Marvel Cinematic Universe

The Marvels: O Captain, Why Captain

Jeremy BeckReviews
Iman Vellani, Brie Larson, and Teyonah Parris in The Marvels

The title of The Marvels doesn’t appear on screen until the end, but it’s announced verbally midway through, during a cutesy scene where the three main characters debate potential nicknames for their improbable team-up. It’s easy to condemn such dialogue as unduly meta, but the problem with The Marvels isn’t the Marvels; it’s Marvel, singular. On its own terms, this movie exhibits its fair share of appealing qualities: charming actors, playful humor, a generally buoyant tone. But it can’t really exist on its own terms—not when it’s constantly being pulled into the yawning black hole that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This is partly a matter of laborious franchise integration. Multiplex attendees have long since accepted the term “threequel,” but logistically speaking, The Marvels is essentially a triple-sequel, providing a conjoined follow-up for its three disparate members. Most obviously, it operates as a successor to Captain Marvel, the 2019 smash hit that introduced Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as the final piece of the superhero puzzle before the studio delivered the ultimate crossover event with Avengers: Endgame. That behemoth may have concluded with a sense of nominal finality, but while it said goodbye to several of the series’ biggest stars (most notably Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Chris Evans’ Captain America), it hardly turned off the corporation’s lights; there have since been eleven additional feature installments, along with quite a few TV series—two of which factor in here. WandaVision introduced Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), the daughter of Carol’s old friend Maria (who also appeared in Captain Marvel, which actually took place in the ’90s and, look, just go with it); Monica acquired her own superpowers when she waltzed through the force field that was trapping Wanda Maximoff in the fabricated town of Westview, and she now serves as a galactic sentry for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). And then there is Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), the New Jersey teenager who morphed into Ms. Marvel on the show of the same name, and who has long nurtured a celebrity crush on one Captain Marvel. Read More

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Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3: Journey to the Center of the Mirth

Jeremy BeckReviews
Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldaña in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3

James Gunn is best known for his eclectic needle drops, but he also has a visual signature: the Right Stuff-style shot of a troop of swaggering warriors striding forward in slow motion as a pop song blares on the soundtrack. He delivers that image twice in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, and while the second is more conventionally satisfying—the final prelude to some long-awaited interstellar ass-kicking—the first is more memorable. It’s noteworthy in part because the characters aren’t walking but floating, having just leapt from a spacecraft onto a bulbous planet (kindly shelve your astrophysical fact-checks), but what’s really striking is that each hero is outfitted in a bulky suit of a different bright color. There’s a simple beauty to the image, an eye-catching quality that’s rare for the Marvel Cinematic Universe—a cultural behemoth which, for all its commercial savvy and box-office supremacy, isn’t exactly a pioneer in terms of visual innovation. In this context, it’s oddly gratifying to be watching a superhero movie that actually cares what it looks like.

Let’s not pretend that Guardians 3 is some sort of aesthetic revelation. It’s still an MCU flick, which means it traffics heavily in green-screened locations, weightless special effects, and haphazard streams of light and fire. When an unknown gold-skinned invader (Will Poulter) zooms through the atmosphere and crashes into the chest of Rocket—the computer-generated mutant raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper, and again embodied on set by the director’s brother, Sean Gunn—the impact is as forceful as that of a coder clacking away at their keyboard. But the value of James Gunn—the canny maneuver that helps distinguish the Guardians pictures from their costumed brethren—is his knack for minimizing the genre’s inherent drawbacks (sloppy action, dull world-building) while emphasizing his own vibrant strengths (sharp dialogue, giddy imagination). Sure, Volume 3 is yet another chaotic adventure involving a desperate rescue mission, a precious MacGuffin, and a megalomaniacal villain. But mostly, it’s a family vacation comedy. Read More

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: A Bug’s Strife

Jeremy BeckReviews
Paul Rudd and Jonathan Majors in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

The implicit assumption underlying the Marvel Cinematic Universe—the notion meant to infuse it with relatability and heft as well as imagination and excitement—is that its movies (and TV shows) take place in our own world. A fantastical version of our world, sure, but ours nonetheless; for every talking raccoon, purple titan, and junkyard planet, there’s a Los Angeles mansion, a Queens tenement, and an Oakland basketball court. The idea is that, while the narratives feature costumed superheroes and magic weapons, the characters’ behaviors and desires remain rooted in recognizable human experience. Sokovia may not be a real county, but the Washington Monument is at least a real building.

What’s potentially interesting about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania—the third movie centering on Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly as the titular insects (he’s the ant, she’s the wasp), and the gazillionth 31st big-screen installment in the MCU’s history (not to mention the first of Phase Five, whatever that means)—is that the vast majority of its action doesn’t take place on Earth at all. It doesn’t take place in outer space either, or on any other faraway planet. It instead mostly transpires in the Quantum Realm, a microscopic land full of alien life forms, misshapen creatures, and animate vegetables. And so, unbound by the usual obligation to chain his fanciful hijinks to the deadweight of realism, the director Peyton Reed (working with the screenwriter Jeff Loveness) appears to have stumbled into the rarest of opportunities: the chance to a make a mass-market superhero movie that’s genuinely weird. Read More

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Fail to the King

Jeremy BeckReviews
Angela Bassett in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Can a Marvel movie be an underdog? Certainly not commercially; even before it smashed the November box office record with $181 million last weekend, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was guaranteed to make an enormous amount of money. But artistically, Ryan Coogler’s sequel faces a set of challenges that are atypical to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with its rigorous quality control and absurd phases and general regimentation. To begin with, his follow-up bears the weight of considerable expectations; in addition to banking $700 million—the third-highest of any film to that date (though it’s since been surpassed by Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Top Gun: Maverick)—the original Black Panther earned rave reviews and a rare sheen of prestige, racking up seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture!) and taking home three statuettes. But beyond that, Coogler is faced with an even graver dilemma: that of making a Black Panther movie without the Black Panther.

Chadwick Boseman’s death two years ago was tragic for many reasons, most of which have nothing to do with corporate profits or franchise continuity. But viewing it purely (and perhaps distastefully) in the context of the MCU, it placed Coogler in a no-win situation: He could either recast the role of King T’Challa, thereby inviting unsavory comparisons and risking the wrath of countless fans, or he could kill off a beloved character and bake his demise into the sequel’s plot. (The prospect of simply not making a follow-up at all is too ludicrous to contemplate.) He chose the latter approach, and in case you were somehow oblivious to Marvel’s marketing machine, he announces his decision straightaway; the cold open of Wakanda Forever finds T’Challa’s younger sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), frantically trying to wield her technological expertise to cure an unspecified illness, to no avail. Coogler stages this brisk prologue, which concludes with a mournful funeral procession, with the appropriate degree of sobriety—the shot of T’Challa’s coffin mystically ascending to an airborne vessel is heartrending, while the replacement of the standard Marvel logo (which typically affords glimpses of various MCU heroes) with exclusive footage of Boseman is a lovely touch—even as it shrouds the ensuing film in death. Read More

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Thor: Love and Thunder: Another Fray in Paradise

Jeremy BeckReviews
Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Love and Thunder

In opening narration that’s akin to the “Previously on” recap of a TV show, the blue rock-being Korg reminds viewers of Thor: Love and Thunder that Loki, the titular god’s brother, is dead; in fact, Thor has witnessed him die repeatedly. Death tends to be temporary in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—Loki’s own demise became the springboard for an ongoing streaming series—and as you watch this latest comic-book extravaganza from Taika Waititi, you may find yourself hoping for a miraculous resurrection, if only so the sly actor Tom Hiddleston might enliven the mechanized hullabaloo. You don’t get one, but the impish wit that was the god of mischief’s trademark still sometimes manages to shine through, penetrating the fog of stale plotting and monotonous fighting. Even if we’re collectively suffering from superhero fatigue (this represents the MCU’s 29th theatrical release), not everything here is old hat; for example, this is the first Marvel picture to feature a love triangle between a viking, a hammer, and an axe.

The axe, called Stormbreaker (“These weirdos all gotta have a name now”), is the jealous type; when it spies Thor (Chris Hemsworth, obviously) looking longingly at Mjölnir (the hammer, less obviously), it glides disapprovingly into frame, like a suspicious housewife who caught her husband peeking at his ex’s Instagram. Love and Thunder’s persistent insouciance can feel phony at times—a runner about the heroine workshopping a catchphrase is practically yanked from last year’s Free Guy (where Waititi had a small role)—but its smirking charm at least bears the stamp of genuine authorship. It is neither as funny nor as dynamic as its predecessor, the broadly appealing Ragnarok, but it nonetheless harnesses the same spirit of cheerful frivolity. Read More

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