Marvel Cinematic Universe

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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Doctor Strange: Do No Harm. Save the World.

Jeremy BeckReviews
Benedict Cumberbatch is a sorcerer in Marvel's "Doctor Strange"

Doctor Strange opens with a dizzying, disorienting sequence of eye-popping incredulity. Somewhere in a South Asian monastery, a man in a robe rips a few pages out of a heavy, important-looking book, then flees from a hooded figure. While running, the man waves his hands and opens a portal to a different continent, and the action suddenly shifts to a brightly lit European metropolis. There, rather than engaging in hand-to-hand fighting, the combatants somehow will objects into motion, and their very surroundings—the buildings, the pavement, the sky itself—seem to twist and contort around them. When I watched this scene, I had absolutely no idea what was happening; now, having seen the entire film, my understanding is only marginally improved. Yet while I was (and remain) clueless, I was nevertheless riveted by the sheer vigor of the filmmaking, the visual dynamism and formal audacity. The ability to induce this sensation—a feeling of awestruck confusion and slack-jawed wonder—is the greatest achievement of Doctor Strange. It may not make a lick of sense—the more it attempts to clarify itself, the more tedious it becomes—but damn is it cool.

Eventually, anyway. Setting aside its discombobulating prologue, the opening act of Doctor Strange functions as a reliably formulaic superhero origin story. Its protagonist, Stephen Strange, is a supercilious New York neurosurgeon, the kind of only-in-the-movies doctor who routinely performs impossible procedures with unmatched skill and unflappable calm. He is as callous as he is capable, and while he may be a medical genius, he’s something of a social misfit; it’s almost as if Sherlock Holmes has swapped out his pipe and deerstalker cap for a surgical mask and gloves. That impression, of course, is hardly coincidental: Strange is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, the immensely talented English actor who first wriggled his way into most viewers’ hearts as the titular detective on the BBC’s Sherlock. Here, he’s just as smart but even more disdainful. When he pauses during a particularly perilous operation to tell a subordinate to stifle his wristwatch (because its ticking second-hand is interfering with his concentration), you can taste the haughty intelligence dripping off him. Read More

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Captain America: Civil War—Dissension in the Superhero Ranks

Jeremy BeckReviews
A host of heroes charges the field in "Captain America: Civil War"

Early in Captain America: Civil War, a character called Vision (Paul Bettany) muses on his brethren’s tendency to antagonize. “Conflict breeds catastrophe,” he gloomily intones. Maybe so. But at the movies, conflict is the engine of drama. Yet while the Marvel Cinematic Universe comprises films that feature plenty of fighting, they’re largely lacking in genuine excitement. The Avengers sequel had its Whedonesque charms, but it ultimately amounted to a bunch of costumed warriors trading blows with an army of faceless flying robots. Ditto for Iron Man 3, except there, the robots were the good guys. Ant-Man was fitfully funny, but it was still an absurd movie about a dude who talked to bugs. Thor? Please.

The recent exception to this institutional lethargy—setting aside the terrific Guardians of the Galaxy, which was literally a universe removed from the rest of the MCU—was Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, it was less a superhero movie than a paranoid thriller, and its stripped-down quality lent it a rare spark of intrigue. Now the Russos are back with Civil War, a far more unwieldy but no less thoughtful superhero extravaganza. Like all Marvel movies, it’s large and loud, with special effects and action sequences galore, but it nonetheless feels rooted in its characters rather than its gee-whiz battle scenes. Every comic-book film has combat; Civil War has actual conflict. Read More

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Ant-Man: For This Superhero, It’s Go Small or Go Home

Jeremy BeckReviews
Paul Rudd brings his bemused charm to "Ant-Man"

Given that it’s a movie about a man who turns into a bug, it’s only fitting that Ant-Man feels small. That is part criticism, part compliment. Ant-Man is not especially memorable; it does not dazzle like The Avengers, nor does it charm like Guardians of the Galaxy. But in an age where bloated superhero franchises buckle under the weight of obligation and fan service, it’s almost refreshing that Ant-Man—the concluding chapter in Phase Two of the scrupulously planned Marvel Cinematic Universe—feels so cheerfully trivial. Sure, Tony Stark’s dad shows up in the prologue, and the post-credits stinger ties it in with next year’s Captain America offering, but for the most part, this is a minor movie about a down-on-his-luck dad trying to get a job so he can pay child support and see his daughter. It is not exactly the stuff of legends, but there is valor in its modesty.

And in its lightness. Ant-Man benefits from a relaxed, nonthreatening tone that makes it feel less like a superhero adventure than a hangout flick. That begins with its casting of Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, a reformed thief trying to make it on the straight-and-narrow. Rudd has never displayed great range as an actor, but he’s developed into a quasi-superstar through sheer affability, not to mention a gift for bemused reaction shots. His presence lends the film a laidback vibe that it mostly embraces, which helps deflect the absurdity of its plot and the stupidity of its pseudo-science. Read More

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