Monthly Archives: May 2025

Movie Reviews

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning – Review

Leave a comment

It’s very difficult for any franchise to maintain stamina to last more than a decade, let alone several.  Even rarer is a franchise that has managed to get even better as it goes along, and rarest of all, do so with it’s main attraction still capable of delivering in every outing.  One such franchise that has continued to age like wine over the course of nearly 30 years is the Mission: Impossible series.  Based on the TV series that ran from 1966-73 made it’s jump to the big screen in 1996, though less so as a direct translation and more as a starring vehicle for an A-list star, in this case Tom Cruise.  What helped to set Mission: Impossible the movie apart was the way that Mr. Cruise threw so much of himself into the action scenes in the movie.  The series would come to be defined as a whole by it’s groundbreaking use of stunts, many of which involving Cruise himself.  And with each new film, it became a game of upping the ante with what they could do.  Each new Mission: Impossible had at least one standout stunt sequence that for a lot of people would be like nothing they’ve ever seen before.  And for an adrenaline junky like Tom Cruise, each of these movies allowed him more opportunities to do what no other actor or stunt man for that matter had ever attempted on screen before.  This includes scaling the outside of the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol (2011); hanging onto the side of a real airplane as it takes off in Rogue Nation (2015); or piloting a helicopter solo through a narrow canyon in Fallout (2018).  Because of all of these iconic action scenes, this has become the identity of the franchise, leaving the original series as a distant memory; save for the memorable theme song that still is a big part of the franchise.  But one has to wonder, after 30 years of raising the bar with each film can Tom Cruise and company still deliver on that same level?  Or is the series inevitably going to hit it’s breaking point, especially with Cruise now reaching his sixties.

There seems to be a feeling that Tom Cruise is starting to prepare to say goodbye to what has been his signature franchise.  And to bring the series to a close, he’s delivering not one but two films.  The plan was to make a grand two part finale, with each film released a year apart.  The problem is that a lot didn’t go according to plan during the making of the film, which also extended into the release as well.  The pandemic shut down filming on the first part of the series for several months.  Cruise tried his best to get production up and running again, including adopting strict Covid guidance measures on his film set.  But even while the production was on hold, he was still making sure his crew was being taken care of, which included paying them all through the delays.  While this was a noble gesture on his part, it also ballooned the budget significantly.  The first part also had to sit on the shelf until 2023, so that it wouldn’t conflict with Tom Cruise’s other big blockbuster, Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  But once it did make it to theaters, it unfortunately suffered a case of awful timing.  It’s late July release just so happened to fall mere days after the Barbenheimer phenomenon, and it got completely drowned out by the dual blockbusters of Barbie (2023) and Oppenheimer (2023).  Not only that, but it also released just as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes were starting, meaning that the actors could not go out to help promote the film as well.  As a result, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One (2023) became a very expensive underperformer at the box office and a significant money loser for parent studio Paramount.  Considering that there still was one more movie left to go for this franchise, the studio was at a crossroads about how to do after this disappointment.  It was decided to put some more distance between Part One and Two, with the latter being pushed back another year.  Also, the studio also decided to drop the Part Two moniker on the title.  The second movie would now be called Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and would get a prime Memorial Day release, which is also when Top Gun: Maverick hit theaters.  Despite all of the changes and production turmoil, there is still a lot of excitement surrounding what may be the final film in this franchise.  The only question is, does this Mission end with a bang or does it self-destruct.

The film opens a few years after the events of Dead Reckoning.  A rogue AI program named “The Entity” has been infiltrating vast stretches of the world wide web, with many government agencies worried that they are next.  But, there is hope that someone may one day gain access to the source code of The Entity and contain it’s power for good.  The source code however was last traced to a Russian submarine named the Sebastopol, which sank over a decade ago.  The only key known to unlock the source code’s location was retrieved by IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team.  Their goal is to find the location of the submarine and use a poison pill algorithm on a hard drive to neutralize The Entity before it reaches the world’s nuclear arsenals.  But, Hunt’s team faces a major hurdle when a past foe, Gabriel (Esai Morales) manages to steal the poison pill drive from them.  Now Hunt and his fellow agents must track down Gabriel while also searching for the Sebastopol’s whereabouts, and to complicate matters even more, the governments of the United States and Russia are also pursuing their own ends to stop The Entity, with a nuclear option on the table.  Ethan is granted a 72 hour window by President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) to find the submarine and neutralize the Entity.  But it calls for his accomplices, tech wizards Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames), master pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), and former ally of Gabriel named Paris (Pom Klementieff) to be at the right place at the right time, putting all of their lives on the line.  Meanwhile, they are also facing interference from other government agents like Secretary Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Captain Briggs (Shea Whigham) who are more skeptical of Ethan’s tactics.  With time running short and facing mounting pressure from all sides, including the wrath of an all seeing AI presence, will Ethan Hunt manage to save the world from the brink of destruction once again?  Or is it one mission too much to handle for even him?

When you go into a Mission: Impossible movie, you more or less know what you are getting yourself into.  This is a franchise that has prided itself on pushing the envelope to the extreme.  But after 30 years, does this franchise still have the ability to deliver something that we haven’t seen done on film anymore?  I was starting to doubt this myself after watching the last film.  While I still though Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning was a really good movie overall, I was a tad bit underwhelmed as well.  There was a lot of hype surrounding the signature stunt of the film, which involved Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle off of a cliff, with a camera following tightly behind him to get that money shot looking straight down into the abyss below.  It’s a cool stunt, but I felt that it was a bit over-hyped because seen in context with the rest of the film, it just doesn’t come off as particularly harrowing.  The more impressive scene came later, with an extended train crash segment, but by that point, I felt that the movie was fairly lacking in overall tension.  Which made me worry about how they were going to follow this up in Part Two.  Has the franchise truly run out of steam?  Well, I am happy to report that it in fact has not.  The Final Reckoning is a major step up from Part One of this franchise finale.  While Dead Reckoning felt unengaging, I can definitely say that Final Reckoning put me on the edge of my seat multiple times throughout the lengthy run time of the movie.  It’s still not perfect, and it does fall a bit short of the franchise at it’s best, but it’s still among my favorite films in this long franchise.  the movie’s most glaring problem is that it takes it’s time in the first act to get things going, with some rather clunky exposition to get us up to speed.  But once it hits the halfway mark when Ethan sets off on his mission, the movie grabs a hold of us and takes us for a ride.  The last hour and a half of this nearly three hour movie is Mission: Impossible at it’s very best, and of course, one of the big reasons for that are the signature action sequences.

This movie has two of what I think are not just among the best action sequences in this franchise, but perhaps among the best ever done in all of cinema.  One is an extended sequence where Ethan Hunt reaches the Sebastopol submarine that lies deep on the ocean floor.  The way they filmed this sequence is just extraordinary.  It uses just the right amount of CGI effects mixed in with some impressive in camera work on a real flooded set.  There’s something that they do with the water level in this sequence that is really impressive when you see it in the movie.  It’s not a difficult technique to do, but when executed as well as it is in this movie, it becomes a really great visual that immerses you into the scene perfectly.  I also have to commend the sound design from this scene as well.  If you watch this movie in a theater with a high quality sound system, you are going to inundated with all of the metallic roaring of the submarine wreckage as it grinds down on the ocean floor and all of it’s weaponry starts banging around in it’s hull.  And it’s a sequence that Tom Cruise largely has to carry on his own, mostly without dialogue.  This was a definitely highlight of the movie for me, but it’s not the only one that stands out in the film.  The one that you see plastered all over the advertising of the movie, involving the duo biplanes is also a worthy action sequence living up to the high bar of this franchise.  I for one would love to learn just how much of this sequence involved Tom Cruise really hanging off of the wing of one of these planes in mid-air.  There are a couple shots that are undeniably the real deal, of course with the necessary safety harnesses either hidden or digitally erased.  Even still, the fact that Tom Cruise would endure high speed winds, excessive g-forces, and any other dangerous possibilities involved with flying a plane just to get those in camera shots is beyond belief.  I cannot think of any other actor who pushes his own body to the limit like he does, all for the sake of making this stuff look as real as possible.

Though the series has run for a total of 8 films, the last half has only had one directorial vision behind it.  Cruise has found a trusted creative partner with Writer/Director Christopher McQuarrie.  McQuarrie has been the one whose guided the franchise through it’s latter stage, which has been driving the franchise more towards spectacle than style.  It’s not a bad thing for this franchise to lose some directorial panache along the way.  While the franchise did attract some big name filmmakers like Brian DePalma and John Woo initially, their directorial styles didn’t quite standout as well as they should.  If anything, the directors in this franchise have had less input on the visuals overall, with Tom Cruise as the star and producer being the chief creative force overall.  Eventually, he decided he would rather have a director that more or less comfortable conforming to his vision rather than their own.  And McQuarrie is a competent enough filmmaker that he actually fits well as the steward of this franchise.  For this film, I actually feel like he proved to be a bit more than just competent.  There are some striking visuals in this movie, including a truly breathtaking one where Ethan Hunt comes into contact with the polar ice cap, and it shows a great deal of confidence McQuarrie has now behind the camera.  It was shots like that that I felt were missing from the last film, which was a fairly basic looking film for this franchise, though not as bad as my least favorite film in the series, Mission: Impossible III (2006).  McQuarrie’s only misstep with this movie is a bit of the writing.  The film, like I mentioned before, does have a difficult time getting started, and it does feel like McQuarrie was perhaps a little overwhelmed by the task he had to perform, which was to not just follow-up the story from the last film, but to wrap everything up from the franchise as a whole.  There’s a fair amount of the movie throwing quick edit montages at you just to refresh your memory of all the key moments from all the previous seven films in the series so that you don’t get lost in the plot.  It’s clunky, but thankfully it doesn’t last far into the film.  Like I said before, once the movie enters it’s second half, that’s where the film gets really good.

The movie also thankfully still devotes enough time to it’s cast as well.  Sure Tom Cruise is the main draw, but there’s a generous amount of time devoted to getting us to like all of the other team members there to help him.  I especially like that Ving Rhames still makes an appearance here.  Apart from Cruise, he’s the only other actor to appear in all 8 movies.  And you can tell that Cruise was more than happy to have him back every single time.  It’s a 30 year friendship that very much translates into the film.  Simon Pegg is also a lot of fun to watch here, bringing a nice bit of levity to the film through his great comedic instincts.  Hayley Atwell, who joined the cast in the last film, also gets more to do, and she brings a nice bit of innocent curiosity to the film, especially when she’s confronted with the sometimes absurd plans that Ethan’s team asks her to participate in.  I also enjoy seeing the who’s who of character actors that Tom Cruise brings in to play all of the government brass that either are on his side or think he’s completely crazy.  There’s also a surprise addition to the cast that harkens back all the way to the franchise’s origins that I thought was fun to see appear here.  The one part of the cast that unfortunately came across as the weak spot in this movie was Esai Morales and the villain Gabriel.  The actor is fine, but the character is just too dull and uninteresting to work as a formidable villain.  Even the movie seems to forget about him, as he disappears for I’d say a good hour of the film’s run time.  To be honest, The Entity works much better as a villainous presence in the film.  It has this “eye of Sauron” like mystique to it, and you can definitely feel it’s influence over everything in the plot, even if it’s not physically shown on screen.  A lot of the tension in the movie comes from the fact that they only have the tiniest of windows available to them to contain this thing, which makes it a foe worth fearing, especially when it has the power to destroy the world.  But, of course the main attraction remains Cruise himself, and he does not disappoint.  I still love the fact that he’s not afraid to show Ethan Hunt’s more vulnerable side.  Hunt doesn’t always do everything smoothly, and he often comes away bruised and bloodied.  The franchise could’ve easily turned Ethan Hunt into an invincible super hero, and instead the movie thankfully shows that he’s a man who gets the job done, even if mistakes and injuries happen along the way.  It also gives the character a much needed humorous side when things don’t always go to plan, which Cruise plays perfectly with his hilarious dumbfounded look in certain scenes.

So, is this truly the end of the road for the franchise?  I don’t think that Mission: Impossible the brand will ever be laid to rest, because it’s just too valuable to Paramount, especially with it’s future merger partner Skydance being the production outfit behind the franchise.  But, Tom Cruise as it’s poster boy star may be nearing it’s end.  Cruise has pushed his body for a long time and has proven to be remarkably in peak physical form even into his sixties.  But, Father Time catches up to us all, and it’s going to get to a point soon where Tom Cruise will be too old to do these kind of death-defying stunts anymore.  Even still, there’s enough left open even at the end of this movie to signal more adventures down the road.  It’s just too early to tell if Tom Cruise is truly done with Ethan Hunt right now.  If he is, then he should feel pretty proud of himself because he closes out his time in this franchise with a banger.  I would say that this is probably my third favorite film in the series, behind only Ghost Protocol and Fallout.  The former was the most well-paced and visually inventive of the series, while the latter had the best stunts and the best villain of the series, with Henry Cavill’s memorable baddie.  For The Final Reckoning, I would say that it falls just shy of the others because of it’s clunky opening, but it features two of the best action sequences of the series as a whole.  That submarine sequence alone is a true work of cinematic art.  At 170 minutes in length, it is definitely the longest film in the series, but you won’t be bored by any of it.  It does exactly what the best action film should do, which is to grab a hold of you and put you on the edge of your seat.  One thing that I would like to see Cruise do though after making a film like this is perhaps return to more dramatic work.  I know he feels at home in action movies, but he’s also a three time Oscar-nominated actor as well, and I would like to see him return to that too.  Maybe that might be in the cards for him, as Final Reckoning feels like a bit of a parting gift to a franchise.  We’ll see if that is the case or not, but if this is the end for Cruise’s time as Ethan Hunt, than it’s a finale worth feeling proud about.  Overall, this is undoubtedly a mission very much worth choosing to accept.

Rating: 8.5/10

Off the Page

Off the Page – Mildred Pierce

Leave a comment

The 1930’s and 40’s was a time of turbulent upheaval for society; something that even today we still feel the ripples of.  The 1930’s were defined by the economic collapse of the Great Depression, which ushered in an era of the New Deal reforms that reshaped America’s domestic policy.  And if that was not enough for one generation to go through, the Depression was followed up with World War II, the bloodiest conflict of the 20th Century.  This was an era that offered up so many stories of survival in the face of adversity and there were plenty of writers who managed to capture that era with a genuine emotional connection to the times.  One such author was American crime novelist James M. Cain.  Cain, a former journalist, was known for creating hard-boiled stories of dark corners of the American experience.  His novels were often first person confessionals of his characters admitting their crimes to the reader and giving out all the details about how they were done.  His stories often involved murder, love affairs, and deception as part of their plots, which made many of his earliest works particularly intriguing to readers looking for something salacious to read in the turbulent Depression years.  The hard-edged stories that he wrote particularly caught the eye of Hollywood.  Many of his early novels, like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity would not only receive high profile movie adaptations, but Cain’s work would also be instrumental in developing a brand new film genre that would come to define the era, known as Film Noir.  And while many of his stories fit well into the genre of Film Noir, not every story that he wrote necessarily centered around crime either.  In perhaps his most well known novel, the 1941 best-seller Mildred Pierce, his story there would actually center around social and economical disparity resulting from the Great Depression.  In a rather ahead of it’s time sort of way, Cain actually shun a spotlight on the struggles of women in the workplace and created a surprisingly potent feminist figure in his titular protagonist; a woman who manages to overcome the obstacles put upon women seeking success in American society.

It didn’t take long for Hollywood to see the potential in Cain’s story, and Warner Brothers immediately snatched up the rights to the novel, intending for it to be one of their next prestige films.  Micheal Curtiz, fresh off of his Oscar winning success directing Casablanca (1943) would prove to be an ideal choice in bringing this film to the big screen.  He was a multifaceted filmmaker who could work in any kind of genre, including crime thrillers like Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) starring James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.  But what mattered even more was who would be playing Mildred.  This was a role that was surprisingly not sought after by most actresses at the time, because many stars were afraid of taking on a motherly role because that was a sign of an actress getting older, which would have aged them out of other coveted roles.  Michael Curtiz’s preferred choice for the role, Barbara Stanwyck declined for this very reason, as did Bette Davis, which is ironic given who they did eventually cast.  Thankfully for Warner Brothers, there was one movie star that not only was unafraid of taking on the role of a mother in her film, but was also actively campaigning herself for the part as well.  Joan Crawford was very different from a lot of other leading ladies of her time.  She often shunned glamour roles, even though she was stunningly beautiful enough to pull them off, because she was more interested in taking more risk taking parts that were often grittier and truer to the American experience, especially during the depression.  Mildred Pierce was a role that seemed almost tailor made for her.  She was drawn to working class heroines, and she had the acting chops to pull it off, while at the same time having the matinee idol visage to still shine on the big screen.  And this would be a role that she would make all hers.  The film would win Joan the only Academy Award of her career, and it’s still the role that most people associate her with.  It can definitely be said that Curtiz and Crawford delivered a cinematic classic with Mildred Pierce (1945), but it is interesting comparing it to the book as well, because there are some striking differences.  Some of them were done out of necessity, due to the code censorship of the day, but it does make watching the movie a slightly different experience than reading the novel.  And in a surprising twist, some of the changes made may have inadvertently contributed to the birth of the film language of Film Noir as a result.

“I felt as though I’d been born in a kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get married.”

One thing that becomes pretty clear between reading the book and watching the movie is that their depictions of Mildred vary in subtle ways.  The book treats Mildred as a more grounded depiction of a women driven to survive in any way she can.  She’s not glamourous or stunning; she’s an average woman both physically and mentally.  And that’s what made her a relatable heroine.  Many readers recognized her, or perhaps found themselves feeling seen as her.  This was a woman who had to sacrifice a lot to maintain everything that she could of the life she had before things went haywire.  She was the embodiment of the average American who had to scrape by in the midst of the Depression and also had to step up when the War left the nation with even less stability.  Her adversity through it all is what made her such a potent symbol of the time.  She goes from housewife, to waitress, to restauranteur, to a corporate head in a very short span, which before the Depression years would have been seen as unusual for a woman.  But this was also the Rosie the Riveter era, when women were called upon to enter the workforce in a way that they hadn’t before because so many men were overseas fighting in the War.  It was a time when women were finally showing their worth as equals in the workforce, and Mildred Pierce was that type of upwardly mobile heroine that this time period valued.  It’s probably what drew Joan Crawford to the role, because she wanted to represent that kind of figure of feminine exceptionalism.  And for the most part she does do justice to the character of Mildred.  She shows off how intelligent Mildred is at running a business and finding new ways to succeed that some of her male counterparts would never have figured out.  The one big difference in her performance is that her Mildred is a bit more melodramatic, which is probably a result of the acting style of the time.  Crawford was definitely more subtle in her acting than most, but there is a soap opera like quality to her performance her as well.

“I think I’m really seeing you for the first time in my life.  And you’re cheap and horrible.”

One thing that the movie does perfectly translate over from the book is the theme about the corrupting influence of wealth.  In particular, both the movie and the book are sharply critical of elitist attitudes in society.  Living through a Depression would have soured many people’s attitudes towards those who flaunted their wealth, especially if they were people who never earned their money through hard work.  This attitude is personified through two different characters in the story; Mildred’s deceptive second husband Monty, and her snobbish oldest child Veda.  Veda in particular is one of the most loathsome characters ever created in both literature and on the silver screen; a spoiled brat who will do anything to maintain an affluent lifestyle, even at the cost of shaming her own mother.  She makes for a shocking villainess in this story given the lengths she goes to.  In the movie, she was played by a remarkable young actress named Ann Blyth, who as of this writing is still with us today at the ripe old age of 97.  Blyth does an amazing job of personifying this cold, ruthless schemer who will never accept anything less than what she feels like she’s owed; which is mostly unreasonable.  She is the biggest test ever of a mother’s unconditional love and the tragedy of Mildred’s story is that she puts the love of her children before everything else.  In the movie, you see Mildred have more of a spine when standing up to her daughter, including one of cinema’s most epic slaps to the face after Veda shames her for working as a waitress.  Mildred’s confrontation with her daughter builds more gradually in the novel, with Mildred putting up with a lot before things hit their boiling point, which results in a very shocking moment in the book.  For a lot of people who read the book and watched the movie in it’s era, Veda was the personification of the very class of people who made the Depression as trying as it was; unchecked greed mixed with a stubbornness to refuse to change for the sake of others.  

The characters of Mildred and Veda very much translated in tact from the book to the screen, but a lot of other characters saw more dramatic changes in the adaptation.  Mildred’s first husband Bert is a bit different in the movie, especially in the opening.  You see him as a bit more of a negative influence in her life as he becomes more frustrated that Mildred is pulling her wait more than he is.  Bert (played by Bruce Bennett) is definitely a symbol of the displaced man who ended up loosing his social balance through the Depression.  Without work, a lot of men couldn’t support their families, and that led to a lot of broken marriages as families split so that there would be one less mouth to feed in the household.  But, like Bert in the book, the portrayal of the character softens as he recognizes Mildred’s value as a successful businesswoman.  Though they do go through with the divorce, it is revealed that Bert is the better man in her life as the scheming Monty shows his true colors through the latter half of the story.  It’s interesting that the movie chooses to put Bert in a more antagonistic role early on than how he’s portrayed in the book, which is far more positive.  It’s perhaps the movie’s way of motivating Mildred to push herself harder to prove everyone else is wrong about her.  Another interesting change from the book is the absence of Mildred’s neighbor and closest friend, Lucy Gessler.  In the book, Lucy is a feisty and loyal confidant for Mildred who helps to push her in the right direction; appealing to all of her better instincts.  The movie instead gives a lot of Lucy’s characteristics to another character from the book, Ida Corwin, who starts off as Mildred’s supervisor at a restaurant and then later becomes her business partner.  Ida in the movie is played by a scene stealing Eve Arden who gets all the best one-liners in the movie.  It seems like the filmmakers wanted to streamline the story by combining the two characters into one, but it was probably also done as a means of giving Mildred more agency in the earliest part of the story.  If she only acted upon pursuing a career in the restaurant industry after a friends suggestion, then it minimizes the self actualization and deep rooted intelligence of Mildred herself.

“Veda’s convinced me that alligators have the right idea.  They eat their young.”

Where the book and the novel divert the most though is the framing of the entire story itself.  Oddly enough, of all of James M. Cain’s earliest novels, Mildred Pierce was the only one that was not framed as a first person testimonial.  And yet, that’s the way that the movie chooses to frame it’s story, having Mildred herself recount all the events that led up to this particular night as she’s being interrogated by the police.  Which is the other big change from the novel; there’s a murder in the movie.  The murder is literally what opens the movie, with Monty (played by Zachary Scott) falling dead from a gunshot, his last words being Mildred’s name.  We don’t see who fired the shot, but the very next moment in the movie shows Mildred walking onto a pier, contemplating throwing herself in and committing suicide, which is certainly a suspicious thing to do right after we’ve seen her husband be murdered.  All of this, however is an invention purely for the movie itself.  The whodunit aspect of the movie in a way was done as a response of skirting around the aspects of the book that couldn’t be adapted because of the Production Code in place at the time.  In the book, there is a much different and more shocking conclusion to the story.  Mildred has given up so much of her hard earned wealth to help give Veda and her new husband Monty the lavish lifestyle that they clearly cherish more than anything.  But, it puts Mildred in a needlessly precarious position with her business expenses being unable to pay for all of this luxury living.  And then she is dealt the harshest blow of all when she finds Monty in bed with Veda (who by the way is still underage).  Monty desperate to plead his case, but Veda just arrogantly flaunts the scandalous situation even more in front of Mildred, and this becomes the final straw.  Mildred violently attacks Veda and strangles her, causing her to lose her beautiful singing voice.  There’s no murder, but what was left of Mildred’s idealized life with Veda and Monty is forever broken.  What’s more, it also proves to be another scam on Veda’s part, as pretending to lose her voice merely lets her out of a contract that kept her in California.  She leaves Mildred broken even further by this deception and in a way still gets what she desired by the end.  The book’s finale has Mildred consoled by Bert in her grief, and ultimately Mildred celebrates by proclaiming “The hell with her” before the two decide to drink their sorrows away.

This bittersweet ending that comes after the villain leaves without ever facing their comeuppance would not have flown with the censors in Hollywood at the time.  The bad guys always had to pay the price in the end no matter what, so that’s why the murder plot was set up in the film.  The set up is the same; Mildred doesn’t find Monty and Veda in bed together, but she does see them in a compromising intimate situation, which still gets the betrayal across in the story.  Where things divert is that Monty second guesses his relationship with Veda after Mildred has found them out, and Veda can’t accept that, so she shoots Monty dead for betraying her.  Mildred returns after hearing the gunshots, prepares to turn her daughter in to the cops because of how hurt she is by their affair behind her back, but Veda once again plays upon Mildred’s motherly love and Mildred, in another moment of weakness, tries to take the blame for her daughter’s crime.  Only, it doesn’t work out and Veda is still arrested.  Mildred is finally free of her, but the movie leaves Mildred still heartbroken, which is different from the more optimistic finale in the book.  The themes of the book still work within this new finale, but it also undermines Mildred’s growth as well.  You just want her to finally assert herself as a mother finally after Veda clearly crossed the line, and yet she still puts her above herself.  If there was ever a warranted place for Mildred to actually be justified in abandoning her child, this would’ve been it.  But, that’s what the filmmakers had to deal with if they were going to make this story work under the Code restrictions.  And in some ways it was a blessing in disguise.  There’s nothing noirish about the original book, but the murder plot in this movie helped to make it work within the Noir style.  Curtiz and his team made great use of dramatic lighting and shadows in this film to give the story a darker tone.  The ending in particular, with Mildred finding Monty and Veda making out in the beach house is one of the most quintessential Noir moments ever pt on film.  While most of the rest of the movie is a compelling drama about endurance and adversity in the face of ongoing struggles, the noir scenes that frame it are just as potent as any detective story made around the same time that were more distinctly noirish.  In fact, you can see the influence of Mildred Pierce in many other Noir films that came after; the pier scene being an often imitated moment in other films.  

“Mildred…We weren’t expecting you.  Obviously.”

One thing that this movie for sure did was to give Joan Crawford the iconic role that would define her career.  There’s questions about whether she was as good of a mother in real life as she was playing Mildred Pierce, as Mommie Dearest (1980) famously speculated on.  But there is no doubt that she crafted a potent portrayal of motherhood that in many ways was both inspiring and also frustrating.  The book gives a much more satisfying catharsis for Mildred, as she finally learns to let go and just accept that she is better off without toxic people like Veda and Monty in her life.  The movie sadly still confines Mildred into a sense of guilt by the end that she honestly doesn’t deserve.  But overall, the book and the movie are undeniable classics that still hold up very well 80 years later.  The movie stands as one of the classics of old Hollywood, with incredible craft behind the camera as well as in front by it’s incredible cast of actors.  One can’t help but think of Joan Crawford in that iconic fur coat standing on the pier in the dead of night as a quintessential Hollywood moment in cinema.  And the fireworks between her and young Ann Blyth are some incredibly intense scenes as well that further define this as a great film.  The book on the other hand goes far deeper into the character’s psyches and also takes more risks in telling it’s story.  Many years later, director Todd Haynes made his own adaptation of the novel in a 2011 mini-series for HBO, starring Kate Winslet as Mildred and Evan Rachel Wood as Veda.  In that series, Haynes stuck much closer to the book and was able to delve more into the darker themes of the story, given the extra creative freedom he had with no more Production Code to get in the way.  The mini-series is pretty good in it’s own right, but the 1945 film feels even grander because of it’s iconic old Hollywood status as well and also because it was more of a snapshot of that time period.  Mildred Pierce spoke to a world that was just coming out of 15 of the worst years this country has ever faced with the Depression and the War.  Those who participated in the movie lived through all that, and that made their portrayals in the film all the more personal.  As we are going through our own time of uncertainty right now, I wonder how audiences today would respond to a story like Mildred Pierce.  In many ways, I think a character like her would still feel familiar to a lot of people and that’s what helps to make her portrayals on the page and on the big screen feel so timeless.  

“You look down on me, because I work for a living.  Don’t you.”

Editorials

The Power of the Goof – How A Goofy Movie Became a Surprise Cult Hit Over 30 Years

The Disney Renaissance ushered in a Golden Age for the art of animation.  After many decades of being a niche market for little kids, animated movies were suddenly becoming big blockbusters once again; films that all ages were enjoying equally.  But it wasn’t just on the big screen that Disney Animation was succeeding.  Their TV animation department was also blossoming alongside the Renaissance films of the late 80’s and early 90’s.  Disney had developed a number of hugely successful Saturday morning cartoon shows that also became highly influential.  They often featured already established Disney characters, such as Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers and Tail Spin, which starred Baloo from The Jungle Book (1967).  They were also developing hit shows with original characters too, like Darkwing Duck and Gargoyles.  One show in particular, the Scrooge McDuck centered Duck Tales became such a huge hit that it even spawned it’s own theatrical film.  Duck Tales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990) was certainly more ambitious than the average episode of the show, but it was also limited by a slightly larger than TV sized budget that the studio allocated for it.  Needless to say, the Duck Tales movie didn’t light up the box office the same way that the TV series had on the airwaves.  But, the attempt to make it work did garner the attention of the new regime that was in charge at Disney during the 1980’s.  In particular, Animation head executive Jeffrey Katzenberg believed that the popularity of the shows made for strong contenders of a new plan he had for his animation feature department.  As the studio was buzzing with the development of their A-list projects like Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992), Katzenberg was looking for a way to put more films in development that were smaller in scale but still retained that high quality Disney style to them, essentially creating a B-move department.  There were plenty of good shows to choose from to jumpstart this new project pipeline at Disney, but which one would be the movie to get the first green light.

The block of Disney cartoon series became so popular that even the programming block it spawned was given it’s own name: The Disney Afternoon.  The Disney Afternoon block of shows would switch once a new program was launched each year, keeping the line-up fresh over many years.  The first new show to jump into the line-up was very unlike the others.  After giving the spotlight to many secondary characters from the Disney stable, or entirely new ones as well, it was decided to give one of the Fab Five Disney characters their own show.  And who better to headline a new series than Goofy himself.  The character, who first launched in 1932 with the name Dippy Dawg, had been a popular mainstay in Disney’s many theatrical shorts over the years.  And Goofy was also a character who could be re-molded for any time period as well, which has helped him to stay relevant all these years while still maintaining his core characteristics.  His new show would be called Goof Troop, which followed the everyday adventures of Goofy and his son Max, as well as their neighbors, the Pete family.  Goof Troop was very different from all the other Disney Afternoon shows, which were often more action adventure based.  Goof Troop by contrast was much more grounded, choosing instead to be a domestic, situational comedy.  It was a show about the quirks of suburban life, with Goofy often getting himself and others into some very silly situations.  And it was a huge hit for the Disney Afternoon.  While people enjoyed all of Goofy’s trademark goofiness, it was also the relatable day to day issues that the characters dealt with that helped to make it a favorite with audiences.  And what’s more, it was a premise that could easily translate into a theatrical story as well.  And that’s what the newly formed B-team at Disney thought as well.  It all depended on if Jeffrey Katzenberg thought the same way they did, so a story team was assembled to pitch the idea of a Goof Troop movie.

Some of the earliest people involved on the project included producer Brian Pimental and story writer Jymn Magon.  Magon had worked as a writer for Disney Television for some time, including on Goof Troop, so he was an ideal choice to put together the first draft of what would be the script for the movie.  Eventually, the team had the script storyboarded out and was ready to present to Katzenberg.  However, it didn’t take very long for Katzenberg to see the problems with the story right away.  The initial story was too close the original show, and Katzenberg thought it lacked heart.  It was just a 80 minute collection of shenanigans with Goofy, and Jeffrey wanted something deeper that he believed would connect more with an audience.  So, despite feeling dejected, the Goofy movie team went back and streamlined their script even more.  Eventually, most of the side characters from the animated series would be excised from the story, including Pete’s wife Peg and his daughter Pistol.  In the end, much of the Goof Troop elements would be left out and this new movie would become more of it’s own entity, with only the characters of Goofy, Max, Pete and his son P.J. being the connecting threads.  And even they would be different to their TV counterparts.  The character who went through the most significant change was Max.  Max has more or less been around since the 1950’s in Disney cartoons, where he was known as Junior in his earliest appearances.  He was renamed Max for the series Goof Troop, was was given a very contemporary, 90’s style personality.  But for the movie, he would be changed even further.  The movie aged Max up to his teenage year, made him less self confident and more at odds with his father.  And it was in exploring this aspect of Max beginning to mature and growing in more contrast with his father that the filmmakers found the heart of the film they were looking for.

What was important in getting this story to work was having a vision that could make the more dramatic themes feel natural, which was not easy for a film that starred a character like Goofy.  A rising star in Disney’s animation department, Kevin Lima, was tapped to direct the film.  This wouldn’t just be his first time directing a feature; it would be his first time directing anything ever.  To make it even more daunting, he would have to supervise production across three different studios in three different continents.  The Burbank studio would be the main base of operations, but most of the animation would be done off-site at Disney’s international animation studios in France and Australia.  While this would’ve normally been a recipe for disaster for a first time director, Kevin Lima proved that he could indeed pull a project like this together.  One thing that helped to make him an ideal choice in guiding this project was the fact that he had a personal connection to the story.  As revealed in the recent Disney+ documentary about the making of the film, Lima had an estranged relationship with his own father, who abandoned him and his family when he was still young.  Taking on this story about a father and son reconnecting through a road trip experience was therapeutic in a way for him, and it motivated him towards getting that sense of bonding across in the story.  He also had the benefit of a team of animators who wanted to show that they were more than just the B-team at Disney.  While it didn’t have the same budget as say Aladdin, the Goofy Movie would still have some of the best rising talents at the studio eager to show off what they could do.  The French studio in fact had a team of twin artists named Paul and Gaetan Brizzi who would later go on to create some of the studio’s most artistically daring sequences in the years ahead.  With a story that had emotional resonance in place and the full blessing of Jeffrey Katzenberg, A Goofy Movie was finally set into motion.  But it’s success wasn’t always a guarantee.

Unlike all of the other animated features made by Disney at the time, A Goofy Movie was not a fantasy or a grand adventure.  It was a road trip movie.  The story involves Goofy wanting to take his son Max on a fishing trip in the hopes that it will mend their strained relationship.  Meanwhile, Max has become increasingly resentful of the traits he’s gotten from his father, fearing that he’s going to grow up to be just like him, so he’s been trying to reinvent himself in the pursuit of impressing a girl that he a crush on at school; Roxanne.  The majority of the movie has the two of them at odds over how they should deal with their relationship; Max wants to break free and Goofy wants to stay connected.  Eventually things come to a head when Max deceives his father, having them steer away from Goofy’s plan to go fishing and instead pointing them in the direction of a concert for Max’s favorite singer that he lied to Roxanne about knowing personally in a desperate ploy to impress her.  But, through the friction, Goofy and Max come to a realization that they can’t stop either from being who they are. Goofy realizes that Max has his own path in life to follow, and Max realizes that his father is always there for him and that being his son is not a curse like he believed it was.  Kevin Lima pointed out one scene in particular where we see this dynamic really coalesce in the story, and that in what he calls the “Hi Dad” soup sequence.  In that scene, where the two are forced to take refuge in their car after an encounter with Bigfoot, they start to break down their defenses and find common ground for the first time.  It’s a scene that you rarely see in any animated feature, let alone one from Disney.  It’s just a parent and their child reflecting on their relationship and getting to the root of why they’ve grown apart.  The fact that they managed to make a scene like this work with a character as inherently cartoonish and silly as Goofy is really a testament to how well the filmmakers handled tone and character in their film.  It’s not too serious, or too silly; it’s just like a conversation you would see in real life, and that was kind of revolutionary in animation.  There’s no wishing on a star to solve these characters problems; this was as true to life as any Disney Animated movie ever got in terms of their storytelling.

One of the major contributors to making A Goofy Movie work as well as it does was the voice cast assembled.  Strangely enough, this is also where things could’ve gone disastrously wrong as well.  Jeffrey Katzenberg had seen what putting Robin Williams in the role of the Genie in Aladdin did for that film’s record-breaking box office, and he believed that the best way to sell a animated film was to put a celebrity name behind it; something that he would pursue more when he left to start Dreamworks Animation years later.  Kevin Lima revealed in recent years that there was a possibility for a while that Goofy was going to be given a celebrity voice.  In particular, he had Steve Martin in mind.  This distressed Goofy’s official voice at the time; veteran vocal artist Bill Farmer.  Farmer had been voicing Goofy since 1987, including in every episode of Goof Troop.  He was hoping to also carry that over into A Goofy Movie, but this plan to change Goofy’s voice left him shocked, making him wonder why someone didn’t want Goofy to sound like Goofy.  A test sample was made, with Bill voicing Goofy in his normal voice to show Katzenberg how it would actually sound in practice, and thankfully Jeffrey saw the error in his plan and allowed Bill Farmer to continue playing the character the right way.  And Farmer’s performance is really extraordinary  in the movie, with him finding nuance in Goofy’s voice that no one had even heard before, allowing him to excel in the film’s more dramatic moments.  His performance also works perfectly against the vocal performance of Jason Marsden as Max.  Marsden was a budding teen actor at the time and Max would be his second major voice role after Binx the Cat in Disney’s Hocus Pocus (1993).  What’s great about his performance is that it feels so natural against the shiny personality of Goofy.  He doesn’t take the teenage angst too far, nor does he try too hard to sound like a cartoon character’s son.  He plays the part naturally, and it makes Max a fully rounded and relatable person.  You really get the sense that you would’ve known someone like Max in school or were him yourself.  In addition to the leads, voice acting veterans Jim Cummings and Rob Paulsen carried over their roles as Pete and P.J. from Goof Troop without missing a beat, and were joined by an impressive collection of character actors like Wallace Shawn, Kellie Martin, Jenna von Oy, and an uncredited Pauley Shore in the cast.

However, there was a speedbump in the film’s road to the big screen.  Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had been the film’s biggest ally at the studio, abruptly left Disney after a succession dispute with CEO Michael Eisner.  Apart from Katzenberg, there was no one else at the Disney Studios that was enthusiastic about having a B-picture production line, so little effort was put into marketing the movie.  The film was too far along to cancel, so Disney ended up treating it as an obligation rather than a movie to be treasured as a well as any of their others.  The film was quietly dumped into theaters in April of 2025 to little fanfare, and this resulted in low box office results.  Critics were also split, because they weren’t sure what to make of it because A Goofy Movie didn’t fit the typical Disney Animation mold.  At least their Spring 1995 release helped them to escape the long shadow of the previous year’s hit, The Lion King (1994), which would have buried the film even more.  But, even with it’s lackluster launch, this was not the end of the movie’s story, but rather it’s beginning.  The movie slowly developed a following during it’s home video release.  People gravitated to the more grounded, realistic story at it’s center, especially in the way it tackled the issues of family and fatherhood.  The fanbase for this movie grew steadily over the years, and in some surprising demographics as well.  One of the biggest areas of support for this film was found in the African-American community.  You’ve got to remember that this was long before The Princess and the Frog (2019) and Disney still had not featured any significant character of color in their movies up until the 90’s.  Despite all of the characters having a Goofy like appearance, black audiences still saw themselves identified in this film, particularly with the pop singer character in the movie named Powerline, who was primarily based off of singer Bobby Brown, with a little Michael Jackson and Prince thrown in.  This was also the first Disney film to ever feature hip hop in it’s soundtrack, which probably also contributed to it’s popularity in the black community.  The soundtrack overall is another factor in the movie’s success over the years.  It’s a musical, but not in the standard Disney fairy tale style.  Each song is unique, mixing rock, country, hip hop, and pop all into one.  The finale song, I 2 I, sung by Powerline (who was voiced by recording artist Tevin Campbell) in particular has become one of Disney’s biggest hits over the years, receiving it’s own fair share of remixes and covers in the YouTube era.  What is especially great about the re-discovery of this film is that it has shown Disney that not every animated classic needs to be based on a legendary story.  Sometimes, a simple father and son road trip is enough to yield a great universal experience for everyone.

Over 30 years the movie has grown in esteem in Disney history; greatly over-coming it’s B-movie status.  It’s especially funny seeing how much Disney’s own social media machine is spotlighting this film’s anniversary this year, and not even mentioning once the anniversary of their “A-list” movie from the same year; Pocahontas (1995).  It shows that even the B-team could create something that could lay claim to being a masterpiece.  And indeed, over time the B-team got to be rewarded for their efforts.  Kevin Lima got to move on to directing an “A-List” feature as co-director of Tarzan (1999), and afterwards he even found success as a live action filmmaker, getting the chance to direct the film Enchanted (2007), starring Amy Adams.  Though their Paris based studio was closed shortly after the making of A Goofy Movie, the Brizzi Brothers would get to direct some of the most beautiful moments in future Disney features, including the “Hellfire” sequence in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and the “Firebird Suite” segment of Fantasia 2000 (2000).  Bill Farmer continues to voice Goofy exclusively to this day and has been honored as a Disney Legend for his efforts over his 37 years in the gig.  Jason Marsden also continues to voice Max occasionally, and has been an in demand voice actor all of these years as well.  One of the pleasing things about this anniversary in particular is that it’s showing just how big this movie has gotten.  Disney was especially taken by surprise 10 years ago when they held a 20th anniversary panel at the D23 Expo in 2015.  Demand was so high that they had to turn away hundreds of people at the door after the room had reached capacity, and the audience that did make it was electric.  After attending last year’s D23, I can tell you that the fanbase has grown even stronger since then.  Powerline was an especially popular cos-play at D23, even rivaling people in Jedi or Mickey Mouse dress-ups.  It makes sense because all the children who grew up over these 30 years with the movie are now having children of their own, and they are probably re-watching the film with them in a new perspective.  Those who originally identified with Max are now finding more in common with Goofy.  And one of the greatest legacies that this movie has had is that it’s helped people from multiple generations, fathers and sons, learn to communicate with one another.  It’s more than just a goof, it’s a movie that brings people together and that’s why it holds such a special place in Disney history.  And that is definitely something worthy to “hyuck” about.

Movie Reviews

Thunderbolts* – Review

Things haven’t exactly gone according to plan for Marvel since the astronomical success of their last few Avengers films.  When Avengers: Endgame (2019) broke every conceivable box office record in it’s opening that summer, it seemed like everything Marvel touched turned to gold.  But not to rest on those laurels, Marvel definitely had their plans for the future.  They had a plan for the next 3 phases of their cinematic universe, which was about to be turbo charged by the upcoming launch of the Disney+ streaming service, which was also going to be an additional platform for their storytelling going into the future.  The first three phases, which centered around the collection of the Infinity Stones and the diabolical plans of the mad Titan Thanos who wanted to use them, would be given the designation of the Infinity Saga, whereas what was coming next would be called the Multiverse Saga.  Given that designation, you can imagine what the focuses of phases 4, 5, and 6 would be.  This was going to be an ambitious new chapter for the MCU and there was a lot of excitement to be had in the Marvel fandom.  Or, at least that was the plan.  The onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic put a massive roadblock in front of Marvel’s plans.  Their entire 2020 slate had to be pushed back a year, and the release order of all their projects had to be reshuffled.  The beginning of Phase 4 was no longer going to be on the big screen, but instead streaming on Disney+, with the mini-series Wandavision leading the charge.  Eventually as the pandemic receded, Marvel was able to get their projects out on time, but there was some trouble brewing as well.  The disruption of the pandemic and the inner turmoil at the Disney corporate offices under the short lived tenure of failed CEO Bob Chapek caused Marvel to lose a bit of their creative luster.  People were noticing that Marvel had lost some of their edge during this time, and it lead to speculation that maybe the golden era of Marvel was indeed over.

Now, some of the complaints that all of Marvel’s output was falling short were a bit overstretched.  I for one still stand by my positive reviews of Eternals (2021) and The Marvels (2023).  But it is undeniable that they have struggled to find their footing in a post-Endgame and post-pandemic world.  Some might say it was Marvel over-stretching itself by putting half of their output on streaming, which left some of the fan-base who don’t subscribe to Disney+ out in the cold when it comes to the interconnected story-lines.  They still have solid successes for sure, like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (2023) and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), but they are also being offset with hugely disappointing films like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) and the recent Captain America: Brave New World (2025).  After the departure of Bob Chapek from Disney, returning CEO Bob Iger took a big look at all the future Marvel projects in development and decided that Marvel needed a major re-calibration.  It was practically a necessity after the Jonathan Majors scandal forced Marvel to abandon their plans for the Multiverse Saga centering around his supervillain character Kang the Conqueror.  Their initial Kang plans for the upcoming Avengers films were suddenly shelved in favor of focusing on another iconic Marvel villain, Doctor Doom, with Robert Downey Jr. returning to Marvel to play the part.  And that shift in plans seemed to ripple across all the other Marvel projects.  All the Marvel shows and films were basically put back into the oven to cook a bit more in order to bring the studio back to it’s storytelling roots.  You can definitely see a shift from project to project.  Captain America: Brave New World seemed to be too far gone in production to be saved with rewrites and re-shoots, but the Daredevil: Born Again series on Disney+ managed to salvage itself and win positive reviews.  The remainder of Marvel’s 2025 slate also seems to have benefited from the re-calibration as they are making it to the finish line without costly rewrites and re-shoots generating negative buzz around them.  The only question is, are they able to prove that Marvel has their mojo back.  That is what we hope to see with the next big new Marvel blockbuster coming out this week; Thunderbolts*.

The story of Thunderbolts* finds controversial CIA director Valentina Allegra De Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) facing impeachment charges by the House of Representatives.  She is called to Capitol Hill to be grilled by a number of Representatives, including newly elected congressman James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the former Avenger and Winter Soldier.  Hoping to skirt repercussions for her more dubious decisions as director, she calls in some of her team of assassins and spies to conduct one final mission. These include former Widow Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who is seeking a way out of her line of work; U.S. Agent John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the disgraced ex-Captain America replacement; Ava Starr, aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a phase shifting powered thief and assassin; and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), a powerful assassin with mimic capabilities.  They are all called to infiltrate a secretive underground facility belonging to Valentina’s shadowy O.X.E. Group, which had been using the base for top secret experimentations.  The group of killers quickly put it together that they were sent there to assassinate one another as part of Valentina’s plan to wipe her slate clean of all incriminating evidence, including them.  But they find someone else in the bunker with them, a dazed and disoriented man who calls himself Bob (Lewis Pullman).  They all manage to fight their way out of the bunker, but soon learn that Bob is more than what he seems.  It turns out he’s the sole survivor of a human experiment project for something called the Sentry Project.  Things go awry during their escape, and the team of misfit mercenaries end up wandering through the desert, hoping to evade Valentina’s forces.  Along the way, they are picked up by Yelena’s adoptive father, Alexi Shostakov. the former Red Guardian (David Harbour), who has been eager to get back into the hero business.  They are also intercepted along the road by Bucky Barnes, who is tired of sitting through congressional meetings and is ready to take matters into his own hands.  Meanwhile, upon learning that the Sentry program yielded a successful specimen, Valentina has aims of using Bob to her own ends.  However, something much darker lies underneath the new power base that is a part of Bob now.  Can the rag tag band of anti-heroes, who have jokingly taken on the name Thunderbolts, end up defying their own shortcomings to become true heroes and stop Valentina from making the wrong move with her plans for Bob?

Thunderbolts* comes out at an interesting time for Marvel.  While the studio has made major moves behind the scenes to help salvage their Cinematic Universe, it’s uncertain just yet if that change will prove fruitful.  Deadpool & Wolverine was a massive success, but that sort of stood on it’s own, being less of an entry for the character into the MCU and more of a continuation of his own franchise.  It didn’t help that this year started off with Captain America: Brave New World, which was a victim of Marvel’s uncertain direction which resulted in underwhelming box office.  Thunderbolts* has a lot to prove to both long time fans of the MCU, as well as casual viewers; can Marvel recapture their glory.  The best thing I can say about Thunderbolts* is that it doesn’t have any of the problems that plagued Brave New World.  It’s a movie with a clear idea of what it wants to be, and it doesn’t clutter the story with a whole lot of connected universe nonesense.  That ultimately was Brave New World’s downfall; that it didn’t know what it wanted to be.  And the fact that it required a whole lot of Marvel lore homework to understand left the audience at arms length from the emotional core.  Thunderbolts* on the other hand doesn’t require you to have seen every Marvel property that ever was.  It certainly helps, considering that all of the characters (except Bob) have appeared in past Marvel movies and shows, but the movie doesn’t assume that everyone is up to speed.  Instead, it expertly places all the characters within the situation and allows us to understand these characters through the dilemma.  And that’s where the movie draws it’s biggest strength, seeing how these characters interact off of each other.  For the most part, Thunderbolts* represents a fine return to form for Marvel storytelling, where they manage to stick to telling one story at a time and not feel like a middle chapter in an ongoing story.  The MCU at it’s best allowed for each of their movies to have an identity all on their own, so that any casual viewer could have an easy entryway into the story of the movie they would be watching.  Post-Endgame, there seemed to be less concern about letting a movie stand on it’s own and more about setting up for the future.  Quantumania was the worst offender of this, and ironically it’s job was setting up a future that we’ll likely never see now.  Sure there are still Easter eggs in Thunderbolts*, but they take a back seat to having us be involved in the story at hand.

But, even as Thunderbolts* does get a lot of things right, I wouldn’t say it reaches the astronomical heights of the MCU at it’s best.  It’s biggest obstacle would be the sense of familiarity.  It doesn’t change the game in the same way that Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) or Black Panther (2018) did, showing us something new in the super hero genre.  Thunderbolts* is just a very well executed but otherwise conventional Marvel film.  Perhaps what all the excitement about this film stems from is that people have been craving this kind of Marvel movie for a long time.  The action scenes and banter between the characters are all a lot of fun, but I also wasn’t feeling like the movie wowed me in anyway.  The heights of the MCU where you felt like you were on the edge of your seat waiting to see what would happen next isn’t quite there in this film.  But, what is there still left a smile on my face.  I liked how the movie molds these characters over the course of the film, going from jaded individualists to a group of friends who have each other’s back by the end.  It could be easy to say that this is Marvel’s answer to The Suicide Squad from DC, but that’s not exactly what this movie is going for either.  There’s growth in these characters that gets surprisingly deep; showing that there is a lot of trauma in each of their pasts, and that each one of them has the capability of being better.  I loved the concept of facing the dark side of your persona and learning to live with it as a part of you while also rising above it being a crucial part of the plot.  The climax of the movie literally has all of the characters facing down their demons and finding strength together.  That’s the heart of this film, and the movie succeeds the most in delivering that message.  The banter with all of the characters is also a lot of fun.  Given that these characters are a dark shadow of the Avengers team themselves, it’s fun to see their bonding come through with a bit more friction in the beginning.  And they get a little more cutting in their insults than any of the Avengers would have done; except maybe Iron Man.

The best asset this movie has is undoubtedly it’s cast.  Everyone here has been making the rounds within the post-Endgame MCU, but in this film we finally get to see the actors really get to the core of who these characters are.  Both Florence Pugh and David Harbour were easily the highlights of the otherwise sub-par Black Widow (2021) movie in which they were introduced.  Thankfully neither misses a beat here.  Harbour’s Alexi naturally gets most of the big laughs in the movie, and I absolutely love the energy he brings to this role, keeping it silly while avoiding becoming too cartoonish.  Pugh’s Yelena sort of acts as the main character of the movie and she delivers a fantastic performance here.  We really get to see her emote in this performance, as Yelena goes through some very rough emotional hurdles in this movie, but the movie still manages to keep that fun sarcastic side to her intact.  Wyatt Russell and Hannah John-Kamen also get to flesh out their characters a lot more, showing their growth from disgraced misfits to heroes with a purpose.  Sebastian Stan, the most veteran member of this cast in the MCU, dating back over a decade down to Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), delivers the standard bad ass elements of his character that you’d hope to see here, but he also manages to work a bit of a fun side in there too.  It is funny to see him outside of his element trying to be a congressman and how it clearly is stiffing to him.  It’s great to see that Stan has not grown out of the character just yet because he is still a lot of fun to watch as the Winter Soldier.  We also get to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus finally get to let loose in a more villainous role.  She’s been making some trouble in the MCU through appearances in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ series and in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), but here we finally get a sense of just how cutthroat and morally scrupulous Valentina can be.  But perhaps the actor who has the most heavy lifting to do in this movie is Lewis Pullman as Bob.  He is definitely the films most interesting character, and it’s a testament to Pullman’s performance that you don’t quite know what turn his character will take.  At times he’ll be charmingly goofy, but then in an instant he’ll be forebodingly creepy.  It’s a balancing act that he manages to pull off well and it makes his character’s journey all the more fascinating.

Of course, when we go to Marvel movies, we expect there to be some spectacle, and Thunderbolts* does deliver on that.  One particular standout is a vehicular chase scene in the middle of the film.  A scene like that one does show one of the movie’s strengths, which is that it’s far less reliant on CGI visual effects than most of the other recent Marvel films.  The action scenes are well choreographed and very grounded in reality, which makes sense given that most of the Thunderbolts are physical fighters rather than super powered beings.  The only down point with regards to the fight scenes are those moments when it does start to rely on CGI.  The digital effects in this movie, to be honest, are not very good, and in one scene in particular near the end it is so blatantly obvious that the characters are being replaced with CGI doubles because they start to look like video game characters.  Thankfully, it’s just one scene where that stands out like a sore thumb.  There is, however, one digital effect in the movie that does look quite good.  Towards the end of the climax, one of the villains goes through a transformation and it is a very chilling and effective digital effect.  What that character is also able to do is pretty creepy and gets one of the most shocking reveals in the film as well.  In this instance, it’s the part of the movie that does feel like something we’ve never seen from Marvel before and that helps to make the final act of the movie work as well as it does.  The movie has a very imaginative finale, and it’s good to see Marvel actually take some chances with this one.  And like the best Marvel films, it’s a climax that actually feels like it has some weight to it; that you really don’t know where it’s actually going to end up.  The film for the most part delivers on what we expect from the MCU, but it is a positive sign that Marvel’s getting back to delivering substance along with the spectacle.

Overall, I don’t feel like Marvel hit a home run with this movie, but it certainly is a solid double and maybe even a triple thanks to that strong finale.  I thought all of the performances really helped to make this a fun time at the movies, with Florence Pugh and Lewis Pullman being particular stand outs.  Also, it’s finally getting Marvel back to the point where they can make any one of their movies stand on their own when viewed apart.  This movie didn’t feel like an obligation, but rather chance to explore a bit more of the this cinematic universe we love.  Sure, anyone who has kept up will get all the clues about what is to come next, including with the obligatory post credits scene, which this one actually delivered with a good tease.  It’s in stark contrast with something like Captain America: Brave New World, which felt like it was telling five different stories in one.  Thunderbolts* knows that we just came to see a group of misfit characters from Marvel’s B-list interact with each other and found a way to have fun with that.  I even love the fact that the name Thunderbolts* itself is it’s own inside joke.  Not to spoil too much, but I will say that we do get an answer for what the asterix in the title actually means and it’s actually a pretty good reveal.  The origin of the Thunderbolts name is also a pretty cute reveal.  I saw this film as a slightly better than average film in the pack.  I would actually rank it with the two misunderstood movies that I seemed to like when no one else did (Eternals and The Marvels).  It is a vast improvement over Brave New World and most of the other middle of the road MCU films made in this Multiverse Saga.  It is still no Avengers level success, but at the same time, it shouldn’t have to be.  The best thing it does is show that Marvel can indeed still make a thoroughly enjoyable movie that doesn’t have to be just another cog in the machine.  Hopefully the solid results from this means good things for Marvel’s future, especially with The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) around the corner.  Given the underdog status of the characters that make up the Thunderbolts team, it’s fitting that their own movie managed to prove a lot of people wrong and ended up rising to the challenge.

Rating: 8/10