Making the Old New Again (Sort of): My Review of "The Batman"

 directed by Matt Reeves

written by Reeves and Peter Craig

Batman is arguably one of the best-known comic book characters in the world, and as such has been adapted into multiple media, including film, so many times that it's hard to imagine any iteration of him feeling particularly fresh, but director Matt Reeves, who not too long ago revitalized the Planet of the Apes franchise and his excellent team of collaborators like actor Andy Serkis and composer Michael Giacchino (to name a few) gives it the old college try.

This iteration of the Caped Crusader is played by British actor Robert Pattinson whose Bruce Wayne is just as brooding as his Batman, and he's bringing with him a whole new cast including Jeffrey Wright as Police Lieutenant (and future Commissioner) Jim Gordon, Serkis as faithful Wayne butler Alfred Pennyworth, Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle a.k.a. Catwoman, Colin Farell as Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. the Penguin, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, and Paul Dano as Edward Nashton, a.k.a. the Riddler. 

In this version (not to be confused with the DC Extended Universe in which Ben Affleck played Batman), Batman is a relatively new crimefighter in Gotham City, dealing violently with the criminal element and aiming to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, calling himself "vengeance."  He already has an informal alliance with Police Lieutenant James Gordon, but both of them are caught completely off-guard when the mysterious killer the Riddler starts killing high-profile city officials of Gotham City, leaving riddles for the Batman to solve and releasing videos declaring his victims to be symptoms of corruption that must be purged from Gotham.  Batman needs to find the Riddler before he claims his next victim. To get to the truth, he must investigate the victims' connection to the criminal underworld, including the shady Carmine Falcone, owner of Gotham's sleaziest gentlemen's club, and his henchman, the Penguin.  In the course of his investigation, he crosses paths with the mysterious Selina Kyle, who has her own agenda, but it's not clear if she'll be able or even inclined to help him as he races against time to stop the Riddler.

The first thing I'd like to say about this movie is that I really appreciated a lot of the little touches.  For example, I hugely appreciated that this was the first Batman reboot that did not feature the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne, which has literally been done on screen four previous times, including in a movie that didn't even feature the Batman (it was the 2019 film Joker, for anyone wondering). The film talks about it, to be sure, but doesn't beat that particular dead horse anymore.

Pattinson and the rest of the cast acquit themselves quite well; Reeves made the conscious decision not to have Bruce put on the suave bachelor facade as a contrast to his brooding Batman; early in his career, Bruce, still wallowing in his Kurt-Cobain-esque angst, wouldn't have yet appreciated the value of putting up a veneer to keep people from asking too many questions. One assumes that iteration of Bruce will come later in the series. Kravitz makes a compelling Catwoman, and Wright does a creditable Jim Gordon as well. Paul Dano, who spends majority of his screentime behind a mask and with a muffled voice, plays a pretty effective psychopath, it must be said.

Unfortunately, a significant downside of the casting is Colin Farrell buried in latex doing what feels like a Vegas-style impersonation of Robert DeNiro. It's understandable that Matt Reeves wanted the Penguin to veer away from his cartoony, comic-book origins, but unfortunately in veering away from one form of camp he has steered too hard into another. Well, at least the Penguin featured in pretty memorable car chase.  

Speaking of which, I quite appreciated Reeves highly kinetic camerawork, and his visible efforts to create a more immersive experience for the viewer, like the moment in which Batman glides from a building top, with what looks like a Go Pro riding him on the way down. It also helped spruce up the car chase sequences, which featured a cool take on the Batmobile that felt part muscle car, part supercar.  The sound mixing of these  sequences was pretty keen, as well.

This brings me to composer Michael Giacchino, who is now the third composer, after Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer, to compose music for both Batman and Spider-Man movies, though he's the first one to have composed for Spider-Man first. His music is memorable and intriguing, given that Batman's current theme sounds distinctly like notes from John Williams' iconic Imperial March. I'm not sure what impelled that but in the context of the story it works, though for me the definitive Batman theme is still Danny Elfman's. 

It's not a perfect film, but it has to be said that this iteration of the Batman is off to a pretty strong start. 

8.5/10

Not Exactly Unexplored Territory: A Review of Uncharted

 directed by Ruben Fleischer

written by Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway

When it comes to film adaptations from other media, video games as a source material are pretty much at the very bottom of the proverbial totem pole.  As marginalized as comic book-based movies are among critics and the "experts" they are royalty compared to video game movies. Heck, Johnny Depp got nominated for an Oscar for a character he played in a movie based on a theme park ride. Long story short, video game movies don't get any respect.

Making a passable video game movie, therefore, is an embarrassingly low bar to clear, and yet so many major film studios have failed at it over the years.  If nothing else, the film adaptation of Naughty Dog's wildly successful Uncharted game at least manages to clear this bar. 

Following over a decade and a half in development hell, Sony Pictures have finally managed to churn out the long-gestating adaptation of Uncharted, with Zombieland's Ruben Fleischer pulling directing duties from a script by Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. White-hot Tom Holland, whose other movie, Spider-Man: No Way Home is still in theaters, making considerable amounts of money for a three-month old film, stars as bartender-turned-treasure-hunter Nathan Drake, while Mark Wahlberg, once in the running for the role of Drake, plays his older mentor Victor Sullivan.  Tati Gabrielle plays chief henchwoman Braddock, Sophia Ali plays fellow treasure-seeker Chloe Frazier, while Antonio Banderas plays the big bad, Santiago Moncada.

The film starts with a flashback in which young Nathan Drake (Tiernan Jones) and his older brother Sam (Rudy Pankow) sneak out of the orphanage in which they live and break into a museum, with Sam attempting to steal a map. They get caught, and Sam, rather than go to jail, escapes, leaving Nathan to grow up alone in the orphanage with the promise to find him again.

Years later, Nate is grown up and working as a bartender in New York, who also happens to know how to slip valuables off of the wealthier patrons, when he is approached by Sully, who tries to recruit him on a hunt for a treasure that was supposedly found by Ferdinand Magellan in the Philippines and brought back to Spain, but which no one can find. They are in a race against time against Santiago Moncada, whose family bankrolled Magellan's trip 500 years ago and who is ready to use deadly force to claim what is his, especially the services of Braddock and her crew of mercenaries. For their part, Nate and Sully have Chloe on their side, but it's unclear if she can be trusted. The hunt is on.

As much as I've enjoyed all four Uncharted games, bearing in mind the "curse" of the video game movie I came into this film with expectations firmly in check.  To be fair, the producers did go to some length to recreate the globe-trotting feel of the games, with some decently-staged action sequences in Spain as well as two major action set pieces, one involving a fight in a plane's open cargo bay and the other involving a fight aboard a Spanish galleon being airlifted by a helicopter. So those boxes are  firmly ticked. Tom Holland's Jackie-Chan-inspired fight sequences are genuinely fun to watch, especially given how he really lends his physicality to them.  Arguably, even more than Spider-Man, this is a role in which his experience in dance and acrobatics will really benefit him. 

Unfortunately, though, apart from the brisk action sequences, the movie doesn't really have that much else going for it. Tom Holland still manages to make Nate Drake a likeable guy, but he's a far cry from the rogue we see in the video games, though the producers have repeatedly emphasized that he's still on the journey to get there. Mark Wahlberg's take on the iconic Sully is even wider off the mark (pardon the pun) thanks to a clunky script and Mark Wahlberg basically just playing Mark Wahlberg.  Banderas' menacing bad guy Moncada, who does nasty things to his father (Manuel de Blas) for wanting to give away his family's blood-soaked fortune, essentially comes across as a goof ball, and the less said about Sophia Ali's take on Chloe Frazier, basically a South-Asian Lara Croft in the games, the better.  Tati Gabrielle's Braddock is vaguely convincing as a bad guy, but that's about it. I also have a problem with a script that basically has its characters act like morons to advance the plot. I know this is true for a vast majority of Hollywood films to one degree or another, but it felt especially prominent here.

The good news, though, is that the bones for a decent franchise are there. Holland can grow (if not necessarily physically) into the Nathan Drake role, which will make more and more sense as he gets older and could potentially be something he could settle into after hanging up Spider-Man's tights, and Wahlberg, who sports Sully's trademark mustache in the film's post-credits scene, could also grow into the character. Between the two of them they could develop the chemistry that makes their interactions in the game so much fun.   Also, the filmmakers have shown they can pull of the show-stopping actions sequences, and given how many of those are featured in the games, there is plenty of material left for them to mine. 

Speaking as a fan of the games, I think it would be nice if they incorporated some of the game's more interesting puzzle sequences into the movie rather than the fairly pedestrian bits they featured. Also, Nate needs to do way more wall climbing in the next film; this is a staple of the game, for crying out loud. I can understand why they toned down the shoot-em-up nature of the game, but the climbing has to be stepped up for the next movie.  I mean, Tom Holland getting ridiculously jacked feels somewhat pointless considering that Nathan Drake was never about shirtless scenes but he was all about scaling virtually any surface.

This certainly could have been better, but it could also so easily have been so much worse.

With my first blockbuster of 2022 now in the rearview mirror, I look forward to checking out Matt Reeves' The Batman. 

6.5/10

Why Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness Needs to be Mind-blowingly Awesome...And Why It Probably Is (Spoilers for...Oh You Know What? Read at Your Own Risk)

 Having seen Spider-Man: No Way Home in theaters a total of three times now, I no longer see it through rose-colored lenses and am less willing to ignore at least one glaring aspect of the storytelling that I basically set aside the first few times that I watched it because, well, I had a really great time. But it's a lot easier now to be honest with myself about one of the single biggest flaws of SMNWH.

I'll just say this directly: Marvel (and Sony) did Doctor Strange dirty by basically turning him into a plot device.

It's not the first time that Spider-Man's Marvel Cinematic Universe iteration has had a "babysitter" from the "MCU proper."  The first film in the trilogy had Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, the second had Samuel L. Jackson as an ersatz Nick Fury, so on the one hand Doctor Strange's presence in SMNWH was just the continuation of a tradition (and most likely a contractual obligation).  More than that, however, he served as an indispensable plot element as his powers were the needed catalyst for the MCU's version of the multiverse to work. That's not a problem in and of itself,  but the way it was carried out was.

Basically, the way SMNWH was written, for Doctor Strange's spell to get screwed up and rip open the multiverse, Doctor Strange had to be dumbed down and turned reckless. I could see some token efforts by writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers to explain him casting the ill-fated spell by basically having him take pity on Peter, but the manner in which the spell is botched just defies logic when the person casting it is supposed to be a sorceror supreme.  There was also the fact that Strange was somewhat callous regarding the fate of the multiverse villains, especially considering he's an actual doctor sworn to preserve life, and finally, the fight between Strange and Peter which literally had the writers inventing new superpowers for Peter, like his unexplained, out-of-body ability to keep the spell box from Doctor Strange, just so he could defeat Strange and move the plot forward.  We could argue the livelong day about how Peter could legitimately take Doctor Strange in a fight, even though we're talking about someone who held his own against an Infinity-Gauntlet-powered Thanos versus someone whom the latter swatted aside like a fly--er--spider, but to my mind, the way the film handled the fight felt off.

The point is that Strange was depicted so blatantly out-of-character just to make the plot work that a whole theory has been written on at least one fansite (and quite probably more) as to why, and even a casual viewer like Ben Shapiro, who has openly professed his preference for DC over Marvel, has taken notice, even in a largely positive review. It doesn't surprise me; McKenna and Sommers, while not actually bad at writing heartfelt character moments, have had trouble creating devices to move the plot forward and are guilty of some pretty lazy writing in the past. They're the guys, just for reference who gave Janet Van Dyne miraculous healing powers at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp (spoiler alert, I guess) because the plot needed to be resolved. Speaking of which, Strange, following his battle with Peter, was essentially written out of the story until the writers needed him to conviently show up and fix everything.  

Benedict Cumberbatch may have just turned in the single most compelling dramatic performance of the year in The Power of the Dog, but in Spider-Man: No Way Home his character's sole purpose is to open up the multiverse and close it back down again. 

When you've got fans racking their brains to explain why one of your marquee characters is so OUT of character, you've definitely done something wrong, and as much as I know that Spider-Man is basically Marvel's crown jewel, a character who will NEVER suffer Tony Stark's fate in Avengers: Endgame, Doctor Strange should not have been so thoroughly degraded just to make Spidey look better. That was unconscionably lazy writing. There were better ways to do it. For example, the fracturing multiverse could have helped Strange lose the spell box to Peter, not some hamhanded explanation of math being the key to manipulating the Mirror Dimension, which the writers quite clearly pulled out of their asses, same as Spidey's out-of-body powers.  

Anyway, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness looks like it may actually fix these mistakes, or at least be cool enough to get us to forget about them. From the look of the trailer, Marvel have basically written Sam Raimi a blank check, and having paired him up with Michael Waldron, the head-writer of the fantastic Loki series, it looks like their investment is going to pay off handsomely.  

Just...please, Marvel, don't disrespect Doctor Strange like that again. 

MARVEL'S MISUNDERSTOOD TAKE ON "STAKES:" A REVIEW OF SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT FOR BOTH SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME AND ETERNALS)

 directed by Jon Watts

written by Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna

Much as I'd like to say that Spider-Man: No Way Home was the first movie I saw in theaters  after a year and a half of lockdown, the truth is that it was another movie I went to see, namely Chloe Zhao's much maligned, somewhat misunderstood film Eternals, a movie I didn't hate but didn't love either.  It's worth comparing the two because there's something important they have in common apart from the Marvel Studios brand name.

Spider-Man: No Way Home immediately follows the revelation that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is Spider-Man that took place in the mid-credits scene of Spider-Man: Far From Home.  Thanks to the doctored broadcast leaked by the late Mysterio's team to conspiracy theorist/online show host J. Jonah Jameson (JK Simmons), Peter's life has basically turned upside-down. Although none of the allegations hold up in court, Peter's life is still in shambles, and to make things worse, even his friends Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) are suffering from the backlash as none of them can get into any of the colleges of their choice due to the controversy surrounding them. Desperate, Peter thinks of a radical solution; he approaches Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks him to use magic to help him. Strange is able to think of a spell to make people forget his identity, but it ends up getting botched, however, after Peter constantly interrupts Strange with concerns about the people he cares about forgetting him like his Aunt May (Marissa Tomei), MJ and Ned. Suddenly, Peter finds himself running into strange, powerful people he doesn't know...but who know that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and who want to kill him. These mysterious strangers include Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and the Lizard (Rhys Ifans), and Peter learns that they've been pulled from other universes into his own because of Doctor Strange's failed spell, which means he is now in a race against time to send them back where they belong, until he learns something shocking that changes everything. 

(SPOILER ALERT)

Sony and Marvel basically pulled out all the stops for this movie, with all of its villains and surprise heroes, but the real coup of this movie was what it took away.  What this film has done in somewhat shocking fashion is to take away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Spider-Man everything in his life, such as his friends, and even his Aunt May, and strip him to basically the barest essentials of the character. When he swings out into the winter night at the end of the movie, the MCU Spider-Man, for the first time, is completely on his own. 

People have often criticized Marvel movies--quite unfairly--in my opinion, of being low-stakes affairs in general, largely because of the relatively light tone that many, if not most of them adopt. Such a criticism actually fails, in my opinion, to understand the way Marvel tells stories. 

Kevin Feige and his cohorts understand, probably better than anyone else in the business, that even though making each individual MCU film is important, they are all still part of a bigger narrative and as such are a true adaptation of the comic book series' long-form storytelling.  They know that it is important for their characters to connect with audiences over time.   In short, rather than get a cheap rise out of the audience with contrived "stakes" through gratuitous violence and death every movie, Marvel takes the cannier route of getting audiences invested in its characters, whether these are heroes like Iron Man and Black Widow or key supporting characters like Aunt May. While, several of their individual films may sometimes seem "weightless," more often than not all but the harshest critics note that they usually do a good job of connecting us viewers with the characters.

As a result, when Black Widow sacrifices herself to obtain the Soul Stone and restore half of the universe's population, and when Iron Man basically barbecues himself to defeat Thanos and his forces, audiences all around the world are genuinely gobsmacked.  I still remember watching Avengers: Endgame two years ago in a packed IMAX theater in which the guy beside me was so sure that Iron Man would rise from the dead with a clever quip...until he didn't. 

Similarly, Marisa Tomei's young and hip Aunt May has been known mainly for her humor and loving support of Peter over the course of several films starting with Captain America: Civil War,  so when the filmmakers finally yanked the rug out from under the viewers and killed her character in No Way Home, it hit harder than any "edgy" but ultimately meaningless violence in movies with supposedly more "stakes" ever could. 

Perhaps the most effective point of comparison and contrast is Eternals, which significantly departs from the Marvel practice of letting all of the major characters survive their first movie. Salma Hayek's Ajak doesn't even make it halfway through the movie before she's killed, and Don Lee's Gilgamesh meets a similarly grisly fate about two thirds into the movie.  This is supposedly good for the narrative because it creates a sense of urgency and menace for our eight remaining heroes, but because this film does such a poor job developing its massive cast of characters, we the audience cannot really be bothered to care that something bad has happened to them.  We're not invested in the characters and so their deaths become meaningless. There are dire consequences to their actions, sure, and there are therefore "stakes" in that hackneyed sense, but because these characters are so undercooked, these "stakes" basically don't mean anything beyond what the script tells us they're supposed to mean, and it's probably only when Thanos' brother (played by Harry Styles) shows up that the audience has some vague idea of how serious the threat is...because the movie has to spell it out at this point, rather than it being a visceral reaction. So having failed in its basic assignment of getting the audience to connect to the characters, the film now struggles to establish its sense of urgency, even after killing principal characters to make its point.  So for once, Kevin Feige and his team screwed up. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home, in contrast, takes what has come before and basically pays it off in spectacular fashion. Throughout all of his adventures in his solo films and in the Avengers movies, MCU Spider-Man has made lots of friends and allies, and even though he's had close calls, he's always benefited from having someone, whether it was Happy Hogan with Stark tech, or  Ned as his "guy in the chair," or even two other Spider-Men, around to help him out.  In Spider-Man: No Way Home, the film truly ups the ante; after finally asking Doctor Strange to cast the spell to really make everyone forget who he is, Peter lets go of everyone left in his life who matters, leaving himself completely alone in the world, and it is a deeply affecting moment, especially when the viewer realizes that he's still just a kid, albeit one who's just grown up a whole lot faster.  

Yes, producer Kevin Feige, working here with Spidey vet Amy Pascal, director Jon Watts and his writers Erik Sommer and Chris McKenna know all about stakes, and how to really hurt their character when it really and truly matters. And THIS film was a time that it really mattered.

  

9/10

MY TAKE ON MARVEL'S ETERNALS (SPOILERS)

 direcred by Chloe Zhao

written by Ryan Firpo, Kaz Firpo, Patrick Burleigh, Zhao

As I write this, Marvel's November 2021 release Eternals has just made its debut on Disney+ after a two-month theatrical run that has seen it earn around USD 401 million at the global box-office and garner a franchise-low 47% "rotten" rating, according to review aggregator rottentomatoes.com.  

A lot has been said about this movie during its theatrical run, a lot of it bad, and one common criticism of the film is that the film has too many characters to juggle, which prevents the audience from making a meaningful connection with any one of them.  I don't entirely agree with this; personally I think it still could have worked had the filmmakers effectively focused on the conflict between duty and conscience, which could have played out much more strongly had it been more properly developed. Having ten characters wasn't necessarily an obstacle to this; better writers, like Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely could have pulled it off in my opinion.

One oft-repeated hot take is that Eternals should have been a six-episode Disney+ series instead of a two-and-a-half hour movie, which is something with which I must respectfully but strongly disagree.  

Eternals is basically the story of ten otherworldly beings of extraordinary power, headed by Ajak (Salma Hayek) and her right-hand man Ikaris (Richard Madden) sent to Earth thousands of years ago to protect humanity from monsters known as the Deviants.  They have been instructed by their principal, Arishem the Celestial, not to interfere in human affairs unless Deviants are involved, though they are allowed, in a fashion, to help guide humankind along in the realization of its potential. When the Eternals defeat the last deviant in the 1500s, they also find themselves shocked by the atrocities of the conquistadores.  Druig (Barry Keoghan) whose power is mind-control, breaks the rules and intervenes, and thereafter the group essentially disbands and each of them go their separate ways.

Centuries later, and in the wake of the events of the war with Thanos, a new threat emerges, one strong enough to kill one of the Eternals, that has the group getting back together again.  

Eternals is a movie that, for all its flaws, deserved to be seen on the big screen because it has a distinct visual identity that couldn't really have been captured on the small screen.  While director Chloe Zhao inevitably shot much of the film on Pinewood Studios' sound stages, undoubtedly for the more fantastical elements of the movie, she also shot a significant portion of it on location in the Canary Islands, giving the film a nice, lived-in, earthy feel, which were a nice point of contrast against the ethereal, otherworldly aesthetic that Zhao used to manifest the Eternals' powers.   It had a visual sense of scope that just couldn't be captured on television, and yes, I have seen the Loki series.  

Zhao's eye for stunning beauty is clearest in the scenes in set among ancient civilizations, and later, in scenes in which the characters commune in the desert.  The scene in which the characters dine together is something I particularly liked; with very few exceptions you rarely see these larger-than-life characters do something as mundane as eat, and it was not only refreshing to see but enjoyable to see the food rendered onscreen with such visual flourish. It's nice to know that it isn't just food commercials that can depict appetizing food.  Zhao even managed to put her personal stamp on the obligatory action sequences.  While unfortunately, she couldn't prevent Richard Madden's Ikaris from looking like a poor man's Superman, I quite liked how she envisioned, among others, the balletic fighting style of Angelina Jolie's Thena, complete with her ability to manifest her golden weapons, sort of like an angelic version of Thor: Ragnarok's Hela.  I even liked the look of the Deviants.

SPOILER ALERT: From this point onwards I will discuss plot-related spoilers.  If you still want to go into this movie unspoiled you may end the review here.

6.5/10

Another aspect of the film that really warranted a big-screen presentation was the literal size of the antagonist, i.e. Arishem the Celestial, a mile-high giant that can basically destroy the world, as well as Tiamut, a nascent Celestial buried in the Earth thousands of years ago, who nearly does just that at the climax of the film. Literal titans like this need to be seen on the big screen. 

Also, unlike with so many other Marvel films, at the very outset it's made clear that not every character will make it to the end credits, something we don't always get in a franchise's launching movie. 

Visually, the film more than justified its presence on the big screen, but its muddled script and some rather uninspired performances ultimately let it down. Salma Hayek's Ajak deserved much more screen time than she got, especially considering that she was one of the focal points of the film's conflict of conscience.  Her story deserved more than being the object of the cheap "Marvel twist" that it got when it was revealed that Ikaris betrayed her.

Speaking of Ikaris, it is never established, up until the point of his betrayal, why he believes as deeply as he does in his mission, to the point that he is willing to betray and murder his fellow Eternal, and this is one of the film's major failings, just as the film also fails to establish why the heroic Sersi (Gemma Chan) loves humans so much that she is willing to spare them.  At least Ajak's motivations were clear.

Clearly all of the Eternals have different reactions to living among humans for thousands of years. Phastos (Bryan Tyree Henry) finds love, Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) finds boredom, and literally lives on their mothership with all of her accumulated junk from Earth, waiting to go home, Druig finds peace with his mind-controlled enclave of humans deep in the jungle, Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) finds fame and fortune, Sprite (Lia McHugh) find frustration at spending thousands of years in the body of a child, while Thena (Angelina Jolie) accompanied by Gilgamesh (Don Lee) finds an uneasy rest from her Mahd W'yry, which is basically a condition that befalls some Eternals as a direct result of living for thousands of years.  All of these characters with their individual reactions to these events could have been a storytelling goldmine and could have easily lived up to the "diversity" banner often used to market this film, but instead the filmmakers wasted time on Sersi and Ikaris' love story.  The so-called "diverse" cast of characters feels like little more than decorations. 

I found it frustrating that the film couldn't be bothered to elaborate on why its main antagonist or its main protagonist think the way they do. There could have been adequate build-up leading up to the twist that Ikaris had murdered Ajak, some dialogue discussing his devotion to the Eternals' mission.   The filmmakers also passed up the chance to pose a real moral quandary given the established fact in the narrative that the Celestials actually create life, which meant that killing one would actually prevent this from happening, and which could have helped deepen the conflict between the two factions. 

So yes, I did have my issues with Eternals, but I still think it deserved its big-screen treatment.

6.5/10

WHY SHANG CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS IS MORE IMPORTANT TO THE MCU THAN SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME (AND A REVIEW, TOO)

 directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

written by Dave Callaham, Cretton and Andrew Lanham

There's something sad about not being able to write about a Marvel movie until after most of the world has already seen it and basically tired of it, but this review's been percolating on my mind for a while so it would be a shame not to at least share my thoughts.  Also, I'd like to discuss how, more than Spider-Man: No Way Home, this film represents the real way forward for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which is now out on Blu-Ray and Disney+ after a very successful theatrical run, is exactly the kind of movie that Marvel fans needed to kick off Phase 4 in earnest, with the disappointing Black Widow basically just serving as an epilogue to Phase 3.  

For those who still don't know, the film tells the story of Shang-Chi, aka Shaun (Simu Liu) a chronic underachiever content to work as a valet in San Francisco and chill with his fellow valet and best bud Katy (Awkwafina). He's happy to live his life this way until the past he's been hiding from catches up to him in the form of the goons of his father, the millennia-old, merciless warlord Wenwu (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), who attack Shaun to get the pendant around his neck, which was a gift from his late mother Ying Li (Fala Chen).  Shaun reveals fighting skills he had long concealed, and then realizing the threat his father poses, he flies to Macau with Katy in tow to warn his estranged sister Xialing (Meng'er Zhang).  When he gets to the underground fighting ring she runs, the two siblings (and friend) encounter their father and all hell breaks loose. 

To show that the title isn't just some clickbait assertion, I'd like to explain just why I believe that Shang-Chi is way more important than Spider-Man insofar as the MCU is concerned. 

Before Chadwick Boseman's tragic death in August of 2020, it seemed very clear from the events of Avengers: Endgame that the Black Panther character was going to be a central character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe moving forward.  When the Marvel head honchos made the sentimental and arguably imprudent decision to essentially write T'Challa out of the MCU following Boseman's death, I personally feel it collapsed one of the established pillars of Phase 4.  It would, of course, be silly to try to create clones of the "tres amigos" of the Infinity Saga, namely Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, or more expansively (if you include Black Widow, Hulk and Hawkeye), the "big six," but it is clear that Phase 4 would need strong, identifiable characters on which to anchor its next mega-narrative, even if it doesn't turn out to be as massive as that first 23-film saga.   Whomever they swap out for T'Challa simply isn't going to cut it; they'll have to develop this new character all over again...and yes, even if that happens to be Shuri. 

Which brings me to Shang Chi, a well-developed, relatable character brought to life in his own solo movie which, barring the mid-credits scene, contains only minimal references to the larger MCU.  One could say that Shang-Chi's solo movie showcases the kind of storytelling Marvel used to do before they descended into formula, but I think it's more accurate to say that Shang Chi is the Marvel formula done RIGHT. Like 2008's Iron Man and 2018's Black Panther, this film has its hero go on a well-defined journey of self-reflection and discovery, features some pretty awesome action sequences, and leaves us with a character ready to take part in something bigger. As of right now, he's basically good to go.

As a character now primed and prepped for integration into the larger MCU, Shang Chi is now pretty much free to fit into whatever grand narrative Kevin Feige and his architects are setting up for the next ten years or so.  There's no danger of any plugs being pulled, or of any character-sharing deals falling through.  Unlike Spider-Man, Shang Chi is not a character whose cinematic fate lies in the hands of a different studio. 

But here's another reason why Shang Chi is so darned important: the MCU is what it is in the cinematic landscape (which right now, includes being the savior of the theatrical moviegoing experience) because once upon a time, all Kevin Feige and his team had to work with were second-stringers, given that the rights to all of the big guns like Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four were all locked up with other studios (who seriously dropped the ball with these properties thanks to some spectacular mismanagement). Having built their foundation on b-listers, Marvel needs to stay closer to its roots, which is particularly apt here considering that Shang Chi was actually one of the very first characters slated to get his own movie alongside Iron Man, though the market clearly wasn't ready for him at the time. 

This brings me to the next point; Feige has stated at least once (and I'm paraphrasing here) that the future of the MCU lies in diversity. The problem, though, is that too often these days, diversity is played up for its own sake, often at the expense of story. For a strong example of meaningless attempts at diversity, take the recent Star Wars trilogy, which had the opportunity to introduce a groundbreaking black lead in Finn, only to relegate him to an eventual token, with the lion's share of storytelling going to white leads Rey and Kylo Ren. 

With Black Panther and Shang Chi, Marvel have shown just how serious they are about telling stories with diverse characters that aren't pandering or tokenistic.  Eternals, which was supposed to be their biggest diversity showcase may have misfired (and more on that in another post), but Shang Chi was definitely a win for the cause of diversity in storytelling, and Marvel needs to lead with that.

It was always a given that Spider-Man: No Way Home was going to dominate the North American box-office for 2021, but the fact that a c-lister from Marvel came in second is testimony not only to the strength of Marvel's brand, but the quality of the movie. 

9/10

    

Netflix Ramblings: Kate

 directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan

written by Umair Aleem

When I watched this film a few weeks ago I considered giving it a video review, but as I wrapped it up I thought better of it; the channel feels much better suited to reviewing and creating awareness about movies that nobody watches.  Kate, in contrast, has proven to be a bit of a hit. Still, while I don't feel the need to champion this film, I definitely would like to share my thoughts on it.

Kate is the story of the eponymous gun-for-hire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who's basically been in the business since childhood, having been recruited and trained by her handler Varrick (Woody Harrelson).  When one of her jobs involves her murdering a Japanese Yakuza boss in front of his daughter, she balks at her work and lies low in Japan. A year later she is called on for one last job, this time on the older brother of her last hit, but after a seemingly chance encounter at a bar, she suddenly feels dizzy and botches the job, only to realize she has been poisoned. She only has hours to figure out who poisoned her, and so begins a desperate race against the clock, in which she does all kinds of crazy things to get to the bottom of her own murder, like invade a Yakuza-infested restaurant, and even kidnap Ani (Miku Martineau), the niece of the Yakuza boss and the actual daughter of Kate's last victim. Will she find out before he time runs out?

One doesn't watch movies like this for plot or character development, so it's slightly easier to bear the fact that the script is all over the place, and that it's riddled from nearly start to finish with ridiculous tropes like the "twist" ending, the kidnap victim developing affection for the freaking kidnapper, etc. These are kind of par for the course.

The thing is, in a post-John Wick landscape, the question becomes what this film has done to set itself apart besides depict eyeball-searing violence. The 2014 sleeper hit John Wick basically revitalized the ultra-violet assassin genre not just with its violence but its absurd premise of a retired hitman coming out of retirement and going on a killing spree because his dog was killed and his car stolen. So far the makers of that series have milked three films out of the consequences of that premise but have helped it along with some amusing, if outlandish world-building. Kate doesn't have nearly that level of quirkiness if any at all.   

One thing Kate gets right is its exotic setting; while an American in Japan isn't the most novel storytelling device (unlike, for example, a black American in Greece in Beckett), director Cedric Nicolas-Troyen makes the most out of his film's chosen setting with bright neon lights, juxtaposed against grungy streets and alleyways and finally the old-world austerity of sliding Japanese doors.  John Wick co-director David Leitch serves as one of the co-producers here, and his influence is pretty apparent in the film's visual sensibility and fight choreography.

Another thing the makers got right was their choice of lead in Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who pulls off the role quite well, really throwing herself into a lot of the really gritty fight sequences, even the ones that involve her ass getting kicked, which is something of an inevitability when one fights an army of opponents. She's also a very sympathetic actress and is thus able to carry the film when the script, with its lack of logic, fails her.  Of course, veteran actors like Woody Harrelson and Tadanobu Asano help the production along nicely, though newcomer Miku Martineau is somewhat grating as the niece whom Kate kidnaps. 

All told, though, there's little about this film that really makes it stand out in a sea of John Wick clones, but since watching it is as simple as clicking the Netflix apps, well have at it. 

6/10