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Fantastic Four: First Steps (directed by Matt Shakhman)
Well, it took five tries, but they finally got it right.
First Steps is a classic Fantastic Four adventure--almost literally. It's as if someone took a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby 1966 FF comic book and fast forwarded it to 2025. It has retrofuturistic analog technology, a cool crystal blue/white color scheme, and more full length dresses, starchy suits and Fedoras than you can imagine in a "modern" movie.
If we're coming in at FF#48, the first issue of the Galactus trilogy (which I guess we are), there's no need for an origin story. We know who the characters are, their relationships and their respective powers. (We've had four previous FF movies; we shouldn't need the hand holding.)
The movie hits all the relationships perfectly: Reed and Sue's marriage, loving (but suffused with underlying tension); Ben and Reed's friendship, shaded by Reed's guilt over Ben's condition, but undiminished; Ben and Johnny's constant, affectionate verbal jousting and Sue's den mother guardianship of her weird, super-powered family.
Vanessa Kirby plays all of Sue's traditional strengths--minus Lee's 1960s sexism; Joseph Quinn is a slightly less hot headed Johnny Storm (but it's balanced by a general boost in smarts and his well developed connection with Julia Gardner's Silver Surfer); and Ebon Moss-Bacharach nails Benjamin J. Grimm/The Thing--the idol o'millions who's still the scruffy kid from Yancy Street. The movie wisely tones down the "tortured monster" trope and gives us a Ben who's comfortable in his own rocky skin.
[Two nice touches: in an early scene, Ben is in the kitchen helping Herbie the robot cook the evening meal--just a reminder that Richie from The Bear is under all that CGI. And near the end, Ben stops in at a local synagogue to check on Natasha Lyonne. Yes, kids--Ben Grimm is Jewish! (Look it up.)]
But this is Pedro Pascal's movie.
Pascal brings a human dimension to Reed Richards that we never had in the previous movies or even in the comics. This Reed still has the sky high intellect and the problem solving compulsion--but Pascal's Reed is painfully aware of how his obsessions affect his relationship with Sue and the rest of the group. You can practically smell the flop sweat as the smartest man in the world deals with two life changing crises he can't problem solve away: a cosmic. planet-devouring monster....and impending fatherhood.
[Speaking of Galactus: love the design! Jack Kirby dimensions, but not so much Kirby style. It reminded me of Moebius (from Silver Surfer: Parable)--granular, totemic, as if sand accumulated for billions of years until it eventually formed this Being.]
And finally....dare I say it? I found the conclusion/solution to this Galactus story much more satisfying than the one in the original comic book!
So...well done, everybody. Can't wait for Avengers: Doomsday. Pedro Pascal vs. Robert Downey Jr.'s Victor Von Doom? BRING IT ON!
Thunderbolts (directed by Jake Schreier)
I think Marvel has learned a lesson here: give your movie a strong central character (with a well-plotted character arc) played by a top quality actor and your audience can forgive any minor flaws in the overall plot.
In this case, it's Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, wrestling with her past as a brainwashed assassin for Mother Russia, bitching about her current, unsatisfying (to say the least) stint as a black ops agent for the CIA, and wondering whether she has any kind of future.
It's odd to have depression as the major theme for a superhero movie, but Pugh makes it work. She's ably assisted by the motley crew of fellow mercenary misfits she picks up along the way: David Harbour as Red Guardian, Yelena's adopted "father", uncut cured Russian ham, but a loving, sensitive man underneath the bluster; Wyatt Russell's US Agent, a would be Captain America and bit of a dick, who gradually confronts his dickishness over the course of the movie; and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, reluctantly baby sitting this crew of cast-offs with understated cool.
[Stan doesn't get much of a spotlight here, but one scene with a motorcycle shows that Bucky still has the goods as a dynamic action hero. Look for it.]
The main antagonist ("villain" isn't quite right), The Sentry, is a perfect mirror for Yelena's existential crisis. "Bob" is a dead-on super-powered metaphor for bipolar syndrome. When he's up, he's literally Superman (with the big "S" to prove it), a God among men; when he's down, he's the Void, a black hole of despair sucking the entire city into the darkness with him. The team's efforts to pull Bob out of his psychic pit (and Yelena out of hers) is a refreshing change from the usual brain dead action climax.
Not everything here is perfect. Hannah John-Kamen kind of fades into the background as Ghost (pun intended); the movie dispatches Taskmaster way too soon; and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (much as I love her) just doesn't make it as the cynical, cold-hearted head of the CIA. (She comes off more like an out-of-her-depth PR flack for the government.)
But, as I said earlier, Pugh is charismatic enough to obscure these minor glitches. (We'll be seeing her again in Doomsday... so check it out!)
Daredevil: Born Again
Finally, I highly recommend Daredevil: Born Again.
Well... mostly the second half.
When reviving the beloved Netflix series, you'd think the showrunners would reunite us with the characters we loved and load up on superhero action... red meat for Hornhead's devoted fans.
Doesn't happen.
Instead, they kill off Foggy Nelson (Matt Murdock's best buddy) and exile Karen Page (former law partner and soul mate) to the (ugh) west coast. Matt is so wracked with guilt over Foggy's death that he stops being Daredevil.
For five episodes.
Now, it's not BAD, really; this is still Charlie Cox in the role, and man, he owns it. But I don't want to watch Matt Murdock, Blind Lawyer with Superhuman Hearing and Sick Fight Moves; I want to watch Daredevil.
Things turn around when Matt visits Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, about a group of NYC cops who are using Frank's particular iconography. Frank is still loonier than Daffy Duck, but he does force Matt to confront his grief over Foggy's death. Cox delivers a beautiful speech about Foggy's basic decency and how "men like us" will never achieve that in our lifetime.
From there, the horns are back on, and the plot picks up speed until the parallel paths of Matt and Mayor(!) Wilson Fisk intertwine in a brilliantly shot sequence at a fundraising ball.
I could have used a bit more character development for Matt's new law partner; she's just not that interesting. The new psychiatrist GF is more plot device than main character. (When Karen shows back up near the end, you almost breathe a sigh of relief.) And Cherry (Homicide's Clark Johnson) mainly pops in to yell "you're blowing up your life, Matt!" and exiting, stage left.
Still...the series is (and has pretty much always been) the pas de deux between Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk (the Kingpin). Fisk, an amoral, monstrous brute who has convinced himself that his taste in tailored suits and fine wine gives him a veneer of civilization; and Matt Murdock, a deeply compassionate human being who thinks of himself as the devil. The interplay between their similar, yet contrasting personalities is endlessly fascinating. This, the showrunners got right.
Season two is teed up and ready to go. Kristen Ritter is back as Jessica Jones! (Never a bad idea to bring Kristen Ritter into your series.) The fight against the Kingpin continues...
Well, it took five tries, but they finally got it right.
First Steps is a classic Fantastic Four adventure--almost literally. It's as if someone took a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby 1966 FF comic book and fast forwarded it to 2025. It has retrofuturistic analog technology, a cool crystal blue/white color scheme, and more full length dresses, starchy suits and Fedoras than you can imagine in a "modern" movie.
If we're coming in at FF#48, the first issue of the Galactus trilogy (which I guess we are), there's no need for an origin story. We know who the characters are, their relationships and their respective powers. (We've had four previous FF movies; we shouldn't need the hand holding.)
The movie hits all the relationships perfectly: Reed and Sue's marriage, loving (but suffused with underlying tension); Ben and Reed's friendship, shaded by Reed's guilt over Ben's condition, but undiminished; Ben and Johnny's constant, affectionate verbal jousting and Sue's den mother guardianship of her weird, super-powered family.
Vanessa Kirby plays all of Sue's traditional strengths--minus Lee's 1960s sexism; Joseph Quinn is a slightly less hot headed Johnny Storm (but it's balanced by a general boost in smarts and his well developed connection with Julia Gardner's Silver Surfer); and Ebon Moss-Bacharach nails Benjamin J. Grimm/The Thing--the idol o'millions who's still the scruffy kid from Yancy Street. The movie wisely tones down the "tortured monster" trope and gives us a Ben who's comfortable in his own rocky skin.
[Two nice touches: in an early scene, Ben is in the kitchen helping Herbie the robot cook the evening meal--just a reminder that Richie from The Bear is under all that CGI. And near the end, Ben stops in at a local synagogue to check on Natasha Lyonne. Yes, kids--Ben Grimm is Jewish! (Look it up.)]
But this is Pedro Pascal's movie.
Pascal brings a human dimension to Reed Richards that we never had in the previous movies or even in the comics. This Reed still has the sky high intellect and the problem solving compulsion--but Pascal's Reed is painfully aware of how his obsessions affect his relationship with Sue and the rest of the group. You can practically smell the flop sweat as the smartest man in the world deals with two life changing crises he can't problem solve away: a cosmic. planet-devouring monster....and impending fatherhood.
[Speaking of Galactus: love the design! Jack Kirby dimensions, but not so much Kirby style. It reminded me of Moebius (from Silver Surfer: Parable)--granular, totemic, as if sand accumulated for billions of years until it eventually formed this Being.]
And finally....dare I say it? I found the conclusion/solution to this Galactus story much more satisfying than the one in the original comic book!
So...well done, everybody. Can't wait for Avengers: Doomsday. Pedro Pascal vs. Robert Downey Jr.'s Victor Von Doom? BRING IT ON!
Thunderbolts (directed by Jake Schreier)
I think Marvel has learned a lesson here: give your movie a strong central character (with a well-plotted character arc) played by a top quality actor and your audience can forgive any minor flaws in the overall plot.
In this case, it's Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, wrestling with her past as a brainwashed assassin for Mother Russia, bitching about her current, unsatisfying (to say the least) stint as a black ops agent for the CIA, and wondering whether she has any kind of future.
It's odd to have depression as the major theme for a superhero movie, but Pugh makes it work. She's ably assisted by the motley crew of fellow mercenary misfits she picks up along the way: David Harbour as Red Guardian, Yelena's adopted "father", uncut cured Russian ham, but a loving, sensitive man underneath the bluster; Wyatt Russell's US Agent, a would be Captain America and bit of a dick, who gradually confronts his dickishness over the course of the movie; and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, reluctantly baby sitting this crew of cast-offs with understated cool.
[Stan doesn't get much of a spotlight here, but one scene with a motorcycle shows that Bucky still has the goods as a dynamic action hero. Look for it.]
The main antagonist ("villain" isn't quite right), The Sentry, is a perfect mirror for Yelena's existential crisis. "Bob" is a dead-on super-powered metaphor for bipolar syndrome. When he's up, he's literally Superman (with the big "S" to prove it), a God among men; when he's down, he's the Void, a black hole of despair sucking the entire city into the darkness with him. The team's efforts to pull Bob out of his psychic pit (and Yelena out of hers) is a refreshing change from the usual brain dead action climax.
Not everything here is perfect. Hannah John-Kamen kind of fades into the background as Ghost (pun intended); the movie dispatches Taskmaster way too soon; and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (much as I love her) just doesn't make it as the cynical, cold-hearted head of the CIA. (She comes off more like an out-of-her-depth PR flack for the government.)
But, as I said earlier, Pugh is charismatic enough to obscure these minor glitches. (We'll be seeing her again in Doomsday... so check it out!)
Daredevil: Born Again
Finally, I highly recommend Daredevil: Born Again.
Well... mostly the second half.
When reviving the beloved Netflix series, you'd think the showrunners would reunite us with the characters we loved and load up on superhero action... red meat for Hornhead's devoted fans.
Doesn't happen.
Instead, they kill off Foggy Nelson (Matt Murdock's best buddy) and exile Karen Page (former law partner and soul mate) to the (ugh) west coast. Matt is so wracked with guilt over Foggy's death that he stops being Daredevil.
For five episodes.
Now, it's not BAD, really; this is still Charlie Cox in the role, and man, he owns it. But I don't want to watch Matt Murdock, Blind Lawyer with Superhuman Hearing and Sick Fight Moves; I want to watch Daredevil.
Things turn around when Matt visits Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, about a group of NYC cops who are using Frank's particular iconography. Frank is still loonier than Daffy Duck, but he does force Matt to confront his grief over Foggy's death. Cox delivers a beautiful speech about Foggy's basic decency and how "men like us" will never achieve that in our lifetime.
From there, the horns are back on, and the plot picks up speed until the parallel paths of Matt and Mayor(!) Wilson Fisk intertwine in a brilliantly shot sequence at a fundraising ball.
I could have used a bit more character development for Matt's new law partner; she's just not that interesting. The new psychiatrist GF is more plot device than main character. (When Karen shows back up near the end, you almost breathe a sigh of relief.) And Cherry (Homicide's Clark Johnson) mainly pops in to yell "you're blowing up your life, Matt!" and exiting, stage left.
Still...the series is (and has pretty much always been) the pas de deux between Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk (the Kingpin). Fisk, an amoral, monstrous brute who has convinced himself that his taste in tailored suits and fine wine gives him a veneer of civilization; and Matt Murdock, a deeply compassionate human being who thinks of himself as the devil. The interplay between their similar, yet contrasting personalities is endlessly fascinating. This, the showrunners got right.
Season two is teed up and ready to go. Kristen Ritter is back as Jessica Jones! (Never a bad idea to bring Kristen Ritter into your series.) The fight against the Kingpin continues...
