Superheroes

Shazam!: Lightning Crashes, a New Hero Rises

Jeremy BeckReviews
Zachary Levi in "Shazam!"

It’s been 14 years since Christopher Nolan made Batman Begins and changed superhero movies forever, ushering in an era of brooding protagonists, muted palettes, and weighty themes. Some of these solemn productions have been quite good, but in the wake of a glut of similarly aimed films that copied the darkness of the Nolan template but failed to capture its richness of character (to say nothing of the Briton’s spectacular execution), many comic-book fans have clamored for a return to lighter, more refreshing fare. Zooming into this void like a caped comet comes Shazam!, which may technically reside in the notoriously grim DC Extended Universe, but which really positions itself as just this sort of antidote, a bright and cheery corrective to the glum macho posturing of movies like Batman v Superman.

And if that’s all you care about, then this silly movie will surely satisfy you. Directed by David F. Sandberg from a screenplay by Henry Gayden, Shazam! is almost defiantly childish, and its goofball vibe can be disarming as well as irritating. But if you care about more than the film’s tonal blueprint—if, for example, you concern yourself with matters of writing, pacing, and action—then you are less likely to be amused. Shazam!’s commitment to lightness is laudable, but it seems to have confused being amiable with being, you know, good. Read More

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Captain Marvel: Blasting Into the Past, with a Feminine Touch

Jeremy BeckReviews
Brie Larson travels back to the '90s in "Captain Marvel".

Trawling through the visualized memories of a warrior captive who’s suspended upside-down via electromagnets, the interrogator becomes baffled by the shapelessness of what he’s seeing. “Is anyone else confused?” asks Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), a member of a green-skinned, shape-shifting extraterrestrial species called the Skrulls. It’s a question that would ordinarily carry a meta charge; after all, this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe we’re talking about, that ginormous, globally branded franchise which has grown so sprawling, even those weaned on comics can barely navigate it without a map. Yet one of the satisfying things about Captain Marvel, the 21st and decidedly not-bad entry in the MCU proper, is that you don’t need to possess a doctorate in comic-book lore to appreciate its familiar origin-story rhythms. This isn’t to say that the movie skimps on fantastical elements or idiosyncratic detail; there are intergalactic wars, levitating soldiers, enigmatic androids, photon blasters, aptitude suppressors, and countless shots of characters manipulating or absorbing beams of glowing blue energy. But that’s all souped-up window dressing. At its core, Captain Marvel is about a hero grappling with her powers and struggling to claim her identity.

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck from a script they wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Captain Marvel’s relative streamlining comes as something of a reprieve following the overstuffed Avengers: Infinity War. Where that bulky behemoth crammed countless characters and subplots into its 160-minute running time, this movie feels positively slender, with a refreshing clarity of focus. Sure, the obligatory mid-credits scene necessarily links what you just watched to the broader narrative of the MCU—a narrative that will theoretically conclude (ha!) next month with Avengers: Endgame—but otherwise, Boden and Fleck’s film features a welcome lack of duty-bound integration. Blessedly, Captain Marvel is about Captain Marvel. Read More

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Glass: The Supervillains Are Running the Asylum

Jeremy BeckReviews
Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy, and Bruce Willis in M. Night Shyamalan's "Glass".

One of the main characters of M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass suffers from dissociative identity disorder. That illness is not shared by its director. Shyamalan may have his flaws, but he wields his camera with a confidence, a sense of self, that’s unusual in the Hollywood studio system. Good thing, too, because when reduced to its building blocks, Glass is a ridiculous movie, a bizarrely plotted thriller that makes astonishingly little sense. Yet it also flaunts a genuine personality, along with an exhilarating degree of style, that elevate it comfortably above its stupidity. There’s a school of critics who insist that Shyamalan should stop penning his own screenplays, arguing that his shaky writing hampers his gifts as a director. Maybe that’s true, but consider the flip side: How many other filmmakers could have taken this script and turned it into something so effortlessly, indecently entertaining?

An ungainly, tantalizing hybrid of two superior genre movies, Glass positions itself as the climax of a suddenly uncovered cinematic universe. Way back in 2000, Unbreakable—still Shyamalan’s best film—followed the uneasy partnership between David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), with the latter insistently tugging at the former to accept his destiny as a real-life superhero. Separately, Split followed the murderous exploits of Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a Sybil-like serial killer who occasionally transformed into a savage, animal-like entity called The Beast. Shyamalan is often accused of repeating himself, but these two movies weren’t remotely alike in terms of either plot or tone; Unbreakable was a powerful study of obsession, confusion, and self-discovery, whereas Split was a hammy, razor-sharp, predator-versus-prey thriller. Yet the (admittedly delightful) stinger of Split revealed that it in fact occupied the same world as Unbreakable, and from those still-glowing ashes, Glass was born. Read More

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Holiday Gift Bag: Aquaman

Jeremy BeckReviews
Amber Heard and Jason Momoa in "Aquaman"

Aquaman is a fun superhero movie. That is a significant achievement. To be clear, I don’t subscribe to the ideology that modern superheroes are too dark; I admire the solemn gravity of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films, the melancholic humanity of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man pictures, and even the interplanetary terrorism of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it’s important to remember that Hollywood’s current (and seemingly inexhaustible) superhero franchise churn stemmed from kids geeking out over comics and playing with toys. Aquaman, directed with energy and vibrancy by James Wan, pays tribute to that spirit of youthful exuberance. It’s a movie about a big merman searching for a giant fork, and it’s a blast. Read More

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Still Small, But with Big Upgrades

Jeremy BeckReviews
Evangeline Lilly and Paul Rudd in Marvel's "Ant-Man and the Wasp"

When we last left the Marvel Cinematic Universe (all of two months ago!), its foundations had been shaken to their cosmic core. The ending of Avengers: Infinity War carried with it cataclysmic consequences for virtually every member of the MCU, though noticeably absent (or maybe not that noticeably) was Scott Lang, the affable thief better known in comic-book lore as Ant-Man. Perhaps he was busy promoting his own movie. Regardless, in light of Infinity War’s devastating conclusion, it was fair to wonder if Ant-Man and the Wasp—the sequel to the passably entertaining, entirely unmemorable Ant-Man—would feel trivial by comparison. In one sense, it does; after all, no galaxies are threatened in this film, whose kill count is in the single digits rather than the billions. But in another, more important sense, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a significant achievement, because it features a key quality that Infinity War largely lacked. Quite simply: It’s fun.

I don’t want to frame Ant-Man and the Wasp as the antithesis of Infinity War, because it’s still a Marvel movie, with all of the pleasures and obligations that entails. (You’ll never believe this, but Stan Lee has a cameo.) But the differences between the two are nevertheless noteworthy. Where the third official Avengers crossover was absolutely massive—a sprawling undertaking that spanned multiple planets and comprised several dozen heroes and villains—this bug-centric sequel feels insular, with a narrow focus that spares only a handful of glances toward the broader MCU. (Most notable of these is the mid-credits stinger, which elicited gasps at my screening.) And where the tone of Infinity War was grave to the point of lugubriousness, Ant-Man and the Wasp is breezy and jovial. Nobody here is worried about saving the world; they just want to spend time with their families. Read More

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