The Incredibles 2

The latest superhero sequel of the year continues the 2018 theme of franchises not being content to leave well enough alone.

The Incredibles 2
Director and Writer: Brad Bird
Starring: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, etc.
Music By: Michael Giacchino
Rated: PG (for more of the same superhero violence and adult themes found in the first movie)

This sequel picks up right where its 14-year-old predecessor left off. The Parr family has just saved the day from Syndrome’s schemes, but that isn’t enough to convince the government to legalise hero work. After the family is forced underground again, a pair of tech company executives offer Elastigirl an opportunity to advocate for superhero rights by attaching a camera to her suit while she performs public acts of heroism. Mr. Incredible stays home with the kids, which turns out to be a more difficult assignment than he expected when baby Jack-Jack’s plethora of powers start to emerge.  Meanwhile, Elastigirl’s activities draw the attention of a new, mind-control wielding supervillain called the Screenslaver. It’ll take a whole family of supers (plus Frozone and a few new allies) to foil their tech-savvy foe’s plans.

The Incredibles was the first superhero movie I saw in a theatre, and even though it was intended as a deconstruction of the genre, it did more to spark my love of cape-and-cowl fiction than anything else from my childhood (except maybe the original Spider-Man trilogy). I still think it’s one of the smartest, most consistently entertaining superhero films out there, even in today’s golden age of comic book movies. It’s also a very complete movie, especially for its genre. Every plot thread and character arc is wrapped up in the end, with no loose ends demanding a sequel. I’ve heard Brad Bird quoted as saying he didn’t want to make a sequel unless he was sure it could be as good as the first movie. So this film, coming well over a decade after its predecessor, had a lot to live up to.

Everyone looks a lot better than they did 10 in-universe seconds ago…

And it definitely does a lot of things right. It’s nice to hear all the original voice actors return (with the exception of Dash, who was recast by necessity), and Giacchino’s soundtrack is as jazzy and cool as ever. The animation definitely showcases the technological advancements that have been made since the first Incredibles. It’s actually a bit jarring to see the super-stylised characters from the last movie moving so much more smoothly, and with so much more detail in their faces and backdrops.

But it definitely helps with the action scenes. The action in this movie is as exciting and fun as it was in the first instalment, and if anything, it shows more creativity on the part of Brad Bird and his animation team. Some highlights include a train vs. motorcycle chase scene involving Elastigirl, a climactic fight involving a character who creates portals, and absolutely every scene in which Jack-Jack appears. After the hints we got in the last movie regarding Jack-Jack’s many powers, I was excited to see him use them in this movie, and he did not disappoint. An uber-powerful baby with no control over his abilities may be a parent’s nightmare, but he completely stole the show for the me.

“No firing the baby around the house!”

Another thing I enjoy about both Incredibles movies is seeing the family work together. When you have a bunch of superheroes with different abilities fighting the same villain, it can be difficult to make them work together in a believable way without resolving the conflict too quickly or giving one superhero more to do than the others (see the end of Justice League for an example of this being done badly). But unless they’re having trouble communicating in-universe, the Incredibles always manage to do the teamwork thing really well: for example, in one scene Mr. Incredible is steering a giant machine away from some buildings while Frozone slows it down with ice and Elastigirl fights the baddie controlling it. Everybody has something to do and does it well, which is always one of my favourite things to see in a superhero team-up movie.

Another thing I appreciate about The Incredibles 2 is that it managed to maintain the same tone as its predecessor. Like that movie, this feels like a superhero film aimed at adults, which also happens to be suitable for kids, rather than the other way round. It doesn’t shy away from death, violence, or complex concepts like the role of technology in our lives.  And the setting revels in its retro-futuristic style as much as ever.

But as much fun as I had with this movie, it didn’t even come close to leaving the same impression on me as the first one did. Granted, I’m much older and far more inundated with superheroes than I was when The Incredibles came out, but I also think this movie fell a bit short in some of the areas that made its predecessor so special.

First, there’s the villain. Screenslaver has a creepy design and an intimidating power, and, at first, seems poised to bring an interesting philosophical question about superheroes to the fore, just like Syndrome did. The villain’s first couple monologues (no, the baddies still haven’t learned their lesson about monologuing) argue that superheroes should stay underground because their heroics make normal people weak and dependent. It’s a valid point that Lex Luthor and other supervillains have explored before to great effect. But this movie does disappointingly little with the idea, and I think it’s partly because Screenslaver isn’t as compelling a villain as Syndrome was.

“The Screenslaver interrupts this broadcast for an important announcement…”

Unlike Syndrome, Screenslaver has neither a personal connection to the Parr family nor an onscreen backstory. Screenslaver’s identity is also kept secret for half the movie and treated like a major twist when it’s revealed, which I think was a bad idea. First, it relegates our villain’s motivations to one monologue and a 30-second flashback, instead of allowing the audience to see things from their point of view like we did with Syndrome. And the surprise element didn’t even work for me. There were only two possible candidates for Screenslaver’s true identity, and I figured out which one it was about five minutes after they were introduced. Surprise villain reveals are a lot more fun when they’re, y’know, surprising.

This movie also falls short of its predecessor in terms of its character arcs. In the first movie, every member of the Parr family learns a lesson or grows as a person by the end. In this movie, most of the family has everything figured out from the beginning. Bob switches roles with Helen and has to figure out how to be a better dad (kind of like he did in the first movie…), and Violet has a minor subplot where she learns to appreciate hero work and accept her role in the family crime-fighting team (kind of like she did in the first movie…), but Helen, who takes the spotlight for the most part, really has nothing to learn. Her part of the story is all about stopping the bad guy, which is fine–I love watching Elastigirl rubber-punch things. But apart from a few fleeting moments where she gets worried about leaving her family at home, she doesn’t really have an internal conflict to resolve or a flaw to overcome. It almost feels like Brad Bird was afraid to give his super-mom any weaknesses, which is a shame, because it makes her story less interesting than Bob’s was in the first movie.

At least she gets a cool bike out of the deal, though!

But that’s about it for character arcs. Dash contributes practically nothing to the story, and although Jack-Jack goes through some changes (literally), he’s still more of an unpredictable prop than a character. We’re introduced to some new supers, but they don’t have much to do except help out in a big fight at the end.

Would I care about any of this if I hadn’t grown up with the first movie? Probably not. On its own merits, The Incredibles 2 is a fine movie that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to any family with children. But I’m picky about sequels, especially when they come after classics like The Incredibles. In order for me to love a sequel, it has to do at least one of three things: continue a storyline left hanging in the first movie, develop the first movie’s characters in new and interesting ways, or take the first movie’s concept and do something totally unique with it. The Incredibles 2 doesn’t do any of those things particularly well.

But then, what did I expect? The Incredibles is about as close to a perfect superhero movie as we’re ever going to get. It has everything: suspenseful hero action, likable characters, quotable dialogue, an interesting setting, and a bunch of challenging messages designed to make the audience think. It’s basically a smarter X-Men or a less depressing Watchmen. Any sequel was doomed to pale in comparison. In a way, I’m glad the standards have been lowered a bit. Now it might be possible for future Incredibles movies to pleasantly surprise me.

“I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.”

Still, if you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend seeing this movie in the theatre–if only to make sure you see Bao, the short film that precedes it. It’s the oddest, most surprising cinematic experience I’ve had in quite some time. I won’t say anything else for fear of spoiling it, but just like Piper before Finding Dory, it’s a short that rather outshines its feature film.

Then again, The Incredibles 2 has Jack-Jack fighting a raccoon. That counts for something.

Grade: B+

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Looks like Disney put out a new Star Wars movie last week.

Unless it was in 2012. I’m a little confused, to be honest.

John Carter
Director: Andrew Stanton
Writers: Andrew Stanton, Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon
Starring: Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins
Music By: Michael Giacchino
Released: 2012
Rated PG-13 (for very mild language, blood that is mostly blue, and offscreen youngling murder)

This space opera tells the story of a lovable rogue who gets reluctantly caught up in a war between aliens, falls in love with a princess, and becomes best friends with a dog-like monster. More specifically, John Carter is a bitter Confederate soldier-turned-prospector who’s hunting for gold in the Wild West when he comes across a glowing amulet that transports him to Mars–or, as the locals call it, Barsoom. Thanks to the lower gravity, he’s extra strong and can jump extra high on Mars, which helps endear him to  a tribe of green, four-armed warriors. But when he bumps into a conveniently human-looking princess on the run from her fiancé, a warlord who wants to take over the planet, he quickly finds himself having to choose sides in a war between Mars’s two major cities.

There are two reasons I thought I might like this movie going in. First, I enjoy those early sci-fi novels, written when actual scientists still thought there might be canals on Mars and rainforests on Venus, and nobody had a clue what space travel would be like. And this movie is based on one of the earliest examples of that type of book–A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (same guy who wrote the original Tarzan). Second, I knew this movie was a huge box office flop when it came out, and, historically, most of my favourite Disney movies–Treasure Planet, The Rocketeer, The Emperor’s New Groove, etc.–have also flopped to one degree or another.

I wasn’t the only person who saw this, right?

And I did find a lot to like about this particular Star Wars movie. Some of its CGI hasn’t aged well (I had the urge to laugh every time John Carter hopped into the air on invisible wires), but it still manages to paint a beautiful and believable picture of its Martian fantasy world. Even though the movie throws a lot of alien culture at the audience in a short amount of time, it does so almost completely through visual storytelling, not exposition. For example, nobody ever explains the four-armed aliens’ method of reproduction, which is important for one of the many subplots–John Carter just stumbles across a nest of babies, and we then see how they’re integrated into the tribe’s society. Even some more complicated concepts, like the actual method by which our hero gets zapped to Mars, get about two lines of explanatory dialogue at most–the audience is just expected to pick up the idea based on what happens onscreen. Most sci-fi and fantasy movies have at least one long exposition scene, so I found this movie’s commitment to show, not tell, rather refreshing.

Of course, the downside is that the audience is also expected to accept a whole lot of ridiculous names being thrown at us by actors (and CGI monsters) with absolutely straight faces. Tharks and therns and Jeddaks and a city called Helium and a magical chant containing a word that sounds exactly like “wheeze”…it’s a lot to take, even for somebody like me, who thoroughly enjoyed Doctor Strange‘s magic artefacts. I imagine that’s part of the reason this movie didn’t do well at the box office, apart from its unnecessarily bland title. Without a built-in fanbase, it’s hard for Hollywood to get people interested in a story with so many ridiculous names and places to keep track of.

At least it’s no Jar-Jar.

Despite all that, I was always able to follow the story, and by the time John Carter got to Mars (which admittedly took a few minutes too long), I was invested. The lead actor isn’t bad…although he does have one of those faces I automatically associate with gym-loving guys who use the terms “beta” and “–tard” unironically. I don’t imagine he would do well in a role that required nuance and complexity, but fortunately this one doesn’t. He’s just a regular action hero with a very simple character arc, and it works.

The other characters largely make up for the hero’s blandness. Princess Dejah Thoris, despite having yet another goofy name, is really quite likable and gets to do a lot more than I was expecting from a damsel in distress. But my favourite characters were the two main Tharks (the aforementioned four-armed aliens), who are, weirdly enough, played by two of the more famous actors in the movie. Theirs was the most interesting out of all the subplots woven through this story, and they were the characters I connected with the most on an emotional level.

Way more than these two, that’s for sure.

Oh, and the dog-alien was cute, I guess. It seems there always needs to be a dog-alien when Disney is involved.

John Carter is very much in the vein of all the old, pulpy adventure movies where a muscle-y guy goes to an exotic place, punches some monsters while shirtless, kills the bad guys, gets the girl, and saves the priceless artefact (or is the other way round?). For what it is, it’s very well-made and accomplishes pretty much everything it sets out to do. If you enjoy that kind of story, or if you just like seeing fresh visual takes on alien worlds, there’s a very good chance you’ll enjoy this movie.

I mean, I’m always up for a good arena monster fight.

Personally, though, I think its greatest weakness is that it’s just okay. It’s not bad, but it’s not amazing, either. And I think that’s why it failed so hard at the box office. The other Star Wars movies can get away with occasional mediocrity because they have the words “Star Wars” in their titles, and most people will pay money for anything even tangentially associated with that label. Because this movie left those words out of its title, it didn’t have a gigantic fanbase willing to accept whatever nonsense was thrown on the screen, so it would have needed to be Lord of the Rings-level awesome in order to turn a profit. And it just wasn’t.

After watching it, though, I’m honestly kind of sad we’ll never get a sequel. I’d like to see more of Barsoom and its creatures and technology. Maybe I’ll have to check out the books.

Grade: B

Oh, and maybe someday I’ll review Solo for real. Didn’t feel like paying theatre prices for it.

Cargo

I’m in a zombie mood again!

Cargo
Directors: Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke
Writer: Yolanda Ramke
Starring: Martin Freeman
Music By: Daniel Rankine (I think…the internet is unclear)
TV-MA (for swearing and zombie-related grossness)

Andy, his wife Kay, and their baby daughter Rosie are waiting out the Australian zombie apocalypse on a houseboat in the middle of a river. Since a sensible set-up like that obviously can’t last in a zombie movie, the undead catch up with them, Kay gets killed and Andy gets bitten. Alone in the outback, with about 48 hours of humanity left, Andy has to find a way to get his daughter to safety before he becomes a mindless, munching monster.

An Unexpected Journey.

This movie is based on an excellent 7-minute Australian film with the same name and the same writer/director duo. When I stumbled across it on YouTube a few years ago, I loved it because it was such a short, sweet story, and packed such a big emotional punch. (I’d still highly recommend it–you can watch it here.) So when I found out it was going to be a Netflix movie, I was torn between excitement and pessimism. On the one hand, the short was so good that I was sure its creators had it in them to make a good feature film. And Martin Freeman starring in a movie is always a good sign. On the other hand, much of the short’s impact comes from its simplicity, and I wasn’t sure how well it would work to expand it to two hours. Not to mention that the term “straight to Netflix” is starting to take on the same connotations as “straight to DVD” when it comes to movies.

And yes, this movie does sometimes feel as slow-moving as its zombies. There’s very little action and quite a lot of walking and talking. But the writer and director clearly worked hard to expand on their original concept. For one thing, in the full-length version, Andy is joined on his journey by an Aboriginal girl named Thoomi, a clever survivor who’s still having trouble accepting that there’s no cure for her zombified loved ones. The movie also adds a human antagonist in the form of Vic, a greedy miner who sees the apocalypse as just another business opportunity.

And on top of everything else, her makeup’s running.

Part of the fun of any zombie movie is seeing how it portrays its living dead–because generally speaking, no two zombie movies are alike in that regard. Cargo adds some inventive twists to the monsters: hibernating zombies that have to stay in the dark, “diggers” that bury their heads in the ground while waiting for prey, etc. The transformation process is also a bit different–and a bit more gross–than usual. This movie’s zombies don’t come across as living corpses so much as really, really sick people, complete with a disgusting sap-like discharge from their eyes and mouths. That being said, the movie has a pretty tasteful approach to its gore. Most deaths happen off-screen, and the focus is always on the tragedy of the death rather than the blood-and-guts.

And personally, while I don’t mind fast zombies necessarily, I tend to prefer monsters that take longer to transform, partly because it allows for dramatic scenarios like the one in this movie.

The original short was a simple story of fatherly love. This movie keeps that theme, but it also adds several more layers of character development for its protagonist. For one thing, the full-length movie shows the disaster that kicks off the plot is largely Andy’s fault, adding a desire for atonement to his motivations for the rest of the film. It also throws some tough ethical dilemmas his way as he searches for a suitable home for his daughter. Turns out that, after an apocalypse, your options for an adoptive family are limited, and Andy often finds himself having to choose between leaving Rosie with people who are good at surviving or with people who are…well, good.

His relationship with Thoomi is another welcome change to the story. They meet under bad circumstances and don’t really get along at first. Like a lot of Aboriginal people, she has no reason to trust a white guy, and he doesn’t understand her way of doing things. But as their situation forces them to rely on each other more and more, they develop a rather sweet friendship. The movie becomes, not just a story about fatherly love, but also one of reconciliation and understanding between people from very different cultures. Which is also very sweet.

“You’re all I’ve got.”

The problems I have with this movie are fairly small. Characters make some pretty stupid decisions, especially towards the beginning, and a lot of problems even later on could have been avoided if people would just come out and say what they were thinking. Some of these mistakes are understandable, especially coming from a character like Andy, who’s not used to surviving in the outback, and they’re certainly not unusual in the zombie genre, but they still annoyed me a bit.

On the other hand, the characters also come up with some pretty clever ways of avoiding the zombies later in the movie, so that helps make up for the earlier stupidity.

As one might expect from its premise, this is a very sad, bleak story, without much of the silliness or crazy action you’d expect from an average zombie movie. Its message is ultimately pretty hopeful and uplifting, but there’s a lot of depressing stuff to wade through before we get to that point. This is definitely not something to watch when you’re trying to cheer yourself up after a rough day.

At least…the baby’s cute?

Overall, though, I thought it was just about as excellent as I would have expected from the makers of the original short. Martin Freeman is brilliant as always, and it’s kind of nice to see him doing an indie movie like this after becoming part of the big Marvel machine. The Aussie actors backing him up also do a great job (even the twins who played the baby, although whoever directed them should probably take the credit for that). There’s some impressive zombie makeup, some lovely shots of the Australian landscape, and some hauntingly beautiful music. It’s more thoughtful and more creative than the straight-to-Netflix label might suggest, and I feel comfortable saying it’s the best zombie movie I’ve seen in quite some time.

While I was watching it, though, I realised it’s been at least a good month and a half since I saw a movie in which all the main characters survive to the end. I need to find a more cheerful movie for next week…

Grade: A-

Sunshine

Don’t look directly at the sun, kids. It’s bad for you.

Sunshine
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, etc.
Music By: John Murphy
Released: 2007
Rated R

Apparently, 50 years after this movie was made, the Sun is going to stop working, and the Earth is going to get cold, threatening the existence of the human race. Our story is about a group of eight astronauts aboard the Icarus 2 (the previous Icarus mission having failed, probably due to its terrible name), who are on their way to fix the Sun by throwing a big bomb at it. (Shockingly, this film was made by Brits, not Americans.) Along the way, something goes wrong with the mission, forcing the astronauts to make contact with the previous Icarus ship, where the crew may or may not still be alive.

This movie is more than 10 years old, was made by an Academy Award-winning director and stars some very big Hollywood names (although in fairness, it was made when Chris Evans’ most famous superhero role was still the Human Torch), yet it took me until late last year to find out it existed. I’m always game for trying a new sci-fi movie I know nothing about, and I’m going through Captain America withdrawals, so I decided to pick it up pretty much based on those facts alone.

And…it turned out to be a bit of an odd pick. Based on the plot description, it seems like it should have been a goofy B-movie, and it certainly isn’t. Based on its cinematography and writing, it seems like it should be a philosophical sci-fi epic, but it never quite gets there, either. It’s some kind of weird hybrid of the two. A…B-epic, perhaps?

Got your SPF 9000 handy?

Let’s start with the setting. I’m no astrophysicist, but I’m fairly certain most of the “science” presented by this movie is nonsense. Just for starters, NASA scientists predict the Sun won’t start “dying” for at least a couple billion years, barring some very unlikely accidents, and when it does die, it’s far more likely to expand, heating up the Earth, than to cool and cause another ice age. And that’s not even getting into some of the ridiculous ways space behaves in this movie.

But Sunshine does try very hard to create a scenario that makes sense, if not according to real-world physics, then at least according to its own internal logic. Much of the first act is dedicated to showing the audience exactly how everything works on the Icarus 2: how its massive radiation shield has to be aligned perfectly toward the Sun to avoid catastrophic damage, how it gets oxygen from a garden fed by recycled water, how the ship’s advanced computer has to be immersed in coolant in order to function, etc. All these things become important later on, and the set-up pays off because the way they work remains consistent throughout the movie. Everything is presented in a way that seems plausible, even if it wouldn’t work in real life.

Oxygen gardens seem like a sensible thing to have in space, though…

Another reason the lack of actual science in this movie didn’t bother me too much is that it has a pretty surreal feeling throughout, which I’m pretty sure is intentional. There are short dream sequences; a scene that keeps getting interrupted by quick, almost subliminal shots of dead characters; and one character who always appears blurred and distorted on the screen. Then the third act happens, and things get really wonky. But I think the sound is more to blame for that surreal feeling than the visuals.

The soundtrack is probably my favourite thing about the movie. I had already heard some of it before–the climactic track “Adagio in D Minor” has been recycled in numerous trailers, and even some other official soundtracks. But in the movie itself, the music blends with the noises of the ship and of space (yes, this movie occasionally has noise in space, just go with it), and it creates a very creepy, moody atmosphere that perfectly fits the story’s tone.

That atmosphere leads to a constant feeling of claustrophobic tension. Almost the entire movie takes place inside a stark, badly-lit spaceship with little room to move…and when we join up with our crew, they’ve already been together inside it for months. It’s no wonder tensions are already running high at the beginning, especially since the crew has just passed outside the range of communication with Earth and the resident psychiatrist has an unhealthy obsession with the Sun.

“Kaneda, what do you see?”

Like any self-respecting sci-fi drama about a small crew trapped and alone in space, this one features quite a few characters who go a little nuts. But characters in this movie tend to go nuts only in a way that involves unsafe sungazing. When it’s not taking place inside a drab spaceship, the film is full of beautiful shots of the Sun and extreme close-ups of human eyes looking at the Sun. Our nearest star is treated almost like a living thing in this movie: a siren beckoning some characters to their doom, while promising some sort of enlightenment to others.

And throughout the movie, I had the feeling the storytellers were trying to say something through that Sun-obsession theme. At one point, a character who’s gone insane starts babbling about how the Sun is God, and He wants humanity to end…but it doesn’t really go beyond that, and the insane character is a little hard to take seriously anyway. The ending, while somewhat ambiguous, seems to suggest there really is something enlightening or spiritual about coming face-to-face with the Sun, but it just isn’t expanded upon as much as I’d hoped. Unless I’m just too stupid to get it…which is always a possibility.

One lesson I definitely took away from this movie: Mercury is super cool!

A theme that’s better developed in this movie is the idea of weighing one person’s life against many. From the beginning, all the characters are well aware of two things: the extreme danger of their mission, and the fact that it is the “last, best hope” for mankind. From the moment things start to go wrong, the movie is basically a long series of trolley problems, forcing the characters to make increasingly drastic choices to ensure their mission doesn’t fail. The right choice always seems pretty clear, at least to the audience: after all, what is one person’s life compared to all the billions of people who live on Earth, and will live there in the future? But despite knowing the risks beforehand, some characters don’t react well to the idea of dying or letting a crewmate die, and at least one goes way too far in the other direction. (After all, what are billions of tiny human-sized lives compared to the Sun and the vastness of space?)

Against all odds, this movie actually did ease my Captain America withdrawals, because Chris Evans plays the most competent character in it. Mace, the computer engineer, has some anger management issues, but he’s the only member of the cast who consistently puts the safety of the human race above his personal feelings (including his regard for his own life or the lives of his crewmates). He always does the most pragmatic, logical thing in every situation, which is rather refreshing to see in a movie like this. I wouldn’t be too surprised if this role helped Evans land his spot in the MCU. Of course Cillian Murphy’s character, the physicist Capa, is no slouch in the hero department either, even if he causes as many problems as he fixes.

“Is it the surface of the Sun? Every time I shut my eyes, it’s always the same…”

Overall, I enjoyed this movie quite a bit–mainly thanks to the music, the creative visuals, and the acting, which is great across the board. But I constantly felt like it was trying to say something important, and I don’t think it ever quite got the words out. It feels like a movie that could have been right up there with the greatest sci-fi classics of all time…if a few story elements were tweaked and the filmmakers thought a little harder about what they wanted to say. As it is, it’s an exciting flick with some very memorable scenes, but not necessarily a must-see.

Unless you have a powerful need to see Scarecrow fighting Captain America. Then you don’t want to miss it.

Grade: B

Final Space

Now that Infinity War is out, I’m free to talk about stuff that isn’t Marvel. And what better way to transition out of those giant box office juggernauts than with a relatively obscure cartoon by a D-list YouTube celebrity?

Final Space
Creators: Olan Rogers, David Sacks
Starring: Olan Rogers, David Tennant, Tika Sumpter, etc.
Music By: Shelby Merry and Jake Sidwell
Rated TV-14

Gary Goodspeed is finishing up a five-year prison sentence in deep space. He’s only had a crew of annoying robots for company during that time, so he’s overjoyed when an adorable little green alien, whom he dubs Mooncake, bumps into his ship, the Galaxy One. Unfortunately, it turns out that Mooncake is actually a planet-destroying super-weapon, and the evil Lord Commander is after it for nefarious purposes. Gary teams up with a grumpy bounty hunter named Avocato and a scientist named Quinn (who also happens to be his unrequited crush) to protect Mooncake and save the Earth–nay, the universe–from Lord Commander’s schemes.

“‘Universe’ sounds way cooler.”

Pretty much ever since I discovered YouTube, Olan Rogers has been among my favourite YouTubers. Whether it was his early skits with the BalloonShop channel, his later skits on his own channel, or dramatic stories about his life, his goofy-yet-wholesome brand of comedy has always been one of the few things guaranteed to cheer me up whenever I’m feeling down. If you’ve never heard this man tell a story, you should remedy that immediately. Here’s a link to a classic to get you started.

So naturally, I was thrilled when I found out this guy had made it big and started his own cartoon show on TBS. And for the most part, Final Space is exactly what I would have expected from Rogers. The humour is very much in the same vein as his YouTube stuff, relying on odd euphemisms (“Dear Heavenly Lightning Lord!”), other colourful turns of phrase (“I didn’t expect that hurt coin deposit in my sadness savings!”), and general absurdity. But it also throws in a lot of morbid, black comedy…which mostly works even better in the world where this story takes place.

And the world of Final Space looks great. Heck, space itself is the best-looking thing in this show. The character designs may be cartoon-y, but the backdrops, the spaceships, the supernovae and the occasional apocalyptic destruction just look like beautiful sci-fi art. The soundtrack, which I think I can best describe as indie space rock, adds several layers of atmosphere and perfectly complements every emotional moment. It’s one of the better soundtracks I’ve heard in a show, cartoon or otherwise.

“Play the good stuff, HUE!”

But the best thing about the show is easily its characters. Gary is a bit of an acquired taste (even more so, I imagine, for anyone unfamiliar with Olan’s style of humour), but he’s often hilarious, and always a great guy at heart. Quinn is all the heroism with none of the stupidity, Avocato is as cool as he is cat-like, and David Tennant, again, shows his skill at creating villains I love to hate with his unrecognisable Lord Commander voice. Even the show’s robots have a wide range of personalities, from the everlasting annoyance of KVN to the patient, loyal HUE. And Mooncake is just ridiculously adorable.

As eclectic as they are, all the main characters have one thing in common: they’re all flawed, and they all know it by the end.  Gary is impulsive and irresponsible, Quinn is stubborn and tends to put her trust in the wrong people, and Avocato is a ruthless mercenary trying to atone for a dark past. But throughout the show, they strive to become better people and often succeed, mainly because of their undying loyalty and friendship with each other. Gary himself sums it up best: “All of us are broken. It’s just a matter of how much, and how far we’re willing to go to fix it.”

Even though I found it quite funny, I think calling Final Space a comedy would be a stretch. The jokes are just the sprinkles on top of the show. At its gooey centre,  this is an epic space opera about a ragtag group of heroes facing down impossible odds to save each other and the world. For every moment that made me laugh, there was at least one other that tugged at my heartstrings.

In space, no one can hear you cry.

Oh, and there’s quite a lot of gory death–sometimes deliberately over-the-top for comedy’s sake, and sometimes played straight. The show also has something of an atmosphere of impending doom. Each episode begins with a flash forward to a future in which Gary is drifting alone in space, slowly running out of oxygen with only HUE for company, so we don’t start off with a whole lot of confidence in a happy ending.

Final Space is only 10 episodes long, and each episode is only about 20 minutes, so it has to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. For the most part, it does this admirably (I imagine years of experience with YouTube shorts helps with that). Hardly a single moment feels wasted, and the writing manages to pack a ton of character development and a rather complex plot into the allotted time. Still, the format does limit its storytelling a bit. I would have liked to see more backstory for some of the characters, and the romance between Gary and Quinn really suffers from the compressed timeline. It’s pretty much your basic “loser falls in love with girl way out of his league, gradually wears her down with persistence and a winning personality” story from every comedy ever. The show at least tries to make their relationship feel natural (it helps that Gary really is a good guy at heart), but there’s just not enough time for it to work. Fortunately, there have been hints on the Twittersphere that Season 2 will be longer.

 

Statistically speaking, relationships formed during the apocalypse tend to be short-lived.

Other than that, and a few jokes that didn’t land for me, the only thing I don’t like about Final Space is that its soundtrack hasn’t been released yet. I need that in my life.

Disclaimer: This is the first cartoon for adults I’ve ever gotten into, so I don’t really know how it compares to stuff like Rick and Morty or Futurama. If you’re a fan of the genre, you might come in with very different expectations than I did. But coming in as a fan of Olan’s YouTube channel, and with no other background info whatsoever, I kinda loved it.

To the max-core.

It should be noted that, based on his videos and the way he interacts with fans online, I think Olan Rogers might be one of the most decent human beings working in entertainment right now, so I was somewhat predisposed to like this show just because of that. It’s hard not to want a guy like Olan to succeed, especially when he seems so genuinely grateful for the success he’s had already.

But while its humour might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and its story occasionally falters,  I do think this is a good show on its own. It’s got flavours of Firefly and Guardians of the Galaxy, and just a hint of Doctor Who, but Final Space  is very much its own thing, and it’s one of the more imaginative sci-fi stories I’ve encountered in a while. It surprised me, made me laugh, and took me on a wild emotional rollercoaster. I can’t wait for Season 2.

Grade: A-

 

 

Avengers: Infinity War

Well, this is it. Ten years of Marvel movies have all been leading up to this moment.

And yet, I don’t think any of us were prepared.

Avengers: Infinity War
Directors: Anthony and Joe Russo 
Writers: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
Starring: Half the Universe
Music By: Alan Silvestri

Thanos is a big, powerful, purple alien we’ve glimpsed a few times before in the Marvel movies, but never really got to know. He believes the universe is dangerously overpopulated, and he has a simple solution: kill half the universe. In order to accomplish this, he plans to collect the six Infinity Stones (which we’ve also seen popping up here and there in various Marvel movies) in his Infinity Gauntlet, which will allow him to wipe out as many intelligent beings as he wants with just a snap of his fingers. The Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange and the armies of Wakanda join forces to stop him from collecting all the Stones before it’s too late.

There’s basically no way to talk about this movie without giving away spoilers, so for the spoiler-free portion of the review, I’m just going to describe what it was like seeing this movie on opening night.

I live in a part of the country that doesn’t have a particularly high concentration of geeks, or people who care about movies in general. So the theatre where I saw Infinity War was only a little more crowded than usual on Thursday evening. But there was a definite feeling of excitement as we waited for the movie to start. A lot of the people there were wearing Marvel gear (except for one brave soul in a Superman t-shirt) and swapping theories about who would die, where the Soul Stone is, etc. During the first two acts of the movie, there was a lot of laughter at the jokes, and loud cheers and applause at three specific moments. But during the last 15-20 minutes, the crowd became very quiet. As the movie drew to a close, the silence started being broken by people shouting at the screen. It was mainly a repeating cycle of “What?!” “No way!” “No!” and various profanity. When the end credits began, there was applause, but also a lot of audible frustration. Same thing happened after the stinger (which didn’t come until the very end of the credits, by the way).

Personally, I spent the last few minutes of the movie giggling like a maniac, because it was exactly the ending I’d hoped and dreamed about for more than two years, and didn’t expect to see.

It brought a smile to my face.

Without giving anything else away, all I can say is that I highly recommend Infinity War—if you’re a fan of the MCU and have seen at least most, if not all, of the previous movies. If you occasionally rent a Marvel movie from Redbox but don’t really feel invested in any of the characters or storylines, this movie wasn’t made for you, and you probably won’t enjoy it much. It doesn’t make any attempt to introduce characters we’ve met before or explain plot elements that were brought up in other movies. There’s no time for that.

It’s also important to realise going in that, despite the studio’s decision to drop the Part 1 from its name, this movie is very much the beginning of a story, not a complete story in and of itself. If the end feels unsatisfying, that’s because Part 2 is coming out next May to resolve a lot of the plot threads that were left dangling here.

So that’s my spoiler-free review. If you’re a Marvel fan, you’re not going to want to miss this one. And definitely see it in the theatre if possible, because the audience’s reactions are half the fun.

In the rest of my review, I’m not going to intentionally spoil any major plot points. But so much surprising stuff happens in this movie that I don’t trust myself not to give anything away while giving my opinion on it, and I know a lot of people like to go into a movie as blind as possible. So there may be some minor spoilers ahead.

READ PAST THIS POINT AT YOUR OWN RISK IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE!!!!
(unless you don’t care about spoilers)

First spoiler: This shot isn’t in the movie.

So, one of the reasons I listed Thor: Ragnarok as my second favourite MCU movie was because it was the first one that truly felt like a comic book brought to life. I felt similarly about Infinity War--except that, more specifically, it feels like an event comic brought to life.

For anyone unfamiliar with comics, event comics are big crossovers that happen about once every five years in DC and once every five months in Marvel. They typically bring as many characters as possible together into one epic storyline that will have an impact on their entire universe, sometimes even rebooting the whole thing. That’s what this movie felt like to me: just a giant, comic book-y crossover with a ton of beloved characters interacting in ways we’ve never seen before, with a much higher-stakes plot than we’ve ever seen before.

Could you imagine Iron Man hanging with this crowd back in 2008?

And while event comics can often be messy, involving a lot of contrived plot devices, people acting out of character, or pointless deaths, I felt this movie handily avoided most of those problems. Yes, the cast is huge, and some characters do get more of a spotlight than others out of plot necessity, but everybody gets at least one moment of character development or just plain awesomeness. Doctor Strange is about 10 times cooler here than he was in his own movie, Thor continues to prove that he is truly the Strongest Avenger, the Scarlet Witch/Vision romance gets more development, all the Guardians get to show off their growth from the last movie while remaining hilarious, and Tony Stark not only gets a ton of ridiculously cool new tech, but also gets to see his paranoia from the last 3-4 movies validated. (Though…he’s probably not happy about that last part.)

But if this movie has a central character, it is Thanos himself. It’s his quest for the Infinity Stones that drives the plot, and his character arc that forms the emotional core of the movie. More time is spent on his backstory and motivations than that of any other single character.

And the fact that I still hated his guts by the end says a lot about the filmmakers’ storytelling skill, as well as that of his actor, Josh Brolin. Thanos is not at all sympathetic, no matter what certain fanboys on the internet might tell you. He’s a genocidal maniac who’s so convinced his cause is just that he will sacrifice anything to achieve it. And that makes him terrifying. He’s easily the biggest threat the Avengers have ever faced, not just because the Stones make him so much more powerful than any of them, but also because he’s so dedicated to his cause that we know he will never stop, no matter how many inconveniences our heroes throw in his way. As a result, this was the first Marvel movie where I wasn’t sure the good guys would win. From the opening scene to the end credits, there was never a moment when they seemed safe, or their victory seemed assured. A constant atmosphere of dread and desperation hung over the entire two-and-a-half-hour runtime.

Man, Thor just never gets a break, does he?

Of course, that’s not to say there isn’t plenty of the usual Marvel humour in this movie. There are quite a few moments that made me laugh out loud, mostly resulting from the interactions of characters who had never met before. The gigantic cast spends most of the movie in more manageable small groups, and each group of characters fits incredibly well together. Iron Man butting heads with the equally-arrogant Doctor Strange and Star-Lord makes for some comedy gold, as does Bruce Banner’s encounter with Shuri. Thor’s team-up with Rocket and Groot is so brilliant that I now want a whole franchise of them together. There’s a little less focus on Captain America and Black Panther’s crews, but they still have some lovely moments together.

But when it’s time to get serious, Infinity War doesn’t play around. As one might expect, this is the darkest MCU movie yet, and it’s not even close. When I went to see it a second time (to collect my thoughts and emotions), a lot of the small children in the audience were crying by the end, and I don’t really blame them. If you’ve spent the last 10 years getting to know these characters, watching them grow and change and get better…some of the stuff that happens in this movie is gonna hurt. Even though I fully expect everything to be happily resolved in Part 2, I still found a few scenes in this movie hard to watch after my marathon through the rest of the MCU.

FOR EXAMPLE.

And that leads me to one of the few complaints I have about the movie. All the female characters seem to get the short end of the stick when it comes to characterisation and screen time. Only two Marvel women have a significant impact on the plot, and it doesn’t end well for either of them. One of those characters gets an especially raw deal that I don’t think she deserved, and worse, it seems like one of the disasters in this movie that’s least likely to be undone in the sequel. That rather upset me, especially after all the progress that had been made in Phase 3 on creating better female characters.

Also, although I think the movie did as much justice to its characters as it could without a 5-hour runtime, there were a few bits of backstory for our heroes that I felt were missing–particularly for the Guardians. We never find out exactly how long it’s been in MCU time since their last appearance, but considering their first two movies took place within six months of each other, it’s reasonable to assume it’s been three years or more. Their relationships to each other seem to have changed in some subtle but important ways during that time, and because of certain things that happen in this movie, I wish we could have seen those relationships better developed onscreen. I also would have liked to know more about Thanos’s henchmen, most of whom don’t even get named in the movie.

I have a few other minor quibbles: Wakanda’s warriors seem less powerful here than they did in Black Panther, Thanos’s motivation made more sense in the comics, once in a while there’s a CGI effect that doesn’t quite look real, etc. But despite those few quibbles, I still found this movie to be an excellently-crafted, emotional epic that paid proper tribute to the best of the Marvel Universe while also doing things no other Marvel movie has done. Despite how overstuffed it is, I came away loving certain characters–Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Gamora, Scarlet Witch, etc.–even more than before. The action is incredible, and just about all the emotional beats hit me exactly the right way.

“Earth is closed today!”

The Russos continue to be my favourite MCU directors (except for maybe Taika Waititi, who made the Thor we see in this movie possible), and I cannot wait to see what they do with the sequel.  In the meantime, I’m glad I have Ant-Man and the Wasp to cheer me up after this emotional rollercoaster.

Grade: A for Avengers

Marvel Phase 3

It’s been fun, guys, but it’s time to wrap up my Marvel re-watch.

I started this blog right after Captain America: Civil War came out, so I’ve already reviewed all the movies in Phase 3. (You can find those reviews here, here, here, here, here and here.) However, I still need to rank them in comparison to the rest of the MCU.

Before I do that, though, I have a few thoughts to share about Phase 3 as a whole. While none of the last six movies have quite surpassed The Winter Soldier for me, overall this has been my favourite era of Marvel by a long way. It’s established a wacky, colourful aesthetic for the MCU’s cosmic stories that I absolutely love, and the movies have gotten more visually creative in general. The music has improved–MCU soundtracks used to be nothing to write home about, but I listen to the soundtracks from the last few movies regularly.

In Phase 3, Marvel has also shown an increased willingness to take creative risks (something you can do when you have a money-printing franchise like this, I guess). Directors like Taika Waititi are getting more freedom to make movies their own way instead of fitting them into a set “Marvel formula,” and more odd, obscure comic characters like the Watchers are getting their moments in the spotlight. And finally, after almost a decade, the franchise is starting to take steps towards giving its female characters equal screentime and development. We’re not quite there yet, but at least the female leads in the last few movies have had more to do than look pretty.

So here’s where I’ll rank each of the Phase 3 movies, and why.

Spider-Man: Homecoming – #9

“Can’t you just be a friendly…neighborhood Spider-Man?”

To me, this was the weakest of the Phase 3 films–which really tells you a lot about the level of quality we’re dealing with here. It’s a fantastic high school comedy with some decent superheroing thrown in. There’s a strong argument to be made that Tom Holland is the best Spider-Man–or at least the best Peter Parker–we’ve ever had onscreen, and the Vulture is easily one of the best Marvel villains ever. I’ll admit that I enjoyed the movie a bit more on the re-watch, since I’d had more time to get used to how different it is from the Raimi trilogy, but it still didn’t quite measure up to the rest of Phase 3 for me. The plot twist that made the movie so surprising the first time around loses a lot of its impact when you know it’s coming, and the actual superhero action scenes remain disappointing. Still, as a light-hearted coming-of-age story, it holds up quite well, and it’s always nice to get a glimpse of what a regular New Yorker’s life is like in the Marvel universe.

Doctor Strange – #8

“Might I offer some advice? Forget everything that you think you know.”

Yes, the plot is identical to Iron Man in many ways. Yes, it contains the last of the really weak Marvel villains. But I am so in love with the world this movie created. The unique brand of magic, the crazy parallel dimensions, the super nerdy-sounding names like the Cloak of Levitation and the Eye of Agamotto–that’s the kind of stuff I live for. It also has some of the wildest visuals I’ve ever seen in a movie, superhero-related or not. And in the end, it has possibly the finest example in the superhero industry of a hero saving the day with brains rather than brawn. This movie opened up some wonderful possibilities for the MCU, and despite his dodgy American accent, I can’t wait to see where Doctor Strange will go next. Plus, his Cloak is adorable.

Black Panther – #6

“In times of crisis, the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers.”

When I first saw this movie, I thought it would make my top five, but upon reflection, there were just too many other great movies in Phase 3. Black Panther is a hugely creative, colourful, and thought-provoking film that blends fictional worlds with real-life issues even better than The Winter Soldier did. It has one of the best ensemble casts in the MCU, stuffed to the gills with great characters like Okoye, Shuri, M’Baku, Klaue, and of course, T’Challa and Killmonger. Its soundtrack is rivaled only by that of Thor: Ragnarok in my heart. Honestly, the only thing that kept it out of my top five was that it was a little too predictable–it never surprised me the way most of the Phase 3 movies did. And it criminally underused Andy Serkis. Other than that, my only complaint is that it made me want to visit Wakanda, and I can’t, because it’s not real. Reality spoils everything.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 – #4

“I know who you are, boy! Because you’re me.”

It was reeeeaaaalllly tough to decide which of the Guardians movies would take this spot, because I see them as equally great in most respects. But in some ways it’s harder for a sequel to live up to a great predecessor than it is for an original movie to make an impact, and Vol. 2 is a nigh perfect example of how to do it. It keeps the tone and atmosphere of the original intact, while heightening the emotional stakes and growing all the characters into better people and better heroes. Yes, some of the humour does fall a little flat, which is a problem the original didn’t have. But to me, Vol. 2 makes up for a few lame jokes with bucketloads of character development and some of the most emotionally rich storytelling in the MCU.

Captain America: Civil War – #3 

“Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right, even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, to look them in the eye, and say, ‘No. You move.'”

Another super tough decision! Up until this week, Civil War was the most ambitious movie in the MCU apart from Age of Ultron, and much more successful at everything it tried to do. But to me, the most impressive thing about it is not the number of characters it brought into one movie, not the introduction to Black Panther and Spider-Man, and not any of the spectacular action scenes (although I still squee a bit every time I watch the emergence of Giant-Man). To me, the most impressive thing about this movie is that it managed to portray two equally heroic characters having an ideological disagreement in which both sides are flawed but have a point, and neither is made out to be the bad guy. To this day, if you put a bunch of MCU nerds in a room, you won’t get a consensus about whether Iron Man or Captain America was in the right, and to me, that’s a mark of excellent storytelling. (I’m #TeamCap, though.) It’s also a powerful witness to the success of this whole “shared universe” idea, because it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well if we hadn’t already had half a dozen movies to get to know these characters. The only reason I’m ranking this lower than The Winter Soldier is because, unlike that movie, I can find things wrong with it if I really try. I don’t like the sudden romance between Captain America and Sharon Carter, and a part of me wishes this had been billed as an Avengers movie so Cap could finish his trilogy with a true solo outing.

Thor: Ragnarok – #2

“Are you Thor, God of Hammers?”

This movie is beautiful, in every sense of the term. It’s the most visually gorgeous film in the MCU. It has the most epic action scenes in the MCU. It has some of the best music in the MCU. And out of all the movies in the MCU, this is the one that feels most like a comic book come to life. It’s also hilarious, of course, but the more I rewatch it, the more the humour feels like a happy side effect of everything else. This movie is what you get when an unconventional comedy director gets a blockbuster budget and decides to embrace everything about the blockbuster’s source material–no matter how wacky or obscure. The result is a movie that singlehandedly transformed Thor from the most boring Avenger to one of the best. That meant getting rid of a lot of his franchise’s unnecessary trappings, like an annoying girlfriend and some side characters who had already failed to be interesting for two movies, but it also meant making some sense out of Loki’s motivations and letting Chris Hemsworth be the comedy actor he was always meant to be. The movie’s effect on the Hulk was almost as drastic, allowing him to be so much more than the big, dumb brute we saw in previous movies. And it did so while introducing a whole new generation to Led Zeppelin and bringing us the magic of Korg. It’s only been out six months, but I’ve already rewatched this movie more than any other MCU entry except The Winter Soldier, and it’s just as good every time. It can’t quite replace Captain America’s best movie in my heart, but the seductive Lord of Thunder can’t be ignored.

So there you have it! My final, definitive ranking of the MCU. At least until Thursday. Let me know what you consider the #1 Marvel movie!

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. Thor: Ragnarok
3. Captain America: Civil War
4. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2
5. Guardians of the Galaxy
6. Black Panther
7. The Avengers
8. Doctor Strange
9. Spider-Man: Homecoming
10. Ant-Man
11. Captain America: The First Avenger
12. Thor
13. Iron Man
14. Avengers: Age of Ultron
15. Iron Man 3
16. Iron Man 2
17. The Incredible Hulk
18. Thor: The Dark World

Ant-Man

All right, time to go from a big Avengers team-up to what may be Marvel’s smallest-scale movie.

Ant-Man
Director: Peyton Reed
Writers: Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay and Paul Rudd
Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly
Music By: Christophe Beck
Released: 2015

Scott Lang is a master thief who’s just been released from prison and wants nothing more than to get his life back on track so he can spend time with his daughter, Cassie. But he gets pulled back into the life of crime when mad scientist Hank Pym recruits him to steal a piece of powerful technology from the even madder scientist who’s taken over his company. In order to pull off the heist, protect his family, and impress Pym’s resentful daughter, Hope, Scott will have to…shrink to the size of an ant and punch things really hard. Because this movie is very silly.

I’m not totally kidding when I say this is the smallest-scale Marvel movie. The fate of the world isn’t at stake (except in a vague, nebulous, “this bad guy could do a lot of damage with this technology” kind of way), and much of the action takes place on a literally microscopic scale. Sure, it ties into other Marvel movies, and even leads directly into the uber-dramatic Civil War, but taken on its own, this is just a light-hearted comedy about a slightly screwed-up guy trying to be a good dad.

Awwww….

Like Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man made a lot of people scratch their heads when it was first announced. The name just sounds ridiculous (which is acknowledged in the movie itself), and to non-comic readers, a superhero whose power is shrinking doesn’t seem all that impressive in a world that also contains Captain America and Iron Man. The movie works, though, for the same reasons Guardians did: it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and its emotional core relies on lovable characters going through relatable struggles.

Scott starts his first movie where Iron Man ended his: a remorseful crook who wants to atone for past sins. He’s not very good at it, partly because of society’s unforgiving nature towards people with jail sentences and felony convictions on their records, and partly because he keeps hanging out with the wrong people: fellow thieves and a rather amoral mad scientist. But the movie does a great job making us believe his love for his daughter is genuine…and it even takes the time to make the audience share that love by showing us how adorable she is.

“He’s so ugly! I love him!”

Meanwhile, Hank Pym is also a failed father trying to redeem himself after destroying his relationship with Hope due to some secrecy about his own past as Ant-Man. Thanks to his and Scott’s shared problems, the heist plot becomes a catalyst for what this movie is really about: two fathers reconciling with their daughters. In order for Scott to get a second chance at being a father, and for Hank to get a second chance at being a good one, they have to not only pull off a successful heist, but also demonstrate some real courage and selflessness in the face of danger. Hank tells Scott at one point that the whole point of his mission is to “be the hero she already thinks you are.” It’s a touching message, and both the lead actors really sell it by the end of the movie.

But there’s a lot of comedy layered over that emotional core. When I say this is a silly movie, I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. Some of the most enjoyable parts involve Scott’s goofy ant-ics (sorry) in the ant-sized world–whether he’s running from giant mice, narrowly avoiding a tidal wave in a bathtub, or befriending actual ants. (Antony FTW.) The scale of this movie also allows it to get extra creative with its fight scenes, setting one on top of a Thomas the Tank Engine set and another inside a briefcase. Then there’s the hilarious team of misfit thieves who join in the heist: Dave, Kurt, and especially the master of storytelling known as Luis.

“I was at a wine tasting with my cousin Ernesto…”

Although the movie manages to make the Ant-Man concept work extremely well, there are a few things that don’t work. Yellowjacket, aka Bland Marvel Villain #7, is so forgettable that I remember his killing methods (death by faulty shrinkage–yikes) better than I remember his actual name. And the romantic relationship between Scott and Hope feels very forced. In general, Hope’s lack of involvement in the plot, even though there’s a solid reason for it, is a bit frustrating and makes her seem like an unnecessary character at times. Hopefully all that will be remedied, now that she’s graduated to co-lead status, in Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Another change I’m hoping to see in the sequel is increased creativity when it comes to Ant-Man’s powers. All his shrinking scenes in this movie are cool, but I sometimes feel the characters could be more creative with their technology–especially the shrinking and growing discs Ant-Man can throw at things. It would also be nice to see more of the Quantum Realm, a dimension that rivals Doctor Strange‘s visuals in trippiness.

“A reality where all concepts of time and space become irrelevant…”

But I have high hopes those desires will be granted in the next movie.

For now, we have Ant-Man: a fun, goofy adventure with great characters, creative action scenes and a wholesome message about family. It proved, once again, that the MCU can spin just about any comic book concept into cinematic gold. And it provided a much-needed breather before the massive downer that was Civil War. Plus, it made real-life ants seem a little less disgusting.

ANTS!

After all, every big franchise needs a little comic relief. (I’m sorry, the puns are just too easy.)

So here’s my final ranking for Phases 1 and 2. Tune in next time for Phase 3!

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. Guardians of the Galaxy
3. The Avengers
4. Ant-Man
5. Captain America: The First Avenger
6. Thor
7. Iron Man
8. The Avengers: Age of Ultron
9. Iron Man 3
10. Iron Man 2
11. The Incredible Hulk
12. Thor: The Dark World

Avengers: Age of Ultron

The first time the Avengers assembled, they fought an alien invasion. The second time they assembled, they needed an even scarier villain to up the ante. The internet was the obvious choice.

Avengers: Age of Ultron
Director and Writer: Joss Whedon
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen….etc.
Music By: Danny Elfman and Brian Tyler
Released: 2015

We open with the Avengers mopping up the mess previous villains have left behind. They find Loki’s sceptre in a secret Hydra base, where it’s been used for human experiments, and they successfully take it back and wipe out the Hydra scientists–but not before Iron Man bumps into one of those human experiments, a woman with psychic powers who makes him see visions of dead Avengers and a destroyed Earth. Still shaken from his wormhole experience, Tony decides he must prevent that future from ever becoming reality. He teams up with Bruce Banner to create an artificially intelligent drone army, called Ultron, that can protect the planet from alien invaders. This plan backfires spectacularly when the AI wakes up and decides “protect the planet” somehow equals “kill all humans.” Now the Avengers have to mop up their own mess before it kills everyone.

This one is such a mixed bag for me. For each thing I love about it, there’s something else I hate about it, and vice versa. Even the tone is all over the place, constantly swinging from dark and scary to goofy and lighthearted, sometimes within seconds. So it’s a bit hard for me to pinpoint exactly where it fits in with the rest of the MCU.

The plot points are like Ultron bots: they just keep on comin’.

Part of the problem, I think, is that there’s just too much going on with this movie. It wasn’t enough for it to be just another Avengers team-up–it also had to set up storylines for Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther and even (probably) Infinity War, plus introduce two new Avengers. That’s a lot for one two-hour film to juggle, and Joss Whedon just doesn’t seem to have been up to the task this time around. As a result, there are a lot of subplots that don’t really make sense in the context of this movie, and a lot of things happen in the story that feel more like marks on a checklist than organic plot points.

Because of the disjointed nature of the movie, it feels more natural to talk about it in list form. So first, here are the things I really like about it:

Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Yes, their accents are terrible, and no, they don’t really get enough screen time (nobody does in this movie), but I still totally bought their tragic backstory and deep sibling bond, and their character arcs were still engaging considering how much time they had. Quicksilver is a fun, mischievous guy with a heart of gold, as befits a speedster, and Scarlet Witch is my favourite kind of Whedon character: the wispy, vulnerable-looking girl who turns out to be super dangerous. Fortunately, she got a chance to become more than that later on, but this movie laid a good foundation for her.

Vision. He rocks. That is all.

“Well, I was born yesterday.”

The action in general. It’s always fun to see all the Avengers beating up mooks together as a team, and this movie gives us not one, but two great scenes like that. Especially considering where the MCU would go later on, it’s good to have a movie where we can see the Avengers at the top of their game, effortlessly tearing apart anything the baddies can throw at them. The Hulk vs. Hulkbuster fight is similarly awesome.

Most of the quiet character moments. Special mention must go to the “lifting the hammer” scene and a few of the scenes on Hawkeye’s farm. The former is a fun moment with lots of laughs and lots of insight into each character as they try (and fail) to lift Mjolnir, and it perfectly segues into Ultron’s menacing entrance. The latter gives Hawkeye some much-needed backstory and character development, making his commitment to the Avengers team seem more meaningful.

The end credits sequence. The way it gradually reveals a giant statue of the Avengers fighting Ultron bots is really cool and creative, making it my favourite of the MCU end credits animations to this day.

Exactly 50 percent of all jokes, quips, and witty speeches. Everyone in this movie quips constantly, so much so that it’d be miraculous if all their lines were actually as clever as they think they are. But a lot of them really do work for me: “Boom! You looking for this?” “Elevator’s not worthy.” “You get killed, walk it off.” “I’m glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan…”, etc. Good stuff.

“You’re all not worthy.”

Now let’s talk about some of the stuff I don’t like.

The Hulk/Black Widow romance. I hate it. First, because it comes right out of nowhere. I may not be the most perceptive person when it comes to romance, but I did not detect even the slightest hint of attraction between Bruce and Natasha in the first Avengers movie. In fact, that movie had me convinced for three years that Black Widow and Hawkeye were a thing. Second, the romance is just badly done. For two attractive and talented actors, Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johansson have shockingly little chemistry, and all their dialogue together feels forced and out of character, especially on Widow’s part. She somehow went from an awesome double agent in The Winter Soldier to a doe-eyed lovebird whose main job on the Avengers team is to “tame” the Hulk, and the change does not look good on her. And so much time is spent on other characters talking the pair up like they’re an obvious, natural couple, and nothing gets on my nerves faster than characters I like endorsing a ship I despise. These two are easily my least favourite couple in the MCU…and there aren’t a lot of couples I like in the MCU to begin with.

I like to pretend that this scene never happened. For so, so many reasons.

Captain America and Iron Man’s characterisation. I often forget that this movie came out after The Winter Soldier and Iron Man 3, and I think it’s because its portrayal of both characters feels like such a step backwards from those movies. The awesome Captain America who singlehandedly took down SHIELD and Hydra in his last movie doesn’t really seem like the same old-timey fella chiding people about their language in this movie. And after a whole movie about getting over his anxiety and paranoia related to the New York wormhole incident, it takes all of five minutes for this movie to undo all of Iron Man’s character development and make him even more paranoid. Plus, he may be a bit of a playboy, but I don’t remember Tony Stark’s sense of humour being quite as raunchy in any of his solo movies as it is here. I mean…a rape joke? Really, Tony?

All the subplots setting up later movies. Yes, they may have been somewhat necessary for Phase 3, but the way they’re shoved into this movie’s plot feels forced most of the time. Especially Thor’s dip in the vision pool, which was just about the laziest possible way to introduce the Avengers to the concept of Infinity Stones.

How would I have ever understood it without this handy visual?

Exactly 50 percent of all jokes, quips, and witty speeches. When they land, they’re great, but when they don’t work, they really don’t work. It gets especially annoying near the climax, when the fate of the world is supposedly at stake, but the Avengers can’t stop cracking jokes. It’s hard to worry about any kind of cataclysmic event taking place when Tony Stark keeps talking about “playing hide the zucchini.”

Then there’s Ultron himself. I’m of two minds about him, just like I am about the rest of the movie. On the one hand, like the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, he’s not nearly as intimidating as the trailers made him out to be. His motivations don’t make a lot of sense–one minute he’s talking about exterminating all humans to protect the Earth, the next he’s talking about forcing humans to evolve, and I just wind up confused. But on the other hand, he does have his moments of creepiness, and with his (sadly under-utilised) power over the internet, he is a legitimate Avengers-worthy threat. Some of his dialogue is pretty great, too. In particular, there’s a conversation between him and Vision that ranks among my favourite scenes in the entire MCU. So overall, I’d say he’s a good villain who could have used more screen time (maybe even more than one movie) to really develop him as a character.

“When the Earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it. And believe me, He’s winding up.”

Age of Ultron is far from the best movie in the MCU, but it’s not the worst, either. It’s over-crowded, and it does not play to its director’s strengths, but instead showcases his weaknesses (an over-reliance on quips, some serious problems with writing female characters, etc.). But it has its moments of brilliance, and, if nothing else, it paved the way for a wild and wonderful new era of Marvel movies.

“Avengers, A–“

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. Guardians of the Galaxy
3. The Avengers
4. Captain America: The First Avenger
5. Thor
6. Iron Man
7. The Avengers: Age of Ultron
8. Iron Man 3
9. Iron Man 2
10. The Incredible Hulk
11. Thor: The Dark World

Guardians of the Galaxy

I like to imagine that the pitch for this movie went something like this: “So an outlaw, an assassin, a literal-minded alien, a talking raccoon, and a tree walk into a bar…”

Guardians of the Galaxy
Director: James Gunn
Writers: James Gunn and Nicole Perlman
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel
Music By: Tyler Bates (and about a dozen ’70s bands)
Released: 2014

We open in Missouri, circa 1988, on the worst day of young Peter Quill’s life. He watches his mom die from cancer, and then, as if that isn’t bad enough, he gets abducted by aliens. Fast forward 26 years, and he’s an outlaw in a galaxy far, far away, stealing precious artefacts for money and going by the name Star-Lord (or trying to–no one else seems willing to call him that). But when he steals a particularly rare and powerful stone, he finds himself with a bounty on his head and a lot of competition. The worst of his competitors is a terrorist named Ronan, who wants the stone to help him wipe out the planet of his enemies. But the genetically enhanced assassin Gamora and the bounty hunters Rocket and Groot (the aforementioned raccoon and tree) also try to take the stone from Star-Lord…only for all four to wind up in prison as a result. But with the help of a warrior named Drax, who wants revenge against Ronan, they hatch a scheme to escape prison, get rich, and maybe save the galaxy along the way.

I give a lot of credit for how the MCU eventually turned out to The Winter Soldier, but an equal amount of credit should probably go to this movie. The Winter Soldier showed me that Marvel could do grown-up storytelling with real stakes and consequences. Guardians of the Galaxy showed me Marvel could do whatever it freaking wanted to.

“IIIII AAMMMM GROOOOOOOTTTTT!!!!”

I mean, it’s one thing to make a Captain America or Iron Man movie. Sure, they were never as famous as characters like Batman or Spider-Man before the MCU, but even a sheltered, non-comic-book-reader like me had a vague sense of who they were. Nobody knew who the Guardians were before this movie came out. Even among avid Marvel comics fans, they don’t seem to have been considered heavy hitters. And how often do you see a big-budget movie for adults that features a talking raccoon? At the time it came out, this movie was probably the riskiest thing Marvel had done.

But despite knowing nothing about the characters and having no idea what to expect from the story, I was hooked from the moment Peter turned on his Walkman and started dancing to “Come and Get Your Love” past the movie’s giant title credits. From that point on, it felt like anything could happen. Once the movie established its fun, zany tone, I was ready to accept Rocket, Groot, and all the crazy visuals it could throw at me.

It has to be acknowledged, though, that this movie’s greatest weakness is its plot. It’s confusing at times (I still can’t keep track of all the planets the heroes visit within the first half hour or so), and, on paper at least, it’s not that interesting. Pretty much your basic “Generic Evil Overlord #7 wants to wipe out all life because of reasons; heroes must stop him by taking his MacGuffin.” As wacky and original as this movie’s setting and decor are, its story is one of the least original in the MCU.

And Ronan’s dancing skills leave much to be desired.

But who needs a plot when you’ve got characters like the Guardians? They’re enough fun to keep me watching whether what’s going on around them makes sense or not. Each of them is fun and quirky in his/her own way, but they also have a surprising amount of complexity beyond the quirks. One of my favourite things in fiction is when a character who seems like a complete joke turns out to have hidden depths–a tragic backstory, an unexpectedly awesome skill, or what have you. This is a movie full of those characters.

For example, when we first meet Star-Lord, he’s an immature manchild who sleeps around, never takes responsibility for his actions, and treats everything like a joke (and/or an ’80s pop culture reference). Of course we, the audience, know from the beginning that this is all a front to help him cover up the pain of losing his childhood, and his character arc in this movie is all about coming to terms with that pain. In doing so, he takes his first baby steps toward being a responsible leader and hero. Meanwhile, his Walkman, which he loves because it’s all he has left from Earth, isn’t just the source of most of the movie’s awesome soundtrack; it’s also the source of its most powerful feels.

“Ain’t no mountain high enough…ain’t no valley low enough…”

Similarly, Drax is hilarious because of his inability to grasp metaphors (they’re probably too slippery) and his sheer enthusiasm about everything, but it’s also easy to sympathise with his sadness over the loss of his family and his desire for revenge. Then there’s Rocket: a bloodthirsty maniac in the body of a small rodent, whose jerk behaviour is covering up a level of trauma that dwarfs Quill’s. And Groot, despite being a tree with a three-word vocabulary, turns out to be a lovable dork who will do anything to help out his friends.

Gamora is the one who left the smallest impression on me. She’s sort of the straight man of the group, which means she has fewer funny lines, and she’s also the only female in the group, which means she spends most of the movie getting rescued and hit on by Peter. Sure, she also gets some cool fight scenes, and a hint of a complicated past with her sister Nebula (who was a fun villain even before we learned more about her dark past), but most of her character development was saved for the sequel.

“I’m going to die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy.”

Still, all five are a delightfully mismatched group, and they play off each other extremely well, both for comedy and drama. The real magic in this movie, beyond the crazy space battles and weird alien worlds, is in seeing these five losers–“as in, folks who have lost stuff”–bond and help each other as only flawed and broken people can. And it’s ultimately their friendship that gives them the power to become the Guardians this galaxy needs. Sure, it’s cheesy, but heartfelt cheesiness is sort of this franchise’s thing.

Long story short, this movie is awesome. It’s like Star Wars and Firefly had a baby and it became a huge fan of the Jackson 5. It paved the way for the more visually creative and colourful Marvel we got in Phase 3, and it did so with tons of humour and heart. It has some of the best characters in the entire MCU, which is saying a lot, and it most certainly has one of the best soundtracks of the MCU (until the sequel, that is). Which is not saying as much, but still.

“What a bunch of a-holes.”

Man, these ranking decisions are just going to get tougher, aren’t they?

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. Guardians of the Galaxy
3. The Avengers
4. Captain America: The First Avenger
5. Thor
6. Iron Man
7. Iron Man 3
8. Iron Man 2
9. The Incredible Hulk
10. Thor: The Dark World