Superheroes

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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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Have Hag, Will Travel

Jeremy BeckReviews
Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

In one of the many memorable moments in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, an enraged Willem Dafoe murders a subordinate scientist who stubbornly insists that they need to take a dangerous chemical concoction “back to formula.” Things may not have turned out well for that underling, but in the two decades since Spider-Man’s release, it’s clear that his cold-blooded logic—the insistence on safety and reliability at the expense of risk and creativity—has earned the last laugh. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, now 14 years and 28 films and several zillion dollars into its reign as the planet’s most ruthless profit-generating machine, is undeniably a product of formula. It is a carefully balanced equation, a recursive system scrupulously designed to serve its fans, perpetuate its merchandise, and—on occasion—make some pretty decent movies. The challenge for any director working within this rigorously controlled franchise is whether they can smuggle their own sensibility—their own spiky and distinctive flourishes—into an enterprise that, by its very nature, flattens personal art into corporate entertainment.

So I am pleased and maybe a little bit to surprised to report that Raimi, the man who created the original Spider-Man trilogy and is arguably (albeit inadvertently) responsible for our current state of cinematic homogeneity, has risen to this challenge with élan and aplomb. To be sure, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Raimi’s first feature in nine long years, is decidedly an MCU production. There are callbacks and cameos and teases and terminological mouthfuls and stale jokes and weightless scenes of computer-generated spectacle. But when he isn’t dutifully hitting these franchise marks, Raimi is sprinkling the margins and filling in the cracks with his own playful, eccentric touches. If the movie isn’t quite a Sam Raimi classic, it at least exhibits glimmers of classic Sam Raimi. Read More

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The Batman: A Dark Blight Rises

Jeremy BeckReviews
Robert Pattinson and Jeffrey Wright in The Batman

Who’s the big bad of The Batman? Modern superhero movies can scarcely subsist on just one antagonist, and this latest take on Gotham City’s caped crusader—directed with spirit and smarts by Matt Reeves, from a script he wrote with Peter Craig—piles on the villains the way his makeup artists slather prosthetics onto Colin Farrell’s face. Farrell, as it happens, plays the Penguin, but while his mannerisms seem to echo Robert de Niro’s work as Al Capone in The Untouchables, he’s hardly the film’s apex predator, instead operating as a mid-level mobster with women to leer at and masters to serve. One of those masters is Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), a slippery mafia don who’s too shallow and profit-oriented to fill the role of comic-book megalomaniac. It surely can’t be Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), a waitress at Penguin’s sleazy nightclub who possesses several feline pets, some calf-high boots, and a knack for cracking safes; she may be Catwoman, but she’s not a madman. The most logical candidate is the Riddler, portrayed here by Paul Dano as a disturbed and disturbing serial killer who knows how to wield blunt instruments and a grudge. He’s a bad dude, no question, but The Batman has the nerve to suggest that his dastardly schemes are merely symptomatic—the inevitable consequence of a more pernicious evil. What if, the movie asks, the real villain is you?

Well, not you you; if you’re reading film criticism online, you’re surely more cultured than the particular brand of troglodytic malcontent that this movie places in its surprisingly topical crosshairs. The Batman posits, with unnerving fluency, that some of the creeps who swarm your social-media mentions are more inclined to blow up a theater than attend one. Remember the gun-toting monster who murdered 12 people and injured 70 others at a midnight showing of 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises? This time around, he might as well be a character. Read More

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Spider-Man: No Way Home: Once, Twice, Three Times a Spidey

Jeremy BeckReviews
Zendaya and a masked Tom Holland in Spider-Man: No Way Home

The twin cornerstones of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (not to be confused with the six infinity stones) are fan service and self-reference. Fan service, in that the primary purpose of these movies is satisfaction—not telling satisfying stories, but catering to their audience’s collective wants. And self-reference, in that the most efficient method of achieving this goal is to cram each picture with copious easter eggs, cameos, and callbacks, the better to flatter viewers’ knowledge and inspire periodic bursts of applause. The point of new installments is to remind people of older ones. The MCU is arguably the most successful global franchise in the history of popular culture, and its success derives from how it operates as a cumulative series of homework assignments.

So it’s fitting that Spider-Man: No Way Home—the third entry to center on Peter Parker, everyone’s favorite science nerd turned friendly webslinger, and the whopping 27th episode of the MCU overall (with another half-dozen films slated for theatrical release over the next two years)—finds its hero applying to college. (Never mind that Tom Holland, the talented British actor who again plays Peter with an appealing combination of gawkiness and sincerity, turned 25 this past summer; proper aging is the least of Marvel’s continuity concerns.) Sure, the movie that bears him carries the hallmarks of modern fantasy: warped spells, fractured universes, toppled buildings, freighted battles. But it is first and foremost a history lesson—a crash course in Spider-Man lore designed to reward viewers for their continued attention and scrupulous studying. If the past two decades of comic-book cinema were the substance of the curriculum, No Way Home is the refreshingly easy final exam. Read More

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