When we look at the whole career thus far of Tim Burton, there is a definable split between the early years and the later years.  When Tim Burton was first starting out, he was a unique voice unlike any other in Hollywood.  He cut his teeth as an animator at Disney before expanding his talents in the realm of live action film-making.  He would get his first shot at directing when LA-based comedian Paul Reubens selected him to make a movie adaptation for his Pee Wee Herman character.  Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) certainly showed off the great creative mind that Burton had, but it would be his follow-up that people consider to be the first true Burton movie.  Beetlejuice (1988) was a true original.  It was bizarre and eerie, but in a way that was still appealing to a mass audience.  It was also irreverently hilarious in a way that many movies of it’s kind in the 80’s were too afraid of being.  Creating a oddball twist on the haunted house sub-genre, Tim Burton created this imaginative world where life and afterlife intersect.  The peaceful serenity of a small New England town becomes a gateway to a strange and otherworldly purgatory with “newly dead” tenants waiting for their turn to be processed through underworld bureaucracy.  And at it’s center is a ghoulish prankster who is too much to handle in both realities.  The titular “ghost with the most” Beetlejuice features remarkably briefly in the movie (less than 20 minutes), and yet he is the centerpiece of the whole movie.  Michael Keaton, the actor who played him, had been around for a while, but Beetlejuice was the character that catapulted him to super-stardom.  If Keaton hadn’t shown off his incredible talent as a performer as Beetlejuice, would Tim Burton have had the confidence to cast him as the caped crusader in his next film, Batman (1989), even when everyone else thought he was crazy.  Burton would have eventually found his footing as a filmmaker, but because of Beetlejuice, he was able to make a name for himself early without having to compromise his vision, and because of that, Burton movies are a category of their own.

But, like with most other filmmakers, it becomes difficult to try to live up to your own legacy.  That’s why the latter years of Tim Burton’s career have been a little more hit and miss.  When he was a much hungrier young filmmaker, he was more willing to take chances to prove himself.  That’s why that early run of movies feel so creatively vibrant.  From Pee Wee, to Beetlejuice, to Batman, to Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Ed Wood (1994), there was a sense of Tim Burton using his talents to transport audiences into another world that only he could imagine.  But, the latter half of his career seems to have lost a bit of that creative spark.  Movies like Planet of the Apes (2001), Alice in Wonderland (2010), or Dark Shadows (2012) feel more like parodies of a Tim Burton film rather than genuine artistic expressions.  As the Burton name has gained it’s reputation, so has the interest of Hollywood in using that to appeal to audiences.  And it seems like Tim Burton has become more inclined to bend to Hollywood’s will rather than them bending to his.  There are occasional flashes where Burton makes something that he feels genuinely invested in; like the Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) musical adaptation, or the Margaret Keane biopic Big Eyes (2014).  He’s also shown an interest in animation that has proved fruitful, going back to his dream project of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and continued through his adaptation of his own live action short, Frankenweenie (2012).  But, even still, he’ll still return to the Hollywood machine and make a soulless project like the Dumbo (2019) remake for Disney.  But, he recently found renewed creative and commercial success with the popular Netflix series Wednesday, which he produced and directed half the episodes for.  The home run that that show turned out to be is giving long time Burton fans hope that he is finding his creative mojo again, which is helping to build anticipation for his next project.  And what that project has turned out to be is a long in development sequel to the movie that defined his career from the start; the highly anticipated Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024). The only question is whether or not the world is ready to bring this ghoul back from the dead again, or is it dead on arrival?

Set in the present day, decades after the events of the first film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice catches us up quickly with what has been going on with Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder).  Her ability to speak with ghosts has turned her into a bit of a celebrity, with her own ghost hunting show, produced by her manager and romantic partner Rory (Justin Theroux).  Lydia’s show is interrupted one day when she receives the news from her quirky stepmother Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) that her father Charles has died. The news hits her hard, and it also means that she’ll have to return to the home that she thought she left behind years ago.  In addition, she has to break the news to her estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) in order to get her to come along.  Meanwhile, in the Netherworld, a malevolent ghost with the power to devour the souls of the dead named Delores (Monica Bellucci) has arisen from her exiled imprisonment and seeks to take revenge on the man who killed her; a familiar ghost by the name of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton).  Beetlejuice is desperate to steer clear of his soul-sucking old flame Delores, and he seeks the help of a ghost cop named Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), who was an actor who played cops in his past life.  While Beetlejuice is on guard, Lydia finds it hard to balance the new life she has made with the life she once had, as it increasingly begins to intrude more with her return home.  Rory is also pushing her to make important life decisions that she is clearly not ready to make, such as getting married, and it’s creating even more of a wedge between her and Astrid.  In the midst of all this, she is having traumatic flashbacks to her original encounter with Beetlejuice, to the point where she’s starting to see him everywhere she goes.  Is she on an inevitable collision course with Beetlejuice once again, and is it possible that this time he may need her help more than she needs his.

A sequel to Beetlejuice has been in off and on development for over thirty years, and given that lengthy span of time, it’s a wonder that Burton and Company managed to actually get it to finally happen.  In many ways, the idea of a sequel seemed to be treated like a joke, with the movie at one point being called Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. Obviously that version never happened, and I imagine nothing of that original treatment made it into this sequel, with Tim Burton opting to not stray too far from the original recipe.  Beetlejuice Beetlejuice more or less covers much of the same ground as the original, which for many legacy sequels tends to be where they fall apart creatively.  Thankfully, this sequel manages to avoid most of the pitfalls that a long in the making follow-up falls into.  While Tim Burton is revisiting the same settings of the first film, he doesn’t turn Beetlejuice Beetlejuice into an endless string of memberberries.  There are a lot of new ideas thrown into the mix that builds upon the world of the first film rather than just exploiting it for cheap nostalgia. The most pleasing thing about this movie is that it’s the first Burton film in a long while that actually feels like a Burton film.  I think this is because he’s not working with an adaptation this time of someone else’s work; like a book adaptation or a Disney remake.  This time he’s working with a universe of his own creation and is allowed to expand upon it and even poke fun at it a little.  What is especially pleasing is that it shows that Tim Burton is still capable of making a movie like this after a decade or so of feeling like he’s just been coasting on his past glory.  Given the special place that Beetlejuice holds in his legacy as a filmmaker, you can see how he wanted to approach this movie with a bit more resolve to get it right, almost like he’s trying to prove himself once again just like he had with the original.

But, this movie is also far from perfect as well.  The big problem with the movie is that it’s unfocused.  There are half a dozen plots going on in this movie, and Tim Burton doesn’t seem to know which one he wants us to focus on.  There’s the Lydia/Astrid storyline, the Beetlejuice/ Delores storyline, a subplot with Astrid getting to know a local boy in town, Lydia’s trauma coming back to haunt her, and a few others thrown into the mix.  The problem is that none of those stories intersect in an organic way, and they all keep butting into each other.  When one storyline finally hits it’s footing, it will be undercut by another storyline, and in some cases, storyline’s that have potential will suddenly be dropped in favor of another.  The movie is missing a traditional three act structure, and is instead a bunch of fun but loosely connected scenes strung together in the hopes that it tells a cohesive story.  The biggest problems with this occur when it robs the effectiveness of the character development within the story.  Delores for example is a really interesting character, with a fantastic introduction scene.  But then she disappears for most of the movie, only becoming an active threat once again towards the end.  Too much of the other subplots got in the way of Delores’ development, and it lessens her presence as a villainous threat in the story.  The original film may not have been the tidiest of plots either, but it had a consistent through-line in it, with the Maitlands (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in that movie) being effective audience surrogates whose eyes are the ones we follow along with as they observe the weirdness of Beetlejuice’s world.  They were the cornerstones on which the rest of the movie could focus on.  This sequel seems to not know which character it should be focusing on; Lydia, Astrid, or Beetlejuice.  It’s the thing that makes this movie fall well short of it’s predecessor, even while hitting the right notes when it comes to the visuals and the humor.

One thing that certainly is pleasing to see with this film is the absence of CGI in the effects.  It really seems like Tim Burton made an effort to return to his roots with the way he made this sequel.  Instead of relying heavily on computer animation to recreate the world of Beetlejuice, Burton instead resorts to old school practical effects that feel like the ones he would’ve used back in his early days as a filmmaker.  For one example, the sandworms that make a return from the first film are animated in stop-motion.  This gives them a more dynamic presence than how they appeared in the first movie, which was done with puppets and models, while at the same time helping to retain the hand crafted effect that Tim Burton is striving for with this film.  There’s also some incredible make-up and puppetry work that help to make the more cartoonish moments of the movie feel genuinely in line with the original film’s low budget charm.  But, even with the drive to do everything with practical effects, Tim Burton doesn’t cut back on the scale of his film either.  The full practical sets of this movie are expansive and pretty incredible to look at as well. They definitely feel in line with the visual style that we all are familiar with when it comes to Tim Burton.  Some of the corridors still retain that off-kilter aesthetic that he’s known for, especially the ones with uneven floors.  And you can tell when watching the movie that these are real sets on real soundstages, with the minimalist of green screen enhancements.  These Netherworld sets also pair nicely with the actual, on location shooting that they did for the film, bringing a beautiful juxtaposition to the film between the world of the living and that of the dead.

Of course, the thing that matters most is how well the cast is able to perform in this imaginative Tim Burton world.  Michael Keaton and Tim Burton go way back, with their shared history obviously going back to the first.  And while this isn’t a long in the making reunion between the two, since Keaton had a part in his Dumbo remake in 2019, it is still very pleasing to see these two working together again on a character that matters a lot to both of their careers. Of course, even with the 36 year gap, Keaton doesn’t miss a beat playing Beetlejuice.  It’s a part that Keaton, whose in his 70’s now, can still play despite the passage of time, given that the character is literally a decaying corpse.  It’s also pleasing that he gets a lot more screen time in this film, though I still believe it’s a lot less than it should be.  Winona Ryder also gets to explore a bit more of Lydia’s character this time around.  It’s interesting how she is a much different person this time around now that she’s a mother, but at the same time, you still see the rebellious little goth girl underneath the surface.  The movie wouldn’t be the same without both Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder both on board, so it is pleasing to see them both say yes to being in this sequel.  Jenna Ortega became an audience favorite with her acclaimed performance as Wednesday Addams in the Wednesday series, and it’s nice to see Tim Burton bring her on board this project as well.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much to the character of Astrid, other than her being an angsty teen.  Jenna does her best with what she can with the role, but Astrid unfortunately is the least interesting character in the movie.  The always great Catherine O’Hara consistently steals every scene she’s in here, and it’s great to see her return as well.  Her throwaway one-liners may be the highlight of the screenplay all on their own, and she delivers them perfectly.  And while stars like Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci are sadly sidelined for much of the film, they still bring a strong presence to every scene that they are in.  The only actor I feel is wasted is Justin Theroux as Rory.  He’s a one-note character that sadly Theroux isn’t able to do much with, and in the end, it becomes an unfortunately underwhelming performance.  But, the highlights of the cast are the ones we were all hoping to see return, and Keaton, Ryder and O’Hara all look like they are having a blast being back in this world.  Burton certainly likes working with the same people over and over again in his movies, and it’s pleasing to see how far after the fact that his troop of stars are willing to get right back into this quirky world again.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is nowhere in the same league as the original film, but it’s not exactly going to reflect poorly on it either.  It’s flawed, but still entertaining enough to be worthy of being a continuation of the story.  The most positive thing about it is that it’s Tim Burton finding himself once again comfortable with making the kinds of movies that he made in his early career.  While I don’t think we will ever see him make a film again that hits the same way that his early films did, this sequel is certainly the closest he’s gotten in quite some time.  The movie is very funny in all the right ways, the visuals are distinctly Burton-esque, and there was an effort made to use real, practical effects in the making of this film.  All of that is a welcome change from the way Tim Burton was making movies over the last couple of years.  We may be witnessing a new, third phase of Burton’s career starting to emerge with this and the Wednesday series.  It would appear that Burton is no longer coasting on any big studio gig that he can get (though this film is still certainly that too).  He’s now starting to seek challenges again as a filmmaker, and trying to build upon his legacy rather than compete with it.  My hope is that he applies some of that renewed creativity into something original.  That’s the thing that we have been missing from Tim Burton over the last couple decades; an original concept brought to life on film.  Even still, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice should still prove to be an audience pleaser.  Michael Keaton slips right back into Beetlejuice’s striped suit just like he’s never left, and it looks like he’s happy to be back, as does Winona Ryder.  A lot of things had to happen to make this sequel possible.  It helps that both of it’s stars have seen big career comebacks in the last decade, with Keaton earning an Oscar nomination for Birdman (2014) and Winona getting a boost from her role in the hit series Stranger Things.  Their hot streak, plus the addition of Jenna Ortega to the mix is almost certain to drive audiences to see this movie in massive numbers.  But hopefully, the biggest beneficiary will be Tim Burton, who needs his own Renaissance as a filmmaker.  While far from a perfect sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice still delivers enough entertainment that’ll keep this franchise alive and far from dead and buried.

Rating: 7.5/10

The Alien franchise has gone through a rocky history since it’s inception back in the 70’s.  The original Ridley Scott directed film from 1979 was a breakthrough in both horror and science fiction film-making.  A truly terrifying experience that lived up to the film’s tagline, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”  No other genre film looked like it and it completely raised the bar in how to make alien lifeforms a terrifying presence on the big screen.  Many would have thought that this kind of film would be a hard act to follow, but in 1986, James Cameron brought us a sequel to the original film called Aliens that not only matched it in popularity but was also in some ways superior.  What helped to make Aliens work as a sequel was that it didn’t just try to repeat the formula of the first.  Scott’s Alien was a haunted house movie in space, using atmosphere as a valuable tool in crafting the scares in the movie.  Cameron’s Aliens was an action film set within the same universe, still featuring the same scary xenomorph aliens but using a louder action heavy scenes to drive the thrills.  And it worked.  The thing that helped to connect the thread of both films was actress Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Ripley; the sole survivor of the first film and the main heroine of the second.  Weaver’s performance in the second film was so beloved that it even earned her an Oscar nomination; unheard of for a horror based sci-fi flick.  Unfortunately, the years after the success of these first two films wasn’t kind to the series.  The making of Alien3 (1992) was a production nightmare for everyone involved and almost prematurely ended the directing career of it’s then novice filmmaker, David Fincher.  And Alien Resurrection (1997) was an embarrassing misfire that killed the franchise for over a decade.  It might have been wise to potentially just leave the series as it was and move on, just so that the legacy of the original first two classics could be preserved.  But, as it is with every well known franchise, the end is never set in stone.

There was hope for a potential re-boot of the series being able to bring back the past glory of the Alien franchise.  In the 2010’s, it was announced that a prequel film set in the same universe as the original Alien was going to be made, and better yet, Ridley Scott himself was returning to direct.  This seemed like great news, because many believed that Ridley Scott would help bring the franchise back to it’s horror roots, though those hopes may have naive in the end.  Instead, Ridley was looking at making a film that was more sci-fi based than horror.  His film, Prometheus (2012) had all the visual hallmarks of the series, but was far more of an action film than a horror film; and it didn’t even feature one of the xenomorph aliens until literally the very last scene.  Suffice to say, audiences were mixed on the results.  Some liked the fact that Ridley Scott was doing more world building in this franchise and exploring the mythology a bit more; particularly when it came to the mysterious Sentinel being hinted at in the first film.  Others thought it was a dull, methodically paced movie that didn’t deliver on the thrills and was a far cry from the roots of the series that Ridley Scott himself established.  It didn’t help that the follow-up film to this one was a far inferior sequel itself, the universally reviled Alien: Covenant (2017), which was neither thrilling nor scary.  That film was also unfortunately directed by Scott as well, and it further tarnished his reputation as the shepherd of this franchise.  For the series to move forward, it needed to find an identity once again, because so many mediocre reboots and sequels were dragging the franchise down.  It would take a while though, as the franchise was put in limbo after it’s parent studio 20th Century Fox was being absorbed into the Disney Company.  Under new management, Alien had a chance to be looked at with a fresh perspective.  The only question was, how Disney would take the still valuable IP and work with it as a part of their cinematic output.  For some, it was pleasing to see that the plan was to bring the series back to it’s horror roots.  Horror film director Fede Alverez was brought on board to bring his own unique vision to the project.  The only question remains does the new film, Alien: Romulus, bring back the same chills that made the original so scary or is it yet another disappointment that falls far from the peak of this franchise.

Alien: Romulus begins on a remote planet that has been completely colonized and exploited by the Weyland Yutani Coporation.  Among all of the exploited workers, a young girl named Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is desperately trying to work her way off planet.  She is accompanied by her “brother” Andy (David Jonsson), who is a synthetic humanoid drone that her late father save from the junkyard and reprogrammed to protect her.  After being rejected by her superiors for off planet privileges, she seeks the help of other space colonists  to give her passage.  She meets up with an old friend named Tyler (Archie Renaux) who is ready to take off from the colonized planet with his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), his associate Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and their pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu).  Just few days prior, they made the discovery of a derelict Weyland Yutani space vessel that has drifted into the orbit of their planet.  Their hope is to find still working cryo-chambers in the wreckage that can enable them to make deep space travel possible in the hopes of reaching a new inhabitable planet.  The only catch is that they need Andy’s droid clearance to access entry into the ship.  Rain and Andy agree to help them in exchange for their safe passage.  Once they reach the vessel, they find that it isn’t just a simple ship, but rather a full station, meant for research purposes.  Split into two sides, each one named Romulus and Remus, the station is a fortress and not so easy to enter.  One other complication, the station is drifting in orbit towards a ring system that encircles the planet, and they only have a short window to complete their mission before the station is destroyed.  Tyler, Bjorn and Andy make their way into the interior of the ship, finding the place to be a ghost town.  All the crew seems to have completely disappeared, and there are massive holes throughout the ship.  Some violent incident had to have happened and the crew decides to speed up their mission so as to not invite whatever caused the mayhem that destroyed the ship.  They find the cryo-chambers they need, but in the same room there are scary looking alien creatures that try to latch onto their faces.  These Facehuggers are dangerous, but as all the crew members soon learn, there are far greater dangers aboard the ship, and the mission soon becomes not just getting out of this world but just surviving long enough to get off the ship.

The bar for Alien movies can definitely be described by it’s extremes.  The original film and it’s direct sequel are absolute masterpieces of the genre where as everything that has come afterwards has been either disappointing or outright junk.  Alien: Romulus is seeking to bring the series back to it’s more grounded roots by leaning more heavily on the horror film side of the series.  The only question is if they managed to succeed.  Thankfully, I can say that Alien: Romulus is unequivocally the best Alien movie we’ve seen in almost 40 years.  But, even as I say that, I do also have to say that it is no where near perfect either.  The bar has been lowered so much over the years that being just better than average immediately puts the film in the upper half of the series.  There are flaws in this movie that did prevent it from being considered among the greats, but thankfully the pluses outshine the minuses.  For one thing, it is pleasing to see a film this in this series that actually is attempting to be scary rather than just being moody or grotesque.  There was effort towards getting this movie back to the simple horror of Ridley Scott’s original vision.  It helps that Scott is still slightly involved with this film as a producer, helping to guide this new generation in line with the legacy of what’s come before.  But make no mistake, this is thoroughly Fede Alverez’s movie, and you can tell that he put his own horror twist on this film that works very well, at least when it comes to making things genuinely scary.  For one thing, I really appreciated his use of sound in the movie.  Whether it’s the absence of it in outer space (including a very effective intro that is completely sound free) to the sudden bursts of loud noises once the mayhem starts.  You really have to appreciate how much the sound plays a role in generating the thrills, especially when there are monstrous creatures that could be lurking in the shadows.  It really is where I feel this movie definitely comes closest to getting back those roots that the series was built off of, and which have been lost ever since Scott and Cameron left their marks on this series long ago.

Unfortunately the flaw that I found with this movie is one that I see all too often with lazy horror movies.  It’s the cliché where your main cast of characters continuously make stupid decisions that end up getting themselves killed or attacked, all with the purpose of manipulating the plot.  There are a lot of out of character moments where the crew decides they are going to go into the obviously dangerous place for the flimsiest of reasons.  I don’t want to spoil too much, but there are decisions made where you know that the character is deciding to walk into a death trap and low and behold, they get themselves killed.  I have seen other horror movies do this cliché worst, but it is unfortunate to see this movie do it as well, especially after it gets so many other things right.  The other flaw of this movie is the way it shoe-horns fan service.  It takes you out of the movie when the film will suddenly throw an Easter egg at you, especially when a character recites a line that’s a catch phrase made famous by the other movies.  There’s no reason for the characters to say those lines.  It’s just there to make the audience laugh or cheer and it’s pandering.  I would have rather the movie just used it’s connection with being part of the same universe as the only thread between itself and the other movies.  Shoehorning in Easter eggs and catch phrases just seems like a desperate move to garner audience approval.  Like I said before, the movie stands well enough on it’s own without them.  Fede Alverez nails the atmosphere and the thrills of this series.  He doesn’t need the assist of fans service.  Thankfully, these elements don’t drag the movie down as a whole, and if you’re not a long time fan of the series and just coming to this film casually, these references will likely just fly over your head.  But, for someone that is familiar with the series, I did find them a bit distracting and it was one of the things that did knock the movie down a peg in terms of it’s place as a part of the series as a whole.

What does work wonderfully in this film is the craft behind it.  When I say that this movie marks a return to form for this series, that’s in response to seeing the return to old school tactics in the filmmaking process.  Unlike most other legacy sequels that we have seen, particularly in this franchise, this one is relying less on wall to wall CGI and instead uses a lot more practical effects.  Sure, there are plenty of CGI moments in this movie, but I was very pleased to see that whenever we got a close-up of the xenomorphs or the facehuggers, they were actually done with either puppetry or with robotics.  That was what made the original films so effective, that the aliens themselves were manufactured to be physically on set.  The xenomorphs themselves were sometimes even portrayed on screen with stunt actors in a rubber suit, and I was happy to see that they did that here are well.  Of course, the wide shots used for the aliens resort to CGI models, and I’m happy to say that those shots are done effectively as well.  It’s what a good action movie should do, which is to mix you effects so that it tricks the eye.  You use the CGI to show the agility of the aliens that otherwise would be impossible with practical effects, and then mix that with the up close shots of the physical puppets and you’ll get a better result in making the alien creatures feel real and threatening, which thankfully this movie does.  The movie also does a great job with it’s world building, especially when it comes to the sense of scale in the physical environments.  Fede Alverez does an effective job of conveying the epic scope of the Romulus space station, while at the same time making the tight corridors feel effectively claustrophobic and foreboding.  And there are some shots in this movie that are just outright beautiful to look at, especially towards the end when the looming ring system begins to near the orbit of the space station.  There are also some really imaginative moments in the movie that I thought brought something new to the series, especially one sequence involving the acidic alien blood.  In many ways, this film has felt the closest in a long time to being the best spiritual successor to Ridley Scott’s original classic, at least in terms of the visuals.

The performances in this movie are generally good as well, though the personalities of the characters are very thinly defined.  The easiest highlight of the film is David Jonsson’s performance as Andy.  The synthetics of the series have always been some of the most interesting characters in the series, dating back to Ian Holm’s Ash in the original film.  Jonsson manages to create a surprisingly complex character out of an android with many limitations.  He is shown to be partially functioning in the beginning, but when he is plugged, so to speak with the operating system of the Romulus station, he almost becomes a new character, and it’s really interesting to see the actor pull of those two different aspects almost like he’s playing different characters in each situation.  There isn’t a whole lot to Cailee Spaeny’s Rain; she’s pretty much there to be a substitute for Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley.  But, she does the best that she can do in the role, and she has excellent chemistry with David Jonsson in the film.  Their two characters are certainly the heart of the movie, so it is good to see the actors actually make that surrogate brother and sister dynamic work in the film.  The other actors in the movie are less well defined, but none of them are distractingly bad in their performances and for the most part are effective.  Let’s face it, these characters are just there to be lambs to the slaughter for aliens.  The movie doesn’t waste any time getting us to the gory parts of the movie so these characters don’t need to be particularly deeply defined personalities.  The movie does focus on the characters that matter and thankfully they are characters that we want to root for.  But at the same time, what we go to these movies for are the aliens themselves, and they’ve never been more complex than the deadly terror creatures that we’ve always known them to be.  The one caveat I will mention that I think might be divisive for many is the inclusion of a character loosely connected to the original film that they reference in this movie.  People are either going to love his inclusion here as an Easter egg or hate it and see it as pandering.  I was a bit iffy on it myself but it wasn’t a deal breaker for the experience as a whole, though it is another one of those things that does bring the movie down a peg.

In general, I would rank Alien: Romulus easily as the third best film in the series, though the gap between it and the two classics in front of it is vast.  The reason this gets the third spot is simply because we have been devoid of so many good films in this series that by being merely adequate enough it rises almost to the top.  What this movie gets right is it’s craft.  It has the look and feel of an Aliens film down, and it’s a great return to form for a series that sadly has lost it’s way over the years.  Just get things back to what works, which is scary aliens hunting humans in dark corridors, and that’s the bullseye that the movie manages to nearly hit.  The only thing that holds it back is the paper thin story behind it and the fact that it falls back on so many tired tropes.  I liked that the story was simple, but there has to be logic behind the characters’ motivations and sadly the movie just ends up making it’s characters look like idiots by having them resort to non-sensical actions to help propel the plot forward.  There are thankfully a couple characters that still garner sympathy, and thankfully they are the focus of the film.  I particularly was impressed with the work of David Jonsson, who brought a surprising amount of nuance to a character that otherwise would’ve been a tad bit unbelievable.  And what the movie does get especially right are the aliens themselves.  The xenomorphs are legit terrifying here, which is a welcome return to form after the unconvincing CGI versions that we saw in the movie Alien: Covenant.  It will be interesting to see what might happen next with this franchise; will it still lean into the horror aspect or will it become more action oriented.  I honestly would favor the former, because I’ve always associated Alien more with the horror genre.  My hope is that it stays in that vein in the future, but perhaps they can improve on it with a more grounded premise.  Perhaps a smaller cast of characters with which there will be more screen time devoted to building up their personalities.  Also, please refrain from shoe-horning Easter eggs and catch phrases into the film that don’t need to be there.  There are some frustrating fan service things about this movie, but I do feel that it does get a lot right as an experience, particularly in bringing back old filmmaking tactics that help to make it feel more timeless.  We’ll see what the future holds, and my hope is that Alien will hopefully become a franchise that once again brings out the terror of the unknown that awaits us in the vast darkness of space.

Rating: 7/10

For a few years, there wasn’t just one way to define a Marvel movie.  What we know now as the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) has over the past decade been the flagship of Marvel media, but there were still remnants of Marvel’s past franchises that were still trying to compete alongside the MCU.  Before Disney became the home base for the Comic book publisher, Marvel had spread it’s many characters across Hollywood, letting multiple different studios obtain the film rights.  But with the debut of Marvel Studios in 2008, the idea was to create a connected cinematic universe which unfortunately was going to be complicated because it would require the cooperation of different competing studios to allow it to happen.  When Disney bought Marvel, they now had a deep pocketed financier keen on executing this mighty vision, but the issue still persisted with the legacy rights held by the other studios.  Surprisingly, Paramount gave up the rights to Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor without a fight, which helped to get the Avengers team-up rolling without issue.  Sony, which holds the rights to Spider-Man, has been the only remaining hold out as they continue to roll out Spider-verse movies in order to still hold onto the lucrative character; many of which aren’t very good, which is probably why they made a good neighbor deal with Disney to allow shared profits on Spider-Man properties, so that Sony can still benefit from the success of the MCU.  And then there was Fox, which for a time was the most defiant in holding onto their rights.  They refused to allow their rights to revert to Disney, or make a neighborly deal like Sony did, so all of the characters they held onto would have had to sit out the connected storyline of the MCU, including the conclusion of their monumental Infinity Saga.  That meant that iconic Marvel characters like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men missed out on what was considered to be the pinnacle of super hero movie-making.

Fans of those franchise were upset and that was reflected in the box office for the Fox Marvel films.  Nobody was interested in the franchise anymore, because the MCU was what people were more interested.  Fox Marvel needed the MCU more than the MCU need Fox.  So, when it was announced that 20th Century Fox was about to be put on the market by it’s owner Rupert Murdoch in 2017, many comic book fans were hoping this would loosen up those rights to the Marvel characters, and allow for them to finally join the MCU.  In a record breaking deal that closed in 2019, Disney did end up acquiring 20th Century Fox’s entire film library which included the film rights to all the Marvel characters owned by the now absorbed studio. But now that all the characters were under the same roof, the question remained how they were going to be worked into the ongoing narrative of the MCU.  It wasn’t going to be easy, given the huge number of characters that exist under the X-Men banner alone.  One of the more bold choices of this new direction for Marvel was to make the next saga of the MCU be centered around the concept of the Multiverse.  Not only would exploring the multiverse help to expand the horizons of the stories that could be told, but it allowed Marvel to also canonize everything that had come before it.  With the Spider-Man sequel, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), they legitimized all the previous versions of the character, by allowing current Spider-Man Tom Holland to fight alongside his predecessors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.  Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) also introduced a What If? selection of Avengers, that including the introductions of Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart reprising his role) and Reed Richards (John Krasinski) into the MCU.  But thus far, an actual movie centered on one of the stars of the Fox Marvel canon has yet to surface as part of the MCU.  For those franchises to finally get their big debut into the MCU, Marvel and Disney needed to call upon their heaviest hitters, and that’s why we are getting a highly anticipated new feature that teams up two of the most popular super heroes of all time; Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

Deadpool & Wolverine takes place not long after the events of Deadpool 2 (2018).   Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has hung up the red suit after setting all issues right in his universe thanks to the time travel device that he got from Cable.  However, not everything has worked out for him.  His relationship with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is on the rocks and he has ended up in a dead end job that his buddy Peter (Rob Delaney) managed to get him on.  Even still, he still finds love and support from his friends, including X-Men Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Deadpool’s foul mouth roommate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams).  But, Deadpool’s time travel shenanigans have caught up to him, as he is captured by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), who are the police force of the multiverse.  After being taken to the TVA’s headquarters, Deadpool meets Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) who tells him that he has been granted the chance to join the Sacred Timeline, which is the MCU where all the Avengers live.  It has been Deadpool’s dream to join Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but he soon learns there’s a catch; he can never return to his own timeline, because it is doomed to fade away.  Mr. Paradox tells him that the reason his universe is dying is because it has lost it’s Anchor Being, a figure who is key to the universe’s survival, and that Anchor Being just so happens to be Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).  In order to save his universe, Deadpool travels the multiverse to find a replacement Wolverine, but the one he ends up bringing back is a drunken mess who was responsible for getting his entire X-Men family killed.  In order to prevent them from altering their plans, the TVA sends Deadpool and the down and out Wolverine to a place called the Void, a realm that exists at the end of time.  There, they find a renegade army of outcasts who are ruled over by a powerful mutant named Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), the exiled twin sister of Charles Xavier.  In order to survive, Deadpool and Wolverine must work out their differences if they’ll ever be able to survive the wrath of Cassandra Nova and a colossal being made of anti-matter called Alioth that feasts on everything that ends up in the realm, wiping it from time and space.

The arrival of Deadpool & Wolverine comes at an interesting time for Marvel Studios.  After experiencing unprecedented success over the last decade, the studio is experiencing something of a slump.  The movies are not performing like they used to at the box office, and their critical reception has also seen a down turn.  Now, I for one think that the online discourse is being wildly hyperbolic when it says that Marvel is dying.  The Marvel output is certainly not at it’s peak, but their movies on the whole are still wholly watchable and in many cases still better than most movies.  And a lot of their problems right now are really emblematic of the super hero genre as a whole and not exclusive to just them.  No matter what the discourse says, I still look at each movie on it’s own and judge it by it’s own merits, and to my surprise, the movies that people claim are Marvel’s biggest failures in recent years are actually among my favorites (2021’s Eternals and 2023’s The Marvels).  I will grant them the failure of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023); that was bad.  But, the Marvel like all the others have had to adjust their plans due to the shifting attitudes towards the genre as a whole.  Due to the disappointing box office last year, as well as the delays cause by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Marvel decided that they would only put out one movie this year in order for them to have time to re-organize.  And that put Marvel’s entire 2024 hopes on the return of Deadpool.  The first two Deadpool movies were monumental hits, and easily the most profitable from the Fox Marvel era, so you can see why Disney was eager to get Deadpool up and running as a franchise under their stewardship.  A positive sign was that Marvel Studios was going to keep this franchise R-rated, which is the only way a Deadpool movie could be made.  The even more promising news helping to spark interest for this movie was the long awaited team up between Deadpool and Wolverine, with Hugh Jackman returning to the character after initially retiring in the aftermath of the beloved film Logan (2017).  One thing is clear, this is the right movie to help revive Marvel’s fortunes at the box office; a surefire team up between their heaviest hitters.  But does it land as a cinematic experience.  The answer is a bit more complicated.

One of the hallmarks of the Deadpool franchise is it’s irreverent sense of humor.  Thankfully that has returned with Ryan Reynolds and company not missing a beat.  The movie is raunchy, subversive, and a laugh riot.  I found myself having quite a few great outbursts of laughter throughout this movie.  Nobody is spared in the crossfire of all the jokes; Marvel, Disney, Fox, the comic book genre as a whole, they all get savaged by the zingers in this movie.  But, it also in a way overwhelms the story that’s being told as well.  The movie doesn’t quite the narrative pull that it should.  It seems like most of the movie is just strung together to put Deadpool and Wolverine into different situations solely so that they can milk it for the comedy.  Thankfully, the comedy does carry the film, but when you think back on the experience, the plot feels very flimsy.  What is especially problematic is that character motivations throughout don’t make a whole lot of sense.  It’s understandable with Deadpool since he is an agent of chaos that just unpredictably goes with the flow.  But, we don’t get the deep character introspection with Wolverine that we should.  There’s only vague reference to what makes him tick, and Deadpool even makes the meta joke about waiting for a third act flashback to explain Logan’s backstory.  Thankfully, the movie doesn’t go for the easy cliché of actually cashing in that promise of a flashback, but we never really get closure on Wolverine as a character either.  He’s just along for the ride with Deadpool too.  For the most part, this movie is far more about the experience than the story and it does have some pretty incredible moments, mainly when the two leads share the screen.  But, the first two Deadpool movies balanced the story and comedy with a bit more care; which is mainly because those movies were a bit more budget conscious and had to make sure everything was clearly defined on screen.

Deadpool & Wolverine also feels a tad bit more generic stylistically than the past Deadpool movies.  I think this has to do with it being directed by Shawn Levy.  Levy is a capable filmmaker, and is clearly someone that Ryan Reynolds likes to work with, given that he directed two of his most recent movies (2021’s Free Guy and 2022’s The Adam Project).  But one area that I feel he lacks talent as a filmmaker is in the direction of the action scenes.  The first film made great use of a limited budget to create memorable and creative action sequences.  The second film leveled up even more by getting John Wick co-creator David Leitch to direct, and that film had some very stylish action set pieces that were stunning to look at.  In Deadpool & Wolverine, the results are mixed.  There are some neat action scenes, particularly in the beginning which has one of the greatest opening credits scenes I’ve seen in quite a while, and undoubtedly the best of this franchise yet.  But, there’s another fight scene halfway through that makes disappointing use of shaky cam.  The blandness of that shaky cam is extra insulting because there are unique character fighting styles that we really want to see in that moment, and it doesn’t give us a clear view of any of it.  It was a scene like that where you really want to see the Leitch style steady shots used more.  But where credit is due, Shawn Levy does deliver when it comes to the comedy.  There are some excellent prat fall moments in this film, and when the movie calls for some gratuitous violence delivered in a funny way, Levy does hit the mark.  But, given that this story was intended to have more of an action centric edge to it, it might have been better to get a director with more action movie experience than the guy behind the Night at the Museum franchise.  He’s good with comedy to be sure, but lacking in that thing that could have made the movie feel just that extra bit exciting.

The thing that undoubtedly is the best element of the movie is the performances.  It should be noted that the title Deadpool & Wolverine is a very good indicator of this film as a whole.  It is very much a two hander of film, with Wolverine getting just as much of the spotlight as Deadpool.  Ryan Reynolds of course is in his element as Deadpool.  This has been his baby now for nearly a decade, and you can tell that he brings his A-game every single time.   He doesn’t disappoint here at all, making Deadpool just as lovably raunchy and irresistibly funny throughout.  I especially love the fact that he is playing the character as just as big of a fanboy of the MCU as the audience who will be watching this movie.  Of course, getting Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine is another miraculous accomplishment for this film, and Hugh does not disappoint.  His performance here is especially strong, and amongst the best he has ever done for the character, managing to hit some surprisingly strong pathos in an otherwise silly movie.  And of course, the most talked about part of his return is that we finally get to see him in the comic book accurate blue and yellow costume, which Deadpool hilariously derides as making him look like a mascot for the LA Rams.  What is interesting is that the movie isn’t so much of a debut for Deadpool and Wolverine in the MCU as it is a swan song for the Fox Marvel universe.  Don’t go in expecting cameos from any Avengers, as the cast here is made up of familiar faces from Deadpool’s past.  It is good to see past cast members make a return, especially Leslie Uggams as Blind Al.  But, it does seem like Marvel is saving their encounters between Deadpool and the MCU for later.  There are still some incredible cameos in this movie; ones that I will spare spoiling here as they are a big surprise, including that made my jaw drop when I saw this character appear on screen.  The villains in this movie, Mr. Paradox and Cassandra Nova are fine, though not among the all time greats in the Marvel canon.  Emma Corrin in particular gets some nice scene chewing moments, and the visualization of her power is effectively disturbing.  Matthew Macfadyen also brings a nice bit of stuffy British humor to the role of Paradox.  The cast in general, with the two charismatic leads and some genuinely pleasing surprises will definitely leave audiences happy about this movie.

Regardless of the flaws that this movie has, it’s still going to be a fun experience at the movies.  It helps when you see this movie with an audience full of comic book nerds who will riotously cheer at all the big comic book and movie references thrown out in the film.  As an experience, this is absolutely a fun time.  I just wish that it held up better as a story.  In many ways, Marvel has become their own worst enemy because of how well all the story lines fell into place for their biggest hit, Avengers: Endgame (2019).  Now we seem to expect that for every movie that they make, which can never be the case because they aren’t movies that function on the same level.  While I do feel that Marvel is doing much better story wise than what the internet discourse is claiming to be a failure on all levels, there is no denying that they have had some struggles keeping the momentum going beyond Endgame, something that Deadpool even jokes about in the movie.  Does Deadpool & Wolverine fix all of those problems.  No, and in fact the symptoms are actually a bit more obvious in this movie than they are in other recent Marvel films.  But, it’s still a great fun experience when you go in just wanting to have a good laugh and see two Marvel icons team up for the first time.  Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have incredible chemistry on screen and that definitely helps to propel the film.  The jokes are also more hit than miss, so it definitely delivers on the comedy.  I definitely think that Marvel will get back on it’s footing after a tough couple of years.  I feel their biggest mistake post-Endgame was moving too fast, putting out too many movies and shows per year.  With Deadpool & Wolverine being their lone standard bearer this year, it will give Marvel the time to take a deep breath that it needs before starting the next act, which includes debuts of the Fantastic Four and more X-Men.  And, more than anything else, this movie shows that things work out better when a movie feels more like a labor of love than a mandate to fill a spot on a timeline.  The best thing about Deadpool & Wolverine is that it helps to renew our excitement for what Marvel has next for us in it’s future.  And given that the movie delivers Marvel’s first ever R-rated experience, that could be an open door for just about anything.

Rating: 8/10