Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 15

A Monster in Paris (2011)

Well now, this was a pleasant surprise.

Going in, there were more red flags than a China versus Vietnam World Cup Final. A straight-to-DVD CGI movie I’d never heard of from a studio I’d never heard of helmed by one of the directors of Shark Tale? Yeah, let’s just say I went into this in full Anton Ego mode.

Also known as “I’m going to be forty next year and I genuinely look like this in real life” mode.

But I dug a little deeper and I started seeing a few green shoots of hope. For you see, director Bibo Bergeron (of, I believe, the Sackville Bergerons) is not just the co-director of Shark’s Tale. As an animator he worked on Fievel Goes West, A Goofy Movie and The Iron Giant which is a pretty damned impressive filmography before you even factor in that he co-directed The Road to El Dorado!

Bibo. My guy. LEAD with that next time.

Ah Paris. 1910. The glamour. The opulence. The inescapable smell of sewage as the river Seine has flooded and half the city is underwater (this really happened).

Emile is a projectionist working at a cinema who has a crush on Maud, the quiet girl who mans the ticket desk and, gosh darn it, he just can’t work up the courage to ask her out. Emile’s best friend is Raoul, an inventor and delivery driver who reminds me so much of Jesper from Klaus despite the fact that they have different animators, writers and voice actors. I guess this was just a standard character type in animation in the 2010s but still, it’s really uncanny.

Animation-wise, the movie does a lot with a little. The film only had a budget of $32 million (i.e. around a fifth of something like Frozen, which was actually fairly cheap by Disney standards). But the character designs are mostly appealing and when the movie needs to skimp on the visuals it does so in interesting ways. For example, take this scene of Raoul and Emile driving through the streets of Paris.

See the way the buildings are almost entirely lacking in colour? Probably because it make the images far easier and cheaper to render but it also makes this depiction of Paris look like it was crafted from paper and gives it a unique visual aesthetic.

Anyway, Raoul gives Emile a lift to the camera shop to fix his projector which got damaged while he was fantasising about saving Maud from a rampaging crocodile. Emile ends up buying a movie camera and then accompanying Raoul on his deliveries and they end up at the home of “The Professor”, an inventor who Raoul is obsessed with. The Professor is away at a conference but Raoul is able to talk his way past his assistant, a Proboscis monkey named Charles.

Raoul runs amuck in the Professor’s lab, testing out a potion that can grant anyone a beautiful singing voice and a serum that makes living things grow to massive size. Emile, who has been trying out his new camera, is shocked when Raoul causes an explosion and then Emile sees a strange, huge, thing emerge from the smoke and fumes and vanish with a colossal leap through the glass roof. Emile and Raoul am-scray out of there and the mysterious creature bounces around Paris like a Gallic Spring-heeled Jack (or Spring-heeled Jacque, if you will).

We move now to L’Oiseau Rare, an exclusive nightclub where the star attraction is a cabaret singer named Lucille, who is an old childhood friend of Raoul’s. Lucille is a highly regarded singer but all is not well in her life. For you see, as the IMDB synopsis of this movie tells us: “As Paris is diverse in the category of the rich and the poor, though she is a successful singer, her Aunt does everything to push her into the arms of the Chief of Police, Maynott, a man devoured by pride and ambition.”

I’m not sure if that’s poetry or French shoved through Google Translate like Steve Buscemi in the chipper at the end of Fargo. Either way, I love it. So, Maynott bears a striking resemblance to another large cartoon Frenchman who has problems respecting women’s boundaries, Gerard Depar…I mean, Gaston. In fact, this movie does borrow more than a little from Beauty and the Beast. But there’s also a little Phantom of the Opera in there too to stop the Disney flavour becoming overpowering.

Also, the waiter in this picture is a clear shoutout to the work of French animator Sylvain Chomet. There’s really no reason for me to bring that up other than to show off my animation nerd credentials. No reason at all. I’m just desperate for your approval.

Anyway, Maynott wants Lucille’s hand in marriage and she’s all “Madame Maynott! His little wife!”. Maynott meanwhile is struggling with falling approval ratings because of the flood (presumably because he hasn’t arrested the river yet?) so he decides to distract the public with this mysterious monster that’s recently started terrorising the city.

Lucille learns of the monster when she sees a poster about it while walking through the atmospherically foggy (and, entirely coincidentally, far cheaper to animate) streets of Paris. She bumps into Raoul and they get into an argument where she tells him that the only way a bum like him would ever be allowed into her club would be if he won the Legion D’Honneur. Meanwhile, Emile has developed his film and discovered to his horror that the monster was created when he and Raoul caused the explosion in the Professor’s lab. They are arrested by Paté, Maynott’s way-more-competent sidekick, and brought before Maynott. Using Emile’s footage, Paté flawlessly explains what happened; the monster is a flea that leaped from Charles and was coated in enlarging fluid. Maynott is delighted to learn that there is a massive bloodsucking predator capable of leaping two thousand feet at will in his city and gives Emile and Raoul the Légion D’Honneur, a grotesque debasement of France’s highest honour is what I’d say if they hadn’t already given one to Leopold II.

Creating a monster, being a monster. There are many paths to a Legion D’Honneur.

Back at L’Oiseau Rare, Lucille is auditioning Albert (the triangle nosed waiter) as her new backup singer. He’s terrible and she has to turn him down, which leads to him storming out, saying that he’s just too avant garde for her bourgeois taste (which, to be fair, is absolutely what a Sylvain Chomet character transported into a regular cartoon would say). Leaving through the back door, Albert encounters the monster in the alley way and screams and runs off. Lucille looks out to see what all the commotion is about and we finally get our first real look at the monster.

At first she’s horrified and barricades herself in the club. But then she hears the Monster quietly singing outside.

So, while I’d legitimately never heard of this movie before being asked to review it, I’ve now learned that this movie has been quietly building a cult following ever since its release over a decade ago. And I think I know why. One is, obviously, shippers gonna ship. But secondly, the songs in this are wonderful. And you should never underestimate the power of a good song to keep a movie lodged in the collective consciousness.

Soon! Soon.

Anyway, the first song is sung by the flea, A Monster in Paris, and it’s just a beautiful, moody lament (fun fact, in the English dub the flea’s voice is provided by Sean Lennon, son of John and Yoko Ono). Lucille, realising that the creature outside her door is no monster but a soulful, sensitive artist with the voice of an angel and a reproductive organ twice as long as the rest of his body so hey, maybe he can come in?

Lucille names him “Francoeur” and disguises him with a hat and mask combo. Raoul and Emile arrive proudly wearing their medals so Lucille is forced to let them into to the club. She returns to her dressing room to find that her mother has met Francoeur and been so amazed by his prowess with the guitar that she’s put him in the band. This leads to the wonderfully catchy duet, La Seine and I between Lucille and Francoeur which I haven’t been able to get out of my head for a week now.

After the show, Raoul and Emile go backstage to congratulate Lucille and Francoeur. They quickly realise that he’s the monster and Lucille swears them to secrecy.

The next day, Emile and Raoul attend a press conference where Maynott announces that he is going to hunt the monster down.

“So it’s time to take some action boys! It’s time! To! Follow! MEEEEEE!”

Albert, who’s figured out that Francoeur is the monster and is jealous that he got the place in the band, rats him out to Maynott. Emile and Raoul race to the L’Oiseau Rare to warn Lucille and Francoeur. They just barely manage to hide the big bug in time but Raoul reasons that they need more permanent solution. Emile suggests that the best thing to do would just be to change Francoeur back to his normal size. Raoul says that the only one who could do that is the Professor, and he’s far away. But Lucille says that, while they may not have the skills needed to make Francoeur shrink, they have exactly the skills needed to make the city think he’s been shrunk.

So the next day Maynott holds a press conference where he announces his candidacy to become Mayor Maynott.

Emile gives Maynott a supposed “antidote”, and when Francoeur “attacks”, Raoul tells Maynott to fling the antidote at the flea which seemingly causes him to vanish in a puff of smoke. However, he’s actually hiding under the floorboards like that old lady with spider-legs and no face who lurks in your bedroom. However, Paté quickly susses the ruse. Furious, Maynott shoots the bug who leaps across the city.

Our heroes race to catch Francoeur with Maynott and Paté in hot pursuit. The trail takes them into the flooded parts of Paris and they find a wounded Francoeur hiding in the Eiffel Tower (ugh, how touristy).

After a climactic battle at the top of the tower between Francoeur and Maynott (which regrettably does not end with Francoeur suspending Maynott over the city by the neck and growling “get out”), Francouer is seemingly killed. I mean, he just vanishes leaving behind his hat and coat but clearly any self respecting Parisian would sooner be dead than not attired in the heights of fashion so they assume he’s dead. Paté arrives and arrests Maynott for the murder of Francoeur because all this time the real monster blah blah blah you know the deal, this ain’t our first rodeo.

Lucille is devastated at the loss of her friend but, when she tries to perform onstage, she hears a tiny voice singing in her ear and realises that Francoeur is still alive. Just, really small and presumably feeding on her delicious blood.

With the Professor returned from Paris, the gang are able to restore Francoeur to full size and the movie ends with our heroes using giant sunflowers to rescue Paris from the flood.

What an odd film this is.

***

A humble but charming little bit of Gallic magic that deserves a much larger audience.

Scoring

Animation: 12/20

Some pretty basic and rubbery CGI elevated by interesting charactering designs, creative problem solving and real visual savoir faire.

Leads: 15/20

Francoeur is adorable.

Villain: 10/20

Mayor Maynott is a wonderful pun. But the character is pretty bland.

Supporting Characters: 13/20

Stupid movie knows I can’t say no to monkeys.

Music: 17/20

Two absolute bangers.

FINAL SCORE: 67%

NEXT UPDATE: 23 June 2022

NEXT TIME: I am sorry to say, the next review will be extremely unpleasant.

“We’re gonna cure some ass.”

There has been a realisation slowly festering in my mind for a good few years now. A realisation whose inexorable truth forces me to re-evaluate core, deeply held beliefs and even my own sense of identity.

And it is this.

One More Day needed to happen.

That’s not to forgive how it happened. Or the rationale given for why it had to happen. Or the long series of mistakes that led to it. But I’ve gone from thinking that it was one of the worst stories in comics history, to a necessary piece of narrative table clearing (that was also just a fucking trainwreck as a comic).

Back when I was doing publicity for Sparrow I was asked who my One True Pairing was and I gave possibly the most vanilla, basic and boring answer possible.

But it’s true! This just works. And there’s so many reasons why. Firstly, you have the obvious chemistry of two very different characters clashing against each other. The quiet, soft-spoken farm boy and the brassy big-city journalist. But most importantly, I think, is the fact that Lois Lane is an integral part of Superman’s story engine rather than simply being vestigial to it. Lois, at least in most incarnations, is a whip-smart investigative reporter and former army brat. What this means in practical story terms is that she has a nose for trouble and the combat training to do something about it when she finds it. This was how the old Fleischer cartoons utilised her; having Lois uncover some nefarious threat which would then allow Superman to arrive and beat the snot out of it. These two aren’t just a great partnership textually, they are metatextually working together to create the story. Superman marrying Lois Lane in the comics was a perfectly logical step because, honestly, what can possibly be gained by having Superman playing the field? There’s only one gal for him. I know it, you know it. Now, let’s take a look at the antithesis of that.

Now, before you get the wrong idea, let me say this upfront. I LOVE Mary Jane Watson. I think she’s a fantastic character, especially considering she was initially created as a gag.

Mary Jane first “appeared” all the way back in Amazing Spider-Man #15 when Aunt May mentions “that Watson girl” next door. This starts a running gag of Aunt May trying to fix Peter up with this girl and Peter weaselling out of it because he assumes that any girl his Aunt likes must be strictly squaresville, daddio.

Oh Peter. Dear naive Peter.

This running gag lasted a full two years until issue 42 where Peter is finally strong-armed into going on a date with Mary-Jane and finally meets her face to face.

Iconic moment. Perfect. 10/10. No notes.

Famously, Mary Jane was such a force of personality that she took on a life of her own. She was initially just supposed to be a secondary love interest for Peter, a distraction from his One True Love, the sainted Gwen Stacy. But fans loved Mary Jane. Of course they did. How could you not? And so it was Gwen who went sightseeing with the Green Goblin, and Mary Jane became Peter’s girlfriend and finally, his wife.

And, on paper, Mary Jane is a lot like Lois Lane. Beautiful, tough, smart, sassy and doesn’t take any shit. But, y’see, Peter Parker has one thing in common with alt-rock singer Lazlo Bane: he’s no Superman. And, like in real life, some characters just aren’t cut out for marriage. And whereas the marriage of Superman and Lois has been one of the most enduring and stable elements of their status quo, the 1987 marriage of Peter and Mary Jane quickly came to be seen as a problem that needed to be worked around.

Peter Parker has always been a younger character than Clark Kent. Clark has a steady job in journalism (stop snickering in the back), Peter lives pay-check to pay-check doing freelance work. Clark is practically invulnerable, Peter is one bullet away from an early grave. Clark Kent is mature, stable, happy and living his best life. Peter is young, insecure and perpetually on the verge of psychological, emotional or financial collapse. Clark Kent is Superman because he’s a good man who wants to help people. Peter Parker is Spider-Man because he is a child broken by guilt. One of these guys is marriage material. One isn’t.

And so the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson became a joyless death march where we got to watch a once vivacious and fun loving woman ground down by the debts of being the wife of Peter Parker. Again and again, she’d try to convince him to give up being Spider-Man and he would, only for the narrative gods to call him back to the webbing because, well, he can’t stop being Spider-Man. By contrast, I can’t remember any time in any media where Lois Lane asked Clark when he’s going to pack this Superman nonsense in. Because why would she? She loves Superman.

Multiple attempts were made to dig Spider-Man and MJ out of this narrative hole. Hell, the entire reason for the two-year long travesty that was the Clone Saga was to get Peter and MJ to a happy ending so that Ben Reilly could take over as a new, single Spider-Man. But nothing worked. The obvious solution, for them simply to divorce, was dismissed as Joe Quesada didn’t want Peter to do something so immoral as getting a divorce (remember that). While I don’t agree with that rationale, I do think having them divorce would have created problems. Spider-Man works best as a young character, that’s the whole reason teens flocked to him in the sixties, and having him divorced permanently ages him and makes him less relatable to your target audience. Not many guys in their early twenties worrying about alimony payments, y’know? So the situation festered until 2007 when Marvel finally decided to cut this Gordian knot with One More Day. If, when cutting the Gordian Knot, Alexander the Great had accidentally killed several bystanders and then stabbed himself in the dick.

I’ll try to keep this brief. During the Civil War storyline Peter Parker made the world class blunder of trusting Tony Stark and unmasked himself to the world as a way of showing his support for the Superhuman Registration Act. But when Peter realises that Tony’s perfectly reasonable agenda of government oversight and accountability for superheroes had started taking its cues from Stalinist Russia he switches sides and becomes an illegal hero. So now Peter, Mary Jane and Aunt May are on the run and every supervillain in the world knows he’s Spider-Man. Aunt May gets shot and is dying and Peter, despite knowing genius scientists, world-class doctors and ACTUAL GODDAMN WIZARDS is unable to find anyone who can treat a perfectly normal gunshot wound. At which point Mephisto, THE LITERAL GOD OF EVIL, approaches Peter and makes him an offer; he’ll save Aunt May in exchange for erasing Peter and MJ’s marriage out of existence.

People were PAID to write this. Actual professional writers.

What makes it worse is that even IF you were dead-set on such a contrived, obvious writer-fiat way of resolving the problem, there were ways to make it better. Linkara had a great suggestion; have Mary-Jane be the one who gets shot and then have Peter have to sacrifice their marriage to save her. Then, at least, it becomes something epic and tragic and genuinely noble, rather than Peter sacrificing his vows to his wife to save Aunt May, a woman who explicitly told him that he should let her go so she could be with her beloved husband in heaven just because he can’t let go.

So other than the terrible contrived writing, the massive character derailment and the huge implied insult to the audience’s intelligence, how was the comic, Mrs Lincoln?

Well…like I said, ghastly business though it was, One More Day was ultimately a success in that it did what it was designed to do. Peter Parker went back to being a young single superhero and the Spider books underwent something of a renaissance during the Brand New Day era. But, my God, it came at a price. And ultimately, I think that’s why we hate One More Day so much. It was the hero we needed, not the one we deserved. Also, really weird pick to base a movie on.

Spider-Man: No Way Home was kind of a miracle. How do you gross $1 billion dollars and become the sixth highest grossing film of all time during a pandemic? Well, we could argue about whether that success was despite the pandemic or because Covid was starting to recede and people were just desperate for some fun, communal activity but regardless, NWM was one of those big, unifying cultural moments that seem increasingly rare in this day and age. People were clamouring for this to win Best Picture for chrissakes, despite it being quite clearly a peasant movie for peasants. Everyone loves No Way Home.

“Like you, Mouse? Right? Right? Like you? You love No Way Home? You must do. You’re my friend. You’re my friend Mouse.”“Tell me you love No Way Home. Now.”“Okay, here is what watching this movie for the first time was like for me.”“Hello, Memer.”“Meme know, Meme somememe of a meme memeself.”

Alright, that’s not entirely fair. The movie isn’t just an endless procession of empty sugary meme calories. But I find it not a little suspicious that I enjoyed this movie (where I was spoiled for many of the big reveals) a lot less than Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (where I scrupulously avoided ads and went in completely cold). And that’s kind of damning. Because I don’t think the two movies were all that far apart in quality, which means that Doctor Strange won me over more or less purely on those fan-servicey, meme-tastic moments. And it’s at that point that I start feeling less like a viewer of a piece of art and more like a lab rat who’s had electrodes jammed into the pleasure centres of its brain that can be triggered on command. And I’m not a rat. I’m a mouse. Sometimes. Depending on how committed I am to the bit.

Anyway, the movie.

We pick up right where we left off with Peter’s secret identity being revealed to the whole world and Spider-Man now wanted for the murder of Quentin Beck. Peter, MJ, Aunt May and Ned are taken into custody by Damage Control, who you may remember as the government agency in charge of cleaning up alien technology in Homecoming but are apparently just doing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s job now, even though S.H.I.E.L.D. are back again, right? S.H.I.E.L.D.’s still around? Can someone check that S.H.I.E.L.D. is okay? Anyway, things are looking very hairy for Peter but fortunately Happy Horgan is able to retain the services of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox, escaped from the Netflix dimension) who gets him cleared of all charges and stops his head being split open by a brick thrown through his window.

Matt warns Peter that, even though he’s not going to jail, he’s still guilty in the eyes of the public and suggests he move to a safe location. Happy puts May and Peter up in a Stark-owned apartment which is pretty decent of him considering May just dumped his ass.

Pretty soon though, consequences start piling up, not just for Peter but for Ned and MJ too. When the time comes for them to submit their college applications, all three are rejected because of the controversy surrounding Spider-Man.

Y’know, I go back and forth on this. I mean, on the one hand, this kid played a not insubstantial role in the little matter of, what was it again? Oh yeah SAVING THE ENTIRE WORLD FROM THANOS. THE KID’S A VETERAN, YOU IVY LEAGUE ELITIST BASTARDS.

On the other hand; MIT probably know that if they give Peter a place fully HALF the science faculty will be supervillains by the end of the semester so, fine, I can sorta see their point. Peter feels incredibly guilty and, as we all know, when Peter Parker experiences guilt he does the sensible, rational thing.

“Can you please help me roofie the entire world?”

Peter goes to Doctor Strange and asks for his help and Strange agrees to erase everyone’s memory of the fact that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Won’t do jack shit about all the newspaper headlines, blog posts and news footage still lying around saying Peter Parker is Spider-Man but who trusts the media anyway, these days? Unfortunately, like a five year old at a drive through who keeps changing his order, Peter keeps altering the parameters of the spell which causes it to go out of control and nearly wreck the sanctum santorum. Strange manages to contain the spell and tells Peter that the real problem is that he’s not willing to choose between being Peter Parker and Spider-Man. He then chews Peter a new one after learning that he didn’t try to contact the MIT acceptance board and plead his case. Peter is stunned that that’s something you can do. Mouse is also stunned that that is something you can do. Is it? That can’t be how the college application system works in the States. If every person who is rejected gets an automatic right of appeal, how is that even an application process? How is that not doubling the workload of the university? And what if you succeed? Does someone who was previously granted a place get that place rescinded? Can THEY appeal then? WHEN DOES THIS MADNESS END?

So then Peter finds out that the MIT administrator is on her way to the airport so he actually accosts this poor woman on the frickin’ motorway to ask that she re-consider rejecting his college application. And keep in mind, she knows that he was recently a suspect in a murder case and he literally has the strength to snap her like a twig.

Look at the fear in that woman’s eyes.

Fortunately, because this situation could not end well in any other scenario, the bridge is attacked by none other than Doctor Otto Octavius played by Alfred Molina and I am still salty that the trailers spoiled it. Anyway, Molina is always a delight and we do get a really cool fight scene where Peter ends up saving the administrator who, entirely by coincidence, decides that Spider-Man is good actually and promises to reassess his application.

Here’s what I don’t like. Otto pierces Peter’s armour which causes Peter’s nanotech to bleed on his arms which allows Peter to remotely control the octopus limbs. And once again, this Peter Parker just swans to victory using technology that was given to him by Tony Stark. And this is such a simple fix! Just have Peter remotely infiltrate Otto’s system and hack it. At least that way, he’s actually active and demonstrating competence and ability and the victory feels in any way earned. Anyway, no sooner is Doc Ock secure than the Green Goblin shows up and starts bombing everything only for Peter and Otto to be spirited away by Doctor Strange to the Sanctum Sanctorum. Strange explains that the spell has started to pull people in from all across the multiverse who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Strange has already captured the Lizard from the deeply dishonestly named Amazing Spider-Man. Strange says they have to track down any other interlopers and send them back where they came from. Peter agrees but says he’ll need some help and so he calls in the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D, a responsible adult, his girlfriend and Lego partner.

Peter chases down a report of a flying monster and runs into Electro played by Jamie Foxx and Sandman played by Thomas Haden Church. I…think. Honestly, Sandman and Lizard spend the entirety of this movie as CGI models so they could both be played by archive soundbites and sound-alikes for all I know. And this brings me to my other main criticism of the movie…you can absolutely tell this was made during a pandemic. Watch this movie again and see how many times all the main villains are actually on screen together. Most of the time, whenever a villain is onscreen he’s the only one in shot, talking to someone off camera as if they were filming around social distancing restrictions. And I know, that’s not really anyone’s fault apart from that damn bat, but it still makes the film feel kinda small and cheap. Especially since, after the aesthetic breath of fresh air that was The Eternals, we’re very much back in the generic bland MCU house style. And obviously this thing ate the box office alive so I’m in the minority here. But that visual sameyness is kinda fatal when the movie that is just crying out to be compared to this one is one of the most visually gorgeous animated features ever made.

No. It doesn’t have Toby Maguire. It has sexy lesbian Doc Ock and A TALKING PIG.

Like, sorry, I’m finding it a bit hard to get jonesed for seeing Andrew Garfield getting negged by Disney/Marvel’s when Spider-Verse is right there.

Anyway, Peter captures Sandman and Electro with little trouble and whisks them back to the Sanctum Sanctorum. There, everyone learns that Otto and Sandman are from the same universe, ditto Lizard and Electro.

Meanwhile Peter gets a call from Aunt May telling him that one of the guys he’s looking for has walked into her shelter. He speeds over there only to find May consoling a confused and distraught Norman Osborn who’s come looking for Spider-Man’s help. Defoe was already phenomenal in Raimi’s original Spider-Man but here, if anything, he’s even better. Look at the scene where he tells May and Peter that “someone’s living in my house, Oscorp doesn’t exist…”. He seems so vulnerable and broken. But…look closely. Right before he says “…my son”. The tiniest hint of a smile. Just to let you know, if you’re paying close enough attention, that it’s really the Goblin in control. May tells Peter that just sending Norman back to his home dimension isn’t enough, this dude needs help.

So Peter takes Norman back to the Sanctum Santorum and he meets Ned and MJ and is fascinated to discover that this Peter is also dating an MJ. This prompts Ned to wonder if there are other Ned Leeds’ out there in the multiverse.

Let’s…not pull that thread, Neddy.

So all of our merry multiversal malefactors are under look and key. You know what really baffles me though? Why they didn’t just bring in Topher Grace’s Venom so that they could have a full Sinister Six? I mean, I know Venom in that movie didn’t exactly set the world on fire but that wasn’t Grace’s fault. I mean, if the Marc Webb movies are deemed worthy of redemption I don’t see why Grace’s Eddie Brock should be consigned to obscurity. I thought he was just fine in the role. Well anyway, the villains get to swopping stories and slowly start to realise that they were brought to this universe right before they died back home (of course, the Lizard never actually died but I just realised that and expecting anyone to remember anything that happened in Amazing Spider-Man is unfair bordering on sadistic). At which point Doctor Strange arrives and is all “well, let’s send these guys back where they came from! What’ll happen to them? Damned if I know. Damned, indeed, if I care.”

Peter tries to convince Strange not to send them back because that’s basically murder and Strange gives his best Ivan Drago impersonation.

So Peter runs off with the spell to send them back and traps Strange in one of his cells, prompting Strange to mutter “this is why I never had kids”.

Ha! No it’s not.

Okay, so forget everything I said about this movie looking cheap for a minute because we get a scene of Peter being chased through the mirror dimension by Strange that is pretty darn shiny and ends with Peter leaving Strange trapped and taking his ring-thingy that he uses to make portals. He heads back to the Sanctum Santorum and offers the Sinister…Five, a deal. He’ll try and fix them before sending them back so they don’t die fighting Spider-Man. I mean, seems to me that de-powering them will actually make them more likely to die. Especially Sandman, Doc Ock and Norman. Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man did not mess around, that dude killed more people than hantavirus. As a precaution, Peter gives MJ the spell and tells her that if she doesn’t hear from him she’s to press the button that will send the villains back home. She tells them that she’ll do it too and Electro deadpans “we believe you, Michelle”. Sidenote, Jamie Foxx is playing a completely different character than he did in Amazing Spider-Man 2 and if you’ve seen that movie you know that is all to the good.

So Peter takes the villains to Happy’s apartment and starts working on them, with Norman’s help because, get this, he’s something of a scientist himself. Now, I will admit, I really, really love this. Peter Parker striving not just to defeat his enemies but to actually help them is absolutely true to the character and I love that this movie shows that. We also get some nice little character moments. May giving Doc Ock some water and trying to fight off the primordial sexual urges that come whenever an Aunt May and a Doctor Octopus are in close proximity.

Call me a prude, but the 20 pages devoted to the honeymoon were as unnecessary as they were filthily graphic.

Norman and Peter bond over the repairs and Electro and Sandman bond over their shared history of falling into shit and getting powers.

The first treatment is a complete success, Doc Ock regains control of his own mind from his robot arms and gratefully agrees to help Peter and Norman treat the others.

My isn’t everything going swimmingly? Suddenly Peter’s Spider-sense starts tingling and he susses out that Norman has been taken over by the Green Goblin persona. Gobby taunts Peter, saying that Aunt May’s morality has poisoned him and that he’s watched him struggling to have everything he wants while the world tries to make him choose. “Gods don’t have to choose” Norman says.

Apparently Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man is not a god.

Then, as the poets say, shit gets fucky. Electro is swayed by Norman’s spiel and attacks Doc Ock, Lizard escapes and goes on a rampage, Sandman does…something, I’m really not sure what his deal is and Norman and Peter duke it out.

Now, hot take, but this fight scene is bad, actually. It’s murky and badly lit, it’s terribly edited and it takes place in possibly the blandest, most non-descript apartment building ever committed to film. But, I will give it this, we finally get a fight scene with this Peter Parker where there’s a real sense of enmity. Before, when he was fighting Vulture or Mysterio or Thanos he had more of a “springer spaniel trapped in a washing machine” vibe going on, just swinging around and trying not to get killed. Finally, with Norman Osborn, we get a villain who can really get under Peter’s skin and push him to his moral limits. The fight ends with Peter and Norman in the basement. May sees Norman brutalising her boy and is about to fucking stave his head in when she gets rammed by Norman’s glider. Cackling like an arch-bastard, Green Goblin blows the building up and peaces out like a boss.

The movie plays a very clever, very cruel bit of trickery here. It reminded me of Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan actually. In that movie, you think that Spock dies in the very opening scene only for it to be revealed that he’s fine. This makes his actual death at the end of the movie hit even harder. In the same way, we get a shot of Aunt May lying on the ground apparently dead, only for her to get back on her feet to help Peter out of the rubble. Phew. She’s fine. It’s all good. They had me worried there for a…

You sons of bitches.

It’s a phenomenal scene. Beautiful. Having May being the one to give Peter the “with great responsibility” speech? Genius. And Holland and Tomei just nail it. Absolutely gut-wrenching. Good job all round.

Anyway, Peter has to go on the run while J. Jonah Jameson leads a media campaign against him, with his broadcasts being plastered over entire skyscrapers like a Geisha advertising sushi in future Los Angeles. Which is weird when you consider that he started out as basically Alex Jones and somehow he’s morphed into Walter Kronkite.

MJ and Ned agonise over whether to push the button and Ned wishes that they could see Peter. Because he’s wearing Doctor Strange’s ring, this actually summons a portal which brings Peter Parker directly to them. Just…not the Peter Parker they wanted.

Or, indeed, anyone wanted.

No! Bad Mouse! Okay, fair is fair, if there is one thing to take away from this movie it’s how royally shafted poor Andrew Garfield was because this dude clearly could have been a great Peter Parker (maybe the best Peter Parker?). I like Holland a lot but he’s quite a different character from comic book Peter. Garfield, finally set free from Sony’s awful conception of the character (remember the skateboard? do you?!) feels like he just stepped off the page. By contrast…

“A boy’s best friend is his mother.”

Look, I like (some of) the Sam Raimi Spider-man movies just fine but for me, Tobey Maguire was always the worst thing in them. Just weird and stiff and…off. That said, he’s definitely much better in this than he was in the originals and the movie’s play at recasting him as the elder statesmen Spider-man mostly works so, fine. I shall tolerate Mister Maguire’s presence. Just keep him away from the poker table.

Anyway, Peter 2 (Maguire) tells the gang that ever since he’s arrived in this universe he’s been looking for Peter 1 because he “just has this feeling that he needs me”. This, of course, is a reference to one of Spider-Man’s lesser known powers, Deus Ex Machina Sense. (Again, really easy fix, just establish that Peter 2 saw that Aunt May died on the news).

With the two new Peters’ help they track Peter 1 (Holland) to the roof of the school. Peter 1 is ready to just give up and send the villains back to where they came from but Peter 2 and Peter 3 (Garfield) talk him out of it. The three Spider-Men team up to cure the villains and Peter 3 offers to take Connors because he’s already cured him once so it’s “no big deal” (which I’m convinced is a reference to the infamous leaked Sony “NBD tough mudder” Spider-man email but I have no proof or friends). We get a nice scene of the three Spiders sciencing together and a funny moment where Ned learns that both older Peters had best friends who turned into Goblins and tried to kill them. You pulled the thread, Neddy. You pulled the damn thread.

Anyway, they decide to lay a trap for the villains and catch them like…I dunno…some kind of animal famous for weaving traps. Peter sends a video to the Daily Bugle basically calling the villains to come and fight him at the Statue of Liberty. Which, for a super-villain, has got to be the equivalent of being asked if it hurt when you fell from heaven.

“Parker, you basic bitch.”

Oh, and the Statue of Liberty has been fitted with a Captain America shield. And THIS is the equivalent of your boyfriend suggesting a threesome.

“Joking! Joking! We’d never do that! Unless…you like the idea?”

While waiting for the villains to arrive the three spiders chat about this and that and it’s funny and charming although I can’t help but feel sorry for Andrew Garfield because some of the jokes at the expense of his movies are honestly kinda mean. Like yeah. Those movies sucked. But we have mounting evidence here that really wasn’t his fault.

Anyway, villains arrive and we get a battle around the Statue of Liberty that’s perfectly adequate. They manage to cure Sandman but Electro proves far more difficult. Fortunately, Doc Ock shows up and helps them subdue Electro and MJ and Ned manage to transform the Lizard back to normal. Doctor Strange arrives and is genuinely impressed that Peter’s attempt at rehabilitation has been so successful but, of course, we’re still short a villain.

“Can Memer-man come out to meme?”

Green Goblin arrives and blows up the spell, with the explosion causing MJ to plummet off the statue. But Peter 3 leaps after her and is able to save her and…oh boy…sorry…

I’m gonna need a minute.

While Strange tries desperately to re-capture the spell, Peter 1 and Norman battle it out on the remains of the giant Captain America shield. Peter, having lost May and almost having lost MJ to this asshole, proceeds to beat the ever living piss out of him. Peter 1 is about to impale him with his own goblin glider (I was going to say “how ironic” but it’s less “irony” and more “that thing that always happens”) but Peter 2 stops him. And then the Green Goblin just shivs Peter 2 in the back because he is the actual worst. Peter 1 then cures Green Goblin by stabbing him very hard in the neck with the antidote. Peter 2 isn’t fatally wounded and Norman Osborn is real sorry about everything he’s done but that’s where the good news ends.

As Strange tries desperately to hold the multiverse together Peter asks him to cast another spell: one that will make everyone forget he even exists. Strange’s line in response is straight up beautiful: “You gotta understand. Everyone who knows and loves you…we’d…we’d have no memory of you.”

It’s the little catch in Cumberbatch’s voice when he says “we’d” rather than “they’d”.

That’s what’s causing you pain. That’s where the sharpness is.

Peter says his goodbyes to his brothers from another studio and to Ned and MJ. He tells them that they’re going to forget who he is, but that he’ll find them.

MJ tells him she loves him. And they kiss for the last time.

Several months later, an anonymous young man arrives at a cafe and orders a coffee from the pretty waitress. They make small talk. He asks about a bandage on her forehead.

She tells him it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Later the same anonymous young man visits Aunt May’s grave and Happy Horgan asks how he knew her.

And the movie ends with Peter Parker moving into his new apartment and putting on a new, homemade, decidedly un-high tech costume and swinging out into to the night.

Penniless. Friendless. Forgotten.

But still with great power.

And with great responsibility.

***

Soooo…I actually changed my opinion over the course of this review. When I first saw this movie I remember being deeply annoyed by the general messiness and the frankly unladylike amount of fan service. But for all that. It gets Spider-Man and what makes the character wonderful. It’s no Into the Spider-verse, but in terms of live action Spidey movies I think we have a new king.

Scoring

Adaptation: 19/25

There is a distinctly ramshackle script here. A lot of coincidence, a lot of moving pieces around a board rather than natural-feeling character motivation. That said, they adapted frickin’ One More Day and made it good so that’s pretty damn impressive. And, it does deliver a new status quo for Spider-Man that I’ve been saying he needed since he first appeared in the MCU. He’s an underdog hero standing on his own two feet and not Iron Man’s sidekick. Cheers to that.

Our Heroic Heroes: 24/25

Holland is giving his best performance as Peter Parker, Andrew Garfield may be my favorite live action Peter Parker ever (God that feels so weird to type) and even Tobey Maguire is actually likeable in this. My God, it truly is a multiverse of infinite possibilities.

Our Nefarious Villains: 17/25

Obviously, with five villains they’re not all going to be ringers.

“No one’s going to get that joke, Mouse.”
“I don’t care, Mouse.”

First, the good. Willem DeFoe’s Goblin goes straight to the very top tier of MCU villains. Doc Ock is great. The new Electro is a vast improvement and Jamie Foxx is clearly relishing getting a second chance to do the character right this time. And Sandman and Lizard are also there.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 23/25

Back when I reviewed the first one I said that the supporting characters were great but Marvel should just get JK Simmons back as J. Jonah Jameson. Welp, time to hold up my end of the bargain.

The Stinger

In a bar, a very drunk Eddie Brock gets a barman to tell him the entire history of the MCU from Iron Man onwards and then vanishes back to his home dimension, leaving a tiny blob of symbiote behind him.

And the audience went…

Like everyone else, I love Venom and I don’t know why I love Venom and I just have to live with that. Also, this exchange between Eddie and the symbiote just cracked me up.

“And there was a really angry green man? Hulk?”

“AND YOU THOUGHT “LETHAL PROTECTOR” WAS A SHIT NAME.”

“Yeah. Because…it is.”

It really, really is.

Are there X-Men yet?

Considering everyone who knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man was coming through the holes in the sky at the end there, yeah, Wolverine or somebody probably was floating around. But good luck proving it.

FINAL SCORE: 83%

NEXT UPDATE: 09 June 2022

NEXT TIME: Well, I haven’t seen this movie yet, I know nothing about it and in fact never even knew it existed until I was asked to review it. But I’ll tell you one thing:

Bragging about being the director of Shark Tale is a RED FLAG.

“I don’t wear a cape.”

You know what? I confess. I phoned the New Mutants review in. I was feeling tired, uninspired and unenthused about the movie and in the end I just kinda bashed it out. Sorry. Sometimes I just don’t have anything particularly insightful or funny to say about a particular film. Maybe it’s because I’ve just come off anti-depressants. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I was just lazy. Whatever it was, I apologise. Now let’s draw a line under it and talk about something I’m actually passionate about…OH GAWD NO.

No. No! I don’t care about the Eternals and ya can’t make me dammit!

Ughhhhh…

Okay. Some of what I’m about to say may seem a little harsh so let me preface it with this:

Jack Kirby was one of the most influential comic creators in the history of the medium and a bona fide American hero to boot. He co-created Captain America and fought Nazis before America even entered World War 2. He combined a singular, iconic art-style with a rock solid work ethic and a fantastic imagination capable of coming up with far out, head-melting concepts.

BUT.

“Concepts” are not “plots”. They are not “characters”. And they are most certainly not “dialogue”. And I do not think its a coincidence that, whatever the ups and downs of their tempestous relationship, Kirby’s best work was done in collaboration with a certain somebody who excelled in those areas.

Or should I say “he excelsiored”?

There’s a saying that everyone has one good story in them, but for some people one is their lot and I’m afraid that, when it came to narrative, Jack was kind of a one trick pony. That trick, admittedly, was pretty neat; superheroes as gods. Six years before the appearance of Thor in Marvel, Kirby did his own take on the God of Thunder for DC in the anthology series Tales of the Unexpected before updating the Norse pantheon as the race of super advanced alien Asgardians for Marvel. He later co-created the Inhumans, a secretive race of superhumans who act like a pantheon of gods and were created as a result of “Chariots of the Gods” style interference by the alien Kree. After years of being slighted and disrespected by Marvel editorial, he jumped ship to DC where he created the Fourth World, a series about god-like superhero aliens. After that was cancelled, he returned to Marvel and created The Eternals, a series about gods from ancient mythology who are actually superhumans created as a result of “Chariots of the Gods” style interference by alien gods.

You see what I’m talking about? The dude kinda had a limited pool of ideas to draw on and I think that his solo work really demonstrates why he needed Stan Lee. On the other hand of course, Stan Lee’s catalogue shows that Stan Lee was an iconoclastic genius auteur who didn’t need help from anybody.

SARCASM. THAT WAS SARCASM. PITCH BLACK AND BITTER AS AN EXE’S KISS.

The big problem with the Eternals as a concept, the reason why they’ve never been a fan favourite and why Marvel has always struggled mightily with knowing what to do with them is this: the Marvel universe is so packed to the gills with Kirby’s influence (either from his own creations or those of creators building on his concepts) that the Eternals can’t but help feel utterly redundant. There is no Eternals story that can’t be told with the Inhumans, or the Avengers, or the Asgardians, or the X-Men or the Titans (Thanos’ crowd) because they all arose, directly or indirectly, from the febrile primordial soup of Kirby’s imagination. Which is probably why they have always been one of the few Marvel properties I just cannot bring myself to care about. Because whatever you think the Eternals bring to the table, chances are there’s another table serving the same thing only better. And, from a cursory glance, it appears that their fortunes did not improve with the move to the big screen. Its box-office performance was pretty good (especially considering the pandemic) but rather anemic for a Marvel movie with a $200 million price tage. And it has the ignominous distinction of being the first Marvel movie with a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Which means, of course, like the contrarian rodent I am, this particular Eternals-hater finds himself nonetheless liking this movie quite a bit.

Did you think we were doing a movie about a Kirby property without scads of portentous lore? Fool!

In the beginning, before the creation of the Infinity Stones the first Celestial Arishem created life in the cosmos, which spread throughout the universe. But then the Deviants came, and began to purge the galaxy of life. Whereupon, Arishem sent the Eternals from the planet Olympia to defeat the Deviants.

So it’s the year 5000 Jesus-Ain’t-Here-Yet, and ten Eternals have arrived on Earth to protect the locals from the Deviants. They are Ajak (Selma Hayek), Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Kingo (Kumail Nanjani), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Gilgamesh (Don Lee) and Thena (Angelina Jolie, actually deigning to be in a movie for once instead of just letting her name be attached to one to get some backing and then bailing). Oh, and rounding out this group is Druig, played by Dubliner Barry Keoghan.

The Eternals save a local tribe of humans from some attacking Deviants and immediately I can see some things to like. Firstly, the flying effect are absolutely kickass. Ikaris is a barely concealed Superman expy what with the flying brick powers, heat vision and blue costume and my God I would LOVE to see a Superman movie handled by this effects team because this is flawless stuff. In fact, between the similar power sets and the less quippy, more mythic tone, this movie often feels like Marvel sneakily making their own Justice League movie. In a good way. The MCU movies aren’t as tonally and visually monotonous as their critics claim but this movie definitely feels different and I appreciate that.

Fastforward to the modern day and Sersi and Sprite are now living in London. Sersi is a teacher and is dating a nice young man named Dale (Kit Harrington). FYI, Gemma Chan holds the distinction of (I believe), being one of only two actresses to play two different Marvel comics characters on film in the MCU (the other being Michelle Yeoh), having also played Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel (I’m not counting actors who played different characters on TV like Alfre Woodard). While she’s at work, there’s an earthquake and Sersi has to save a child who thought that the best place to hide in an earthquake was under a massively heavy artifact hanging on a wall but that’s the British education system for you.

Later, Dane is having a birthday party in a pub. Sersi and Sprite are both there, but Sprite has to generate a holographic shimmer because she’s been stuck looking like a twelve year old for the last 7,000 years, just like Elijah Wood.

Anyway, Sersi gives Dane a ring with his family crest that dates from the Middle Ages (this will be relevant) and he asks her if she wants to move in with him. She sadly turns him down and he asks if she’s “a wizard like Doctor Strange”.

Oh yeah, so if you haven’t seen Multiverse of Madness, it’s confirmed there: Doctor Strange is a big effing deal in the MCU. Full on A-List superhero. Which kinda feels weird to me, honestly. If he’s front and centre then the things he fights; demons, other-dimensional entities and the like, would also be commonly known and that’s got to do something right? “Aliens are real” is one thing. “Here is the Devil fighting a wizard on the nine o’clock news” is a completely different category of headfuck. Then again, everyone in this world has known Norse Gods are real since the Obama administration so what do I know?

Anyway, Sersi, Sprite and Dane make their way home through Camden when suddenly they are attacked by a Deviant which honestly, if there was anywhere in London that was going to happen…

They’re rescued at the last moment by Ikaris. Sersi explains to Dane the whole convuluted backstory and tells him that she and Ikaris were an item for five thousand years and then split up. She also tells him that their mission on Earth is to fight Deviants but that the last one was killed in the 1500s and now they’ve just been sitting around waiting for the Celestials to give them new orders. Dane asks why the Eternals haven’t intervened in the non-Deviant related shittiness of human history and oh gawd, he’s one of those boyfriends. “Why don’t you like my mother, why didn’t you stop the holocaust?” Nag nag nag.

Anyway, Sersi, Ikaris and Sprite head off to meet up with Ajak at her farm in South Dakota to see what the deal is with all these earthquakes and Deviants and whatnot. Unfortunately, they find Ajak’s body lying outside her barn. Sprite remembers that the Deviant that attacked them in London could heal itself, which was Ajak’s power. Sprite reasons that the same Deviant killed Ajak and absorbed her healing abilities. While examining Ajak’s body, a glowing sphere emerges from her chest and enters Sersi. Sersi sees a vision of Arishem, who tells her “IT IS ALMOST TIME” and vanishes because what’s the point of being an ancient alien deity if you’re not going to be needlessly cryptic.

We get another flashback, this time to 1521 and the fall of Tenochtitlan to the Spanish. The Eternals are focused on killing the last Deviant on Earth but are deeply troubled by the massacre happening all around them. Phastos in particular is sickened because it was his responsibility to foster human technology and now the Spanish are using muskets to slaughter the Aztecs. Just because the historical nerd in me will toss and turn at night if I don’t mention this, the fact that the Spanish had gunpowder didn’t really make a blind bit of difference. Muskets at the time were so weak and inaccurate that they didn’t really offer much tactical advantage against the stone blades and arrows of the Aztecs. What DID make a big difference was the fact that they had metal armor. And what made the biggest difference of all was the fact that they were absolute filthy with Old World disease and basically coughed their way to victory. Anyway, moving on.

Thena suddenly snaps and attacks Ajak for no reason. The other Eternals are able to restrain her and Ajak tells them that Thena has Mahd Wy’ry, a degenerative mental disorder caused by the the thousands of years worth of memories she’s had to process. Ajak wants to wipe Thena’s memory to cure her but Thena begs to be spared. Gilgamesh then offers to take care of her and promises to take her somewhere remote where she won’t be a danger to herself and others. Druig then decides he’s had enough of all this and mind controls all the Aztecs and Spaniards and walks off with them into the Amazon. And that’s how the Eternals went their seperate ways.

So I think that one of the reasons this movie got a lot of flack is that it’s very languid for a superhero film. Most of the movie’s muscular 2 hour run time is the Eternals putting the band back together, travelling to gorgeous locales, having flashbacks and just hanging out and exploring the relationships with the various characters. And that ain’t for everyone. I’m honestly not sure it…am…for me. But it’s definitely different.

Anyway, back in the present day, the gang travel to India to meet Kingo, who’s been using his eternal youth to mascarade as India’s greatest Bollywood dynasty. Of course Kumail Nanjiani is actually Pakistani which I wouldn’t bring up except that it makes this scene from Community so much funnier. Kingo’s valet Karun also tags along as comic relief and to remind the Eternals what they’re fighting for; adorable older Indian men. As are we all.

Next stop is Australia where they pick up Gilgamesh and Thena. Gilgamesh meets Karun and compares him to Alfred from Batman which is just a casual little throwaway line whose implications will haunt me to my dying day.

Sersiwho is now Prime Eternal thanks to Ajak’s death, has a vision of Arishem and is given some on-boarding into her new role. Basically, it’s like when you’ve worked the cash desk in McDonald’s for five years and get promoted to manager and have to learn the horrific secret of what ACTUALLY goes in the McNuggets.

So Arishem tells Sersi that everything she ever thought she knew is a lie. She’s not an Eternal from the Planet Olympia because the Planet Olympia was just cooked up by the Celestials Marketing team. The Celestials reproduce by implanting their seed in planets, with the infant celestial emerging from the planet like an egg when civilization on the surface has reached the “Tik Tok” threshold of social complexity. They would originally send the Deviants to cull the planets apex predators so that intelligent life could arise. This is what happened to the dinosaurs, incidentally, as the Deviants arrived on the Asteroid that caused the K-T extinction even. I mean, fine, the thermal radiation, earthquakes, mile-high tsunamis and subsequent near collapse of all plant life on Earth following the nuclear winter helped but it was mostly the Deviants. But the Deviants went rogue so the Celestials created the Eternals, machines whose task was to protect the locals from the Deviants until the infant Celestial could emerge.

Arishem explains that they have done this on many worlds, and that each time their memories are wiped. The Eternals are shocked to realise that, while their purpose was protecting humanity and encouraging it to progress, it was only so that the could all be sacrificed for a giant alien robot god.

The Eternals are then split on what to do. Should they try to stop the Celestial, whose name is Tiamat, from being born and save all of humanity, even though they’ll be murdering Tiamat as well as preventing countless future civilizations that would have been seeded by Tiamat from coming into existence. At first, they settle on a middle compromise, putting Tiamat to sleep for a few more centuries to give humanity a chance to become space borne and leave the planet. Great. Acceptable compromise reached.

But Ikaris insists that they can’t interfere with the Celestials’ plan and reveals that it was HE who killed Ajak when she revealed to him that she was going to try and stop Tiamat’s Emergence.

Like the Icarus of myth, he flew too close to being an asshole.

The team basically split in two, with Ikaris and Sprite trying to safeguard Tiamat and the rest of the Eternals trying to prevent the emergence.

At first they try to put Tiamat to sleep in the battle, but after Druig is injured they make the decision to kill Tiamat, meaning the Earth now has a big corpse just sticking out of the surface like those Garfield toys people used to have on the trunks of their car.

Deeply conflicted over what they’ve done, the Eternals go their seperate ways. Ikaris leaves without a word. Sersi uses her powers as Prime Eternals to make Sprite able to age so she can live a normal life. Thena, Druig and Makkari decide to leave Earth and find other Eternals to tell them the truth and Sersi goes back to London to be with Dane. Just as he’s about to reveal a big secret to her, however, Sersi is pulled into space by Arishem along with Phastas and Kingo and he tells them that he will spare humanity if they prove worthy of living. Which is…remarkably chill of him all things considered. I would have expected him to casually vaporise the planet and then go out for golf with Galactus. Arishem then vanishes along with the three Eternals. And, back on Earth, Dane Whitman looks like he’s about to do…something.

***

The word I kept finding myself coming back to describe this movie was “refreshing”. It feels very different from the other MCU films, quiet and almost elegiac. It’s beautiful to look at, with some of the most gorgeous cinematography this series has seen so far. The superhero movie I found that it most reminded me of was 2017’s Wonder Woman with its mixture of loving period detail and sincerity. That’s the thing. It’s sincere. Old school. Kinda dorky. Noticeably lacking in the “too cool for school” snark of its stablemates. That’s certainly not enough to make it a great film, but it’s more than enough to make it a pleasant change of pace.

Scoring

Adaptation: 20/25

Take this with a pinch of salt. I’m not a fan of the Eternals so this movie did not have to work all that hard to improve on the source material for me.

Our Heroic Heroes: 09/25

Honestly, a mixed bag. The movie makes an unwise decision in pushing Sersi as the main character despite her being the least interesting Eternal with the least interesting performance. Honestly, I can see this movie re-centred on literally any of the other Eternals and being a stronger movie for it.

Our Nefarious Villain: 18/25

I really dig Richard Madden in this. Charming, brooding and the twist is genuinely shocking.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 16/25

Kit Harrington gives a nice turn as supportive boyfriend Dane Whitman. But, be honest, you really thought they hired a big name actor with oodles of screen sword-fighting experience to play the boyfriend?

The Stinger

Druig, Makkari and Thena are having no luck finding more Eternals when suddenly two beings beam onto their ship. The first is Pip the Troll, who introduces his companion: STARFOX.

And the audience went…

Okay, if you care that Starfox is played by Harry Styles you went:

Otherwise you probably went:

But me? I was like: “Starfox in a post #metoo world, eh Disney? Ya got balls, I’ll give you that.”

The Second Stinger

So we cut to Dale opening a box that presumably has a connection to his dark family history and inside we see a sword with a red eagle emblem. He reaches out and the blade responds to his touch and a voice offscreen asks him if he really wants to touch the obviously evil sword.

And the audience went:

So, this may be the single most bafflingly inept stinger I’ve ever seen. Firstly, the Black Knight is not really a well known enough property that you can get away with this kind of cutesy-poo tease. I mean, I’m pretty deep in this shit and even I had to google who Dane Whitman is in the comics. Secondly? That mysterious voice that addresses Dane from offscreen? THAT’S FUCKING BLADE. THAT’S BLADE. DAY-WALKER. KILLS VAMPIRES. DOESN’T PAY HIS TAXES. THAT GUY.

Now Blade absolutely is the kind of big name hero who you’d get a massive pop from teasing. But…we never even see the guy. We were apparently supposed to recognise Masherala Ali’s voice just from that one line and piece together that it was Blade. I don’t know, is Masherala Ali’s voice that iconic? Is he the new James Earl Jones? Am I the problem here?

Are there X-Men yet

Eternals, Celestials, Deviants, Titans, Vampires and Brits but no X-Men.

FINAL SCORE: 63%

NEXT UPDATE: 26 May 2022

NEXT TIME: Oh, you like memes do ya?

“They’re not training us to be X-Men.”

Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the Wolverine from snikting with a juicy bone. Clean away the electrified toads. Shutter the Department of Redundancy Department. Roll up the carpet under which we swept away the allegations against Bryan Singer. The X-Men are dead. Long live the X-Men.

And yet, in a very real way, we already have covered the final X-Men movie, as Dark Phoenix was actually filmed after New Mutants. New Mutants long stay in purgatory while Disney tried to figure out what exactly to do with this malformed creation that Fox had hurriedly thrust in their arms is now well known and need not be re-hashed here. Between the Fox/Disney merger and Covid has any movie had worse luck in terms of timing than New Mutants? Yes, almost certainly. But learning about them would take time and I’m feeling lazy today.

Anyway, like Dark Phoenix I’m feeling oddly charitable to New Mutants, maybe because of its rough upbringing, or maybe just because, deeply flawed though it is, it’s trying to do something that I’ve been saying superhero movies needed to do for years.

The movie begins with a young Cheyenne girl named Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) fleeing for her life as her reservation is devastated by a tornado. She wakes up in a strangely abandoned medical facility where a softspoken woman named Doctor Reyes tells Dani that a tornado killed everyone in the reservation and that she is the sole survivor. Dani is obviously distraught but also confused because she distinctly remembers being chased by something that growled.

Reyes tells Dani that the “man I work for” has a way of detecting new mutants when they appear and that Dani has manifested an X-gene at exactly the time when anyone who might object to her being spirited away to a secret medical facility has conveniently been fatally tornadoed what luck indeed. Reyes tells her that Dani will stay here until she’s learned to master her power (whatever that turns out to be) and introduces her to her fellow inmates detainees happy campers. They are Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), a soft-spoken, deeply religious Scottish girl, Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor Joy) a Russian girl who makes up in unpleasantness what she lacks in not being racist, Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), a boy from Kentucky with an accent that would make the Colonel hisself tell him to tone it down and Bobby daCosta (Henry Zaga), a Brazilian trust fund kid.

So, as you can probably guess from that set-up (diverse group of teens in a mysterious asylum watched over by a seemingly benign authority figure who, let’s be honest, we all twigged as the villain from minute one) this is a horror movie and I think that’s a fantastic idea. Comics are full of amazing characters that you can tell virtually any type of story with and yet superhero movies nearly always default to the same tired story structure. What about a gangster movie about the Kingpin’s rise to power? Or a space opera set against the background of the Kree-Skrull war? Where the HELL is my Office Rom Com set in the Daily Planet? And, on paper, New Mutants is a great idea. Give an up and coming director a slightly smaller budget and let them take some risks and experiment with genre. It’s a great idea, but unfortunately Fox apparently lost their nerve and neutered some of the harder horror elements. The result is a movie that’s neither flesh nor fowl, and feels mostly like those sterile PG 13 horror movies that infested the genre in the nineties and early 2000s.

Ilyana begrudgingly shows Dani around the facility which includes what she calls a “chapel” but is by all appearences a full-size Catholic church, practically a cathedral, including confessional booths and that’s a perfectly normal thing to find in a medical facility in the middle of rural America. Ilyana tells Dani that the nearest town is 20 miles away but that there’s no fence or walls so Dani makes a run for it and faceplants into a massive forcefield that surrounds the facility.

Having had about as much of this shit as she’s willing to take, Dani climbs the clock tower of the “chapel” and tries to throw herself off. She’s talked down by Rahne who then gives her an actual tour of the place that involves less forcefield faceplants and more sapphic sexual tension than a She-Ra Convention.

The romance between Rahne and Dani isn’t in the comics, where they’re just good friends.

I really like this change, though. The relationship is presented in a way that feels both sweet and authentic and never pandering and both actors have a very nice understated chemistry. In fact, it’s one of the few elements of this shambling mess of a script that feels like it knows what its doing.

Ah yes the script. The dialogue finds a happy little nook between passable and cringey and never lifts its head out but it’s really the structure that lets the whole thing down. Lemme just spoil the whole thing so I can get to my point; Dani’s power is manifesting people’s nightmares. So the movie’s main momentum comes from waiting until one of our cast of mutants is alone so that they can encounter a horrific spectre from their past so that we can learn a bit more about their tragic backstory. Said mutant goes “what the deuce was that?” and then rinse lather and repeat until the final act where all the mutants have to team up to fight Danni’s monster, which is a big fuck-off demon bear. Because what else would an Indian be afraid of?

Mostly the movie just feels confused. Confused in tone and confused in focus. We spend a goodish amount of time focusing on Danni and Rahne and then suddenly, out of nowhere, Ilyana of all people becomes our main character, complete with badass action heroine one liners and so many powers that she makes the entire rest of the cast seem superflous. It’s almost like, when Ana Taylor Joy started blowing up, they massively expanded her part to see if they could get a solo franchise out of the racist Russian girl.

Which…you know what, I don’t think people are in the mood.

There’s other stuff I could complain about. And what the hell, this post is going to run a little short so I might as well. The depiction of Rahne’s Catholicism leaves a lot to be desired. She says that when she realised she was a mutant she went to see “Reverend” Craig (no she didn’t). When we see “Reverend Craig” he was apparently dressed like a Monsignior getting ready for an audience with the Pope and not an ordinary priest presumably hanging around his house.

[EDIT: As Jesus himself said in Matthew 14:26: “Check your sources, dumbass”. I dunno why I had it in my head that Rahne was definitely Catholic (projection, probably) but commenter edgelesspidgeon commented that in the comics she’s actually Calvinist. I hurriedly dived down a wiki wormhole but all the Marvel wiki and wikipedia have to say about her denomination is that she’s “religious” which of course is very helpful. “Reverend Craig” is apparently a character in the comics, but the wikis also refer to him as “Father Craig” interchangeably. My guess is that Marvel decided to keep Rahne’s denomoniation purposefully vague to avoid offending any one congregation. That said, Rahne is shown in the movie as using a Catholic-style confessional booth (which Calivinists do not make use of as far as I’m aware?) and wears what I think is supposed to be a miraculous medal so I’m still pretty sure Movie!Rahne is intended to be Catholic and therefore the snark still stands.]

And oh, my favourite, when Rahne turned into a werewolf in front of her he flipped out and branded her with a “W”. For “witch”. With the W shaped branding iron he just keeps around. For branding witches WHAT FUCKING YEAR IS THIS SET IN?

Which brings us to our next point. When the hell is this? Does this even take place in the same continuity as the other X films? There’s a throwaway line about the X-Men, and Reye is apparently working for the Essex Corporation (the owners of that diabolical briefcase we saw at the end of Apocalypse). There’s no technology or fashion (outside from obviously sci-fi stuff) that definitively dates it. This movie could literally be set at any time in the last forty years. But then we see flashbacks to Reyes working in the same facility that created Laura in Logan so maybe this movie takes place in the future? But in Logan, Laura and the other mutant children were only created after mutants had been wiped out so where the hell did the New Mutants come from GAH!

***

A really nice little premise and a great young cast, this one had potential. But corporate intrigue, a weak script and some of the shittiest luck imaginable strangled New Mutants in the crib. I ain’t mad, I’m just sad.

The Stinger

Nothing. Zip. Nada.

Department of Duplication Department

Sunspot, who appeared in Days of Future Past portrayed by Adan Canto, is now played by Henry Zaga.

How worried is Guinan right now?

Guinan is dead. This movie killed her.

Wait, Magneto is how old?

I don’t even know what fucking year this is supposed to be set in. I don’t know. I don’t know how old Magneto is. Who even cares at this point. It’s not like he’s going to age anyway. Michael Fassbender doesn’t age.

Mutant Heaven has no pearly gates, only revolving doors.

The X-Men franchise is dead. Time will tell if there is a resurrection (obviously there will be, when have you ever known Disney to leave money on the table?)

Today, mutants are…

New.

This movie is…

X-CELSIOR!!!

X-traordinary

X-cellent

X-pected standard

Un X-ceptional

Un X-cceptable

X-crement

NEXT UPDATE: 13 May 2022.

NEXT TIME: Do I hear the sound of a barrel being scraped?

When the Sparrow Falls Paperback now available for Pre-Order!

Hey all!

Mouse! What news?

When the Sparrow Falls will be coming out in paperback this summer so if you wanted to get a copy and money was tight or your pacifist principles forbid you from owning a book that can also be used as a lethal weapon YOUR TIME IS NOW.

Better yet, Barnes and Noble are holding a sale on all pre-order paperbacks from April 20th to April 22nd!

By Granthar’s Hammer, what a savings! How do I avail?

Use the coupon code PREORDER25 and you will get a stonking great 25% off the price.

Mouse, I want to order this book but I have a rare condition where touching paper causes me to psychically commune with the trees that were murdered to create it.

That’s a hell of a thing, buddy, but you can also pre-order the E-Book version HERE.

ME NO REDE GUD

Sigh. Audiobook version HERE.

“You’re always sorry, Charles. And there’s always a speech. But nobody cares anymore.”

And so, after a long journey we finally reach the last main series instalment of the Fox X-Men films, a once proud dynasty now culminating in the flabby, five-chinned inbred monarch we see before us (in this analogy, New Mutants is the secret bastard child the king fathered on a tavern wench and then hid in a dungeon for three years).

And sure, the odds were against Dark Phoenix. It was released after the Disney/Fox merger all but assured that this series and its continuity would shortly be scrapped, giving the whole enterprise an inescapable stink of futility. It follows in the wake of Age of Apocalypse which was the cinematic equivalent of someone pissing up your nose for two hours. And it tries again to tell the story of the Dark Phoenix saga despite being written by the same dude who ballsed it up last time.

And yet…maybe it’s the contrarian in me. Maybe it’s the fact that the DVD yelped and recoiled in fear when I opened the case. Maybe it’s the fact that that the critical consensus on this film, that it’s the worst X-Men movie (it has less than half Apocalypse’s score on Rotten Tomatoes) is just flatly wrong.

Maybe it’s that I went in with expectations lower than a snake’s ballsack. But dammit, I kind of enjoyed Dark Phoenix. It’s bad, but it’s bad in weird and surprising ways and I never felt as horribly bored as I did with The Last Stand, Wolverine: Origin…to hell with it, I’m just going to say it. I would watch Dark Phoenix over any of the other bad X-Men movies. So there.

Which, of course, is practically the opposite of saying that it’s actually good.

In fact, Dark Phoenix is refreshingly honest about its not goodness upfront. Now, it’s practically law by this point that an X-Men movie will open with a voiceover musing philosophically on the nature of mutation and I honestly can’t remember any of them being particularly well written but this one, jeez louise:

“Who are we? Are we simply what others want us to be? Are we destined to a fate beyond our control? Or can we evolve? Become… something more?”

Goddamn that is some fucking basic pseudo-profundity right there. Anyway, for once it’s not Professor Xavier giving the opening spiel but Jean Grey. We then flashback to 1975 where Jean was just an eight year old ginge and we see how her psychic powers accidentally caused a car accident that killed both her parents. This scene is actually pretty good. Summer Fontana, who plays the eight year old Jean is excellent and there’s a really nice effect where the car is flipping over and all the little shards of broken glass are bouncing off the forcefield she’s unconsciously erected around herself.

Jean survives and is visited in the hospital by Charles Xavier. Now, this movie’s script is fascinatingly bad but I don’t want to put all the blame on the writers. It’s no secret that this film was plagued with rewrites and reshoots and it absolutely shows onscreen. Character motivations change from scene to scene and a lot of the dialogue has a thuddingly obvious quality that screams “this character is saying this now because some studio exec demanded that we hit this beat now don’t bitch to me I just work here”. And some scenes just play weird. Like this one.

XAVIER: Hello.

JEAN: Where are my parents?

XAVIER: My name is Charles Xavier…

JEAN: They’re dead. Aren’t they?

XAVIER. Yes. They are. I’m very sorry to have to tell you.

(A pause of maybe three seconds, tops)

JEAN: So what happens to me now?

XAVIER: Well, that’s why I’m here actually…

Like, Jesus Christ, there’s making your eight your old child character seem mature and precocious and there’s making her come off like a goddamned sociopath. Break the scene so we get the impression that she’s cried offscreen in the time that’s passed, it won’t even lengthen your pagecount, Gawd!

And yet, there’s a lot of good here too. Fontana, as I’ve already said is a really strong child actor and of course McAvoy as Xavier elevates every scene he’s in. Weird script issues aside, I actually really like this as a first meeting between Charles Xavier and Jean Grey. It’s miles better than the one we got in The Last Stand with the creepy CGI mannequins of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan.

Brrrrrrrr…I can feel their cold, dead eyes upon me.

Okay, cut to 1992 and the Space Shuttle Endeavour runs into a problem on its inaugural flight. Charles and Hank McCoy are watching the news and Charles asks Beast if the X-Jet can fly into space and Beast says “no, absolutely not. That’s crazy. It’s a jet. It’s not a space-ship. That’s stupid. Shut up”. And then Xavier gets a call from the president and says “sure, we can go to space. Our X-Jet can go to space. No problem.”

Later, the X-Men are getting ready to go to space and Scott asks if the X-jet can actually go to space and Beast says “well actually” and Mystique just cuts across him and says “you bet. The X-Jet is going to fly to space. No problem.”

And I’m like. Guys. The guy who built the damn thing seems pretty sure it CANNOT IN FACT GO TO SPACE. But whatever. The X-Men are going to space now. Jean asks Mystique if she’s worried and Mystique assures her that if anything goes wrong she’ll take them back to Earth immediately. Which is a weird thing for a superhero to say, honestly.

“AVENGERS ASSE…whoah! Whoah! Time out! Some of those guys have guns. Sorry folks, we’re getting out of here, this is NOT a safe working environment.”

So the X-Jet goes to space and approaches Endeavour to see it being menaced by some kind of giant space goo. Nightcrawler and Quicksilver are able to teleport over and rescue the astronauts but, while trying to keep the shuttle from exploding, Jean gets hit by the giant space goo and absorbs all of it and wait a minute, hold the phone. So, this is how Jean gets the Phoenix Force? The Phoenix Force is from space, like in the comics? Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool.

THEN WHAT THE FUCK WAS HAPPENING AT THE END OF AGE OF APOCALYPSE?

I dunno bout you, but to me that looks a bit like she’s already GOT the Phoenix Force so what the hell?

And I’m not even getting into what that means for the Famke Jannsen version of the character because honestly, who can even marshall the mental energy to make sense of this bullshit continuity anymore but…ah, screw it. Life’s too short for this kind of negativity. Honestly, if I was happy with First Class retconning away The Last Stand and Wolverine: Origin, how can I complain if this movie does the same to Age of Apocalypse?

This movie does a lot of stuff I appreciate. For one, it actually changes the status quo for once. The X-Men arrive back with the rescued astronauts and are feted as heroes. In fact, it seems like the X-Men have actually…won? The world considers them superheroes, Charles Xavier is an advisor to the president and there are even X-Men action figures. One of the biggest criticisms of the X-Men as a concept is that nothing ever gets better. Humanity always hates and fears mutants and they never seem to make any progress towards their goals of gaining greater tolerance and acceptance. So it’s immensely gratifying to see at least one reality where mutantkind has actually caught a break.

Back at the X-mansion, Raven takes Charles to task for risking the X-Men’s lives, saying “you put those kids lives in danger” and he replies “they’re not kids anymore”. Like, yeah. No shit. This movie is set in 1992. Quicksilver is almost eligible for a bus pass at this point. Raven asks him if he likes getting medals from the president and being on the cover of Time and he’s all “well, beats being hunted by giant robots, y’know?”. Raven, who I guess never stopped being an anti-human bigot, says she resents “our” people being risked to save “theirs”. She then says that she can’t remember the last time Charles was the one being put in danger (he is, I remind you, in a wheelchair) and then says “by the way, the women are always saving the men around here, you might think about changing the name to “X-Women”.

“Raven, by that logic I should just rename the team “The Amazing Quicksilver and His Dumb Shit Idiot Friends who Can’t Wipe Their Asses on Their Own.””

I’m sorry. No. Give this speech to somebody who didn’t fuck up so badly that a hairy Canadian had to be sent back into the past to undo the literal holocaust her actions created. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Jennifer Lawrence Mystique but MY GOD this scene just burned every lingering shred of respect I might have had for the character.

Anyway, there are aliens now.

Yup. Mysterious lights appear in the sky over a suburban home and a woman played by Jessica Chastain and her guests are killed and replaced by shapeshifting aliens. Their leader, who’s named Vuk (as in “what the Vuk is this shit?”), takes on the appearance of Jessica Chastain.

Now aliens have been a presence in the X-Men comics since the earliest days (did you know that in the comics Xavier lost the use of his legs in a battle against Lucifer, who was leading an invasion by an alien species called the Quists? Well now you do). And of course, once Chris Claremont took over and started using the X-Men to launder a bunch of ideas for a Ms Marvel series he never got to do, the X books have been lousy with all manner of extra-terrestrial shenanigans. But the movies very much have not. And it’s a bit of a lurch when X-Men suddenly goes X-Files arf arf. It’s even more jarring when you realise that Chastain is definitely supposed to be playing Emma Frost (y’know, the platinum blonde psychic who manipulates Jean Grey to gain control of the Phoenix Force) and apparently the movie was originally shot with that very intention. But the studio demanded a more action packed finale which somehow translated into making Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club into aliens. Specifically Skrulls, if the whole shapeshifting thing wasn’t a giveaway for you. But then Captain Marvel was doing Skrulls as well so they had to switch things up again to make the Skrulls…sigh…the D’Bari.

Who are the D’Bari? Good fucking question. The D’Bari are these guys.

An extremely minor Marvel alien race whose one claim to fame was getting wiped out by the Dark Phoenix. And if that doesn’t scream “we literally read one comic when coming up for the plot of this movie” I don’t know what does. I mean, if you want an alien species with close ties to the X-Men who can infiltrate humanity and are also a genuinely threatening and terrifying enemy…guys, the Brood are right there.

Back at the mansion, Raven tries to get Hank to leave the school with her, saying that she doesn’t like who Charles has become. Hank says that the school is their life and Raven replies “it’s not our life. It’s his. What do you think the “X” in “X-men” stands for?”. Oh Raven, Raven. Poor suspicious, doubting Raven.

See? Perfectly reasonable explanation.

Meanwhile, Jean, Scott, Nightcrawler and Storm are having a midnight party in the forest to celebrate their recent success. This is a weird scene because everything about it, how the characters act and are dressed and just the basic fact that they’re having drinks in a forest makes it feel like these are teenagers sneaking around behind their parents’ backs instead of, y’know, people old enough to have mortgages. Like…people old enough to drink somewhere comfortable don’t drink in forests. Whatever, Jean has a psychic attack and collapses, which is noticed by Mystique and Hank who see it on the CCTV cameras that are apparently everywhere, watching the students at all times.

Not content with this violation of privacy, Xavier returns to the mansion and starts poking around in Jean’s mind with Cerebro. Charles reveals that he put mental blocks in Jean’s mind to protect her from the trauma of her parent’s death, but now that her powers are increasing those protections are falling apart. Jean suddenly hears her father’s voice and realises that he’s actually been alive this whole time and that Charles lied to her. Furious, Jean expels Charles from her mind and and sets off to find her father.

Arriving at his home, Jean’s invited in by her father. He feigns happiness at seeing her but, looking around his home she realises that there are no pictures of her. She asks him why he never came looking for her and he invites her to read his mind where she learns the awful truth: her father abandoned her because it was her psychic powers that caused the crash that killed his wife.

So, another thing I will give this movie props for is that it actually has a genuinely interesting moral conundrum at its core; was Xavier right to tamper with Jean’s memories? On the one hand, her anger is absolutely understandable and justified. On the other, he did what he did to protect an extremely vulnerable child from one of the worst traumas anyone can experience; parental abandonment. It’s a rare instance where you can genuinely see both sides of the argument. Anyway, enough nerd stuff, time for a big superhero fight.

The X-Jet arrives and Xavier tries to talk Jean into coming home but the situation quickly escalates and Jean lashes out, attacking her friends. Jean’s now so powerful that even Quicksilver’s plot armour is no defence. Beast is about to fire a stun gun at Jean but Charles stops him telepathically so that Mystique can talk her down. Mystique tells Jean that they’re family and that she’ll take care of her and then Jean loses control and impales Mystique on a fence spike which, yeah, is like a lot of family arguments.

Distraught, Jean flies off and Raven dies in Beast’s arms.

The X-men hold a funeral back at the X-Mansion and are now deeply divided over what to do with Jean. Scott obviously thinks that Jean can still be saved and brought back to the light side because, y’know…

But Beast is coming apart at the seams. We now get an actually really good scene between Nicholas Hoult and James McAvoy where Beast calls Xavier out on his arrogance. Xavier, for his part, still refuses to even admit he did anything wrong and Beast tells Charles that Raven saw the truth: that they thought they were protecting the students from the world when they should have been protecting them from Xavier.

“You’ll pay for that Hank. Charles Xavier don’t fucking play.”

Like, I know objectively this is not a good movie but guys, it is so, so much better than Age of Apocalypse. There’s actual dramatic weight here. There’s atmosphere (a lot of that due to a quite excellent Hans Zimmer score) and there are even individual scenes that I would hold up as some of the best in the franchise.

Okay, well, Jean now does what I think any of us would do in this situation; she goes running to cool Uncle Magneto who is now running what I think is supposed to be the mutant nation of Genosha but looks like a moderately staffed urban farm. Magneto at first offers her sanctuary, asking her whose blood is on her shirt, but when the US Military lands and demands to know where Jean is he has to restrain her from killing them all and he angrily banishes her from Genosha.

Jean gets picked up in a bar by Vuk, who feeds her some vague mumbo jumbo about realising her full potential. Meanwhile, Beast shows up in Genosha and tells Magneto who that blood on Jean’s shirt belonged to and Erik’s all “oh fuck no”.

Back in New York, Vuk shows Jean a holographic projection explaining what the Phoenix Force is and we get another really weird scene.

VUK: What entered you in space was not a solar flare. And it was not an accident. It was drawn to you.

JEAN: What… what was it?

JEAN: A pure and unimaginably powerful cosmic force. We saw it enter you in space. We were there, Jean, following that force.

JEAN (A woman who has just learned that aliens are real, that she’s talking to an alien, that she has an alien energy being inside her and that everything she thought she knew about humanity, earth and the universe is wrong): Why?

Like…damn Jean Grey is being pretty chill right now. Vuk says that the Phoenix Force destroyed their world and that they’ve been chasing it ever since to try and harness it which is honestly the opposite of what i would do in that situation. Vuk tells Jean she’s the only person who’s ever been able to control the Phoenix Force because she’s “special”. We will soon see that this is a blatant fucking lie. But we will never find out why.

The X-Men and Magneto’s forces arrive in New York to stop Jean. Magneto tries to kill Jean but is quickly overpowered. Charles pleads with her and apologises for lying to her and she responds by telekinetically taking control of him and forcing him to agonisedly walk up the stairs towards her so I’m guessing she still mad.

Before she kills him, Charles tells her to read his mind and she sees how her father rejected her and Charles came to the decision to raise her as his own. Shocked by how close she came to killing the only real father she’s ever had, Jean decides to renounce the Phoenix Force and asks Vuk if she can take it and Vuk’s all “well, I suppose”.

Charles realises that this was Vuk’s plan all along (which, and let’s be fair here, makes absolutely no sense) and that she will use the Phoenix Force to kill all of humanity and remake the Earth for the D’Bari. Fortunately, Scott arrives just at the last moment and blasts Vuk, severing the link between her and Jean.

The army arrives and carts all of the mutants off in a train to be incarcerated but Vuk hasn’t given up and the D’Bari attack and Magneto and Xavier’s forces have to join together to defeat them. And so at last we discover the reason why the enemies had to be changed to aliens, its so we can watch our heroes absolutely WRECK SHOP on them without feeling guilty about the loss of precious human life. Fair’s fair, this final fight scene feels really arbitrary and forced but…it also kicks ass? Like, the X films are a really mixed bag when it comes to fight scenes and group fight scenes in particular, but I think this might be one of the best. Everyone gets a moment to shine, powers are used inventively and it moves along at a fair old clip. It’s pretty great.

The train crashes and Jean finally unleashes her full powers and just massacres the D’Bari. I feel like Sophie Turner got shit on a lot for her performance in this movie but I think she’s honestly pretty great. Particularly in the Phoenix scenes. There’s some great facial acting here. A kind of unearthly bored contempt that really brings across just how powerful the Phoenix is. She can kill you with a thought, but she still resents the inconvenience of even having to do that.

With Vuk the last surviving D’Bari, Jean grabs her and prepares to give her the Thanos special. But Vuk tells her that she can’t control the Phoenix’s power and that if she kills Vuk, she’ll kill the X-Men too. I don’t follow the logic but clearly this movie just wants to end so I won’t make a fuss.

Vuk tells Jean “your emotions make you weak!” and Jean replies…well, why don’t you guess from one of the following options:

No! My emotions make me strong!No. My emotions. They make me strong.My emotions strong, they make me.No. Emotions. Strong. Me have strong emotions. Strong emotions good.

Anyway, Jean sacrifices herself to end the threat from Vuk who by this point represents zero threat at all and everyone pretends that that’s noble and not deeply stupid.

Charles renames the school the “Jean Grey School for Gifted Youngsters” and makes Hank the new dean.

“Why…why would you put me in charge of this place and then rename it after my girlfriend’s murderer?”

“Because Charles Xavier don’t fucking play, bitch.”

***

Not a good movie, but miles better than its dismal reputation. And you know what? It set out to be a more grounded and emotionally resonant film than Age of Apocalypse. It succeeded. It set out to tell a better version of the Dark Phoenix saga than The Last Stand? It succeeded at that too. Yes, it’s a hot mess, but a hot mess is better than a cold turd, and Lord knows this series has had plenty of those.

The Stinger

No stinger. After all, nobody making this even knew if there was going to be another.

Department of Duplication Department

Scott Shepherd and Hannah Anderson replace Adrian Hough and Desiree Zurowski as Jean’s parents.

How worried is Guinan right now?

Guinan is so damn tired. But we’re nearly done.

Wait, Magneto is how old?

Magneto is 62.

Sure. Sure he is.

Mutant Heaven has no pearly gates, only revolving doors.

Jean Grey comes back to life. You’re all shocked, I’m sure.

Today, mutants are…

Vulnerable young women who’ve been lied to about their fathers being dead when they were actually alive. I dunno.

This movie is…

X-CELSIOR!!!

X-traordinary

X-cellent

X-pected standard

Un X-ceptional

Un X-cceptable

X-crement

NEXT UPDATE: 28 April 2022.

NEXT TIME: Look, all I know is this. If a studio keeps a movie hidden for three years, it’s because it’s so damn good they couldn’t bear to share it with anyone else.

Detective Pikachu (2019)

The video game adaptation has proven a particularly alluring siren for Hollywood over the years. The medium is stacked to the gills with beloved, household name properties with huge fanbases of teens absolutely filthy with disposable income. But, like any siren, it’s probably best to assume that the relationship is not going to end well and skedaddle before you run aground on the jagged rocks of box office disaster. Oh yes, traveler, many studios have tried for the successful video game adatation.

So what’s the problem? Why can we adapt frickin’ LORD OF THE RINGS successfully but not Super Mario Brothers? Well, because your typical video game adaptation is working towards two mutually exclusive goals. On the one had, and apologies for this harsh and mind-blowing truth I’m about to drop on your poor innocent sensibilities, but studios don’t greenlit video game adaptations because the muse demands that they bring Dead Or Alive: Beach Volleyball to the big screen so that the story can be truly appreciated as God intended. They don’t care about the material, they just know these games have large fanbases, and they want those fans to buy tickets in droves. But those fans will rebel and stay away if the studios change too much about the source material. And here’s the big problem: 99% of the time, if you don’t change the source material, you’re not getting a good movie.

That’s because video game plots are like dreams. They’re wonderfully exciting and immersive when you are the one experiencing them, but to an onlooker (or anyone you describe the dream to) it’s alienating and deeply dull. And that’s because people play games and watch movies for very different reasons.*

For example, right now I’m playing Darkest Dungeon. Again. After a month since my last playthrough where I probably sunk the guts of fifty hours. I am rather partial to that game like methheads are rather partial to meth. The premise is, you arrive in a dilapidated hamlet cursed with ancient evil and have to lead waves and waves of heroes into the titular dungeon to finally defeat the Lovecraftian horror that dwells below. And your heroes die. A lot. They get sick, they go mad, they get murdered in countless unspeakable ways. It’s a gruelling, grinding quest where you face constant failure. But every so often, you defeat a significant monster or earn enough to upgrade one of your buildings and it all becomes worth it. The grind and the tedium are what make it satisfying because you, personally, are achieving something. But, much as I love Darkest Dungeon, if I hear that anyone is trying to make a movie of it I will frame that person for murder because that is a terrible, awful idea and would make a terrible, awful movie.

So it’s not simply that video game adaptations are being handed off to talentless hacks. I mean, obviously, that does happen (see everything Uwe Boll has ever done or touched). But, as I hope I’ve demonstrated there are real structural reasons why video game adaptations almost never work.

So, how the hell did Detective Pikachu pull it off? Well, it probably helps to have all the money in the world.

Here’s a riddle. What do you get if cross Star Wars with the MCU? Something that still makes less money than Pokémon. I didn’t actually realise going in to this review just how big Pokémon is. It is, bar none, the single most profitable multimedia franchise in human history. It dwarfs all. It looks at Disney’s vast holdings and goes…

Beginning in 1996 with the first game, Pocket Monsters Red and Green (Pokémon Red and Blue in the West), Pokémon depicts a world where human beings breed, battle, study, work and live with colourful monsters called Pokémon. And to be clear, that is all they do. No piece of Poké media has ever just come out and admitted that anyone who’s just not that into Pokémon in this world gets ratted out by their family and taken away by the government in the dead of night but it’s a frankly inescapable conclusion.

Since then, the game has spawned over 20 sequels as well as numerous spin-offs. And of course it birthed an animé series that is still running to this day and has amassed over 1000 episodes, as well as 23 animated films. Soooo if computer games are so difficult to adapt to non-interactive media, what the hell is Pokémon doing differently?

Well, I’d suggest that it’s because plot has never been overly important to Pokémon. I mean, sure, the games have plots, basically one child’s journey to master Pokémon battling while taking brief hiatuses to fight terrorists. But the story has never been the series’ main appeal. It’s all about the mons, finding them, catching them, training them and pitting them against each other in brutal legalised cock fights but it’s okay because they love it, honestly.

Look at them. The fun they’re having.

So you don’t need to be faithful to the Pokémon games necessarily, you just need to be faithful to the Pokémon themselves. I think Pokémon fans would watch a legal drama about a lawfirm of Scythers as long as the pokémon in it were rendered faithfully. I probably would. Who am I kidding? I definitely would.

This means that, while the main Pokémon games follow a formulaic plot so strict they make Legend of Zelda look like freeform jazz, the wider Pokémon universe is actually pretty versatile in the kind of stories that it can tell. Take Detective Pikachu, a 2016 spin-off for the 3DS which features the player character teaming up with a deerstalker-hat wearing Pikachu to track down his missing father. While well received overall, one of the common criticisms of the game was that it was a little too plot heavy, and might have worked better as a film. And so here we are.

The movie begins with a young insurance assessor named Tim Goodman being taken on a Pokémon hunt by his friend Jack because Tim isn’t into Pokémon and Jack can only cover for him for so long before the government vans arrive in the dead of night. They find a Cubone wailing pathetically in a field and Jack tells Tim that it’s the perfect Pokémon for him because its mother is dead and it’s miserable, just like Tim.

Every Cubone wears the skull of its dead mother. All of them. Simultaneously. The entire species. SOMEHOW.

But just because Cubone is emotionally vulnerable, doesn’t mean it’s ready to climb into to any rando’s Pokéball and the Cubone chases them away. Tim tries to convince Jack that he’s not even really into Pokémon and is perfectly happy working in insurance which is a filthy lie as everyone who works in insurance longs for a quick death and an unmarked grave to hide their shame. Tim then gets a voicemail from the Rime City police department telling him that his Dad has died in a car accident.

Heading into Rime City, Tim watches an infomercial about how the city was founded by eccentric billionaire Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy) who loved Pokémon so much that he wanted to build a place where humans and Pokémon could live together without battles or Poké balls. I actually think this is the first time any piece of Poké media has even obliquely hinted that Pokémon battling is kinda fucked up and immoral. I mean…if this place is supposed to be a paradise for Pokémon…and Pokémon battling is illegal there…that kind of implies that Pokémon don’t actually like being converted into energy, stashed in a tiny ball and forced to fight for every second of their conscious existence. Am I crazy?

So, as I said before, I think if you’re doing a Pokémon movie and you get the Pokémon themselves right, you’re pretty much home and dry at least as far as the fanbase is concerned. And when it comes to rendering the Pokémon, this movie knocks it out of the park. These critters look great.

They manage to have a real sense of weight and texture and solidity while still remaining appealingly cartoony. And they manage to look real while staying out of the uncanny valley. And lastly, they manage to be instantly recognisable and faithful to the video games and animé despite those designs being two-dimensional. That’s like threading three needles simultaneously.

In fact, I’ll go even further. The scene where Tim Goodman arrives in Rime City for the first time and we see all these beautifully rendered creatures living and working in the city filled me with the same kind of wonder I usually get from Studio Ghibli. This scene feels like live action Miyazaki and I do not say that lightly.

Tim arrives at the Rime City police department where he meets his father’s friend, Detective Yashida played by Ken Goddamned Watanabe because Pokémon owns half the world and if they want Ken Goddamned Watanabe for a small supporting role in a kid’s movie who’s going to stop them? You? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Stay in your damn lane.

Yashida tells Tim that his Dad was a hell of a detective but he and his Pikachu partner died in a car accident and there definitely was nothing deeper going on there. He tells Tim that, even though they were estranged, his father loved him and he always spoke about how Tim wanted to be a Pokémon trainer. He asks where Tim’s Pokémon is and Tim explains that he’s just not into them.

“Kid, you’re going through a lot and your old man was a pal so I’ll let that slide. But I’m still a cop. Say that shit to me again and I WILL arrest you.”

Tim brushes off Yashida’s attempts to talk to him about his father and simply asks for the keys to his father’s apartment so that he can clear out his stuff. In the hallway he’s accosted by a mysterious woman and her Psyduck companion. In another example of this movie absolutely refusing to phone it in this scene has some really nice staging and lighting

Actually, all the night time scenes in the city have this really cool neo-noir ambience which, combined with the surprisingly excellent score, make me feel like I’m watching an all-ages Bladerunner. So this dame is Lucy Stephens, a wannabe reporter who feels that her skills are squandered writing Top Ten Cutest Pokémon listicles because “they’re all cute”.

False. That is false.

She says that she’s investigating Harry Goodman’s murder because she’s convinced he was killed as part of a coverup but he tells her he can’t help her. After she leaves, he searches his father’s apartment and finds a vial containing a mysterious purple substance. He opens the vial which releases a mysterious purple gas that drifts out the window and gets inhaled by some Aipom, which makes them decidedly less chill.

You fool! You fed them after midnight!

Exploring the apartment Tim finds the room that his father had prepared for him in case he ever wanted to move in. See, Tim’s father left for Rime city after Tim’s mother died, leaving him with his grandmother because he just couldn’t deal with the terrible grief of losing his wife and raising a child. Tim was never able to forgive his father for leaving despite many efforts by his old man to bring Tim to Rime City so they could be a family again. Obviously, that’s a bit of a heavy moment but fortunately Tim discovers his father’s Pikachu hiding in the apartment and he’s wearing a little deerstalker hat and this is a good, good world.

LOOKATHIM! LOOK AT HIS LITTLE FACE! LOOK AT THOSE LITTLE CHEEKS! LOOK AT THOSE LITTLE EYES! THE HAT! THE HAT! LOOK AT THE HAT!

So the conceit of Detective Pikachu, both game and film, is that this Pikachu can actually speak and be understood, but only by Tim Goodman. In the games, Pikachu speaks with a gruff, world weary voice for the obvious comedy of it and, when this movie was first announced way back in 2016, the internet decided that there was only one possible actor who could do justice to the role.

Danny deVito. Danny deVito! Perfect! Genius!

And the internet sprang into action!

Petitions were launched which garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures!

There were articles, fan campaigns, marches and protests!

“GIVE US DANNY DEVIKACHU!” cried the internet with one voice. “OR GIVE US DEATH!”

And Danny DeVito heard the people cry, and saw that they wanted, more than anything, for him to play Pikachu.

And Danny De Vito said:

“What the fuck is Pokémon? No.”

Not all stories have happy endings, children. Time you learned that.

Anyway, Pikachu is voiced by Ryan Reynolds and that’s great too.

Tim is understandably freaked out that this Pikachu is saying things other than its own name repeatedly but he has to put his mental breakdown on hold as the apartment is invaded by rabid, purple-eyed Aipom who chase him and Pikachu out into the street before seemingly returning to normal.

Pikachu takes Tim to get a coffee and tells him that he was Harry’s partner but that he’s suffering from amnesia and doesn’t remember anything from before the car accident. Nice little bit of characterisation here: in the café Tim takes out his phone and holds it to his head while talking to Pikachu so that the other patrons think he’s on a call and not crazy. So many movies have the protagonist who can talk to a ghost or a magic cat or whatever just talking away without any regard to how crazy they look. The pantomime with the phone makes Tim seem smart and canny, it’s a nice touch.

Pikachu tells Tim that all he knows for sure is that he’s a detective and that he has to find Harry Goodman and Tim tells him that Harry is dead. Pikachu refuses to believe that because the cops never found a body and…yeah, that’s an excellent point. If they don’t have a corpse the police absolutely should be treating this as a missing person case. Anyway, Pikachu offers to help Tim find his father and Tim’s all “nah, it’s fine I wasn’t even using it” but eventually he relents.

Another thing about this movie that really is better than it had any right to be is the script, which has a delicious strain of dark humour running through it that stays just on the right side of family friendly to avoid being nasty and mean-spirited. One of my favourite scenes is where Tim and Pikachu interrogate a Mr. Mime for info by threatening to burn him alive…through mime. It works because the absurdity of the situation undercuts the inherent brutality and also because it’s Mr. Mime and fuck Mr. Mime.

My one regret is that we didn’t get to see the bastard burn.

The trail leads them to an underground Pokémon battling ring where they end up getting arrested by Yashida, who is no doubt very relieved that Tim is into Pokémon now and won’t be sent to the Happiness Camps. Tim tells Yashida that he’s looking for Harry because he think’s he’s still alive and Yashida shows him footage of the crash, saying that no one could have survived it. Which yeah…if he was in the car.

In which case there’d be a body. But there was no body. Sooo…who the fuck is in charge of these cops?

Guess the mayor needed the Water Type vote.

Anyway, Tim takes Yashida’s extremely circular logic to heart and finally accepts that his father is dead.

He goes and sits on a bench and has a quiet, heartfelt conversation with Pikachu about his father and all the missed opportunities he had to rebuild their relationship that he never took.

And I don’t know what happened here guys but it’s good. It’s just really good, beautifully acted and well written human drama. I mean…I am genuinely moved by this young man’s loss and it’s a video game adaptation about a lightning-farting yellow rodent (I can say that, I’m a rodent).

It just seems that everyone involved in this refused to phone it in and brought their A-game. More power to ’em.

Anyway, it’s about this time in a noir mystery when then hero is brought to lair of the mysterious sinister millionaire who seems to be a potential ally but will inevitably be revealed to be the real villain behind this whole thing.

And he’s in a wheelchair, BINGO! What do I win?

Howard Clifford reveals that Harry was working a case for him when he went missing, investigating the source of “R” the mysterious purple gas that turns Pokémon feral. He says that Harry uncovered that the R was being manufactured by Clifford’s own company, at the behest of his son, Roger, who hates Pokémon and but has managed to avoid being put to sleep because his father owns the police, media and local government (bloody 1%). Tim tells Howard that Harry’s dead but Howard shows him footage of Harry’s car being attacked by Mewtwo, who teleported Harry away. Pikachu exclaims that Mewtwo is the most powerful pokémon in the world which, c’mon, this isn’t Gen 1. Mewtwo ain’t exactly in the top tier of powerful Pokémon anymore.

This dopey giraffe looking motherfucker is basically Yahweh.

Clifford gives Tim his next task: find Mewtwo and find his father.

Tim and Pikachu team up with Lucy Stevens and her Psyduck and investigate the lab where Mewtwo was being held. They discover evidence of pokémon experiments and R manufacture but are chased away by Greninjas. Pikachu is badly injured and Tim desperately asks a passing Bulbasaur to bring him to a healing Pokémon. I mean, he could bring him to a Pokécentre but they’re free and Tim would presumably die rather than allow his friend to fall into the clutches of socialised medicine.

The Bulbasaur brings him to Mewtwo who heals Pikachu and reveals that it was Pikachu who set Mewtwo free. before he can explain any more, however, Mewtwo is captured by Roger Clifford and taken away. Tim wants to head after him but Pikachu believes that he must have betrayed Harry and gotten him killed. He says he can’t risk the same thing happening to Tim and so he calls it quits.

Desolate, Pikachu wanders the roadside, tearfully singing the Pokémon theme tune…which he knows…somehow…and he arrives at the scene of the crash. By examining the scene, he realises that it was the Greninja, not Mewtwo, that attacked Harry and that Howard Clifford was lying to him and Tim.

Back in Rime City Clifford puts his plan into action and honestly, this is my least favourite part of the movie. His plan is to transfer his mind into Mewtwo’s body to escape the disease that is slowly killing him and live forever as a giant cat. Okay, bit weird but I’ve been on the internet long enough to know there are definitely plenty of people who would be into that. But then, he’s going to flood the city with R and use Mewto’s power to…merge people with their Pokémon. It’s certainly the kind of climax I would expect from a Pokémon movie but that’s why it’s disappointing. This movie was exceeding my expectations and to just fall back on a big CGI climax resulting from a super villain plot that is, and let’s be fair here, slightly silly. Well, I’m not mad. But I am a little disappointed.

Anyway, Tim discovers that “Roger Clifford” is actually Howard’s own Pokémon Ditto, a shapeshifter that can turn into humans as well as Pokémon.

That’s fine, I never needed to sleep again anyways.

Pikachu arrives in the nick of time and he and Tim manage to free Mewtwo from Clifford’s control and save the city. Mewtwo reveals that he actually saved Harry by stuffing his consciousness into Pikachu’s body and that the real Dads were the Pikachus we made along the way. Or something.

Anyway, Mewtwo reverses the process and Tim is reunited with his father. And the movie ends with Tim decided to stay in Rime City and join his father and Pikachu as a detective.

***

How did Detective Pikachu manage to break the curse for Western video game adaptations? I think it helped that the game it’s based on had a plot that fit more neatly into the requirements of a three act structure than most video game plots. But ultimately, I think it just comes down to good film-making fundamentals. Why is Detective Pikachu good? Because the performances, script, special effects, cinematography, music and special effects are all good to great. Sometimes, it’s just a question of hiring the right people and getting out of their way.

Scoring

Animation: 17/20

They did it, the mad bastards.

Leads: 16/20

Justice Smith brings his A game to what could have been a rote role and manages to find some real layers to the character of Tim Goodman. And Ryan Reynolds needs to do more voicework.

Villain: 13/20

I’ll never be sad to see Bill Nighy arrive but if I’m honest Clifford and his whole scheme are probably the weakest element of the film. Not bad, but a little rote and silly for a movie that otherwise manages to blow past expectations for what a movie like this should be. That said, hearing Bill Nighy say the words “Pikachu”and “Mewtwo” with absolute sincerity never gets old.

Supporting Characters: 16/20

Kathryn Newtown is bringing her best Nancy Drew energy to the part of Lucy Stevens and is utterly charming. The Pokémon themselves are so wonderful that for the first time I can actually buy that the whole world would be obsessed with these critters.

Music 15/20

Henry Jackson’s score evokes a kind of Vangelis lite which perfectly compliments the Bladerunner lite vibe of the film.

FINAL SCORE: 77%

NEXT UPDATE: 14 April 2022

NEXT TIME: There’s no way it can be worse than X-Men 3 right? Right? RIGHT?!

*Obviously there are exceptions to this. There are video games that have very filmic plots and would work well as movies with very little adjustment. It’s part of the problem of using the same term “video game” to encapsulate everything from Elden Ring and desktop Solitaire. The term is so broad as to be practically useless.

Back on the horse…

So last month I did my first stand up set since before the pandemic in Whelan’s Comedy Club. Why didn’t I post this earlier? Well, Russia invaded Ukraine the next day and it didn’t feel like people would be in the mood, y’know.

Anyway, I was really happy with the response to this and I hope you enjoy.

“My son is… unique. That’s why you can’t relate to him. And because he is unique, the world will not tolerate his existence.”

Way back in 2016 I reviewed The Incredible Hulk and gave a pretty thorough overview of the character and his history. Obviously, there’s no point rehashing all of that again, so I’m just going to share this little tidbit I came across while researching this movie, because it’s the most perfect summation of the Ultimate Marvel universe I’ve ever seen.

Wow. That’s mature AND realistic.

Most people familiar with the comic book movie genre are aware that, only a scant five years before the Ed Norton starring Incredible Hulk, there was another big-screen version, the Ang Lee directed and less-boastfully titled Hulk. What many may not remember (because unlike me they are not ancient, decrepit relicts dancing forlornly on the lip of the grave) was just how big a deal this movie originally was. Yeah, sure, now it’s this weird half-forgotten little afterthought, but back in 2003 this movie was supposed to change the game totally.Picture the scene. It’s Summer 2003. America is settling into what will surely be a short and uneventful occupation of post-Saddam Iraq and the world is breathing a sigh of relief as Vladimir Putin ushers in safe and steady governance in Russia following the chaotic Yelstin years. And at the box-office, movies based on Marvel characters have finally broken their decades long curse and are seeing box-office success and even a measure of critical appreciation. But still just a measure. Comic book movies were still regarded largely as silly, disposable (if entertaining) mental popcorn. We had yet to see a movie that could truly capture the intellectual and emotional heft of the graphic novel medium at its best.

With a few notable exceptions.

Hulk was meant to change all that. In Ang Lee, it had the most critically acclaimed director ever to helm a movie in the genre. With the Hulk, it had a character that not only had mass name recognition (thanks to the seventies TV show) but had the potential to tell a more mature tale about rage, trauma and masculinity. And the early buzz and interviews made clear that this was exactly what Lee was aiming for. This was not going to be a dumb summer actioner. This was going to be a serious film, with serious themes. This was the film that was going to force the superhero movie to grow up. This was what would finally break the genre’s “cred-ceiling”. Did it succeed?

Well, the positives first. It’s distinctive as hell, one of the very few superhero movies of the era that can be said to have any kind of visual style of its own. I really enjoy Danny Elfman’s score, a nervy, sweaty descent into madness that suits the character very well. Um…what else? The Hulk effects have aged very poorly in some scenes but in others I actually think they held up magnificently. And I do like the actual model design very much.It’s more child-like and innocent looking than either the Norton or Ruffalo Hulks and it works for me.And, we must give credit where credit is due: it’s doing something different. It definitely is. And more power to it.The downside is, what it’s trying to do is DULL.And I know how that sounds! “Oh Mouse couldn’t keep his eyes open because there’s not an explosion every five minutes!” But that’s not what I mean. I am actually all for a Hulk movie where the Hulk hardly appears. My favourite part of the Norton version is not any of the Hulk scenes. It’s the first act set in Brazil where Banner is living undercover because those scenes had tension. They had stakes. That movie ain’t high art or nuffin’ but it understood how to take the concept of “if this guy gets angry, shit gets fucky” and wring some goddamn suspense out of it. Hulk 2003…something isn’t working. There’s plenty of good parts here but the wheel’s aren’t clicking.So the movie begins in 1966 with military scientist David Banner doing some shady military science. He asks his supervisor, Thaddeus Ross, for permission to begin human trials, as killing starfish and monkeys just isn’t doing it for him anymore. Ross, of course, refuses and Banner, also of course, decides to experiment on himself because it’s the sixties and scientists in that era did not give a single solitary fuck. A few weeks later, his wife tells him that they’re going to have a baby with all the warmth and emotion of the speaking clock.So here’s the first real big problem with this movie; every performance is so damn subdued. I don’t think anyone actually raises their voice above a gentle murmur in the first half of the movie. It’s so all pervading that it has to be a deliberate choice. And I suppose I can see why it might have worked, contrasting this quiet, universal emotional restraint against the loud raging id of the Hulk when he finally emerges but even the Hulk scenes are weirdly…quiet.Anyway, Ross discovers that Banner’s been doing experimentation with human DNA and boots him off the project. Banner reacts calmly and with good grace by setting off a nuclear chain reaction at the base and then rushing home to his wife and baby son Bruce…Cut to the modern day and scientist Bruce Krenzler is working in Berkeley on some medical wonder tech that involves radiation, nanomachines and frogs. Krenzler needs today’s experiment to go great because’s there’s a review coming up and complicating matters even further, he’s just broken up with his lab partner Betty Ross. Apparently the relationship didn’t work because Bruce wasn’t “passionate” enough but honestly I don’t see how it’s fair that he have to display emotion when no one else in this entire universe does.Alright, good enough time as any to talk about the split-screen.So one of the things this movie got quite a bit of praise for when it came out was the innovative use of split-screen to mimic comic book panels.

It’s like a page from my favourite comic; Boring Assholes #134!

I remember reading a lot of reviews noting approvingly that this was an actual “comic book movie” rather than a movie with comic book characters. But here’s the problem. Comic book panels aren’t as aesthetic or artistic choice. They’re just a functional necessity of the medium. This is a bit like if, when directing Sense and Sensibility, Ang Lee had ended every scene with a page turning because, y’know, that’s how they do it in books. Now, split-screen absolutely can serve an artistic purpose, like how in 24 it’s used to ratchet up a sense of escalating threat, but here it’s just there. It’s just reminding us that, yes, this is based on a comic book and, yes, the creators are aware of that. Occasionally it does create a visually arresting image but more often than not it’s just distracting and gimmicky.Anyway, the experiment succeeds only in causing a frog to explode and Bruce and Betty are devastated by this failure, and so sit alone in a room talking at each other in hushed monotones.The next day Betty is visited by Glen Tablbot, her blond asshole ex-boyfriend with a shit-eating grin who works for her father but who’s in it for the money, not the science, man.

Thank goodness this stunningly original movie that re-defines the superhero genre doesn’t rely on stale overused tropes.

I kid, but I actually really like Josh Lucas as Talbot, if for no other reason than he seems to understand that movies should be fun. Anyway, sing along if you know the words; Talbot has heard about the incredible frog-destroying power of Betty and Bruce’s research and wants to acquire it for the military in case France starts getting uppity. But Bruce is too pure and noble a scientist for that and wants his research to benefit little sick children and injured puppies and GAWD THIS SHIT AGAIN.I went over this in the previous hulk review but it bears repeating; Bruce Banner is not a good man. Bruce Banner, like Frankenstein, recklessly tampered with forces he didn’t fully understand for selfish reasons and was punished for his DAMNABLE HUBRIS. It’s supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a tale about the world’s nicest man getting shit on by fate for no real reason. And it’s honestly baffling to me that no live action version, whether Bixby, Norton, Ruffalo or Bana, ever had the stones to say “yeah, this dude kinda had it coming”.Heading home for the day, Betty notices that the new janitor is considerably more “Grizzly Adams”-esque than then old guy. This is David Banner, now in his seventies and played by Nick Nolte. Nolte grew his hair out for the part into a magnificently wild and scraggly mane, which backfired when he was arrested for drunk driving during filming.

The next day, as they run another experiment there’s a malfunction and Bruce and Betty’s lab assistant Harper is almost killed by a blast of gamma radiation. Fortunately, Bruce heroically places himself between Harper and the machine, blocking the blast. Of course, gamma radiation’s distinguishing characteristic is that it passes right through solid matter which is why it’s so dangerous so Harper is almost certainly going to die from cancer. Still though, real nice gesture Bruce.

Bruce wakes up in hospital and Betty tells him that he should be dead (honestly, with this performance I’m not sure he’s not) but Bruce tells her that he’s “100%. More”.

“I’m using hyperbole Betty! Hyperbole! God! I feel so ALIVE!”

Later, after being dosed out of his gourd on painkillers, Bruce wakes in the dead of night to find Nick Nolte looming over him which happens to all of us from time to time.

From left to right: Dog, Dog turning into Nick Nolte, Nick Nolte.

David tells Bruce that his real name is Bruce Banner and he is his father and that its his experimentation that’s the reason that Bruce isn’t a giant gelatinous mass of tumours right now. Bruce tells David to take a hike but later loses his temper in the lab and transforms into a Playstation 2 cutscene.

The next day Betty finds Bruce unconscious in his home after apparently having a smashing night on the town (eh? eh?). Betty’s father, now General Ross, arrives and places Bruce under house arrest, saying they found his wallet at the wrecked laboratory.

Later that night, Bruce gets a call from his Pop telling him that he took some of his DNA and injected it into his dogs and sent them to kill Betty. Just at that moment, Glenn Talbot arrives and starts beating Bruce up because he thinks he’s going behind his back and working out a deal with Ross. This, as you can imagine, doesn’t work out to well for Talbot because the Hulk’s catchphrase is “you wouldn’t like me when I’m in a hurry to get to my girlfriend who’s about to be eaten by big green dogs”.

Bruce hulks out, smashes Talbot like Russia’s chances of winning Eurovision anytime soon and bounces over to Betty’s house just in time to save her from being eaten. I wish I could say that the sight of Hulk whaling on a bright green poodle is enough to elevate this movie to the realms of giddy comic book fun but even this SOMEHOW is boring. A lot of the fight happens off screen in a darkened forest while Betty sits in the car and looks worried.

After killing the dogs, Hulk changes back into Bruce and Betty calls her father who takes them both back to the secret military base where this whole farrago began. Betty convinces Ross to try and help Bruce, although he’s doubtful that David Banner’s son can be anything but a menace.

As if to prove his point, David Banner breaks into the lab and subjects himself to the same experiment which turned Bruce into the Hulk. He doesn’t get to be the Hulk, but he does get a decent consolation prize. He turns into the Absorbing Man, with the power to absorb literally everything he comes in contact with and make it part of himself.

I think this explains why Disney don’t want this to be canon. Probably hits a bit too close to home.

At the base, Talbot, still somehow alive, takes over Bruce’s treatment and starts torturing him to try and get him to hulk out. That goes about as well as could be expected and soon Hulk is rampaging through the base and we get a ridiculous moment where Talbot is blown up and freezes in mid-air because Ang Lee really wants you to know this is a comic book movie.

Oh ho! We have fun here.

Hulk escapes through the desert, and I have to give credit here, the scenes of Hulk just bouncing languidly across the desert are very comic faithful. Ross gives chase with half the US military and they eventually track the Hulk to San Francisco where Betty is able to calm him enough to change back into Bruce.

Bruce is placed in a special prison cell probably built by the same company that did Magneto’s and his father is placed in with him, David having surrendered himself on the condition that he be allowed to speak to his son.

We now get probably my favourite scene in the whole movie, which is just this stark little minimalist two-man play between Eric Bana and Nick Nolte. And it’s weird, but it kinda works for me? Maybe it’s just the theatre snob in me.

I would absolutely pay $200 to see this and then pretend I understood it afterwards over wine in the foyer.

Seriously though, both Nolte and Bana go HAM and this one scene really does stand head and shoulders above everything else in the movie. And it’s just two men talking. But it’s not boring, I’ll tell you that. Banner tells his father that he remembers his mother (and remembers that it was David that killed her). David tells Bruce that he’s come to see his “real” son, because he needs to absorb the Hulk’s strength to destroy the US military and when Bruce refuses he takes a bite out of a power cable and absorbs an entire military base’s worth of electricity.

“I know actors who only metaphorically chew the scenery and they’re all cowards.”

What follows next is unwatchable. I don’t mean bad, I mean I literally am unable to watch it. I cannot visually parse what is supposed to be happening here.

While Hulk and the Absorbing Man battle in a poorly lit vat of pea-soup, Betty helpfully explains that David is absorbing all the ambient energy which is certainly one way to explain her performance.

Anyway, something happens, there’s an explosion and everyone thinks David and Bruce must be dead.

But, far away in the Amazon rainforest, a mysterious American doctor has started treating the locals and warning the local ruffians that they wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

***Is it better to strive for greatness and fail, or aim for competence and hit your mark? Hulk 2003 has plenty about it that’s interesting but, if you’ll excuse me, so the hell what? Interesting isn’t good. Interesting isn’t moving or thrilling or transcendent. Interesting just makes you go “huh” and that doesn’t justify the cost of a cinema ticket.Look, I realise this is the most basic, unenlightening criticism you can make of a movie but it’s boring. It is. It just is. There’s no life. There’s no spark. It’s DOA. Dull. Overly-Pretentious. Annoying.ScoringAdaptation 08/25Somehow makes one of the most bombastic and visually spectacular characters in the history of comics boring.Our Heroic Hero 09/25A decent and quite faithful depiction of ol’ Jade Jaws let down by a distractingly awkward and just plain…off…performance of Bruce Banner.Our Nefarious Villains 14/25If everyone in this thing had managed to rise to the level of Nick Nolte it’d be a better movie.Our Plucky Sidekicks 05/25I would hereby like to withdraw my previous critique of Liv Tyler as Betty Ross as low energy because my God, Jennifer Connolly makes her seem like Margot Robbie on uppers.The StingerNo stinger in these barbaric, pre-MCU times.Wait a minute, was that Stan Lee?!That was Stan Lee, appearing as a security guard with Lou Ferrigno, the original TV Hulk.Any names of comic book characters clunkily worked into dialogue that no one would ever say in real life?“My father sent them. He is my father. He wanted me to change. He wanted me to change into that mindless hulk.

FINAL SCORE : 36 %

NEXT UPDATE: 31 March 2022NEXT TIME: Pokémon? Is that like Digimon?

“Is this what you wanted?”

NOTE: This review was written mostly before the stunning and unprecedented events in Ukraine. If you wish to donate to one of a number of vetted charities to help those suffering due to the criminal actions of the Putin regime, you can do so HERE.

Here’s a challenge for you. Try to find a book, article or blog post about the phenomenon of “Yellow Peril” that does not include a reference to Sax Rohmer’s fictional creation Doctor Fu Manchu.

One of the earliest fictional supervillains, Fu Manchu was a brilliant, devious Chinese scientist and master criminal who sought world domination and was basically the entire concept of the Yellow Peril incarnate in one man. And if you think I’m being unfair to Sax Rohmer, please be aware that the phrase “Yellow Peril incarnate in one man” is a direct quote describing Fu Manchu from the first novel he appears in. He is a hugely controversial creation, and no, not just in these more enlightened times. Fu Manchu has never been uncontroversial and every fresh wave of popularity for the character has prompted massive backlash and accusations of racism which are pretty damn hard to refute as, by his own admission, Rohmer basically just monetized anti-Asian xenophobia and based the character on Bayard Taylor’s notoriously racist descriptions of the Chinese.

But, here’s the thing…Fu Manchu also kinda rules? I mean, he is like Asian Dracula. He is badass. He is cool. He has menace and charisma to burn. He has a moustache named after him. He is a fantastic villain and pretty much codified the whole archetype of the brilliant, dastardly criminal mastermind, even more so than (I would argue) Professor Moriarty. And he has been incredibly influential in film too, having been played by such notable Asian actors as Christopher Lee, Boris Carloff and Nicholas Cage (oh shit, I think we took a wrong turn and ended back in Racism Town).

So on the one hand you have an extremely compelling villain with ninety years of rich history, but on the other hand you have the incredibly uncomfortable creation of the character. It’s a very thorny problem. How do you extricate Fu Manchu from Rohmer and Taylor? Could you do a non-racist Fu Manchu? Is it worth trying? Who would even want to take that on? And how would you go about it?

Well, Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin took a crack at it in 1973.

Results were…mixed.

The comic that would eventually become Shang-Chi was initially pitched to DC as an adaptation of the hugely popular TV series Kung Fu starring noted Asian actor David Carradine. DC passed and Englehart and Starlin took the idea to Marvel who agreed to the basic premise of a kung fu themed comic with the following stipulations:

That the main character be the son of Fu Manchu, who Marvel had just acquired the rights to.That the main character be half-white.

Why 2? Well, Marvel had recently tried to cash in on the blaxploitation craze with their character Luke Cage but had been burned when some Southern retailers had refused to display a comic with a black main character. By making Shang-Chi half white, they hoped to avoid a repeat. Which…how does that work exactly?

“Hello, my good sir! Would you be interested in stocking our new comic, “Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu” in your fine establishment?“Whut? I ain’t stockin no rassin frassin comicky book with no Chinee!”“Fret not, my fine racist, you see, Shang-Chi’s mother is white for he is the product of racial mixing.”“Oh that’s fine, I’ll take your whole durn stock.”

Despite that deeply compromised beginning, Shang-Chi went on to become Marvel’s first Asian superstar character, carrying his own book for a very respectable 125 issues (which was only cancelled when Marvel declined to renew their rights to Fu Manchu). While he’s never recaptured the same prominence in the comics that he did during the Kung Fu craze of the seventies and eighties, he’s always been a well respected and popular mainstay of the Marvel universe. So when the time came for Disney/Marvel to turn their all-seeing rapacious eye to the martial arts genre, naturally they first thought of…

Ha ha, be honest. You’d totally forgotten, hadn’t you?

But when the time came for Disney/Marvel to make their second attempt at the martial arts genre, this time with an eye to Asian representation (and absolutely nothing to do with cracking the obscenely lucrative Chinese market they’re perennially eyeing like a dragon’s horde to the point that they will desecrate their own properties and literally collaborate with a genocidal regime just for a chance of making some cold hard yuan and I think need to wrangle this sentence back into shape) they chose Shang-Chi.

Alright, something I need to get off my chest. Rings are cool. Bracelets are not.

I don’t know if I can explain why but it’s just a fact. It’a the same principal that swords are cooler than clubs. They just are.

The movie begins with a flashback to Ancient China where a narrator tells us the story of Xu Wenwu who discovered ten magical rings which granted him immortality and all kinds of awesome super powers which he used to found the Ten Rings, a secretive criminal organisation that’s been active throughout history. They are also bracelets, and not finger-rings like in the comics. And that’s lame.

So I touched on the character of the Mandarin in my Iron Man 3 review but for a quick recap; the Mandarin was an Iron Man adversary from the sixties who was basically Fu Manchu with the added gimmick of having ten magical rings. The Mandarin (sort of) appeared in Iron Man 3 played by noted Asian actors Guy Pearse and Sir Ben Kinglsey as the creators decided to steer hard away from the character’s whole “Yellow Peril” schtick. But, after some backlash, the short film All Hail the King revealed that the Mandarin was a real dude who Aldritch Killian had basically ripped off to create his bogeyman. That’s this guy. To put it simply, Trevor Slattery was playing the Mandarin at the behest of Aldritch Killian who was a rip-off of the Mandarin who was actually Xu Wenu who is based on the Mandarin who is a rip-off of Fu Manchu and Fu Manchu.

“Thank God you were here, I almost got confused.”

In the nineties, Wenwu discovered the legend of Ta Lo, a mysterious lost village full of mysterious people with mysterious powers.

So he sets out to discover it for himself and is stopped by Ying Li, a guardian of the village. They have a beautiful, wuxia-esque fight and they fall in love.

Fast forward to the present and Wenwu and Ying Li’s son, “Shaun” (Simu Liu) is living in San Francisco and working as a valet with his best friend, Katie (Awkwafina). Shaun met Kate in high school when she interceded on his behalf with a bully who called him “Gangnam Style” and wait what? That makes no sense! This dude is like in his mid-twenties and Gangnam Style only came out…

Oh.

Oh Jesus Christ.

How am I even still alive if I’m this old?

Anyway, Shaun and Katie are having dinner with their old school friend Soo who is now a lawyer and passive-aggressively chides them for not doing more with their lives. They decide to show how responsible they can be by staying out all night getting drunk and singing karaoke. The next morning Shaun swings by Katie’s house to pick her up and her mother likewise chides her for not living up to her potential.

So I am now going to give my review of this movie. What do I mean by that? Well, Shang-Chi isn’t one movie, it’s three. And we’ve just about reached the demarcation point where movie one ends and movie two begins. Movie 1 is…nice. I like it. It’s not fantastically written, the dialogue is a little artificial sounding but it’s a nice, engaging little piece about two goof off friends who are happy where they are and don’t see why they should have to change. Awkwafina is great, honestly and Simu Liu gives a nice, likeable understated performance. I also like little details like the faded posters for Blip support groups in the background and the scenes with Katie’s family. They don’t particularly go anywhere but there’s a nice low-key vibe to them. I dig it.

Now we get to the bus scene. The bus scene is what cinema scholars commonly refer to as “dude, dope as fuck.” It’s honestly one of the best fight scenes we’ve seen in the MCU, right up there with the elevator scene in Winter Solider or the corridor fight in Daredevil. Anyway Shaun gets attacked by a bunch of dudes on the bus who want a pendant that was given to him by his mother. Shaun then reveals that he’s no mere valet and busts out a near-Ukranian level of kickass on his assailants. The scene isn’t perfect, some of the CGI is a little weightless (there’s one particularly egreious moment where Shaun punches a guy out a window like he’s made of aeroboard) but it’s a ridiculously fun Jenga tower of escalating violence and peril, culminating in Katie trying to steer the out of control bus through the streets of San Francisco while Shaun battles like six dudes and a Romanian with a sword for a hand. Said Romanian tells Shaun that they’re coming for his sister so, after the fight has been one, he decides to jet to Macau to see her. And Katie decides to tag along because she’s the comedy relief and what else is she gonna do?

On the flight over Shaun explains that his real name is Shang-Chi and that he was raised by his father, Wenwu, to be the perfect assassin. But Shang-Chi refused to carry out his first kill and has been hiding from his father ever since.

The pair arrive in Macau and find that Shang-Chi’s sister, Xialing, is running an underground fight ring and we get two cameos, Wong fighting the Abomination. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the impression I got from Doctor Strange was that the Masters of the Mystic Arts are supposed to be a secret, mysterious order protecting the Earth from the shadows. And yet, here’s the frickin’ Sorcerer Supreme using his magic in full view in cage fights being broadcast on the internet, apparently just to make a few bucks.

This is like if the Pope became an MMA fighter.

Actually it’s worse. We see him afterwards talking to Abomination and it’s clear the fight was rigged. Wong is cheating the honest paying customers of this underground Dark-Web snuff factory!

Anyway, Shang-Chi is now famous because the video of the fight on the bus has gone viral and he gets duped into participating in a fight. And…somehow the crowd is excited to see a perfectly normal human fight after seeing a literal wizard battle an actual monster. But whatever. Shang-Chi’s mysterious opponent turns out to be, of course, as we all expected, Betty White.

Personally, I thought the part where she ripped out Shang-Chi’s still beating heart and showed it to him was a tad gratuitous.

No, OBVIOUSLY, it’s his sister. She kicks his ass and then after the fight he tells her that their father is coming for her pendant. Xialing reveals to Katie that Shang-Chi abandoned her when she was still a child and that she had to escape from their father on her own. Suddenly the Ten Rings attack the building and Shang-Chi and Xialing have to fight hordes of assassins while hanging off the side of the building from bamboo scaffolding. It is, as the old Irish saying goes, dope as fuck.

Wenwu shows up and takes them all prisoner and brings them to his secret fortress of villainy. Over dinner, he tells Shang-Chi that it is time for him to take his place as his heir. He has a conversation with Katie where they discuss the importance of names, and he reveals that over the centuries he was known by many names, including “Master Khan”. Ohhhh boy. So, Master Khan is a minor Iron Fist and Doctor Strange villain. So that’s three villains this guy is an amalgamation of. Any others you want to throw on the pile?

“I have been known by many names. Galactus. Annihilus. Paste Pot Pete.”

Wenwu tells Katie how he fell in love with Shang-Chi and Xialing’s mother and convinced her to leave Ta Lo and return with him to Earth. For a while they were blissfully happy and he renounced his criminal empire. But then she died and he went back to his old life. nd it’s right around here that Movie 3 begins and more’s the pity. Because Movie 3 fucking sucks. And it makes up like two thirds of the total run time. Wenwu tells his children that Ying Li has begun appearing to him in visions and that she is waiting for them in Ta Lo. Obviously his kids think that’s crazy so he takes their two pendants, puts them in a wooden dragon statue, which starts sweating profusely, and then the sweat freezes and forms an ice sculpture of the bamboo maze that surrounds Ta Lo, revealing the way in.

Yeah, this movie takes a HARD turn into magical fantasy and it really doesn’t work. The tonal shift is jarring as all hell and worse, the movie just completely loses its sense of fun. The plot becomes this overly complicated slog of maguffins and new characters and just more and more…stuff. Not individual parts making up a greater whole, just…stuff, piled on top of itself.

Wenwu tells his kids that the Ten Rings are going to storm Ta Lo and force them to return his (dead, I remind you) wife to him or he’ll destroy the village. Before Shang-Chi and Xialing can have a hushed conversation in the next room about nursing homes, he imprisons them. There, we get a little a ray of sunshine.

Ah Trevor. Always a pleasure.

Yes, T. Slatts is in the house. Turns out that the Ten Rings were so impressed with his Shakespearean monologues that Wenwu spared his life and he’s now his court jester.

He also has a hundun named Morris (a hundun being a legendary Chinese creature with four wings, two asses and no face) and he’s very relieved to learn that Shang-Chi and Katie can see Morris too (as he believed he was simply a hallucination brought on by too many lovely, lovely drugs).

Anyway, he helps them escape and they go to Ta Lo to warn the village that their father’s coming.

There they meet a shit ton of new characters, including Shang-Chi and Xialing’s aunt Ying Nan (played by a thoroughly wasted Michelle Yeoh) and she tells them that thousands of years ago Ta Lo was attacked by a demon named the Dweller in Darkness but they were saved by a dragon called the Great Protector who sealed the Dweller…

Stop. No. No. You cannot dump that much lore on us this late in the game. Either get Cate Blanchett to recite this over the opening credits or trim this shit.

Anyway, it turns out that Wenwu is being lured to Ta Lo not by his (very dead) wife but by the Dweller in Darkness. The Ten Rings attack and Ta Lo mounts a spirited defence, including Katie who is now lethal with a bow and arrow after a few days training.

And it was around here that I realised I’d completely checked out of the movie and couldn’t even remember why anyone was doing anything. I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten here from that fun little martial arts flick I remembered watching so long ago. Ultimately, the movie’s biggest sin is failing to understand the appeal of its genre. This is supposed to be a combination wuxia/chopsocky flick, Crouching Tiger, Enter the Dragon if you like. And the main appeal of both those genres is a reliance on practical stunts and effects. No one wants to see Bruce Lee fight CGI opponents, and no one wants to see a martial arts film that devolves into airless, weightless computer generated sludge.

And my GOD but the CGI looks phoney.

Anyway, Wenwu succeeds in freeing the Dweller in Darkness and realises that his wife was not in fact an eighty foot long dragon and that he’s been played. Before the Dweller kills him, he gifts the ten rings to Shang-Chi who uses them to slay the beast and save the world.

Back in San Francisco, Shang-Chi and Katie relate this tale to Soo and her husband and are aghast when they don’t believe that these two valets were kidnapped by the one thousand year old immortal warlord and then saved the world by defeating a soul-eating dragon in an alternate dimension.

The soul sucking dragons were bad. But the brain sucking dragons were the worst of all.

This scene just left me agog. Why? Why do Katie and Shang-Chi think anyone would believe them? Why do they not realise how batshit insane they sound? Do they just not care.

Well, speaking of characters with no fucks left to give, Wong just straight up portals into the restaurant in full view of everyone (my, these jade post-Blip millenials) and whisks Katie and Shang-Chi away.

***

Well dang. That was…quite bad. There have been Marvel movies before that I found to be lacklustre or dull but never less than competent. Shang-Chi is not a good film. It starts out…”strong” is a strong word (obviously) but “pleasant”. Good martial arts action, fairly likeable characters. But I did not make the Frozen 2 comparison lightly and it really does suffer the same problems; character bloat and a mythology that is at once overly complicated and kinda samey and generic at the same time.

“This half billion gross says different.”“Well everyone’s WRONG! AGAIN!”

Scoring

Adaptation: n/a

In the interests of fairness I have to abstain from giving a score. I haven’t read the original Shang-Chi run, or indeed anything featuring the character apart from a few guest appearances in other books.

Our Heroic Hero: 08/25

It’s truly maddening watching Shang-Chi morphing from a likeable, laid-back everyman protagonist to a weightless void at the centre of his own film.

Our Nefarious Villain: 09/25

I don’t get it. I don’t get the “greatest villain”/”greatest performance in the MCU” accolades. I just don’t get it.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 14/25

Awkwafina carrying this whole damn thing right here.

The Stinger

Shang-Chi and Katie get taken to the Sanctum Santorum where Wong shows the Ten Rings to Bruce Banner and Captain Marvel. And then Shang-Chi, Katie and Wong go sing karaoke.

And the audience went…

The Second Stinger

We discover that Xialing has taken over her father’s murderous criminal empire, but that it’s fine because now it has women and it’s an equal opportunities murderous criminal empire.

And the audience went:

Are there X-Men yet?

Nope.

FINAL SCORE: 36%

NEXT UPDATE: 17 March 2022

NEXT TIME: For Saint Patrick’s Day, we’re going green…