporific effect as the brain starts to shut down rather than keep attempting to process the information. Perhaps I just need to watch it on a smaller screen.

Part of the USP with the animation is that its art style is constantly changing, often within the same scene. Initially it seems to be doing this to reflect the character whose point-of-view we're experiencing, but scenes later in the movie only feature two people yet cycle through half a dozen looks. This precocious presentation results in a film which feels like watching a group of first-year art students have a collective seizure. Elsewhere, earnest and spirited vocal performances are rendered unintelligible by an atrocious sound-mix, poorly placed over intrusive, percussive soundtracking. And since around 60% of the dialogue here is catch-up exposition, Across The Spider-Verse basically has to be enjoyed (...) as a visual experience.

GINA

My real problem is bigger than all of this, though. The following is not limited to Spider-Verse, but certainly includes it. Put simply, multiverses are hands-down the worst thing to have happened to superhero cinema, and that's only getting more problematic. The concept works in print where the possibilities and limitations can be explored at a more careful pace (indeed, with comics it becomes needed as characters are relaunched for evolving audiences after years of literary service; multiverses allow for a soft-reboot), and I've admittedly enjoyed it at certain points previously. But the cinematic iteration of the superhero-multiverse has fast become the equivalent of 3D, a knee-jerk fad to be ordered at an executive level in lieu of creativity. And it's already on its arse.

As well as encouraging filmmakers to overindulge in distracting cameos and needless fan-service, the open-ended structure of parallel realities means that narrative decisions in one movie can be ret-conned, undone or just flat out ignored in the next (yes I'm looking at you, Gamora). When consequence is removed from the storyline then none of it matters on an emotional level, and cinema is supposed to be about empathy. But hey, why mine for a deeper pulse when you can just make the whole thing bigger and louder with more slightly-different versions of the same thing*¹? Audiences know by this point not to expect restraint from corporations desperately trying to keep their intellectual property fresh, and the race for More Stuff™ has become just as repetitive as the origins-formula it was trying to supersede.

Even more ironically with Across The Spider-Verse, Miles Morales (and by extension, the whole audience) gets a whole lecture about 'canon events' - concurrences which need to take place across every iteration of the hero's life (here it's the death of Uncle Ben, or equivalent guardian in each timeline), otherwise their path will be too different from all the other spider-heroes and things will become too unpredictable. What this deftly - if unintentionally - illustrates is that Sony are happy to bring in about a hundred different Spider-Mans from all the corners of the property they've got the rights to but are too afraid to do anything different with the character. Spidey's backstory is permanently locked into our pop culture at the same level as Bruce Wayne's, meaning nothing can be changed on a fundamental level without Sony taking a massive gamble in pissing off the legacy fanbase and also not enticing new viewers. In other worse, Spider-Man is precisely the wrong character with which to explore the multiverse. Well done, guys.

DICKIE

Truth be told, when Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse slows down and actually concentrates on its character-work, it is pretty superb. But the fact that this only happens twice in over two hours means that the film, on the whole, isn't. A textbook example of Style Over Substance. In all honesty, it feels like I'm done*².

All I really want out of Spider-Man is a third Andrew Garfield flick to close out his trilogy, and a new set of live-action movies for Miles Morales where possibilities can be broadened. And what are Sony bringing to the table instead? How are they maximising on their end of an historic deal from Marvel currently enjoyed by no other studio? With shit-Dracula and shit-Tarzan. We get the protagonists we deserve.

To make matters worse, I just know that Me in some other part of the multiverse is enjoying the good stuff...

*¹ "more slightly-differing versions of the same thing" is, to be fair, Marvel's entire cinematic business-model. And I have to admit it's done them well for at least the first ten years of the MCU... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² It's worth noting of course that this is Sony's mess, not that of Marvel Studios. But Marvel's name is on the can and they signed off on this - they do have that veto. Which means they are in a large and instrumental part responsible for it. And even that'd be easier to forgive if Marvel hadn't put out Eternals under their own banner. If they can be slack in what they serve up, they can expect consumers to give few fucks in return... ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3
Cert: 12A / 150 mins / Dir. James Gunn / Trailer

Having watched it back on release-day, this review of the James Gunn's off-again / on-again third Marvel sci-fi smash-up has admittedly taken some time to make it onto the blog, not least because I've been busy updating my relationship status with Guardians of The Galaxy to 'It's Complicated'...

Part of this is down to the current odd malaise with the MCU, whereby "no Infinity Gauntlet" equals "no collective-narrative forward momentum and no individual storyline with legacy characters strong enough to really justify its existence". Another factor is still wincing from the frankly atrocious GotG TV Holiday Special, which we now know was definitely filmed on the same sets as the cinematic threequel but with precisely none of the creative talent that's gone into the movie. But I digress.

POOLING

The very short version of all this is that the 60% of Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 which focuses on Rocket Raccoon sustaining serious injuries, the Guardians-family pooling everything to rescue him, Rocket's reflecting on his backstory and how this affects his present and his future, and then properly developing the character into what he needs to be... is absolutely outstanding. It's precisely what Marvel Studios do best; engaging, exciting, affecting (slightly schmaltzy in places, but well-earned) and most importantly funny. Bradley Cooper loses himself in the character once again and everyone benefits. Rocket Raccoon is the beating heart of this film and every minute spent in his company enrichens the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The other 40%, however, is James Gunn throwing as much content at the viewer as he thinks he can get away with. It's a white-noise cacophony of over-written subplots, over-scripted clatter, over-designed sets and over-directed action sequences. Gamora's return feels poorly defined, Adam Warlock's presence (not to mention the fantastic Will Poulter's performance thereof) is wasted, and the sheer volume of returning minor-characters just to really rip into the casting-budget makes the movie feel scattershot and bloated, like emptying all the free vending machines on your final day in the office.

SNOOKERING

Oh, and after two movies with Peter Quill's vintage cassettes accompanying the journey, the tunes come via Rocket's iPod this time around. But the temporal versatility of this as a format means that the soundtrack is an absolute mishmash of anything James Gunn happens to like from whenever. Now I'm always here for a bit of Spacehog but this is basically Danny Boyle's Mixtape Madness all over again.

Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 is worth watching for the things it does right. Just about. Like I said, it's complicated...

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Ant-Man And The Wasp - Quantumania

Ant-Man And The Wasp:
Quantumania
Cert: 12A / 124 mins / Dir. Peyton Reed / Trailer

It's a weird one, I don't know what critics want. I mean to be fair, I am technically part of 'critics' and I don't really know what I want, so how would I have any idea what would keep other people happy? Not a clue. Anyway, Marvel Studios' Phase Five begins with another outing for Ant-Man and The Wasp, as Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly are joined in their eponymous roles for a full adventure by Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer as Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, along with Kathryn Newton as Ant-Man's daughter Cassie, all shrunk to sub-atomic size and battling their way to be free of The Quantum Realm, much to the chagrin of Jonathan Majors' Kang The Conqueror...

And the critics really aren't bothered about it. The film's been on general release for a week*¹ and the aggregated score over at Rotten Tomatoes is firmly middling. Far from being trashed, but way below what was expected or even hoped-for. Civilian viewers are digging it a bit more, but frankly they're often more fickle than the folks' who write it all down afterwards. There seems to be the received thought that Quantumania (looks good written down, but a dreadful title to say aloud) is a decidedly average outing which is more suited to the hardcore Marvel fanboys. But given that this is the 31st feature film in a steadily-formulaic series, the fifth screen appearance of Ant-Man and his third own, actual movie, it's hard to know who else the audience is expected to be...

TAKEN

Part of the reason that this review has taken over a week to surface is that I thoroughly appreciated this latest flick, and at the same time I completely understand that criticism. It's reassuringly underwhelming, in a way that seems almost unique to the Ant-Man films. The cast are reliably great (Majors is especially fun, bringing the only real sense of gravitas to the entire thing while still treating it like a pantomime), and the screenplay does just about everything its able to, acknowledging that the story is Fantastic Voyage retooled for the MCU. And bearing in mind the rescue of Pfeiffer's Janet Van Dyne in Ant-Man's first sequel set up precisely this, it hardly comes as a surprise.

Inside of the 'normal world' framing device which tries (and only scrapingly succeeds) to recapture the easygoing, low-key charm of 2015's Ant-Man, the pacing of this movie is relentless, and it's frankly draining. After shrinking, the heroes are split into two groups (standard), with their adventures intertwining to tell the story. Unfortunately, despite industrial amounts of backstory and exposition, none of it slows down enough to convince the viewer of why this matters (other than: trying not to die in the Quantum Realm). There's little room for the story to breathe, and the expansive CGI surroundings (admittedly necessary) create a weird claustrophobia as the main body of the film exists without sunlight. The visual debt to modern era Star Wars is - in places - absolutely off the scale, with pretty much every character in the Quantum Realm looking like they've either stepped out of Maz Kanata's watering hole or just gotten off the shuttle from Jakku.

NON-STOP

The real problem is that much like its 2018 predecessor, there's little that's actively bad about Quantumania but it feels like it doesn't really have a proper place to sit; especially as the film takes place in its own micro-universe where outside time doesn't exist. The potential for these events to spill over into the 'real' world is more than hinted at, of course, but this feels like a very expensive project just to establish a recurring villain for Phase Five. That said, they'd better use it as such, because it's even more of a waste of money to cue up multiversal Kang on the big screen and then not exploit the absolute hell out of him.

Rudd is always fun to watch of course, and this is no exception. But even at his comedic height of working with the Judd Apatow crew, Rudd was always an ensemble player; frequently one of the best things about a movie, but not its leading man. He works best when he's got others to bounce off so it seems slightly unfair to expect the guy to carry the weight of an entire movie on his own, and yet he's the only character upon whom the script allows any real focus.

Then Bill Murray shows up for a restaurant scene which is slightly too long to be classed as a cameo, and not really meaningful enough to be anything but. And as much as we all love Bill, the thought soon emerges that much like Jeff Goldblum in Ragnarok, he's been hired to just turn up and play himself, suggesting the Marvel casting department are now running on fumes. The film is entertaining as hell all the time it's on, but doesn't leave the audience with much other than wanting to see how Kang develops.

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST

So does this have the whoops of No Way Home, the snarls of Multiverse Of Madness or the camaraderie of Love And Thunder? No, it doesn't. Then again, it doesn't have the appalling accent work of Black Widow, the personality-vacuum of Eternals, or the plotline which deliberately excludes legacy characters and then can't find anything interesting to do with the ones still left of Wakanda Forever, either.

All Quantumania is trying to do is bimble along and have a laugh, and if anything that's far more respectable than striving for greatness where it can't exist. From a wider angle, the film contains very on-point messages about responsibility and personal growth (delivered both straight-faced and with wry smiles), but after two hours, at the movie's very crescendo, when all else lies in ruins and ashes, this still somehow comes down to two guys in a room punching each other...

But there I go again, complaining about a film whose side I'm on.

For better or worse, Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania is essentially a very loud, very bright, two hour chase/fight sequence, with a near-constant exposition track and which still makes almost no sense.

Not going to lie, I rather enjoyed that.

*¹ That's right, I watched this ten days ago and the review is just landing now. That finger-on-the-pulse, agile responsiveness is exactly what you lovely people come here for and I love you for it. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Spider-Man - Far From Home (second-pass)

Spider-Man: Far From Home (second-pass / 2D / MAJOR SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 129 mins / Dir. Jon Watts / Trailer



Hello, this is your spoiler-break. If you haven't seen Spider-Man: Far From Home, you shouldn't be here. This piece goes into (and underneath) far too much detail of the plot and themes of the film. To the point where it probably won't even make too much sense if you haven't seen the movie, but all the same you can always read my first-pass review to get a general flavour of what's in store (very vague spoilers in there, but nothing too derailing).

It took me far too long to get round to watching Far From Home again, but in the meanwhile I was at least able to marshall my thoughts somewhat. I absolutely love it, that should have been clear last time, and watching a second time allowed me to pick out more specific detail while also having the deeper themes filled in with more texture. I still didn't get quite the buzz that I did from 2017's Homecoming, but this movie is far more than just a flashy ride, as we'll discover.

Anyway, that's enough stalling - proceed with care…



Still here? Smashing. Okay, let's look at potentially the biggest revelation in Far From Home before we get into the meaning of the film. Because while they're certainly linked, they're not the same thing. J.Jonah Jameson appears in the mid-credits scene. Big deal, J.Jonah Jameson is a central player in the spider-specific mythos, and he didn't rock up in Homecoming, either reinterpreted or otherwise, so he fits in well here. But J.Jonah Jameson is played by actor J.K. Simmons here. Big deal, Simmons is an absolutely perfect fit for the bullish newspaper editor. In fact, we know he's a perfect fit because we saw J.K. Simmons play J.Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy from 2002-07.

Wait, what? Oh yeah.

Now, the one point on which Marvel Studios have been consistent over the course of twenty three movies is that the cinematic universe is sprawling yet self-contained. Characters who have appeared in other movies and media previously are not to be taken as the ones in the MCU content, in terms of the story-canon. Many of them will have broadly similar backstories, but characters, events and even actors outside this timeline are not to be taken as historical in their new iterations. That's why Chris Evans was able to portray The Human Torch in a pair of Fox's Fantastic Four movies, and still become the definitive Captain America. It's why Ben Affleck was Daredevil in the 2003 flick, but in the MCU he's played by Charlie Cox, and different things happen to that character.*¹

Anyway, the point is that Marvel Studios aren't beholden to the story arcs and casting choices of any 'sub-contracted' movie series*². So why, after all these years of retooling and re-imagination, has J.K. Simmons returned in the role of J.Jonah Jameson? They could have dropped many other performers into that role. Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tommy Lee Jones, Jenny Agutter, the MCU is full of actors who maybe can't do the action stuff any more, but are still great to have in roles of gravitas. But they chose Simmons again. Rest assured, this was no accident. And the answer, somewhat ironically, lies in last year's Into The Spider-Verse. Sony's non-MCU animated extravaganza deals with the collision of various comic and cartoon versions of the web-slinger, when a dimensional-portal mishap draws all these threads together. And just when we thought the MCU was safely walled off from Marvel's uneven earlier cinematic efforts, J.K. Simmons rocks up as J.Jonah Jameson, reminding everyone of those three Tobey Maguire movies*³. And all of a sudden, it seems like characterisations from elsewhere in Marvel's screen history actually could exist in the MCU after all. Different stories, but same faces.

How? That's not explained. Yet. Doctor Strange spoke of seeing different realities at the climax of Infinity War, his 2021 outing is titled Multiverse of Madness, and Disney's recent re-acquisition of the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters via the Fox buy-out could well point to some mass crossover whereby non-MCU properties are at least accounted for (otherwise it's exposition-heavy reboots all round). Far From Home teases the possibility earlier in its run-time when Mysterio states he's from Earth 813, a parallel dimension to the MCU's 'standard' Earth 616. But as everything else Quentin Beck says here is a lie, presumably we can discount that, too? We can certainly scrub his exact version of events, although the seed has been planted all the same. Hell, Beck's got access to a lot of Stark's old files, and it's possible his own team have made some advancements of their own, he's just rounding it out with bullshit.

But the first shoot to break through the soil comes in the mid-credits scene, and it's something which was there all along - we just hadn't been shown it yet.

J.Jonah Jameson exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the editor of The Daily Bugle, and he's played by J.K. Simmons. And Jameson's still angry. He's angrier than ever, in fact. Because director Jon Watts hasn't stopped with a callback to an old character. In the MCU, The Daily Bugle and its associated website is an opinionated, authoritarian, right-wing, conspiracy-theory-loving news outlet. 2019 (our version) is a cynical place, and not everyone has that 'gee-whiz' trust in the media any more. The Daily Bugle now shadows the likes of Fox News*⁴ and even InfoWars; Jameson rants and raves across the digital airwaves, so determined to bring viewers The Truth™ that he's prepared to spread lies to do it. And it could be the most real thing that Marvel Studios have done to date.

Which brings us, as they say, to the crunch. The real message, hiding in plain sight throughout Far From Home. That even in fiction, you can't handle the truth…

IT'S EASY TO FOOL PEOPLE
WHEN THEY'RE FOOLING THEMSELVES.

Or, as a much wiser man once said, "your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them". That thing you just saw, there. Did you really see it? Really? Okay, but did you also believe it? In 2019? More fool you. And its coming to something when the largest entertainment company on Earth - the one that's been capturing hearts through fiction for just shy of a hundred years - feels the need to dole out that lesson.

The Daily Bugle's paranoid propaganda machine is the final raised-eyebrow, tongue-in-cheek hammerblow in a movie which has spent two hours telling its audience to question everything. From Quentin Beck's fabricated backstory, to the hologram generators he uses to create his attacks, to the con he pulls on Peter to get the E.D.I.T.H. glasses, to the visual nightmare he summons around Spider-Man to paralyse him, to his coup de grace contingency-plan of faking a video then doxxing Parker as revenge from beyond the grave: question everything.

From the double-life that Parker still leads as he tries to complete his education and not assume the full mantle of hero, to pretending he doesn't know why his school tour is being diverted around Europe into the path of attacking Elementals, to the clumsy excuses he makes to MJ as he tries to avoid the subject of his absence without flat-out lying to the girl he's falling for: question everything.

From Happy Hogan and Aunt May lying to Peter about the relationship they're having, to Happy Hogan and Aunt May lying to each other about the relationship they're having, to Happy sending clumsily coded messages to Nick Fury about Mysterio's whereabouts, to Nick Fury pretending he didn't pick those up, to Nick Fury lying to Happy and Peter Parker because Nick Fury is actually Talos because the real Nick Fury is halfway across the galaxy helping the Skrull refugees, to Talos then attempting to play down the absolute shit-show he's created on Earth in the meanwhile: question everything.

PEOPLE NEED SOMETHING TO BELIEVE;
THESE DAYS, PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING.

Throughout all of this, Spider-Man: Far From Home is a film about belief. It's about Peter Parker learning how much Tony Stark believed in him, and Parker learning to believe in himself, too. Not so much the cocky, self-assuredness of an athletic teenager with access to a billionaire's vault of technology and the free-rein to use it, but believing - knowing - that he's doing this for the right reasons. That being the hero is just the right thing to do, because not everyone can help themselves. Because being the hero is a privilege.

It's a film about confidence, about trust, about choosing friends you can rely on and about accepting that sometimes you'll make mistakes. It's about accepting that you won't always know what to do - whether you're 15, 35 or 85. And ultimately it's a film about truth. About how damaging the truth can be as well as how liberating. About how we'll often deny the truth in comfort rather than confront it to make things genuinely better, and how when it's taken out of our hands that can cause even more problems.

At the end of Far From Home, the city of New York (and by extension the world) knows that Spider-Man is a kid named Peter Parker. That shouldn't affect him too adversely, Tony Stark outed himself as Iron Man at the end of the first movie, after all. In fact, Spider-Man is one of the few heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe who actually has a 'secret identity'. But that disguise wasn't there to help the web-slinger - it was there to help the kid who wears the suit. The kid who knows he still has to finish his education if he's to become the best version of himself. Well, I'm sure the Stark Foundation can stretch to some private tuition because now Parker is in the big-leagues. They're probably going to have to stretch to some protection for May, Ned and MJ too, but that's another story.

Parker will do well, though. He'll grow, he'll adapt.
He'll become the hero he was meant to be.

I believe in him.

Spider-Man: Homecoming.



It is.



It is.



It certainly deserves to be near the top of the CV of everyone involved.



I suppose we might.



There ain't.



Level 1: Pre Vizsla is in this.
Also, Peter Parker's got a 3¾" scale TIE Bomber in his bedroom, which is exactly the level of in-universe homage I'm after. The Lego Death Star from last time was a bit much, mate.





*¹ It's also kind of why Evan Peters is the mutant-Quicksilver in 2014's X-Men: Days Of Future Past, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the "enhanced" Quicksilver in 2015's Avengers: Age Of Ultron. That one is more complicated, in fact - same character, completely different backstory for self-defeating contractual reasons - and I'll be honest I'm regretting bringing it up now. But here we are. Blame Marvel. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Andrew Garfield did a fantastic job in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Marvel still recast the role to Tom Holland in the MCU. Holland is also fantastic, but that's not my point. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ In fact, Simmons also voiced Jameson in the Ultimate Spider-Man animated TV series, although that's less likely to be in the minds of the casual cinema-going audience. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ While they've kept the newspaper's branding in-universe for obvious reasons, this is a particularly delicious tonal twist as Disney (owners of Marvel) have recently bought the entertainment arm of Fox Corp, leaving its broadcast network and news outlets to fend for themselves financially - ie without being under the larger umbrella that also earns income from licensed Marvel characters such as X-Men. They can basically take the piss out of Fox's shouty bullshit paranoia full-belt now, knowing they're not inadvertently funding it. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Spider-Man - Far From Home (first-pass)

Spider-Man: Far From Home (first-pass / 2D / THEMATIC SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 129 mins / Dir. Jon Watts / Trailer



Well, we're barely half-way through the year and already on to the third entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Jon Watts' Spider-Man: Far From Home landing in cinemas before Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame have even hit the Blu-ray shelves.

We're in the post-Endgame timeframe, as the world adjusts to life without the heroes they lost fighting Thanos, as well as the odd fact that everyone who disappeared in 'the snap' has returned, albeit five years younger than those who were spared the cull - adressed early in the screenplay and referred to in-universe as 'the blip'. Young Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is still having to balance student-life with being an on-call Avenger. With an imminent school trip to the cities of Europe, Peter hopes to take a back seat from the costumed life and catch the right moment to tell classmate M.J. (Zendaya) that he's grown increasingly fond of her. But naturally a superhero can't go on vacation in much the same way that Hercule Poirot can't book himself into a Travelodge for the weekend and expect peace and quiet.

And so, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Coby Smulders) enlist the web-slinger to assist the multi-dimensional newcomer Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). Beck has come to Earth 616 (ie, the reality we know from all previous movies) from his alternate existence, Earth 813, after it's destroyed by four power-hungry entities known as the Elementals. These aeons-old beasts are attacking major cities with little-to-no warning, and the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. need all the help they can get.

CARD

Now, perhaps the strongest card played by the movie is how much surface resemblance it bears to its predecessor, Homecoming. The high-school aesthetic eases us gently back into the levity, and a lot of flippant laughs serve to mask more deadpan humour behind. This is a film very much made for people who bought into Parker's pre-Thanos adventure, and viewers who struggled with certain aspects of that will find little to change their minds here. Those aspects are slightly amplified if anything. Of course, Homecoming's strength lay in how self-contained it managed to be in such a sprawling wider narrative. Far From Home has more threads to pull together in that respect, but still manages to do so with its own voice.

But it's not just a disposable action-jaunt. Peter spends the film struggling to form a romantic relationship while people around him breeze in and out of theirs. He's also sorely in need of a mentor-figure, and the shadow of Tony Stark looms over the story and its characters (in a good way).

The title 'Far From Home' is a callback to the 2017 movie and a descriptor for the 2019 sequel, as well as being a nod to The Wizard Of Oz. And much like that classic, there are themes here about identity, responsibility, trust, social-conditioning and most notably Fake News™. In fact, that latter is presented far too boldly to hold the mantle of subtext, feeling both entirely fitting yet painfully on-the-nose. But it's woven into the fabric of the movie and runs throughout (stay until the end of the credits - obviously).

FEAR

Holland does well in the title role, by now embedded as Parker for a new generation of cinema-goers, and is supported well by an extensive cast returning from both Homecoming and the wider MCU. Sam Jackson illustrates that irritated Nick Fury is the best (and the funniest) Nick Fury. There's another layer to this performance, but that can't be discussed without minute spoilers, which we aren't doing here. On the newbie-front, Jake Gyllenhaal is on predictably solid form and deliberately hard to read. But the most pored-over casting choice in the next few weeks will be the one*¹ who seems to suggest that the live action Spider-Man universes may well be pulling together in much the same way as their animated counterpart. Exciting stuff.

Marvel continue to soar in regard to choreography, cinematography and spectacle, and a fantastic nightmare-type sequence means this is arguably the most visually ambitious entry to date. Michael Giacchino returns on score-duties, capitalising on his fantastic work from the last outing, yet not adding too much to the overall soundscape. But his work retains the identity of Homecoming without being just a rehash, and that's not to be sniffed at.

The expansion of the mythos is on slightly looser ground however, with the Elementals bearing more than a passing resemblance to Spider-Man's 2007's antagonist, Sandman, and one particular character's backstory seeming to riff on Jim Carrey's 1995 Riddler. The well can only go so deep obviously, but if you were going to deliberately evoke a pair of superhero movies from years past, would Spider-Man 3 and Batman Forever really be on on that list?

CHOCOLATE

Make no mistake, Spider-Man: Far From Home is an imperfect film, but I love that imperfection. It's easy to make something which looks gorgeous but feels empty, and while this never quite reaches the heights of Homecoming, it's still a two-hour joyride in every sense.
Outstanding work and I grinned throughout.

The business-end (not spoilers, but highlight-to-read anyway):

• Is there a Wilhelm Scream? I dunno. Didn't hear an obvious one?
• Is there a Stan Lee cameo? There isn't, those days have now past.
• Is there a mid-credits scene? There is - stay for this.
• Is there a post-credits scene? There is - stay for this.

MCU movies, but the other Spider-Man flick, in particular.



It is.



It is.



Let's not get carried away.
Although this is still fantastic.



Well I LOVE the movie, so only you know if that's likely to happen.



Not that I heard.



Level 1: Mace Windu is in this.
What's more, he can apparently make references to Star Wars references. Very meta.





*¹ I won't name the performer in question this time, but I imagine that by the time this review goes live it'll be all over the internet anyway and you'll know exactly who I'm talking about. Because there's no such thing as accidental casting in a movie aimed in no small part at geeks who obsess over every last detail. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Avengers - Endgame (second-pass)

Avengers: Endgame (second-pass / 2D / SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 181 mins / Dir. Joe Russo & Anthony Russo / Trailer



Well, this isn't the review I expected to be writing about the second-most anticipated movie of 2019. My first-pass of Endgame is here. My thoughts on the film haven't changed since then, I absolutely adore it. Every single frame. Even if the already-gargantuan runtime still isn't enough to properly accommodate the number of characters involved. Even if the film's approach to time-travel is elastic, self-contradictory yet absolutely textbook all at the same time. Even if the God of Thunder is effectively reduced to a fat-joke for two and half hours because the screenplay doesn't want to close his character arc just yet but doesn't have anything for him to actually do.

BLOWN

I love Avengers: Endgame. It's just that…

…why am I not blown away by Avengers: Endgame? I left the cinema satisfied from character (okay mostly), narrative, script and visuals points of view. But I didn't have that buzz. That 'shit, I'm so excited I need to see this film again as soon as possible'. That feeling of utter childlike joy I had after Spider-Man: Homecoming, after Guardians Of The Galaxy, after Iron Man 3.

Ant-Man & The Wasp is the (relatively) low stakes palate-cleanser following the literal genocide of Infinity War. Likewise, Captain Marvel is a retro lead-in, but was never going to attempt to match the absolute fucking armageddon required to close this chapter. Both enormous fun, but deliberately light on dramatic gravity.

Yet with Endgame I was more 'that was utterly fantastic, now let me see if I've got everything straight here, let me just refer to my spreadsheet'. Because a lot of this movie is admin. Great admin, important admin, but still*¹. That's only to be expected when you're wrapping things up, twenty two chapters into a continuous flow. And hey, my day-job is in Quality Assurance, I fucking love admin (and spreadsheets). But a fair amount of time here spent is ticking off names and ensuring the audience is reminded of secondary characters from earlier movies.

RANGON

Maybe it's just because I've been waving the flag for the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2008*², and my many years spent immersed in Star Wars continuity means that by this point I'm slightly less caught up in the emotional swell, and more preconditioned to connecting story-dots as we go? That's certainly true of the first time I watch an MCU flick (as well as any/all Star Wars, obviously), and I'd wanted a close second-pass to take in all the plot details I'd missed the first time round. But there turned out to be surprisingly few of those - a testament to how well written the screenplay is.

It's not that I wasn't thoroughly engaged for every single frame of Endgame, and it's certainly not that the film doesn't have its fair share of goosebumps-moments. But most of these are things which I'd been either hoping for or flat-out anticipating for some time, not things that I couldn't believe had just happened. While the Russo brothers are spinning many plates here, there are few actual surprises. But again, if this were the 22nd level of a tower block, no matter how accomplished it was it would still have to conform to the rules laid out in the floors below it*³.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICON

Perhaps I'm not overwhelmed because I know this isn't the end of the line for the franchise? The title itself seems to have led to several people (in the actual, offline world) referring to this as "the last Avengers movie". Which it very much isn't. The fact that Spider-Man, Black Panther and Doctor Strange all have officially announced sequels in the pipeline did remove some of Infinity War's punch, somewhat. And if there are more individual hero-films on the way, you can bet your bottom Disney-token that there will be future Avengers team-ups, too. The supergroup hasn't ended, it's just shifted membership. Not unlike The Drifters or the Sugababes, you can't just kill them off, apparently*⁴.

But, anyway. To clarify, because this reads back like a really negative appraisal, I absolutely love Avengers: Endgame, I'm not finished with it by a long shot and think it's very almost the best film it could be. But that best film was probably never going to surprise me.

And I don't mind that. Even if it sounds like I do...

Well, Infinity War.



Hell yeah.



Hell yeah.



Given what we've covered above, let's not call that one just yet.



Possibly, I suppose?



I'm not hearing one.



Level 1: Pre Vizsla's in this.





*¹ Although mentioning the film casually to a colleague at work, he referred to another colleague (not present at the time) who'd said that the three hours wasn't a problem as there were plenty of opportunities to nip out to the toilet because not that much was happening. Still, it's nice to know that the notional idiots who we imagine only turn up for the explosions and the LOLZ really do exist. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² This sounds like bragging or gatekeeping - it's not, I assure you. Besides, everybody knows I can't really get into a franchise unless I'm there at ground-level. I get the fan-version of impostor syndrome if I try. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Seriously kids, when you're in Quality Assurance that shit is for life. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ And on a side-note, I've long maintained that Marvel is terrified of actually killing its heroes. Think of the roll-call of good guys in Endgame. Now think of how many of those are gone by the end credits. The goodbyes we say in this movie are significant, but not particularly numerous.

There is a separate issue surrounding the exit of Black Widow and whether she was 'fridged'. It's covered very well in this article here, although I'd point out that at least Natasha's death meant something. Had Clint won the race to the bottom of the cliff, his exit would have been as shrug-inducing as the rest of the poor bastard's characterisation, frankly… ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Captain Marvel (third-pass)

Captain Marvel (third-pass / 2D / SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 124 mins / Dir. Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck / Trailer



Apologies for the lateness of this review, writing time is competing for top billing at Blackout Towers. First review way back here, second (micro) review here.

CAMEO

So, this was the third time of watching Captain Marvel, and the third time that the opening ident featuring Stan Lee brought me to tears. Ditto with his cameo in the train-scene. What I absolutely adore about this is that because the movie is set in 1995 and Kevin Smith's Mallrats was released in that same year, the Stan we see on the train is rehearsing the lines for his appearance in that film. It's the scene with Brody in which he plays himself after an appearance at a comic book store. So for this Marvel Cinematic Universe cameo, Stan Lee doesn't play Man At Window or Guy Opening Fridge; Stan Lee plays Stan Lee. An amazing tribute to a unique man which is fucking beautiful, frankly.

But I digress. What becomes clearer watching the movie after a break is that the amount of exposition mixed with call-forwards in the first act means that the viewer is bombarded with way too much information. Ironically, this isn't as noticeable on a first-pass when you're just gawping at everything anyway, but the more you understand what's going on, the more jumbled its beginning becomes. Anything before Vers lands in the Blockbuster feels needlessly cluttered.

GUN

On a more positive note (because I do love this, remember), the feeling grows that there's nothing in the actual story itself which dictates that Carol Danvers needs to be a female character. It could as well be Carl Danvers. That she's a woman is just a bonus (albeit a long overdue one). And whereas DC's Wonder Woman did a great job of ramping up its girl-power while retaining credibility, Captain Marvel is altogether less showy about it - although no less important. And that's either the mark of true narrative equality from Marvel, or a damning indictment of the homogenisation of superhero cinema. Definitely one of the two.

It's slightly odd to think that Danvers ends up being the one who inadvertently names The Avengers. As above, it's cool that there's a female touch to these proceedings, but way back in the supergroup's debut comic it was The Wasp who came up with the moniker. It's bad enough that she was recently reduced to being a sidekick in a movie where she should have co-headlined, but now this? I expect Hope Van Dyne to have her own kick-ass movie in short order by way of recompense.

It also occurred to me watching this again that Maria's daughter Monica is around 11 in 1995, which would put her in the mid-30s by the time of Endgame. Might we see the budding pilot teaming up with Carol Danvers in the future when she takes the fight to Thanos? Well, that movie's out by the time of posting this review, and that question has been answered…

Tonally, the other character-chapters in the MCU.



It is.



It is.



The jury's still out on that one.



That's possible.



Nope, I thought there was in the scene where Goose gets hungry for the first time, but I didn't hear it the next time round.



Level 1: Orson Krennic's in this.







DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.