Tag: Marvel

2022, Movies

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022, Sam Raimi)

Can you tell me why some characters in other universes are played by the same actors and others aren’t? In this film Dr. Strange is always the same actor but in other films of the MCU Spider-Man is played by different actors. Jenn suggested it was British cast who stayed the same and American cast …

2021, Movies

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021, Jon Watts)

The MCU Spider-Man movies are probably the best overall series within the whole massive thing, though there may be better individual movies. But this is the weakest – and longest (and most self-important) – of the three and, in many ways, reverts back to the usual Marvel crap. There is a difference here, of course, …

2021, Movies

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021, Andy Serkis)

So I liked this substantially more than the first movie and I think it’s for one main reason: Venom is present from the beginning. I don’t remember if there were this many wisecracks in the first film but, if there were, I was already pretty bored when they started. Here it’s clearly a comedy (in …

2008, Movies

The Incredible Hulk (2008, Louis Leterrier)

So I’ve finally found my way to one of the few MCU movies I’ve missed, the weird one where they replaced the star before things really took off. At this point this feels like a movie from another era, as it has more in common with the first Iron Man, as you’d imagine, than it …

2021, Movies

Black Widow (2021, Cate Shortland)

Much like Captain Marvel, this is a necessary and needed corrective. And much more than Captain Marvel, we can legitimately wonder what took so damn long. Most of the other Avengers got their movies a long time ago. (The Hulk got his own movie, remember.) But being a necessary corrective to a patriarchal movie franchise …

2018, Movies

Venom (2018, Ruben Fleischer)

The world is a strange place. Because of rights issues, Venom is not currently part of the MCU even though Spider-Man and the recent Spider-Man movies are. So Venom isn’t part of the MCU and there is no Spider-Man in it. So that’s, um, weird. It might not be the worst thing, given all the …

2019, Movies

Captain Marvel (2019, Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck)

As I have noted with Marvel movies, I only ever read X Men and related comics, so I have no skin in the game of whether or not Captain Marvel should be a man. But a quick Wikipedia search reveals that it’s not so controversial as some made it seem. But make no mistake, this …

2017, Movies

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017, Jon Watts)

I hate reboots. There are perhaps few things I hate more than reboots than reboots of reboots. And yet, I must admit, this one works. And it works way better than expected. This film is, for me, one of the top 3 MCU movies. It might be the best, actually. Very minor spoilers if you …

2018, Movies

Black Panther (2018, Ryan Coogler)

So, before I get to the actual film, I think there is the film’s importance to discuss, and it’s hard to ignore. This is the only blockbuster film to have a majority black cast. It is an absolute landmark and it’s hard to believe it took so long. (It’s a testament to both systemic racism …

2017, Movies

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017, James Gunn)

I don’t know what kind of ill-humour causes me to not love these movies as much as the next guy, but I was pretty damn underwhelmed by the (possibly over-hyped) first Guardians of the Galaxy and really had no plans to watch this one, unless I was bored one day looking through Netflix (which is how …

2016, Movies

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016, Bryan Singer)

The stakes got upped a bit in the previous entry and so I must say I was worried about the endless stake-upping occurring in this series, like it does with the Avengers movies. And, to an extent, the stakes are indeed upped passed the point of sanity. The bad guy is a different kind of …

2016, Movies

Captain America: Civil War (2016, Anthony Russo, Joe Russo)

What is this? Is it a 2 and a half hour prelude to another movie? Because it sure feels like that to me. It’s the nadir of this recent trend in blockbusters to split a movie into two halves. Because, though this is ostensibly a Captain America film, what it really feels like is just …

2016, Movies

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015, Joss Whedon)

I pretty much only watch Marvel movies when I am looking for something I don’t have to think about. Civil War was just added so I figured I’d watch that, distract myself from my surgery tomorrow. But then I remembered I hadn’t seen this one, so I figured I’d watch it first. SPOILERS I guess