Marvel Cinematic Universe

Avengers: Infinity War: Everybody Must Get Stones

Jeremy BeckReviews
Benedict Wong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. in "Avengers: Infinity War"

Vaulting through the interplanetary air, sticky webs shooting from his genetically altered wrists, Spider-Man issues a sincere apology. “I’m sorry,” he says to his plummeting compatriots as he slings gobs of gummy goo at them, yanking them out of their falls and saving them from certain death. “I can’t remember anyone’s names.”

Can you blame him? The nineteenth official installment in the gargantuan compendium known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Infinity War arrives as the ultimate crossover event, a superhero greatest-hits collection most notable for its sheer tonnage. No fewer than eight major characters here have already headlined their own standalone films, while countless others—all played by recognizable actors—have carved out sizable territory as villains, foils, squeezes, and sidekicks. The closing credits sequence alone feels like a breathless roll call, cramming as many high-profile names above the fold as possible, just so nobody’s agent complains about their client getting the shaft. Read More

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Black Panther: With Great Power Comes Great Villainy

Jeremy BeckReviews
Lupita Nyong'o, Chadwick Boseman, and Danai Gurira in "Black Panther"

Early in Black Panther, Ryan Coogler’s bold and thorny new film that is the eighteenth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the titular hero asks his young sister, Shuri, why she’s bothering to upgrade an already elegant technological system. Shuri—played by an impish, scene-stealing Letitia Wright—responds with huffy wisdom: “Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.” The MCU has its faults—low-stakes storytelling, visual sameness, an exponentially swelling character base—but as mega-franchises go, it’s pretty good, churning out suitably entertaining products that are typically funny, professionally made, and well-acted. What’s gratifying about Black Panther is the way it operates within the MCU’s preestablished confines (the groaning Stan Lee cameo, the post-credits scenes) while simultaneously seeking to push beyond them. In raw terms, it isn’t the MCU’s best movie—its hero is too bland, its story too busy—but it may be its most interesting. And in an era where carefully packaged formula rules the cinematic roost, an interesting superhero movie is something to savor.

It also helps dispel the myth that personal filmmaking and corporate oversight are somehow incompatible. With Black Panther, Coogler continues to tackle the themes of racial strife, familial loyalty, and youthful conflict that animated his previous features, the heartfelt docudrama Fruitvale Station and the boisterous boxing picture Creed. But he has also made—and I mean this sincerely rather than pejoratively—a comic-book movie, complete with bright colors, complex mythology, and CGI-inflected rumbles. His estimable achievement is to weave these elements into a cohesive vision. Black Panther is packed with excitement and ideas, but it never feels choppy or overstuffed. Read More

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Thor: Ragnarok: God of Thunder, Bringer of Rain, Cracker of Jokes

Jeremy BeckReviews
Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston smirk and squabble in "Thor: Ragnarok"

Midway through Thor: Ragnarok, a creature called Korg—a soft-spoken gladiator whose body is composed entirely of lumpy blue rocks—informs the God of Thunder that the planet they’re currently inhabiting doesn’t really make sense. It may not be coincidental that Korg is voiced by Taika Waititi, the film’s director and impish guiding spirit. A New Zealand native best known for his fanciful comedies (What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople), Waititi may not seem an intuitive choice to helm Ragnarok, the third Thor-centric feature and the seventeenth(!) installment in the corporatized mushroom cloud that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yet Waititi’s gift of whimsy proves perfectly suited for the MCU, thanks to a deceptively similar set of priorities. The Marvel movies, for all their lumbering technological clamor, have typically been better at dialogue and character than at action and story, and Waititi embraces that hierarchy with energy and savvy. He realizes that, if you’re going to make a senseless comic-book movie, you might as well make it fun.

And make no mistake: This movie is senseless. Perhaps comic-book aficionados can assemble its random artifacts and fantastical esoterica—fire demons and bi-frosts, eternal flames and infinity stones, cryptic prophecies and resurrected skeletons—into an intelligible map, but even an intimate understanding of Marvel mythology cannot provide Ragnarok with any narrative logic. Nor can it instill any legitimate stakes or tension into a product that is, in broad strokes, entirely predictable. (Given Marvel’s commitment to the perpetual expansion of its sequel-happy universe, it is hardly a spoiler to declare that no Avengers were harmed in the making of this film.) But unlike the first two Thor pictures—which felt leaden and lifeless, weighed down by their ostensible otherworldliness—Ragnarok seizes on its own silliness. When it comes to enjoying this frolicsome, jokey adventure, the plot’s lack of relevance proves irrelevant. Read More

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Spider-Man: Homecoming: Local Schoolboy, Coming of Avenging Age

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Holland is the new Peter Parker in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"

Both Peter Parker and Spider-Man are great movie characters, albeit for different reasons. Peter’s appeal is one of drama and narrative; ignore the whole vigilante crime-fighting thing, and he’s the perfect embodiment of nerdy boyhood angst, a decent kid juggling the all-too-familiar teenage problems of school, work, and girls. But Spider-Man’s allure is distinctly cinematic. His particular abilities—the way he springs from one edifice to the next, the way his sticky webs lend his movements physicality and coherence—are uniquely suited to visualized heroism. When Peter struggles to muster the courage to ask a crush to a dance, you can empathize with how he’s feeling. When Spider-Man strains to yank two halves of a splintering barge back together, you can understand and anticipate what he’s actually doing.

Perhaps this blend of thoughtful characterization and dynamic action explains why Spider-Man: Homecoming is Sony’s sixth title to feature Spidey in the last 15 years. Or maybe the studio just likes making money. In any event, Homecoming cannily capitalizes on its hero’s twofold potential, even if it falls short of genuine triumph on both fronts. The gold standard for Spider-Man movies—and for all superhero movies, for that matter (hell, maybe for all movies, period)—remains Spider-Man 2, Sam Raimi’s transcendent fusion of bold adventure and plaintive desire. This ain’t that. But Homecoming, which was directed by relative newcomer Jon Watts from a script by a bevy of writers, is at least a quality effort, a spirited quasi-reboot that captures its hero’s quintessential pluck and delivers a few moments of exhilarating web-based suspense. Read More

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Saving the World, One Wisecrack at a Time

Jeremy BeckReviews
Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, and Chris Pratt in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"

In the middle of the hectic opening set piece of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, the green-skinned alien Gamora reproaches two of her squabbling colleagues: “Can we put the bickering on hold till after we survive the massive space battle?” It’s a sensible request that comes from the troupe’s most sensible member, but at the risk of mansplaining (human-splaining?), allow me to point out the flaw in Gamora’s logic. Whereas the typical superhero extravaganza centers on its high-octane action sequences, the first Guardians of the Galaxy made its mark by inverting the formula; it emphasized writing and character, pushing its passable pyrotechnics into the background. With this franchise, the bickering isn’t ornamental—it’s the main attraction.

That canny focal adjustment made the original Guardians a welcome antidote, a rejuvenating tonic that helped offset the fatigue brought on by the glut of superhero pictures constantly invading the American multiplex. The challenge now facing James Gunn, returning as both writer and director, is how to reconcile the bracing freshness of the first installment with the rigid demands of the cinematic universe. The standard operating procedure for comic-book sequels is simply to take what worked the first time around, then blow it up to even greater dimensions, but spunky originality isn’t so easily amenable to magnification. How do you bottle lightning twice? Read More

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