Riding the Zeitgeist: A Review of K-Pop Demon Hunters

 directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans

written by Danya Jimenez, Hanna McMechan, Kang and Applehans

In a cinematic landscape dominated by Intellectual Property of one sort or another, be it derived from books, comic books, video games, or even old movies, it truly is refreshing to see a new property truly take off, which what the new animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters, has managed to do since it dropped on Netflix over two months ago. A completely original film (with a kind of regrettable title that sounds like they never moved past the concept stage), this film give American animation a shot in the arm it has needed since original properties from studio giants like Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks have all been faltering.

As the title states, K-Pop Demon Hunters is the story of a group of K-Pop singers named Huntr/x, who, by day are a hugely popular music group, but by night, hunt and kill demons. The three girls Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong) and Zoey (Ji-yong Yoo) are actually continuing a tradition that's hundreds of years old, of three women fighting demons with not only martial arts skill but with the power of song. It is through this song that they maintain the Honmoon, a magical barrier between the Earth and the Demon's world that helps keep them at bay. The demons aren't easy to keep out, however, especially considering that their boss, Gwi Ma (Lee Byung Hun) hungers for souls to consume, which is why Huntr/x seek, through their music, to create the Golden Honmoon, which will bar demons from entering the world completely.  The demons, however, may just have an ace up their sleeve in the form of Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop) a handsome singer of a demon who hatches a bold plan; to fight the singing demon hunters with a band of their own. Meanwhile, things get complicated when Rumi's normally golden singing voice starts to falter on her, which may or may not have something to do with a dark secret she's been keeping from her friends. Will they be able to seal the Golden Honmoon in time to stop Gwi Ma?

Given the success of their giant-killing, Oscar-winning smash hit Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it's gratifying to seen that Sony Pictures Animation hasn't just leaned on existing IP to keep their slate running.  While the worldwide popularity of K-Pop may have made this movie seem like an obvious choice to make, it was still a risk to make something so culturally specific, and yet this risk appears to have paid off in dividends.

To my mind, what makes the movie work is its accessibility to non-K-Pop fans. The story lets us "normies" in on the ground floor, and even though there are undoubtedly plenty of Korean of K-Pop references that fly over our heads, the filmmakers give us characters that are somehow both ultra cool and relatable at the same time. It helps that both the animation and the voice acting does a sterling job of bringing these characters to life.

Now, I'm still not a fan of K-Pop music, but I appreciate how it propelled this movie forward in a catchy, earworm sort of way. This is the kind of thing that will eventually date this movie, I suppose, but it is definitely good fun, which to my mind is something the other big studios seem to have forgotten about. 

 This is easily worth the 100 minutes or so that it will take to sit down in front of one's TV and tune into Netflix. Well done!

9/10

Who Needs Origins Anyway? (Spoilers for Superman 2025 and Fantastic Four: First Steps)

 There's something I've observed about the last couple of comic-book based movies that I've watched that I've actually found somewhat refreshing; they appear to have done away with origin stories.  James Gunn's Superman threw us right in the thick of the action right after a few lines of text told us about how Superman came to Earth, and Matt Shakman's Fantastic Four: First Steps introduced Marvel's first family through a quick, Ed-Sullivan-show like montage depicting their beginnings in less than five minutes before diving straight into the story.  

Having seen nearly every movie based on a Marvel Comics character in theaters and having seen most movies featuring Superman and Batman in one medium or another I have to say it is refreshing to not have to sit through origin stories again. I don't know who said it first but like that person, I do not have to see Thomas and Martha Wayne get shot by a mugger to that Bruce Wayne gets inspired to fight crime as a  giant bat, nor do I have to see Uncle Ben die again so that Peter Parker learns about great power and greater responsibility. I don't have to see Jor-El sent Superman hurtling off a dying planet again, and I don't need to see Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm take a radiation bath again in order to get incredible powers.   

Dispensing with the origin means getting to explore the characters in different ways, and avoiding the slow burn that usually comes with the main characters going from ordinary to extraordinary. It also challenges the writers to find ways to make life miserable for the main characters even though their hero's journey has already been established. 

Marvel kind of did this first when Spider-Man showed up in Captain America: Civil War with super powers and a pre-offed Uncle Ben.  Eventually, the MCU trilogy provided him an origin story of sorts when it killed off Aunt May but I feel that the main reason Uncle Ben never showed up was that Marvel had shrewdly decided not to waste time telling that story again, and it's a lesson that James Gunn took with him to DC, and which Matt Shakman learned well enough to incorporate it into his hit movie.

Neither Marvel nor DC will get away with this when launching new characters, of course, but given that they will undoubtedly be dipping into the well of their marquee superheroes for many years to come, complete with the occasional reboot, it's gratifying to know that they no longer consider origin stories a non-negotiable in storytelling.  

Honoring Lee and Kirby as They Deserve: A Review of Fantastic Four: First Steps

 directed by Matt Shakman

written by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer

When Marvel sold off its various intellectual properties to stave off bankruptcy in the 1990s, one of the bigger casualties was the property that had kicked off the Marvel Age of comics back in 1961, the Fantastic Four.  Whereas other key properties like the X-Men and Spider-Man had their big screen breakthroughs in the early 2000s, Marvel's first family stumbled out of the gate with a film that was reasonably entertaining but notably less well-made than its contemporaries, followed up by a sequel that was more of the same, but which didn't make enough money to justify a continuation of the franchise. The worst was yet to come for Marvel's premier team when in 2015, back when the Marvel Cinematic Universe had already been launched and was going from strength to strength, rights-holders Twentieth Century Fox made the disastrous Fant4stic, a reboot of the franchise that was so infamously terrible it was only the second ever comic-book property to take home the dreaded Golden Raspberry Award or Razzie for worst picture. 

Ten years after that debacle, Walt Disney now owns Twentieth Century Studios, and as a result, Marvel Studios has finally gotten to take its own crack at its maiden superteam with Fantastic Four: First Steps.

 The movie kicks off in the 1960s, in Earth 828, which is a universe quite distinct from the Earth-616 in which the mainstream Marvel Cinematic Universe is set. The Fantastic Four, namely Mister Fantastic/Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), his wife the Invisible Woman/Susan Storm (Vanessa Kirby), her brother the Human Torch/Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and their friend the Thing/Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), have been operating as a superhero team for four years, having gained their powers from cosmic radiation that struck them on a journey to space. They've been using their powers to fight crime and other threats to the world, and as a result, they are widely beloved.  As the film begins, they are about to welcome a brand new member to the family when they find out that Susan is pregnant.  However, their entire world is shaken to the core with the arrival of a mysterious silver alien (Julia Garner) who arrives on what appears to be a flying surfboard, who tells them that Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds (Ralph Ineson) will soon arrive to consume their world. Not about to take an existential threat lying down, the quartet head off into deep space to meet Galactus, only to find a threat unlike any they've ever faced before. 

Like DC Studios did with James Gunn's Superman, Marvel mostly dispenses with the team's origin story, recapping it in a five-minute sequence reminiscent of the very first page of a comic book, and dives straight into the action. The story is simple and straightforward, and the film is briskly-paced. The four actors who portray Marvel's most famous foursome have such wonderful chemistry together that it's easy to believe that they're a family.  They're all accomplished actors in their own right but group chemistry isn't always the easiest to manage, and yet their collective performance is pitch-perfect.  The villain Galactus is less a bad guy than he is a force of nature in this film, and Julia Garner acquits herself well as Shalla Bal, this universe's iteration of Galactus' herald, the Silver Surfer. While people may grumble that she's serving as the herald and not Norrin Radd, the better-known version of the Silver Surfer from the comic books and the previous films, she gets far less screen time and character development than the last iteration of the Surfer did, so I really didn't have a problem with the change. Ralph Ineson certainly is an upgrade from the giant cloud we got as Galactus in the 2007 FF sequel.  Incidentally, I really liked how they handled Johnny Storm's character, which ultimately played a significant part in how the film was resolved.  It was a nice bit of writing, helped along by some effective acting from Joseph Quinn that showed that there's more to the character than chasing skirt and driving around in fast cars.  

Shakman gets the most important ingredients right; he extracts sincere, effective performances from his leads, and tells a clear and engaging story, but he also gets the big, bombastic stuff right, too. The action sequences have their own distinct energy to them; they're well-staged and not shrouded in darkness or nighttime, a usual cheat resorted to in visual-effects-heavy films. Another thing worth noting about the film is the decidedly bright color palette. After years of having to endure mostly washed-out colors that facilitated last-minute changes to special effects, it was refreshing to see a Marvel film confident enough to show its effects in broad daylight for a good chunk of the film. The space sequences were also staged quite impressively as well, though not quite on the level of the best that the Guardians of the Galaxy films has to offer.  This truly fills me with hope that Marvel will be able to tackle more of the FF's otherworldly foes like Annihilus, the Impossible Man, and the Skrulls. Yes, the Skrulls, whom the MCU has embarrassingly fumbled since debuting them in 2019's Captain Marvel, deserve a proper onscreen portrayal.  The CG effects that turned Ben Grimm into the Thing were basically flawless, and while I've never had a problem with the visual effects depicting the Human Torch, even in the older movies, he looked great here, as did Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman.  

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my absolute favorite part of this movie, and it was the soaring, utterly heroic and instantly iconic music score from Oscar-winning  composer Michael Giacchino.  This is already the fourth Marvel Cinematic Universe film franchise to which Giacchino has contributed music after the first Doctor Strange film, the MCU Spider-Man trilogy, and the fourth Thor movie, but to my mind, his work here easily surpasses anything he's done for the MCU before, and I'd argue it's among the very best music that's ever been composed for a Marvel film, including gems like Alan Silvestri's score for Avengers and Ludwig Goransson's Oscar-winning score for Black Panther. 

I liked Marvel's last offering before this, the dark and somber Thunderbolts about as much as I liked this, but there's something I really appreciate about a bright and hopeful movie like this. Alongside Superman, this film really is one of my highlights of the summer movie season of 2025.  

8.5/10

The Movie the OG Superhero Deserves is Finally Here: A Review of Superman (2025)

written and directed by James Gunn

I may be a Marvel guy through and through, but there are a couple of things that had me very eagerly anticipating the new Superman film written and directed by Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. The first one, quite simply, was that the trailer looked spectacular and promised a very exciting time at the movies. The second was that I had virtually complete trust in Gunn based on his track record of making superhero-related films; the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy was just about the best resume that anyone could have brought along.  The third one was that this movie, based on everything I had seen and read about it, seemed very happy to embrace its comic-book roots, and not pretend to be something that the character clearly was not.

The film, breaks away from both the continuity established by the original, 1978 Superman film, which Bryan Singer actually attempted to continue with his disastrous 2006 sequel Superman Returns, and from the DC Extended Universe that was kicked off by Zack Snyder in 2013's Man of Steel.  

For this film, Gunn dispenses with telling his own version of Superman's origin story and drops us viewers right into the action. Metahumans have been on this version of earth for over 300 years, and Superman, aka Clark Kent (David Corenswet), from the doomed planet Krypton, is the most powerful of them all. He has sworn to be a force for good, because he believes that this was the reason his parents Jor-El (Bradley Cooper) and Lara Lor-Van (Angela Sarafryan) sent him to Earth, though most of the time he pretends to be a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet alongside his colleagues Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) among others.  Unfortunately, billionaire Lex Luther (Nicholas Hoult does not appreciate Superman's efforts at all and, clouded by hate and envy wants to destroy him once and for all, and when he discovers a startling bit of information about Superman he might be able to do exactly that.  

I'll get straight to it: I loved this movie through and through. It was entertaining, moving and wonderfully-paced. The writing was topnotch; whatever the film's flaws may have been, writer-director James Gunn clearly gets what it is about Superman that makes him such an enduring part of our pop culture: his humanity and compassion.  Corenswet, was pitch perfect in this role, as were his castmates Brosnahan and Gisondo, as well as his fellow metahumans, the Justice Gang composed of Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) and Hawkgirl (Isabel Merced).  Special mention should also go to Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor who manages to make the guy evil as all heck but crazily charismatic at the same time. It's quite a feat.

Gunn brings out the very best out of not just his actors but his effects crews as the film's visuals are simply stunning, in a way no Marvel movie has been for years. Gunn really is an old-hand at these visual effects-driven extravaganzas, and he turns in some of his absolute best work here.

9/10 

Off to the Races! A Review of F1: The Movie

 directed by Joseph Kosinski

written by Ehren Kruger and Kosinski

Slight disclaimer: I had low expectations for F1: the Movie, for two main reasons, the first being that the lead character was played by a sixty-one year old man, and the second being the apparent enthusiasm of F1 management for the content of the film. I get that FOM had to buy in to the movie for it to get made, but it makes me uncomfortable sometimes when the subject of a film embraces it a little too enthusiastically.

Fortunately, F1 far exceeded my humble expectations for it, delivering a genuinely memorable viewing experience and arguably the best car racing movie since 2019's dynamite Ford vs. Ferrari.  

Racecar driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) once a rising star in Formula One in the 1990s whose F1 career was cut short by a horrific accident, has spent the last three decades driving in a variety of different racing series all over the world, living out of his van and driving from one race to the next.  One day, however, an old teammate of his, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) tracks him down after he has just won at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and makes him an offer he cannot refuse: a chance to drive in F1 again. Ruben owns a team, APX GP, that has spent the last three years at the back of the grid, without scoring a single point.  It's midway through the season and Ruben is desperate for results, or else the board of directors will sell the team.  He's got a talented but arrogant rookie Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) driving one of his team's two cars, but the other seat has just been vacated by a driver jumping ship.  Sonny refuses at first, but then realizes that he has unfinished business with F1 and takes the plane to England. 

From there, he finds himself thrown back in the deep end, clashing egos with Pearce and butting heads with his new bosses, Team Principal Kim Bodnia (Kaspar Smolinski) and Technical Director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and of course, having to face off against 20 of the most talented racecar drivers on the planet. Will Sonny and Joshua be able to put aside their differences and work together long enough to get the team the results needed to keep it from getting sold off and scrapped?

Chances are if you've seen a sports movie with plucky underdogs as the heroes, you've seen everything this film has to offer, story-wise.  Director and co-writer Joseph Kosinski doesn't seek to break any new ground here, and none is broken. Fortunately, though, he fills his cast with capable actors who deliver solid performances and have good chemistry together. Brad Pitt has been touted by several reviewers as having a crazy charisma that sells the movie, regardless of how improbable it is that someone his age would be allowed to race a Formula One car in any kind of competitive capacity, and while I'm inclined to agree to an extent, I also think it helps that his other cast-mates are up to the task of selling this somewhat absurd fantasy as well, which is about as believable as a superhero movie when one really thinks about it. In particular Pitt and Bardem have a great chemistry together as former teammates turned driver and team owner and they effectively convey the notion that they have history together, even though the script lets them down a bit at a key point in the film.

Honestly, the less said about the script, the better.  The attempt to sell the reasons for why a fifty-something would even be considered for a driving seat, complete with the obligatory tragic backstory, was heroic but still chuckle-inducing, almost as much as the "built for combat" line that featured heavily in the marketing.  Fortunately, like I said, even the very worst dialogue and story contrivances were mostly masked by some really winning performances from the whole cast. 

Charming performances however, would mean nothing if Kosinski and his crew didn't get the most important thing right: the racing. I am very pleased to report that in this respect, the film not only delivers but exceeded my already lofty expectations for how good the racing would look. For all its silliness, after all I deeply enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick for its jaw-dropping flight sequences, and so I knew what kind of technical proficiency Kosinski, cinematographer Claudio Miranda, and their various crew members brought to bear on this production, and suffice it to say, they brought their "A" game.  With dozens of car-mounted cameras Kosinski and company put viewers right in the thick of the action, capturing all nine races depicted in a truly breathtaking fashion, especially when coupled with the amazing sound mixing that, if anything, flattered the 1.6-liter turbo engines that aren't quite regarded as the most sonorous power plants the sport has ever heard.  Still the races look and sound amazing, in no small part to the seamless mix of practical photography, incredible stunt driving and some judiciously inserted computer-generated imagery.  In this respect, this film stands head and shoulders over what James Mangold and his crew delivered in Ford v. Ferrari, which is no mean feat. 

Oh, and film music deity Hans Zimmer delivers an absolute banger of a music score. This is a bit of an update from his last Formula One-themed movie, 2013's Rush, and his work here is just as good as it was back then.

 

I caught this in IMAX, and while for some reason the dialogue  where I watched was compromised by echoes, in every other respect the experience was elevated by the amazing images and the roar of those incredible machines, so to my mind, it's worth the premium.  Whatever its flaws, this is definitely a movie I was glad to see in a movie theater.  

8.5/10

I Have...Questions: A SPOILER-FILLED Discussion of "Thunderbolts."

(SPOILER ALERT)

 I genuinely enjoyed Marvel Studios' latest offering: the action film Thunderbolts which featured as its protagonists mostly C-list Marvel characters.  I liked it for its strong performances, good chemistry between its actions, solid action set pieces, and its strong emotional core.  That said, it left me with a lot of questions, most of which I cannot really delve into without wading into spoiler territory, and all of which have me excited to see more of this excellent team of antiheroes on the big screen. In no particular order they are:

1.     WHAT'S IN THE SECRET COCKTAIL THAT GAVE BOB HIS GODLIKE POWERS?

For those who don't know, the Sentry came into existence at Marvel as a fake Silver Age character, a purported creation of Marvel godfather Stan Lee and the non-existent artist Artie Rosen, whose name was a mashup of two Silver Age Marvel staffers Joe Rosen and Artie Simek.  As such, his origin was as about as simple as it gets: as an anxious teen, he took a version of the super soldier serum developed by one of his professors at school, and gained the power of a million exploding suns.   MCU Bob, on the other hand, was conceived in a universe that has had quite a bit of interconnected lore, so the notion of him getting his Omega-level powers from something as generic as a secret formula not only feels simplistic but like a complete cop-out.  It's fair enough that they didn't dive into it this time around, but I hope they do eventually.

2.   WHAT IS VALENTINA'S SECRET ORIGIN?

One of Bob's many powers, the apparent ability to glimpse into a person's darkest moments, gave us some pretty interesting character moments for key characters like Yelena and John Walker. What intrigued me, though, was the glimpse into Val's traumatic past where she saw her dad get offed by a loan shark. It seems simple enough, but for the fact that it appears to have taken place a long time ago and in Italy. It sounds like some pretty decent prequel material if handled right, and I wouldn't mind seeing that story told somewhere down the line.

3.  WHO ARE SAM WILSON'S AVENGERS?

The end credits scene makes a big deal about the fact that Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes are at odds over the use by Bucky's group of the name "Avengers" even though it was basically just thrust on them Val in her desperate gamble to escape accountability.  The thing is, at the end of Captain America: Brave New World, the only "Avengers" are Sam/Cap, Falcon/Joaquin, and not-Sabra/sorta Black Widow, a trio who don't exactly qualify. Granted, there is a 14-month time jump from the end of Thunderbolts* to the end credits scene, so a lot can happen in that time.

4.  WILL MEL BECOME SONGBIRD?

Much has been said about the character played by Geraldine Viswanathan, Val's assistant named only "Mel" but whom fans are certain is a nod to Melissa "Mel" Gold, otherwise known as the supervillain-turned-superhero Songbird. It's definitely something fun to consider, given that Mel is a genuinely likable relatable character, and Viswanathan would cut a nice figure in a superhero suit. 

Well, that's about it for me. Fanboys being fanboys, I'm sure other people have plenty more interesting and in-depth questions than I do, but I'm just happy that there's finally a Marvel film worth asking questions about, for the first time in years. Long may this continue. 

Pleasantly Surprising: A Review of Thunderbolts*

 directed by Jake Schreier

written by Erik Pearson and Joana Calo 

created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley

It had been a while since I truly enjoyed a movie set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As much as I enjoyed last year's Deadpool and Wolverine, that was not, strictly speaking, an MCU film as both those characters were remnants of the Fox Marvel Universe. As many excuses as I have made for Captain America: Brave New World I really didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped I would. I basically hadn't really enjoyed a Marvel movie all that much since 2023's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Fortunately, all that ended when I finally saw Thunderbolts, directed by Jake Schreier and starring Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell and Hannah John Kamen as an unusual band of protagonists who can't quite be called heroes but who, for now, are all the world has got. 

The film starts with a spectacular stunt as Yelena (Pugh) skydives off a building in Kuala Lumpur, where she then torches a secret lab on orders of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus). Having buried her sister Natasha a few years back, Yelena is deeply depressed and in the middle of an existential crisis. After meeting up with her father figure, Alexei (Harbour) former super soldier Red Guardian who is now eking out a living as a limo driver,  Yelena asks Val for a change of pace from her covert missions. Val promises to give her just that, but first, she needs to do one more mission for her in a secluded bunker in the middle of nowhere. Val is under intense scrutiny by Congress for her secret, unethical research projects conducted through her shady company O.X.E. and is looking to clean up all evidence of them. Among those looking into her activities is freshman Congressman Bucky Barnes (Stan).  Yelena arrives at the bunker and, to her surprise, finds herself confronting disgraced Captain America John Walker (Russell), the Ghost (John-Kamen), and the Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko).  They all fight, but shortly thereafter Yelena and the others realize that they were all sent there to die. The situation becomes even more complicated when a man dressed in pajamas named Bob (Lewis Pullman) appears, seemingly out of nowhere.  In short order, Val and an army of O.X.E.'s security arrive onsite.

Fortunately, Alexei has found out where Yelena is heading by eavesdropping on Val while chauffering for her, and, at the same time, Bucky has hit paydirt because Val's assistant Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan), alarmed at the goings-on at the secret bunker, has given him a call, leading him to the bunker, where Yelena and the gang are now fighting for their lives. High jinks ensue.  

What follows is hardly an ideal team-up, but the reluctant allies will need to get it together to face the truly formidable threat that Valentina is about to unleash.

While I had been looking forward to this movie, I didn't quite have high expectations. Captain America: Brave New World was a genuine disappointment but this movie gave off a different, more promising energy in its trailers, and fortunately, it mostly lived up to its promise. 

Most of what worked in this film is stuff that Marvel has done before; practical action set pieces, lots of banter between the leads and some pretty decent action.  They have even touched on mental health before, as Tony Stark quite clearly grappled with post-traumatic stress disorder in Iron Man 3 as a result of the events in The Avengers. 

Still, this film hits a bit differently, as director Jake Schrier and writers Eric Pearson and Jaona Calo apply these tools to tell a story that manages to feel both fresh and familiar at the same time.  As many other writers have already observed, what sets this apart from other Marvel movies is just how much it leans into the emotional trauma of its lead characters, particularly Yelena and Bob.  Pugh and Pullman in particular stand out, but all of the actors do a bang-up job with the characters handed to them. I liked the chemistry, especially the banter between Walker and Yelena, or sometimes Walker and Ghost, as well as the moments in which Alexei is fanboying out over his old hero, the Winter Soldier. 

The action set pieces were quite well-staged, and it was gratifying to know that much of it was practically done, save of course for the stuff that obviously couldn't have been.  

Of course, some of the writing is a bit silly; there are a few too many convenient coincidences for my liking, and the idea of selecting mentally unstable people for experiments that could give them godlike power still feels downright bizarre, but overall the storytelling is thoroughly engaging, thanks to winning performances from everyone involved, especially from Pullman, who, for me at least, is the breakout star of this movie.  

The best part of this movie, for me, was how surprisingly emotional it was; this isn't necessarily something new from Marvel, considering it's brought us gut-wrenching movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but it's uncommon enough that it is a welcome development when one of their lighter movies has a solid emotional core. 

I wouldn't go so far as to proclaim that Marvel's back but I definitely find myself looking forward to July's Fantastic Four: First Steps with a bit more enthusiasm than I used to have.  

8.5/10