While The Incredibles 2 didn't really lean heavily on story twists, there is quite a bit about it that's worth discussing from a thematic perspective, and yes, this discussion does involve spoilers.
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(SPOILER ALERT)
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Okay, you've been warned. When The Incredibles 2 introduced a "mystery villain" in the form of Screenslaver, it was pretty obvious from the word "go" that he was going to be one of the two new characters introduced, either Winston Deavor or his sister Evelyn. Brad Bird managed a bit of a fake-out by revealing him to be a mind-controlled pizza delivery man, but there never was any doubt that it would have been one of the two siblings. Winston was played a bit too obvious, making Evelyn the likelier candidate for villainy, as she in fact was.
The predictability of the twist wasn't really an issue for me, though I confess I kind of rolled my eyes at the "angry at superheroes" motivation that drove Evelyn, who for some reason reminded me of Helena Bonham-Carter, to concoct her scheme to destroy them, as it felt like a variation on the motivations that drove Jason Lee's Syndrome to murder just about every known superhero except for Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone from the first film.
I found it curious considering that neither of the "big bad guys" that the Incredibles have fought are actually "villains" per se. They're not out for world domination, or even something more mundane like grand larceny. They simply hate superheroes, for one reason or another, and set out to destroy them. That's basically their sole goal, and they're willing to inflict considerable death and destruction to achieve it.
The Incredibles 2 presents a more interesting spin on the concept than its predecessor, which simply presented a spurned fanboy. While Evelyn is similarly angry with superheroes, she's also angry with the way people have come to depend on them, which sounds like a pretty reasonable gripe with superheroes if you ask me. The argument, if I'm honest, was never fully debunked, and Evelyn's line when the police are hauling her off at the end--"just because you saved me doesn't mean you're right"--actually rings somewhat true.
I mean, there is something to be said about the argument that people shouldn't count on "heroes" to save them; it actually applies directly to our global politics right now. Countries all over the world are caught in the grip of a new wave of authoritarian rulers because voters have been embraced the ultimately false notion that these "strongmen" could "save" them from all of their problems. There's a distinct failure to realize that if anyone is to save us from our problems, it's us.
It kind of makes me wonder if The Incredibles isn't a surreptitious critique of the entire superhero storytelling genre; in this world, it's the superheroes themselves who, however inadvertently, create their biggest villains. And then, of course, there's that scene in which the Parr family are shown their new house, which suspiciously resembles a certain billionaire philanthropist playboy's former Malibu mansion, and Violet comments on how ridiculously exposed a self-confessed superhero living in such a house would be.
Of course, there have been comments on how Brad Bird's personal philosophy of Objectivism plays into the narrative, but really, neither Syndrome, who wanted to "democratize" being "super" by selling everyone high tech weapons, nor Evelyn Deavor, who wants to "cure" people of their dependency on superheroes to solve their problems, sounds like a particularly bad person; it's only their chosen means (assassination, mayhem) that ultimately make them bad. But I'll be darned if they aren't SPOT ON in their disdain for superheroes in general, at least in the context of the stories that are told.
I'd like to see Brad Bird explore this thought process further, and I'm fairly sure he'll get the chance. The thing is, even though he's presented villains with cogent arguments against the so-called heroes, he has yet to have the villains win the argument, the way Erik Killmonger did in Black Panther, and to a lesser, less-commonly-acknowledged extent, the way the Vulture did in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
I really love this world that Bird has created, and even though it's nowhere near as expansive as, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its scope, thematically it's got a richness to it that the first two films have only just begun to explore.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Sunday, June 17, 2018
Worth the Wait...Mostly: A Review of The Incredibles 2
written and directed by Brad Bird
When Pixar released The Incredibles back in 2004, it knocked my socks off. Having grown up with Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, the original squabbling family of superheroes, I found much to love about these charming but wildly dysfunctional new animated heroes, Silver Age superheroes who'd been forced into retirement by a disillusioned populace and who found themselves grappling with middle age and suburban ennui. At a time when the superhero fare in cinemas was limited mainly to Sam Raimi's Spider-man and Bryan Singer's X-Men films, the original Incredibles provided a refreshing take on the genre that endeared it to both critics and audiences, including this particular viewer.
The Incredibles 2 arrives in a somewhat more heavily-populated cinematic superhero landscape, and while Brad Bird and Pixar still manage to deliver a quality film, one which, from a technical perspective, is leaps and bounds above its predecessor, it doesn't have quite the same impact.
The film picks up directly where the first one left off, with Bob Parr, aka Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) his wife Helen, aka Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), their super-powered kids Violet (Sarah Vowell) and Dash (Huck Milner) and their old friend Lucius aka Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) taking on the menace of the Underminer (John Ratzenberger). While the assembled superheroes save City Hall from destruction, the chaos wrought by the Underminer (who has escaped with a bank vault full of money), coupled with the fact that superheroes in general are still illegal, causes them headaches as they are detained by the police, who let them off with a warning. The Parrs are at the end of their rope; not only was their house destroyed at the end of the last movie, but they soon learn from their old government liaison Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks) that the government has shut down the program for keeping superheroes underground, meaning that they need to find work soon or they'll be out on the streets.
Fortunately, Lucius approaches Bob and Helen, having been contacted by the affluent Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) a wealthy telecommunications magnate and fan of superheroes whose father adored them and supported them back when they were legal, and who wants more than anything to make that happen. His grand scheme, which he plans to implement with his tech-genius sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) is simple: to put people right in the seat of what superheroes do by implanting cameras into their suits, so that they can see how hard they work to save lives. Deavor chooses Elastigirl to spearhead the program, as she has, in her career, been the least destructive of the three superheroes. This puts Bob, to his initial annoyance, on stay-at-home dad duty with Dash, Violet and their infant Jack-Jack who is about to manifest a whole host of his own superpowers.
No sooner does Helen get back into action, however, than a new threat, the mysterious Screenslaver, emerges.
From start to finish, the movie is a joy to behold. Having just re-watched the original film on DVD before taking my family to see this, I was struck by how much the technology has advanced since then. Helen has considerably softer and warmer features than her more plastic-looking previous incarnation, while Bob's hilarious transformation from superhero to sleep-deprived superdad is vividly depicted with eyebags and five o' clock shadow. The movie does a bit of gender-swapping from the last one, with Helen flexing muscles doing the superheroics, while Bob handles the challenge of looking after three kids, who consist of a lovelorn teenager, a tweener struggling with his math lessons, and a baby, who'd be challenging enough without the superpowers. In that sense, the film does feel a bit familiar after awhile. Fortunately, the antics of the multi-powered Jack-Jack infuse a bit of welcome freshness into the film, especially as the terrified Bob tries to figure out how to handle his tiny little powerhouse.
If there was any particular letdown about this film, it had to be the villain, who, upon scrutiny, is surprisingly similar in motivation and, to some degree, in method, to Jason Lee's Syndrome from the first film. I appreciate that Bird gives the bad guys nuance and a driving force beyond just the desire to rule the world or enrich one's self, but there was too much similarity between this and what came before to ignore.
I was also overjoyed to hear Michael Giacchino's familiar brassy, retro-jazzy tunes once more. He's come full circle; after kicking off his film career with the first Incredibles movie, he's since gone on to write music for not only movies from Pixar and mother company Disney but also giant film franchises like Mission Impossible, Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and Jurassic Park. More than just rehash his original themes, though Giacchino infuses this score with just about every trick he's picked up since the first film. It's not unlike hearing how much richer Alan Silvestri's Avengers: Infinity War score was than his original Avengers music.
As satisfying as I found the film to be, though, I really couldn't shake how familiar everything felt. Everything looked and sounded great, to be sure, but really, it's was like a shiny coat of paint on basically the same car. Don't get me wrong; I am a huge fan of sequels that basically lean on formula, like the Marvel films and even the Jason Bourne series, but considering the narrative triumph of the first film, I had somewhat high expectations of a sequel fourteen years in the making. Perhaps too high, it seems.
The good news is, it's still a rip-roaring good time at the movies. It looks to be a smash hit, too, so I know I'll be back for the almost inevitable sequel.
I just hope it doesn't take another fourteen years for them to make one, and that they try for something a little different next time.
8/10
When Pixar released The Incredibles back in 2004, it knocked my socks off. Having grown up with Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, the original squabbling family of superheroes, I found much to love about these charming but wildly dysfunctional new animated heroes, Silver Age superheroes who'd been forced into retirement by a disillusioned populace and who found themselves grappling with middle age and suburban ennui. At a time when the superhero fare in cinemas was limited mainly to Sam Raimi's Spider-man and Bryan Singer's X-Men films, the original Incredibles provided a refreshing take on the genre that endeared it to both critics and audiences, including this particular viewer.
The Incredibles 2 arrives in a somewhat more heavily-populated cinematic superhero landscape, and while Brad Bird and Pixar still manage to deliver a quality film, one which, from a technical perspective, is leaps and bounds above its predecessor, it doesn't have quite the same impact.
The film picks up directly where the first one left off, with Bob Parr, aka Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) his wife Helen, aka Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), their super-powered kids Violet (Sarah Vowell) and Dash (Huck Milner) and their old friend Lucius aka Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) taking on the menace of the Underminer (John Ratzenberger). While the assembled superheroes save City Hall from destruction, the chaos wrought by the Underminer (who has escaped with a bank vault full of money), coupled with the fact that superheroes in general are still illegal, causes them headaches as they are detained by the police, who let them off with a warning. The Parrs are at the end of their rope; not only was their house destroyed at the end of the last movie, but they soon learn from their old government liaison Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks) that the government has shut down the program for keeping superheroes underground, meaning that they need to find work soon or they'll be out on the streets.
Fortunately, Lucius approaches Bob and Helen, having been contacted by the affluent Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) a wealthy telecommunications magnate and fan of superheroes whose father adored them and supported them back when they were legal, and who wants more than anything to make that happen. His grand scheme, which he plans to implement with his tech-genius sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) is simple: to put people right in the seat of what superheroes do by implanting cameras into their suits, so that they can see how hard they work to save lives. Deavor chooses Elastigirl to spearhead the program, as she has, in her career, been the least destructive of the three superheroes. This puts Bob, to his initial annoyance, on stay-at-home dad duty with Dash, Violet and their infant Jack-Jack who is about to manifest a whole host of his own superpowers.
No sooner does Helen get back into action, however, than a new threat, the mysterious Screenslaver, emerges.
From start to finish, the movie is a joy to behold. Having just re-watched the original film on DVD before taking my family to see this, I was struck by how much the technology has advanced since then. Helen has considerably softer and warmer features than her more plastic-looking previous incarnation, while Bob's hilarious transformation from superhero to sleep-deprived superdad is vividly depicted with eyebags and five o' clock shadow. The movie does a bit of gender-swapping from the last one, with Helen flexing muscles doing the superheroics, while Bob handles the challenge of looking after three kids, who consist of a lovelorn teenager, a tweener struggling with his math lessons, and a baby, who'd be challenging enough without the superpowers. In that sense, the film does feel a bit familiar after awhile. Fortunately, the antics of the multi-powered Jack-Jack infuse a bit of welcome freshness into the film, especially as the terrified Bob tries to figure out how to handle his tiny little powerhouse.
If there was any particular letdown about this film, it had to be the villain, who, upon scrutiny, is surprisingly similar in motivation and, to some degree, in method, to Jason Lee's Syndrome from the first film. I appreciate that Bird gives the bad guys nuance and a driving force beyond just the desire to rule the world or enrich one's self, but there was too much similarity between this and what came before to ignore.
I was also overjoyed to hear Michael Giacchino's familiar brassy, retro-jazzy tunes once more. He's come full circle; after kicking off his film career with the first Incredibles movie, he's since gone on to write music for not only movies from Pixar and mother company Disney but also giant film franchises like Mission Impossible, Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and Jurassic Park. More than just rehash his original themes, though Giacchino infuses this score with just about every trick he's picked up since the first film. It's not unlike hearing how much richer Alan Silvestri's Avengers: Infinity War score was than his original Avengers music.
As satisfying as I found the film to be, though, I really couldn't shake how familiar everything felt. Everything looked and sounded great, to be sure, but really, it's was like a shiny coat of paint on basically the same car. Don't get me wrong; I am a huge fan of sequels that basically lean on formula, like the Marvel films and even the Jason Bourne series, but considering the narrative triumph of the first film, I had somewhat high expectations of a sequel fourteen years in the making. Perhaps too high, it seems.
The good news is, it's still a rip-roaring good time at the movies. It looks to be a smash hit, too, so I know I'll be back for the almost inevitable sequel.
I just hope it doesn't take another fourteen years for them to make one, and that they try for something a little different next time.
8/10
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Thank You, Fox, for Letting Comic Book Blockbusters in 2018 Breathe a Little
At one point, we were slated to have as many as TEN comic-book based films this year, three from Disney, two from Sony/Columbia, three from Fox and two from Warner Bros. Some online pundits were predicting doom and gloom for the box office, asserting that all of these aspiring blockbusters (which, apart from comic-book movies, included sequels galore to properties ranging from the Ocean's 11 franchise to the Incredibles) would cannibalize one another.
Well, so far, the good news is that with few exceptions, the movies that were expected to succeed have done exactly that.
When the trailers for Bumblebee and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse dropped this past week, I realized, however, that they were opening within one week of each other, and that Bumblebee was actually opening against Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman, which meant that the prognostications of doom and gloom for the overall Hollywood box office (which, let's face it, is a globally consumed product), may yet prove accurate by the end of the year.
Bearing this in mind, then, I remembered Twentieth Century Fox's decision to postpone till 2019 the release of two of its three Marvel-based movies originally scheduled for release this year namely, X-Men: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants. The decision to postpone the latter film was genuinely surprising considering that a trailer had already been released several months ago.
Now, there could have been a number of different reasons for the postponement, ranging from the old "troubled production" dilemma to poor reception by test audiences, but whether or not these films were taken off the table because they were turkeys or because Fox simply didn't want to enter too crowded a market, at the end of the day they made the right move, and did everyone, them AND us, a favor.
After all, if the movies are bad, then they'll simply add to the superhero blockbuster glut and maybe even help induce the "superhero fatigue" that pundits have been predicting for years (which has yet to happen, incidentally). Conversely, if they're good, they may simply disappear amid the crowd of "great" films peppered all throughout the year. After all, neither X-Men: Dark Phoenix nor New Mutants carries with it the "event" status of Avengers: Infinity War or cultural milestone status of Black Panther (unless Fox wants to market New Mutants as the first superhero film with a Native American lead, but given that it's an ensemble piece that's not likely to work), or even the long-awaited-sequel status of The Incredibles 2. Deadpool 2 was a much easier sell, being the follow-up to a box-office juggernaut, but after X-Men: Apocalypse underperformed and given that New Mutants is a completely unknown commodity, caution was warranted. Was it a result of the planned Disney buyout? That seems unlikely, given that there's still a fair chance that Comcast may snatch up Fox instead of Disney.
Are the movies most likely to be bad, given extensive reports of reshoots? Well, reshoots aren't always a bad thing; Rogue One: A Star Wars story underwent quite a few reshoots and turned out pretty good. Even World War Z, an infamously troubled production which had to undergo reshoots for nearly the entire third act, opened to boffo box office all around the world, so it's early to say that all is lost for Fox's non-Deadpool Marvel movies. I, for one, remain cautiously optimistic.
In the end, postponing the movies, whether it was to avoid the crowd or to undergo reshoots, was really the best thing for the movies themselves and the viewing audience. And it was gratifying to know that Fox execs didn't rush the movies into theaters just to make sure they could claim their bonuses (coughcoughJUSTICELEAGUEcoughcough). What ultimately matters is that when the movies do hit theaters, they prove to be products that were worth the wait.
Well, so far, the good news is that with few exceptions, the movies that were expected to succeed have done exactly that.
When the trailers for Bumblebee and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse dropped this past week, I realized, however, that they were opening within one week of each other, and that Bumblebee was actually opening against Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman, which meant that the prognostications of doom and gloom for the overall Hollywood box office (which, let's face it, is a globally consumed product), may yet prove accurate by the end of the year.
Bearing this in mind, then, I remembered Twentieth Century Fox's decision to postpone till 2019 the release of two of its three Marvel-based movies originally scheduled for release this year namely, X-Men: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants. The decision to postpone the latter film was genuinely surprising considering that a trailer had already been released several months ago.
Now, there could have been a number of different reasons for the postponement, ranging from the old "troubled production" dilemma to poor reception by test audiences, but whether or not these films were taken off the table because they were turkeys or because Fox simply didn't want to enter too crowded a market, at the end of the day they made the right move, and did everyone, them AND us, a favor.
After all, if the movies are bad, then they'll simply add to the superhero blockbuster glut and maybe even help induce the "superhero fatigue" that pundits have been predicting for years (which has yet to happen, incidentally). Conversely, if they're good, they may simply disappear amid the crowd of "great" films peppered all throughout the year. After all, neither X-Men: Dark Phoenix nor New Mutants carries with it the "event" status of Avengers: Infinity War or cultural milestone status of Black Panther (unless Fox wants to market New Mutants as the first superhero film with a Native American lead, but given that it's an ensemble piece that's not likely to work), or even the long-awaited-sequel status of The Incredibles 2. Deadpool 2 was a much easier sell, being the follow-up to a box-office juggernaut, but after X-Men: Apocalypse underperformed and given that New Mutants is a completely unknown commodity, caution was warranted. Was it a result of the planned Disney buyout? That seems unlikely, given that there's still a fair chance that Comcast may snatch up Fox instead of Disney.
Are the movies most likely to be bad, given extensive reports of reshoots? Well, reshoots aren't always a bad thing; Rogue One: A Star Wars story underwent quite a few reshoots and turned out pretty good. Even World War Z, an infamously troubled production which had to undergo reshoots for nearly the entire third act, opened to boffo box office all around the world, so it's early to say that all is lost for Fox's non-Deadpool Marvel movies. I, for one, remain cautiously optimistic.
In the end, postponing the movies, whether it was to avoid the crowd or to undergo reshoots, was really the best thing for the movies themselves and the viewing audience. And it was gratifying to know that Fox execs didn't rush the movies into theaters just to make sure they could claim their bonuses (coughcoughJUSTICELEAGUEcoughcough). What ultimately matters is that when the movies do hit theaters, they prove to be products that were worth the wait.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
So...How About Those CAMEOS?!? (MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR DEADPOOL 2)
SPOILER ALERT for Deadpool 2.
Last chance to back away...
Okay, here we go.
Deadpool 2 is not a movie that relies on twists for its narrative. It's a straight-up action comedy that is practically predictable by design and doesn't really go for any emotional punches, nor does it particularly mess with its audience. In short, it doesn't really go for any of the usual beats that characterize a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, almost as if to emphasize just how different Deadpool is from his estranged cousins at Disney.
One thing this movie does traffic quite a bit in, however, is cameos, and I'm not just talking about regulars, or people who would normally show their faces in a superhero/comic book based movie. The cameos here are so wild and wacky, in fact, that I've taken the liberty of categorizing them according to type. In order of appearance, they are:
1) The "We've Arrived" cameo: As before, Deadpool is joined by X-men Colossus (again played by Stefan Kapicic and terrible CGI) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and as before, Deadpool makes one of his patented 4th-wall breaking quips about how "the studio" can't even spare more X-Men. Behind him, however, quietly closing the door is no other than Hank McCoy, aka the Beast, played by Nicholas Hoult. Beside him are virtually the entire cast of the last X-Men movie, including James MacAvoy as Professor X, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Evan Peters as Quicksilver to name a few. This is their only appearance in the film, but it is a nice nod from Fox to acknowledge the simple mathematical fact that Deadpool is, hands-down, their most financially successful property, and by God they can certainly spare some X-men for him. They just won't, because Deadpool is an idiot.
2) The "HOLY COW, THAT WAS HIM?!?" cameo: When Josh Brolin's Cable teleports to the past from the future, he lands near two rednecks who are discussing, of all things, toilet paper. It's a moment that stands out for its bizarre but genuinely funny dialogue about which brand of toilet paper offers maximum comfort, and is cut short when Cable tranquilizes the two rednecks and steals their pickup truck. One of them, it turns out, the guy with a lot to say about quality toilet paper, was Matt Damon, under heavy make-up. The other one, with less dialogue was character actor Alan Tudyk. I watched the whole movie without knowing this and basically only found out when I Google-searched another cameo in this film. This may not have been one of the flashier cameos, but in retrospect it was, for me anyway, the funniest. So Matt Damon's got two Marvel movie cameos under his belt (having had a much more visible cameo in Thor: Ragnarok), albeit not from the same studio, and it'd be interesting to see if this becomes a semi-regular thing for him.
3) The "I Was Expecting to See More of This Guy" cameo: comedian/character actor Terry Crews is perhaps best known to audiences for lip-syncing to Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" in the Wayans Brothers' comedy film White Chicks. Personally my favorite Crews role is his little-seen turn as the wrestler-turned-president Camacho in Mike Judge's tragically prophetic Idiocracy. Either way, he featured heavily in the marketing materials and so I figured I'd be seeing quite a lot of him. As it turns out, the film's very best scene, when he and the other members of Deadpool's newly-assembled team X-Force parachute into heavy wind, turns out to be his last as nearly every member of the newly formed team dies horribly: the preposterous-looking Shatterstar is shredded by helicopter rotors, splattering green blood, with his only remains being his ridiculous braid, the acid-vomiting Zeitgeist is sucked into a wood cutter and pulped, and Crews' Bedlam smashes headlong into a bus. It was completely out of left field and an utter laugh riot, so even though Crews had no further participation in the film, his cameo was a damned good one, but it wasn't even the most striking one in that madcap sequence, which brings me to...
4) The "IS THAT WHO I THINK IT WAS?" cameo: when the members of X-Force who aren't named Deadpool or Domino meet their grisly demise, one member, the Vanisher, who up until this point has, well, basically vanished, lands on some electric wires and is predictably fried to death, at which point he is, for a split-second, revealed to be Brad Pitt. Now, when I saw this, at first I thought I was seeing a lookalike, like Karl Urban or something, but later the end credits revealed that it was, actually, Brad Pitt, and a quick Google search (which also turned up the aforementioned Damon cameo) confirmed it. It was quite a coup; Pitt may not be quite the A-lister he once was, but he's never appeared in a comic-book based movie before and considering that he was one of the actors approached for the role of Cable but had to turn it down, it was nice that Fox was able to at least get an entertaining cameo out of him.
5) The "Best Use of Recycled Footage" cameo: By now, I think Fox has all but given up on their X-Men timeline making any sense, so when Deadpool walks onto the climactic scene of X-Men Origins: Wolverine in which Hugh Jackman's Wolverine meets the 'Dead Pool' for the first time, and shoots the godawful version of himself in the head, there's no point in asking if it makes any sense. What matters is that it's hilarious, though it was a shame they couldn't have filmed any new footage with Hugh Jackman.
6) The "Erasing Bad Decisions" cameo: It's certainly a stretch to call an appearance by Ryan Reynolds in a movie starring (and written by) Ryan Reynolds a cameo, but really, when "Ryan Reynolds" eagerly sits down to read a little script called "Green Lantern" only to be shot through the head by none other than Deadpool, it's a truly epic moment, on par with Thor arriving in Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War (Well, not really, but it was really funny).
Truth be told, Deadpool 2 may have waxed cliche on more than one occasion, but it really was a brilliant move to work all those cameos into the film; they gave it yet another bit of quirkiness that no other superhero/comic-book based movie can claim to have.
Last chance to back away...
Okay, here we go.
Deadpool 2 is not a movie that relies on twists for its narrative. It's a straight-up action comedy that is practically predictable by design and doesn't really go for any emotional punches, nor does it particularly mess with its audience. In short, it doesn't really go for any of the usual beats that characterize a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, almost as if to emphasize just how different Deadpool is from his estranged cousins at Disney.
One thing this movie does traffic quite a bit in, however, is cameos, and I'm not just talking about regulars, or people who would normally show their faces in a superhero/comic book based movie. The cameos here are so wild and wacky, in fact, that I've taken the liberty of categorizing them according to type. In order of appearance, they are:
1) The "We've Arrived" cameo: As before, Deadpool is joined by X-men Colossus (again played by Stefan Kapicic and terrible CGI) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and as before, Deadpool makes one of his patented 4th-wall breaking quips about how "the studio" can't even spare more X-Men. Behind him, however, quietly closing the door is no other than Hank McCoy, aka the Beast, played by Nicholas Hoult. Beside him are virtually the entire cast of the last X-Men movie, including James MacAvoy as Professor X, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Evan Peters as Quicksilver to name a few. This is their only appearance in the film, but it is a nice nod from Fox to acknowledge the simple mathematical fact that Deadpool is, hands-down, their most financially successful property, and by God they can certainly spare some X-men for him. They just won't, because Deadpool is an idiot.
2) The "HOLY COW, THAT WAS HIM?!?" cameo: When Josh Brolin's Cable teleports to the past from the future, he lands near two rednecks who are discussing, of all things, toilet paper. It's a moment that stands out for its bizarre but genuinely funny dialogue about which brand of toilet paper offers maximum comfort, and is cut short when Cable tranquilizes the two rednecks and steals their pickup truck. One of them, it turns out, the guy with a lot to say about quality toilet paper, was Matt Damon, under heavy make-up. The other one, with less dialogue was character actor Alan Tudyk. I watched the whole movie without knowing this and basically only found out when I Google-searched another cameo in this film. This may not have been one of the flashier cameos, but in retrospect it was, for me anyway, the funniest. So Matt Damon's got two Marvel movie cameos under his belt (having had a much more visible cameo in Thor: Ragnarok), albeit not from the same studio, and it'd be interesting to see if this becomes a semi-regular thing for him.
3) The "I Was Expecting to See More of This Guy" cameo: comedian/character actor Terry Crews is perhaps best known to audiences for lip-syncing to Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" in the Wayans Brothers' comedy film White Chicks. Personally my favorite Crews role is his little-seen turn as the wrestler-turned-president Camacho in Mike Judge's tragically prophetic Idiocracy. Either way, he featured heavily in the marketing materials and so I figured I'd be seeing quite a lot of him. As it turns out, the film's very best scene, when he and the other members of Deadpool's newly-assembled team X-Force parachute into heavy wind, turns out to be his last as nearly every member of the newly formed team dies horribly: the preposterous-looking Shatterstar is shredded by helicopter rotors, splattering green blood, with his only remains being his ridiculous braid, the acid-vomiting Zeitgeist is sucked into a wood cutter and pulped, and Crews' Bedlam smashes headlong into a bus. It was completely out of left field and an utter laugh riot, so even though Crews had no further participation in the film, his cameo was a damned good one, but it wasn't even the most striking one in that madcap sequence, which brings me to...
4) The "IS THAT WHO I THINK IT WAS?" cameo: when the members of X-Force who aren't named Deadpool or Domino meet their grisly demise, one member, the Vanisher, who up until this point has, well, basically vanished, lands on some electric wires and is predictably fried to death, at which point he is, for a split-second, revealed to be Brad Pitt. Now, when I saw this, at first I thought I was seeing a lookalike, like Karl Urban or something, but later the end credits revealed that it was, actually, Brad Pitt, and a quick Google search (which also turned up the aforementioned Damon cameo) confirmed it. It was quite a coup; Pitt may not be quite the A-lister he once was, but he's never appeared in a comic-book based movie before and considering that he was one of the actors approached for the role of Cable but had to turn it down, it was nice that Fox was able to at least get an entertaining cameo out of him.
5) The "Best Use of Recycled Footage" cameo: By now, I think Fox has all but given up on their X-Men timeline making any sense, so when Deadpool walks onto the climactic scene of X-Men Origins: Wolverine in which Hugh Jackman's Wolverine meets the 'Dead Pool' for the first time, and shoots the godawful version of himself in the head, there's no point in asking if it makes any sense. What matters is that it's hilarious, though it was a shame they couldn't have filmed any new footage with Hugh Jackman.
6) The "Erasing Bad Decisions" cameo: It's certainly a stretch to call an appearance by Ryan Reynolds in a movie starring (and written by) Ryan Reynolds a cameo, but really, when "Ryan Reynolds" eagerly sits down to read a little script called "Green Lantern" only to be shot through the head by none other than Deadpool, it's a truly epic moment, on par with Thor arriving in Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War (Well, not really, but it was really funny).
Truth be told, Deadpool 2 may have waxed cliche on more than one occasion, but it really was a brilliant move to work all those cameos into the film; they gave it yet another bit of quirkiness that no other superhero/comic-book based movie can claim to have.
Bigger, More Violent, More Infantile and...More Prosaic: A Review of Deadpool 2
directed by David Leitch
written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds
After the relatively micro-budgeted, ultraviolent superhero...errr...superantihero movie Deadpool managed to make nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in global box office (without China!) two years ago, a sequel was all but guaranteed. It was guaranteed that they would come back with a bigger budget, more violence and even more superhero-movie lampooning than you could shake a bundle of MAD magazines at.
What wasn't entirely expected was that the sequel a movie so fond of skewering narrative cliches would turn up with quite a few of its own.
After the events of the first movie, Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, gamely donning the red tights and human raisin makeup again), spends his days gleefully killing the scum of the earth such as human traffickers and his nights romancing the love his life Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who wants to start a family with him.
When tragedy strikes (more on that in a minute) Wade finds himself in a funk, but the X-Man Colossus (Stefan Kapicic and a lot of really bad CGI) isn't about to let him lie around feeling sorry for himself; he tries (again) to recruit him for the X-Men, and their first mission is to rescue a young mutant, Russell Collins (Julian Dennison) an orphan who is currently in a standoff with the police. When Deadpool learns that Russell has been suffering abuse at the hands of his caregivers, including the headmaster (Eddie Marsan), he reacts violently and as a result both he and Russell are sent to a prison for mutants known as the "Ice Box." While they are there, the prison is invaded by the time-traveling cyborg Cable (Josh Brolin) whose sole mission is to kill Russell, who only just escapes with his life as Deadpool takes on Cable. Deadpool then finds new purpose in his life: to save that of Russell, and recruits a whole crew of super-powered people, including mutants Bedlam (Terry Crews), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgaard), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Vanisher (it's a surprise!), Domino (Zazie Beetz) and the non-super-powered Peter (Rob Delaney) whom he dubs "X-Force" to help him in his newly-adopted mission. But Cable, whose grudge against the future version of Russell is deeply personal, will be extremely tough to stop.
It's hard to elaborate on how I feel about this movie without going into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that in their efforts to put more "heart" into the movie, the film's writers have become guilty of some of the very cliches they ridicule. That said, the movie has plenty of the things made its predecessor enjoyable, most notably the humor, though a lot of the gags feel like retreads of old jokes, like the severed/regenerating hand joke from the first movie, which gets a somewhat more disturbing update for this edition. I found one particular series of jokes particularly enjoyable but I won't spoil it for anyone.
As for the action, this film is a bit like last year's John Wick 2 in that there was really only so much neck-snapping, bullet-riddling wanton murder, I could watch before I started feeling a little queasy. Violence porn was never really my thing, and nowadays, even less so with school shootings in the United States becoming a startlingly regular thing and extra-judicial killings here on my home soil continuing almost unabated. Additionally disappointing was the fact that Leitch, who, with John Wick co-director Chad Stahelski actually started reintroducing well-choreographed, well-shot fight sequences into action movies, is surprisingly guilty of the rapid-cut editing style that obscures actual fighting and which has been a bane on action cinema since Paul Greengrass popularized it over ten years ago with the Bourne movies. I would not have expected this from a champion of old-school movie fighting like Leitch. It's not nearly as bad as the Taken movies, but definitely not up to John Wick standards.
The good news is that the film is pretty solid on the acting front; Reynolds is still as charming in the role as ever, and new additions to the cast Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz and Josh Brolin turn in some truly entertaining performances, with Beetz being the standout for me, even though Brolin's obviously the most high-profile addition to the cast. There are a couple of hilarious cameos that help spice things up. Overall, despite its flaws and the inevitable pitfalls of being a sequel, the film still manages to entertain.
I just hope they use a little more imagination next time around.
6.5/10
written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds
After the relatively micro-budgeted, ultraviolent superhero...errr...superantihero movie Deadpool managed to make nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in global box office (without China!) two years ago, a sequel was all but guaranteed. It was guaranteed that they would come back with a bigger budget, more violence and even more superhero-movie lampooning than you could shake a bundle of MAD magazines at.
What wasn't entirely expected was that the sequel a movie so fond of skewering narrative cliches would turn up with quite a few of its own.
After the events of the first movie, Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, gamely donning the red tights and human raisin makeup again), spends his days gleefully killing the scum of the earth such as human traffickers and his nights romancing the love his life Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who wants to start a family with him.
When tragedy strikes (more on that in a minute) Wade finds himself in a funk, but the X-Man Colossus (Stefan Kapicic and a lot of really bad CGI) isn't about to let him lie around feeling sorry for himself; he tries (again) to recruit him for the X-Men, and their first mission is to rescue a young mutant, Russell Collins (Julian Dennison) an orphan who is currently in a standoff with the police. When Deadpool learns that Russell has been suffering abuse at the hands of his caregivers, including the headmaster (Eddie Marsan), he reacts violently and as a result both he and Russell are sent to a prison for mutants known as the "Ice Box." While they are there, the prison is invaded by the time-traveling cyborg Cable (Josh Brolin) whose sole mission is to kill Russell, who only just escapes with his life as Deadpool takes on Cable. Deadpool then finds new purpose in his life: to save that of Russell, and recruits a whole crew of super-powered people, including mutants Bedlam (Terry Crews), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgaard), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Vanisher (it's a surprise!), Domino (Zazie Beetz) and the non-super-powered Peter (Rob Delaney) whom he dubs "X-Force" to help him in his newly-adopted mission. But Cable, whose grudge against the future version of Russell is deeply personal, will be extremely tough to stop.
It's hard to elaborate on how I feel about this movie without going into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that in their efforts to put more "heart" into the movie, the film's writers have become guilty of some of the very cliches they ridicule. That said, the movie has plenty of the things made its predecessor enjoyable, most notably the humor, though a lot of the gags feel like retreads of old jokes, like the severed/regenerating hand joke from the first movie, which gets a somewhat more disturbing update for this edition. I found one particular series of jokes particularly enjoyable but I won't spoil it for anyone.
As for the action, this film is a bit like last year's John Wick 2 in that there was really only so much neck-snapping, bullet-riddling wanton murder, I could watch before I started feeling a little queasy. Violence porn was never really my thing, and nowadays, even less so with school shootings in the United States becoming a startlingly regular thing and extra-judicial killings here on my home soil continuing almost unabated. Additionally disappointing was the fact that Leitch, who, with John Wick co-director Chad Stahelski actually started reintroducing well-choreographed, well-shot fight sequences into action movies, is surprisingly guilty of the rapid-cut editing style that obscures actual fighting and which has been a bane on action cinema since Paul Greengrass popularized it over ten years ago with the Bourne movies. I would not have expected this from a champion of old-school movie fighting like Leitch. It's not nearly as bad as the Taken movies, but definitely not up to John Wick standards.
The good news is that the film is pretty solid on the acting front; Reynolds is still as charming in the role as ever, and new additions to the cast Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz and Josh Brolin turn in some truly entertaining performances, with Beetz being the standout for me, even though Brolin's obviously the most high-profile addition to the cast. There are a couple of hilarious cameos that help spice things up. Overall, despite its flaws and the inevitable pitfalls of being a sequel, the film still manages to entertain.
I just hope they use a little more imagination next time around.
6.5/10
Thursday, May 3, 2018
(SPOILER ALERT) So Who's Getting the "Logan Treatment" in Avengers 4? (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR)
SPOILER ALERT FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Last chance...
Okay, let's go.
Let's be honest; right after Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War and caused half of the population of the universe to disintegrate, including most of the Marvel superheroes gathered in the film, I'm fairly certain only the members of the audience who had never picked up a comic book in their lives, or had never seen a single Marvel Cinematic Universe film truly believed that they were dead for good. The rest of us knew better. With respect to the four characters who died before then, however, even some seasoned comic-book veterans may not be quite so sure about their eventual return, and we all have one movie to thank for that: Twentieth Century Fox's Logan, in which a major Hollywood studio killed off arguably one of their most valuable intellectual properties, played by a bona fide superstar in Hugh Jackman, all in the service of a genuinely moving story.
While Marvel and Disney rattled off one box-office hit after another, they could never quite escape the criticism that their films had no real consequences or stakes, and that people would always be back for the next installment. It was even the case after they had quite clearly killed off Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron. For some reason, some people thought that Superman's death in Batman vs. Superman, which was going to quite obviously be undone in Justice League, carried more weight than the ideological and emotional rift that had torn apart the Avengers in Captain America: Civil War. Such was the reputation Marvel had garnered for itself.
It might have remained that way, as well, had Logan not shown us what was possible. Sure, it was produced not by the family-friendly Marvel but by Twentieth Century Fox, who also brought us the potty-mouthed, ultra-violent Deadpool, but it showed us that even studio execs could have the balls to put the kibosh on cash-cow characters. As a result, while there are a number of deaths which will undoubtedly be undone in next year's as-yet untitled Avengers sequel, it's now treated as an inevitability that there will be definitive casualties, most likely from among the original six Avengers.
And so, as we await the final chapter in the ongoing saga of Thanos, I can't help but wonder aloud who will get the "Logan" treatment from among the six original team members.
Conveniently, just about all of the original Avengers live in, or come from extremely dysfunctional situations. Captain America is a man out of time, Iron Man had his parents murdered by a brainwashed assassin, and he was held hostage by terrorists, Hulk has a nine-foot, super strong monster living inside him, Black Widow has an extremely checkered past as a former Soviet assassin (though I honestly have a hard time doing the math on that one, considering that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, when her character was still seven years old, according to Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and Thor's lost his mom, dad, brother AND the evil, murderous sister he only just met one movie ago, as well as most of his people in a huge fireball. The closest thing they have to a "normal" character is Hawkeye, who's also got quite a bit of blood on his hands, though at least he's got a family.
Of the six, only Thor and Hawkeye have several people in their lives who need them. Thor is now King of what's left of Asgard, while Hawkeye has a wife and three kids. By no means does this mean they're safe from getting "Logan"ed (and in fact it might for even more compelling drama if Hawkeye gives his life to save his kids from the ultimate destruction of the world, or if Thor lays down his life to save what remains of his people), but it does give the filmmakers some incentive to have them survive the carnage ahead. If it were up to me, Thor and Hawkeye would live, though Thor would "retire" from superheroing to help his people rebuild. Hawkeye's already sort of "retired" to take care of his family, so he could go back to that, especially since Avengers 4 will introduce a freakin' cosmic superhero and a guy with a bow and arrow will just be a little too out-of-place.
For my money, I'd say Iron Man, Cap and Black Widow are basically toast. In the first Avengers, Iron Man seals his bona fide hero credentials by showing willingness to make the supreme sacrifice and blow himself up along with the Chitauri fleet. There'd be something fitting about giving him the chance to make that sacrifice one more time, and for him to take it. Cap is a lonely, old man whose old flame died two years ago and who basically doesn't have anyone or anything left in his life to fight for except "what's right." Black Widow, who will never be able to settle down and have kids, having been sterilized (as was established in Avengers: Age of Ultron), and who has a lifetime of bloodshed she'd probably like to redeem herself for, was all ready and set to bite the big one in A:AoU, and, I'm guessing, has been for some time.
I'm not sure Marvel would want to kiss Bruce Banner goodbye, considering that there has yet to be a definitive, truly satisfactory standalone Hulk movie, but at minimum I suspect this is the last time Mark Ruffalo will be playing this character.
So I'm betting at least two, with an outside shot of three, of the original Avengers will get to ride off into the sunset come May 2019, though really, thanks to Logan you can't really be sure of anything.
On an unrelated note: one major upside to all the death in Avengers: Infinity War is that for the first time in the whole series, the team's name actually makes sense, as they now have people to avenge.
Last chance...
Okay, let's go.
Let's be honest; right after Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War and caused half of the population of the universe to disintegrate, including most of the Marvel superheroes gathered in the film, I'm fairly certain only the members of the audience who had never picked up a comic book in their lives, or had never seen a single Marvel Cinematic Universe film truly believed that they were dead for good. The rest of us knew better. With respect to the four characters who died before then, however, even some seasoned comic-book veterans may not be quite so sure about their eventual return, and we all have one movie to thank for that: Twentieth Century Fox's Logan, in which a major Hollywood studio killed off arguably one of their most valuable intellectual properties, played by a bona fide superstar in Hugh Jackman, all in the service of a genuinely moving story.
While Marvel and Disney rattled off one box-office hit after another, they could never quite escape the criticism that their films had no real consequences or stakes, and that people would always be back for the next installment. It was even the case after they had quite clearly killed off Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron. For some reason, some people thought that Superman's death in Batman vs. Superman, which was going to quite obviously be undone in Justice League, carried more weight than the ideological and emotional rift that had torn apart the Avengers in Captain America: Civil War. Such was the reputation Marvel had garnered for itself.
It might have remained that way, as well, had Logan not shown us what was possible. Sure, it was produced not by the family-friendly Marvel but by Twentieth Century Fox, who also brought us the potty-mouthed, ultra-violent Deadpool, but it showed us that even studio execs could have the balls to put the kibosh on cash-cow characters. As a result, while there are a number of deaths which will undoubtedly be undone in next year's as-yet untitled Avengers sequel, it's now treated as an inevitability that there will be definitive casualties, most likely from among the original six Avengers.
And so, as we await the final chapter in the ongoing saga of Thanos, I can't help but wonder aloud who will get the "Logan" treatment from among the six original team members.
Conveniently, just about all of the original Avengers live in, or come from extremely dysfunctional situations. Captain America is a man out of time, Iron Man had his parents murdered by a brainwashed assassin, and he was held hostage by terrorists, Hulk has a nine-foot, super strong monster living inside him, Black Widow has an extremely checkered past as a former Soviet assassin (though I honestly have a hard time doing the math on that one, considering that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, when her character was still seven years old, according to Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and Thor's lost his mom, dad, brother AND the evil, murderous sister he only just met one movie ago, as well as most of his people in a huge fireball. The closest thing they have to a "normal" character is Hawkeye, who's also got quite a bit of blood on his hands, though at least he's got a family.
Of the six, only Thor and Hawkeye have several people in their lives who need them. Thor is now King of what's left of Asgard, while Hawkeye has a wife and three kids. By no means does this mean they're safe from getting "Logan"ed (and in fact it might for even more compelling drama if Hawkeye gives his life to save his kids from the ultimate destruction of the world, or if Thor lays down his life to save what remains of his people), but it does give the filmmakers some incentive to have them survive the carnage ahead. If it were up to me, Thor and Hawkeye would live, though Thor would "retire" from superheroing to help his people rebuild. Hawkeye's already sort of "retired" to take care of his family, so he could go back to that, especially since Avengers 4 will introduce a freakin' cosmic superhero and a guy with a bow and arrow will just be a little too out-of-place.
For my money, I'd say Iron Man, Cap and Black Widow are basically toast. In the first Avengers, Iron Man seals his bona fide hero credentials by showing willingness to make the supreme sacrifice and blow himself up along with the Chitauri fleet. There'd be something fitting about giving him the chance to make that sacrifice one more time, and for him to take it. Cap is a lonely, old man whose old flame died two years ago and who basically doesn't have anyone or anything left in his life to fight for except "what's right." Black Widow, who will never be able to settle down and have kids, having been sterilized (as was established in Avengers: Age of Ultron), and who has a lifetime of bloodshed she'd probably like to redeem herself for, was all ready and set to bite the big one in A:AoU, and, I'm guessing, has been for some time.
I'm not sure Marvel would want to kiss Bruce Banner goodbye, considering that there has yet to be a definitive, truly satisfactory standalone Hulk movie, but at minimum I suspect this is the last time Mark Ruffalo will be playing this character.
So I'm betting at least two, with an outside shot of three, of the original Avengers will get to ride off into the sunset come May 2019, though really, thanks to Logan you can't really be sure of anything.
On an unrelated note: one major upside to all the death in Avengers: Infinity War is that for the first time in the whole series, the team's name actually makes sense, as they now have people to avenge.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
(SPOILER ALERT) How "Avengers: Infinity War" May Have Hurt "Ant-Man and the Wasp" Even as It's Given Another Upcoming Film a Huge Boost (SPOILER ALERT)
MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
LAST CHANCE!
Okay, anyone who's seen Avengers: Infinity War knows by now that the film begins (and ends) with the death and apparent death of several characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including four deaths at the hands of Thanos and/or his henchmen and nearly a dozen deaths that happen instantaneously when Thanos, having assembled all of the Infinity Stones, snaps his fingers and extinguishes half of all life in the universe. The film ends with Marvel's beloved end-credits stinger, with a crumbling-to-dust Nick Fury using an old-school pager to make an emergency call, the recipient of which is identified solely by a symbol that flashes on the tiny display of the pager.
Marvel Comics geeks will instantly recognize that symbol as the insignia borne by Carol Danvers, also known as Captain Marvel.
Marvel Studios has therefore strongly suggested, if not definitively established that Captain Marvel will be key to Thanos' defeat in next year's sequel to A:IW and has, in doing so, has virtually guaranteed that a significant percentage of the tens of millions of movie viewers all around the world whose patronage powered A:IW to a record-crushing $641 million opening weekend (without China!) will want to check out Captain Marvel's solo film which is due out in March of next year. While the Marvel badge has, over the years, proved to be the closest thing to a guarantee of box-office success, this little tidbit has all but guaranteed generous box-office returns for Marvel's first female-anchored superhero film, assuming the film itself is a decent product. Such is the strength of the Marvel marketing machine that they they have, in general, managed to sell the heck out of even the weakest of their movies (I'm looking at you, Thor: The Dark World). That's not the big surprise.
What, to me, is surprising, is how A:IW with basically one throwaway line in the script may have subtly, ever-so-slightly undermined the chances for the breakout box-office success of Ant-Man and the Wasp, the sequel to the 2015 superhero/heist hybrid.
One of the characters mentions that neither Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye nor Scott Lang's Ant-man is in the film about a third of the way through the movie, citing the fact that they were incarcerated at the end of Captain America: Civil War and had to cut a deal to stay free, and no mention is ever made of them again. It actually makes quite a bit of sense in the context of the story because Hawkeye and Ant-Man are the only two Avengers characters with children. From a viewer's perspective, though, this line basically declares "these characters don't advance the overall narrative." In Hawkeye's case, this isn't a problem; I'm sure Jeremy Renner appreciated the time off from dangling from wires and other bruising stunts, plus the fact that he doesn't have a standalone movie to sell. In Ant-Man's case it wouldn't have been much of a problem either, if it wasn't for the fact that Avengers: Infinity War delivered a series of emotional gut punches that left much of the audience reeling and a heck of a cliffhanger. The takeaway from the A:IW script, however, is that Ant-Man and the Wasp will have no impact whatsoever on this story.
Does that mean it won't sell? Of course not; the first Ant-Man movie made half a billion dollars with barely any connective tissue to the ongoing narrative at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm sure the core audience will be back for more of Scott Lang, but what about the millions of new viewers won over by Black Panther and bowled over by Avengers: Infinity War, and who will no doubt be eagerly anticipating the next chapter in the story? They've just been told that Ant-Man and the Wasp will basically have nothing to do with A:IW.
In truth, it's to Marvel's credit that they were willing to leave all that money on the table rather than force some kind of connection to the larger narrative; they're letting Ant-Man and the Wasp stand or fall on its own merits. It's just a bit surprising considering that just about every one of the 18 films leading into Avengers: Infinity War was tied into it somehow, to see Marvel categorically declaring that this one stands on its own. Perhaps it's the start of a new era of confidence in their product where they content to let movies stand on their own and not be inextricably woven into one big meganarrative, who knows?
LAST CHANCE!
Okay, anyone who's seen Avengers: Infinity War knows by now that the film begins (and ends) with the death and apparent death of several characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including four deaths at the hands of Thanos and/or his henchmen and nearly a dozen deaths that happen instantaneously when Thanos, having assembled all of the Infinity Stones, snaps his fingers and extinguishes half of all life in the universe. The film ends with Marvel's beloved end-credits stinger, with a crumbling-to-dust Nick Fury using an old-school pager to make an emergency call, the recipient of which is identified solely by a symbol that flashes on the tiny display of the pager.
Marvel Comics geeks will instantly recognize that symbol as the insignia borne by Carol Danvers, also known as Captain Marvel.
Marvel Studios has therefore strongly suggested, if not definitively established that Captain Marvel will be key to Thanos' defeat in next year's sequel to A:IW and has, in doing so, has virtually guaranteed that a significant percentage of the tens of millions of movie viewers all around the world whose patronage powered A:IW to a record-crushing $641 million opening weekend (without China!) will want to check out Captain Marvel's solo film which is due out in March of next year. While the Marvel badge has, over the years, proved to be the closest thing to a guarantee of box-office success, this little tidbit has all but guaranteed generous box-office returns for Marvel's first female-anchored superhero film, assuming the film itself is a decent product. Such is the strength of the Marvel marketing machine that they they have, in general, managed to sell the heck out of even the weakest of their movies (I'm looking at you, Thor: The Dark World). That's not the big surprise.
What, to me, is surprising, is how A:IW with basically one throwaway line in the script may have subtly, ever-so-slightly undermined the chances for the breakout box-office success of Ant-Man and the Wasp, the sequel to the 2015 superhero/heist hybrid.
One of the characters mentions that neither Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye nor Scott Lang's Ant-man is in the film about a third of the way through the movie, citing the fact that they were incarcerated at the end of Captain America: Civil War and had to cut a deal to stay free, and no mention is ever made of them again. It actually makes quite a bit of sense in the context of the story because Hawkeye and Ant-Man are the only two Avengers characters with children. From a viewer's perspective, though, this line basically declares "these characters don't advance the overall narrative." In Hawkeye's case, this isn't a problem; I'm sure Jeremy Renner appreciated the time off from dangling from wires and other bruising stunts, plus the fact that he doesn't have a standalone movie to sell. In Ant-Man's case it wouldn't have been much of a problem either, if it wasn't for the fact that Avengers: Infinity War delivered a series of emotional gut punches that left much of the audience reeling and a heck of a cliffhanger. The takeaway from the A:IW script, however, is that Ant-Man and the Wasp will have no impact whatsoever on this story.
Does that mean it won't sell? Of course not; the first Ant-Man movie made half a billion dollars with barely any connective tissue to the ongoing narrative at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm sure the core audience will be back for more of Scott Lang, but what about the millions of new viewers won over by Black Panther and bowled over by Avengers: Infinity War, and who will no doubt be eagerly anticipating the next chapter in the story? They've just been told that Ant-Man and the Wasp will basically have nothing to do with A:IW.
In truth, it's to Marvel's credit that they were willing to leave all that money on the table rather than force some kind of connection to the larger narrative; they're letting Ant-Man and the Wasp stand or fall on its own merits. It's just a bit surprising considering that just about every one of the 18 films leading into Avengers: Infinity War was tied into it somehow, to see Marvel categorically declaring that this one stands on its own. Perhaps it's the start of a new era of confidence in their product where they content to let movies stand on their own and not be inextricably woven into one big meganarrative, who knows?
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