Well, here we are. Marvel Cinematic Universe movie number 21. The last film before Endgame and the penultimate film of Phase Three, and the first MCU film to follow a solo female superhero. But how does it do?
RELEASED: March 8th 2019 DIRECTED BY: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck WRITTEN BY: Nicole Perlman, Meg LeFauve, Geneva Robertson-Dworeet, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck PRODUCED BY: Kevin Feige MUSIC BY: Pinar Toprak STARRING: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Lashana Lynch, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Gemma Chan, Clark Gregg & Annette Benning
Up top, I just want to say that this film starts with a great little tribute to Stan Lee. Fun and very touching.
Set in the 1990s,Captain Marvel follows Vers, a soldier and member of the Kree – a race of noble warrior heroes. As part of ‘Starforce’, Vers is tasked with combating the shape-shifting Skrull terrorists to keep their homeworld of Hala safe. However, after a mission to stop the Skrulls goes awry, Vers finds herself stranded on the planet Earth, where along with S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Nick Fury, she must save the planet from an alien incursion.
For the first act of the movie, Captain Marvel boasts your standard mid-level science-fiction fare. Notorious Star Trek-looking baddies and slick, capable heroes bark words that will sound like nonsense to non-comic book fans, amidst gleaming metal cities and bleak ruins on deserted planets alike. While the cast is strong, it plays out like something you’ve seen a million times before. Furthermore, that’s blended with your classic Marvel humour that can be quite hit and miss and makes you wonder if this movie is going to lean more The Dark World than it is Infinity War.
Fortunately, the action then transitions to Earth, and ‘Captain Marvel’ (although I’m not sure she’s ever actually called that in the movie) gets to really prove herself. In Brie Larson, the hero finds a capable actress to fill out the role of our feisty new heroine. She revels in her immense power*, making a change from a lot of the male heroes who are weighed down by their past failures and responsibilities.
Bit of a hefty title, I know. But I actually saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse like a week ago, and after seeing it wasn’t sure I really had anything to say that others hadn’t said already. But now, I’m finally ready to jot down my thoughts in what is mostly a review, but also my opinion of the character of Miles Morales across the various mediums.
RELEASED: December 14th 2018 DIRECTED BY: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman WRITTEN BY: Phil Lord & Rodney Rothman PRODUCED BY: Avi Arad, Amy Pascal, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller & Christina Steinberg MUSIC BY: Daniel Pemberton
STARRING: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, Zoë Kravitz, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicholas Cage, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schreiber & Chris Pine
When this movie was announced, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. Sure, I love Spider-Man, and I’m always down for a solidly animated movie, and heck – I’ve yet to see a Lord & Miller joint that I didn’t dig. But there was still one glaring problem slap-bang in the middle of that trailer that stopped me from getting invested: Miles Morales.
RELEASED: October 5th 2018 DIRECTED BY: Ruben Fleischer WRITTEN BY: Jeff Pinkler, Scott Rosenberg & Kelly Marcel PRODUCED BY: Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach & Amy Pascal MUSIC BY: Ludwig Göransson
STARRING: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, Reid Scott & Jenny Slate
I had spectacularly low hopes for Venom, which no doubt helped going into the film. The fact that Sony seemed intent on pushing forward with their own Spider-Man universe despite all evidence suggesting they didn’t know what they were doing was the first worrying sign. Then, the suggestion that this universe wouldn’t actually feature Spider-Man was another mind-boggling factor. Finally, the film’s terrible marketing campaign cemented my thoughts that this would be a bad movie.
I had gone from anticipating a film featuring a character from a franchise I love, to being morbidly curious about how bad this film would actually be.
Venom follows Eddie Brock, a reporter disgraced after asking too many questions about the sinister ‘Life Foundation’, headed up by Carlton Drake (I actually had to look up his name just then, even though I only saw this film the other day. That is a bad sign. But let’s continue…). Having obtained a group of alien life-forms known as symbiotes, Drake recklessly hopes to upgrade humanity so they can one day live off-world. But in trying to out Drake’s schemes, Brock is bonded with one of the aliens, and becomes a monstrous anti-hero. Together, he and his symbiote become determined to stop Drake at all costs, as his unchecked schemes could mean the end of mankind.
RELEASED: July 6th 2018 DIRECTED BY: Peyton Reed WRITTEN BY: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari & Paul Rudd PRODUCED BY: Kevin Feige & Stephen Broussard MUSIC BY: Christophe Beck
STARRING: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michael Peña, Walton Goggins, Hannah John-Kamen, Abby Ryder Fortsen, Randall Park, Laurence Fishburne & Michelle Pfieffer
Hilarious. Innovative. Exciting. These are words I would expect to be using to describe an Ant-Man sequel free of the constraints laid upon it by a change of director a long way into the development process, and an Ant-Man sequel coming eight films later in the monumental Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Unfortunately, the reality is that a lot of this film is flat, disjointed and oft times only mildly amusing.
RELEASED: May 15th 2018 DIRECTED BY: David Leitch WRITTEN BY: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick & Ryan Reynolds PRODUCED BY: Simon Kinberg, Ryan Reynolds & Lauren Shuler Donner STARRING: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Zazie Beetz, Julian Dennison, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller, Brianna Hildebrand & Stefan Kapičic
I’m kind of glad I didn’t actually re-watch Deadpoolbefore going to see this film (I had written that review a few years back, and after a few edits it seemed like a timely point to restore it), like I did the various Marvel movies before Infinity War and the Star Wars saga before The Last Jedi, because I feel it would probably have lessened the experience.
Let me just level with you before we get into this properly; working at a cinema, I dreaded the release of Deadpool 2 because it would no doubt encourage a bunch of underage kids to try and sneak in – a bunch of underage kids who, being underage, don’t have I.D., which, let me tell you, is really ruddy annoying. And when people feel entitled to see a film (of all things, seriously!) which they can’t due to age restrictions, it can bring forth the ways in which certain members of humanity are either extremely annoying, or in short, dirtbags. This may or may not have had an affect on my experience, as I feel I didn’t quite enjoy the film as much as fellow audience members. But I digress.
Deadpool 2 sees the return of, you guessed it, Deadpool, who has broadened his scope and become somewhat of an international hero. But after certain circumstances lead him into a complicated relationship with a young mutant called Firefist, Deadpool realises he can’t save the world alone, and decides to form a ‘super-duper-fucking-group’ (that line doesn’t make it to the actual movie, unfortunately) to protect Firefist from the time-travelling killer known as Cable.
RELEASED: February 12th 2016 DIRECTED BY: Tim Miller WRITTEN BY: Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick PRODUCED BY: Simon Kinberg, Ryan Reynolds & Lauren Shuler Donner MUSIC BY: Tom Holkenborg STARRING: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapičic
If you’d scanned the internet following the release of Deadpool, you’d have been faced with countless articles about how it changed the comic-book film industry by successfully releasing a R-Rated film which toys with continuity as much as it wants whilst still adhering to the much coveted cinematic universes that everyone is chasing after.
Whilst this is untrue, as it ignores the earlier releases of films like Kick-Ass and Super, it tells you one thing you should know; Deadpool is a hugely popular and very enjoyable movie.
Still ranking in the top ten of a lot of comic-movie ranking lists a whole two years later, Deadpool tells the story of Wade Wilson; a former soldier who is confronted by the fact he has terminal cancer. Approached by a shady government type, Wilson undergoes a procedure that awakens his mutant gene; granting him a healing factor to rival Wolverine’s and a face that, in his own words, is completely “unfuckable”. But when his ‘creator’, the sinister typical British villain, Ajax, kidnaps his girlfriend, Wilson must don a superhero suit, and slice his way through Ajax’s grunts so that he can get revenge.
I haven’t quite finished reviewing all the older Marvel films yet, although I did finish watching them, so that’s half a victory. But having seen Infinity War, I’m not sure I can hold back my thoughts and feelings, so it’s review time! [Spoiler-free]
RELEASED: April 26th 2017 DIRECTED BY: The Russo Brothers WRITTEN BY: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely PRODUCED BY: Kevin Feige STARRING: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Tom Holland, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Pratt, Don Cheadle, Zoe Saldana, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Peter Dinklage, Dave Bautista, Pom Klementieff, Benecio del Toro, Tom Hiddleston, Karen Gillen, Idris Elba, Benedict Wong, Sebastian Stan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Letitia Wainwright, William Hurt & Josh Brolin
Wow, just wow.
Back in 2012, the world watched in awe as Joss Whedon assembled the six Avengers. In 2016, the Russo Brothers brought together twelve heroes to throw down over the Sokovia Accords, and it was even more exciting. Two years on, and the Russo Brothers now have nineteen heroes under their command (and that’s not even including the various other side-characters like Wong, Okoye and so on) and would you believe, they’ve somehow managed to pull it off again. But this time, it’s even better.
After his various lackeys fail to claim the Infinity Stones in Avengers Assemble and Guardians of the Galaxy, Thanos leads his children on a cosmic rampage towards Earth to finally complete his spiritual journey to gain ultimate power. With the Avengers shattered after the events of Captain America: Civil War, what hope do the remaining heroes have against this threat of unspeakable proportions, even with the help of Star-Lord and his Guardians of the Galaxy?
