It has been an interesting run for Spike Lee as a filmmaker.  The Georgian born and New York raised cinema icon became a pioneering voice in Black Cinema during the late 80’s and early 90’s.  He quickly developed a reputation as a talent on the rise immediately after graduating from the prestigious Tisch School of Arts at NYU with his first two features She’s Gotta Have It (1985) and School Daze (1988).  But it was his third feature that really grabbed the world’s attention.  Do The Right Thing (1989), Spike’s multilayered meditation on racial tensions in America was a bombshell movie when it first released, bringing much needed dialogue to an issue that for the most part Hollywood had been too afraid to tackle.  The film garnered wide critical praise, was spotlighted at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, and also earned Spike his first Oscar nomination for his screenplay.  However, the movie did not earn a Best Picture or Directing nom that year as some had predicted, and the top awards that year went to another movie about race relations in America, but in a more “safe” fashion: Driving Miss Daisy (1989).  Despite the snub, Spike continued to press ahead and didn’t slow down.  He made two more smaller films, Mo Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991) before taking on his dream project; an epic historical biopic on the life of civil rights icon Malcolm X.  Malcolm X would be a monumental undertaking and it took everything he had learned up to that point as a filmmaker to pull it off.  One of the strongest assets he had at his side was an actor named Denzel Washington.  Washington had already won an Oscar for his supporting performance in the movie Glory (1989) and he got to work with Spike Lee for the first time on Mo Better Blues.  There would be no one better suited to bring Malcolm to life on screen than Denzel, and indeed it was a perfect match of actor and role, and a filmmaker to bring out the best in him.  Denzel would go on to earn his first Best Actor nomination for Malcolm X but would end up losing to Al Pacino that year.  Even still, Spike Lee and Denzel would prove to be a strong collaborative team that would over time span several films.

Though their career treks have taken different paths, both Lee and Washington have stayed good friends and this has resulted in three more films they have collaborated on.  There was the basketball themed He Got Game in 1998 and the bank heist thriller Inside Man in 2006.  But, after a long dry spell, the two are finally working together on a new film.  Denzel of course has remained a well respected fixture in Hollywood, finally winning that coveted Oscar for Best Actor in Training Day (2001) and becoming a consistent box office draw in films such as the Equalizer series.  Things have been a bit rockier for Spike Lee.  Though he has kept working all this time, both in narrative films and with documentaries, he hadn’t reached that high point he experienced in his early years with Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X.  That was until 2018, when Spike delivered a critical and box office hit with the racially charged crime drama BlackKklansman.  The film was a welcome return to form for Spike, delivering a tension filled narrative that also was provocative in it’s tackling of racial issues.  In addition to the critical praise the film also finally earned Spike Lee his first Academy Award for the film’s screenplay.  Though, of course, the movie lost out on Best Picture to another “safe” movie about race in America called Green Book (2018).  But even still, Spike Lee had a renewed creative spark that he would further put to good use with his next film; the Vietnam vet drama Da 5 Bloods (2020).  Bloods received a lot of praise from critics, including myself as it made it all the way to #2 on my best of the year list for that year, but it’s visibility was limited as it was released solely on Netflix without a theatrical screening, due largely to the pandemic.  It’s a shame that Da 5 Bloods didn’t get a bigger release, because in my opinion it was Spike’s best film since Malcolm X.  But, after a couple years, Spike Lee was ready to take on another film project, and this time he finally had the project that would be perfect for both him and Denzel.  It would be a new adaptation of the 1959 Ed McBain novel King’s Ransom, which was famously adapted by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa into the film High and Low (1963).  That Kurosawa adaptation is particularly noteworthy as it’s what has inspired Spike Lee to adapt his own film, even inspiring the title itself, Highest 2 Lowest.  The only question is, can Spike Lee’s version stand up on it’s own against the Kurosawa classic, or is it a pale imitation?

The film is set in New York City, across the two boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn.  David King (Denzel Washington) is one of the world’s most successful record producers, creating an empire that has launched the careers of many recording artists.  He lives the high life with his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and his teenage son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) in their penthouse Brooklyn apartment.  Also in the King family orbit is David’s assistant and chauffeur Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright), who has a teenage son of his own named Kyle (Elijah Wright) that’s one of Trey’s closest friends.  While the family is living comfortably, David is beginning to make plans behind the scenes to try to buy back the company he founded so that it isn’t sold to a corporate conglomerate that he’s fears will destroy everything he has built.  He convinces many of his business partners to give up their shares in the company in order to stave off the corporate take over, but at the same time it’s putting his financial stability at risk as getting the money is putting him in serious debt.  At the point where it looks like he might succeed in his buy outs, something tragic and unexpected happens.  He receives a cryptic phone call telling him that his son has been kidnapped and that he’ll only be returned if a ransom is paid.  David and his wife quickly get the police department involved as they try to find his son.  Detectives Bridges (John Douglas Thompson), Bell (LaChanze) and Higgins (Dean Winters) set up operations in the King’s apartment, hoping to track down the kidnapper (A$AP Rocky) once David receives another call.  Miraculously, they manage to find Trey King safe and sound.  It turns out the kidnapper made a mistake and grabbed Kyle instead, believing he was Trey.  Now, David is in the difficult position.  Does he still go through with paying the ransom to save the life of someone else’s kid, even though it will put himself at incredible financial risk?  A lot is at risk, especially when media attention is cast upon the case.  Does David King destroy his reputation in order to save his financial gamble, or does he do the selfless thing and help save his closest friend’s only son.

It’s interesting to think about Highest 2 Lowest in regards to it’s status as a remake of a Kurosawa film.  Akira Kurosawa has probably had more remakes made of his films than any other filmmaker around the world.  Sergio Leone turned Yojimbo (1961) into his spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars (1964).  Hollywood would also adapt Seven Samurai (1954) into The Magnificent Seven (1960).  Even Star Wars (1977) has elements of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958) woven into it’s story.  So, it’s not surprising that Kurosawa’s High and Low would also inspire it’s own remake as well.  Truth be told, Spike Lee could’ve just said that this was just another adaptation of the original McBain novel, but giving it the title Highest 2 Lowest certainly is meant to invoke the memory of the Kurosawa classic.  Now there is the danger of doing a remake poorly.  There have certainly been many subpar adaptations of Kurosawa’s movies.  Also Spike Lee already has a bad history with remakes, given his misguided attempt to remake Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) in a 2013 film starring Josh Brolin.  One thing that works in this remake’s advantage is that it includes the involvement of Ko Kurosawa as a producer; grandson of Akira Kurosawa.  But even without that connection, this is a remake that does indeed reflect back positively on the original film.  I would say that the movie works in the same way that Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars adapted Yojimbo.  It’s tackling the same story and involves similar characters, but the film definitely feels uniquely tailored to the filmmaker working on it.  Make no mistake, this is a Spike Lee movie, complete with all the stylish editing and visual flair that he gives to all of his films, as well as his typical musings about race and class in society in modern America.  And that is what makes this remake work so well.  Spike Lee and Akira Kurosawa both were drawn to this story based on it’s provocative premise about class struggles, but their spins on the material are uniquely their own.  Kurosawa framed it through the lens of hierarchy in post-War Japan, while Spike Lee frames his story through the lens of racial identity and privilege in contemporary America.  Same story, and similar message, but in very different voices.

One of the great things to see in this film is how Spike Lee uses this particular story and makes it adhere to his own tastes.  He provides an interesting take on the material by making it a reflection about privilege in the African-American community.  David King lives a life of privilege that you realize over the course of the movie came from his commodification of black excellence for mass consumption.  Described as “the best ears in the business” he has indeed helped many black artists enter the mainstream, but over time it has also alienated him from that same community.  His take over bid for the company that he created is not about helping to preserve the cultural importance of the art that he helped create, but rather about him retaining his position as the gatekeeper of that art.  Sure, saving artistic integrity and keeping it in the hands of the black community rather than handing it over to a soulless corporation is a worthwhile thing, but in doing so, David King is also leaving many of those same black artists out of determining what they want to do with their music.  It’s a conundrum that comes to a head when David sees the faults of his own creed come back to bite him with this kidnapping plot.  When it becomes about saving someone who isn’t even his own flesh and blood, we see him fundamentally change, and that’s a compelling story no matter the story’s setting.  Spike Lee is telling more than just a story about wealth and power here.  He’s telling a story about black identity as well; how people in the community change once they do achieve wealth and success.  Whether or not David King goes through with paying the ransom or not is filtered through that perspective.  As a black man in America, he probably had to go through a lot more hurdles in order to become the tycoon that he is today, and that’s something that he doesn’t want to throw away so easily in response to this kidnapping.  That’s where Spike Lee finds his unique angle on the material, which helps to distinguish it from Kurosawa’s.  Both films still deliver on the crime procedural aspects taken from McBain’s novel, but they definitely hit their own outlooks on the themes of the story in their own special way.

Of course the main draw of this remake is undoubtedly the stellar lead performance of Denzel Washington as David King.  There’s a reason why Spike Lee and Denzel has had such a fruitful collaborative partnership over 5 films now; because they both bring out the best in each other.  Denzel is in top form in his performance here, completely commanding every scene that he is in.  It’s a very different performance than that of the legendary Toshiro Mifune in High and Low.  Mifune was very subdued in his role, brilliantly capturing a wide range of emotions with a great deal of subtlety.  Denzel is a lot more showy in his performance, but that works for this film and matches the kind of nature that this character needs to display.  Corporate culture is very different between Japan and America, with American CEO’s being more brash and flashier than their Japanese counterparts.  Plus, he’s the CEO of a music company, so he’s got to be someone who’s got to deal with a lot of clients who are as self-promoting as he is.  He is this way so that he can maintain his place at the top.  Denzel uses his magnetic charm perfectly in this role, and is able to make David King relatable while at the same time making him funny and intimidating depending on the circumstances.  It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of his performance involved a fair bit of improvisation.  But, Denzel isn’t the only standout in the cast.  Jeffrey Wright also delivers a solid performance as Paul.  His more subdued performance works perfectly against Denzel’s bombastic acting in the film.  He also perfectly conveys the internal pain that he’s dealing with, wondering if he’ll ever get his son back alive.  The trio of actors playing the detectives are also wonderful in their roles, which is actually an interesting change from Kurosawa’s version as their part to play in the story was only given to one character before, played by Kurosawa favorite Tatsuya Nakadai.  And though his onscreen role is pretty limited, rapper turned actor A$AP Rocky also stands out as the kidnapper.  His eventual scenes with Denzel near the end are definitely some of the movie’s highlights.

One of the things that Spike Lee likes to do in most of his movies is to pay tribute to his home turf of New York City, and this film is no different.  From the opening credits sequence that is entirely made up of aerial shots of the city, you know that this will be a love letter to NYC, and the city definitely becomes a character in it’s own right.  There are a great many glamour shots of city landmarks, particularly the Brooklyn Bridge, which becomes a pivotal setting at one point in the story.  The diversity of the people in New York is also an important factor.  One of the most pivotal scenes from Kurosawa’s film was the train sequence, where the money exchange takes place.  Spike Lee takes that same moment and does his own spin on it, utilizing all the flavors of New York to make the moment even more exhilarating.  Of course, the subway system of New York City is a natural substitute for the Japanese rail network of the original film.  But as Denzel’s David heads further down the line, a lot of Yankee fans start to fill up the train on their way to a game.  They start chanting and the film intercuts between this scene and the location of the drop off site, which happens to be where the Puerto Rican Day parade is taking place.  The mix of Puerto Rican music and the chanting of “Let’s Go Yankees” on the train makes for a beautifully chaotic sequence, and it’s a great testament to Spike Lee’s talents as a visual storyteller to create that atmosphere to set this pivotal moment in the movie within.  Lee works here with his frequent cinematographer Matthew Libatique, and they create some beautiful sweeping shots of the city.  They also do a great job with the interior spaces of the Kings’ apartment.  Composer Howard Drossin also gives the film a beautifully rich score, which also cleverly weaves in some of the melodies that would be associated with the work that David King does.  Also, Spike Lee goes the extra length in his stylish presentation by cutting scenes together with graphical wipes; some of which even include the logo of his company, which is a very Spike Lee touch to add.  Overall, a very visually inventive and beautiful movie to witness on screen.

If you are a fan of the original film, be rest a assured that Spike Lee’s remake is reverential in all the right ways, but also is different enough to make it stand apart.  Kurosawa and Lee are very different filmmakers, and these two versions of the same story make that very clear.  But, it’s a remake that compliments it’s predecessor.  I have a feeling that one of Spike Lee’s intentions with this movie is to also shine a light on the original.  If you haven’t watched High and Low, I strongly recommend you see that as well.  It’s a genuine masterpiece and easily one of the best crime thrillers ever put on screen.  I also strongly recommend watching Spike Lee’s version as well.  Between the two, Kurosawa’s is the one I’d prefer more, but I am glad that this one exists now as well.  For one thing, it’s a great showcase for Denzel Washington in his top form.  He is clearly making a meal of his performance here, and it’s a lot of fun to watch.  The movie itself is also well crafted.  I already knew the direction of the story because I had seen the original, and even yet there were several points in the film that left me surprised.  And like a lot of Spike’s movies it’s got a great soundtrack and a visual flair that only he can deliver.  It’s a wonderful thing to see these two titans collaborating again, and hopefully it’s not the last.  This is definitely a movie worth seeing in a theater with an audience.  Unfortunately like Da 5 Bloods, this is a film made by a streaming platform; in this case Apple TV+.  Thankfully Apple (in partnership with A24) is giving this a limited theatrical run before it goes on Apple TV+ in September.  It’s a very theatrical film, so I strongly suggest seeing it on the big screen while you can.  I just wish the theatrical window was longer and the roll out a lot wider than just a handful of arts cinemas.  It’s a shame that so many streaming platforms are taking away so many great filmmakers out of the theatrical market, but at the same time, they are indeed the ones putting up the money to allow for filmmakers like Spike Lee to have the creative freedom to make movies like this.  Regardless, Highest 2 Lowest is another strong film from Spike Lee, who seems to be on a roll with his last 3 movies.  It’s a remake that does justice to the original while at the same time manages to be a great movie on it’s own.  Definitely seek out Kurosawa’s original if you haven’t watched it yet, but also give this newer one a watch as well.  It is definitely delivers far more highs than lows.

Rating: 8.5/10

Marvel has managed to get a remarkable amount of their comic book characters recognized around the world thanks to their movie adaptations.  But it has been a bit more difficult for one of their most popular titles.  Marvel’s first family, The Fantastic Four, started their life on the page in 1961.  Created by legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby and chief Marvel writer Stan Lee, the quartet of super powered beings have become one of Marvel’s best selling properties, managing to top the comic book charts even to this day.  It was also the first time a comic series was built from the ground up on a team dynamic, predating the X-Men and the Avengers.  What also set the Four apart was that they were a family unit as well.  Reed Richards and Sue Storm, known as Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl respectively, were a married couple, and their team also consisted of of Sue’s younger brother Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) and Reed’s best friend since childhood Ben Grimm (The Thing).  With that broad appeal thanks to their comic book success, it should have been very easy for them to translate to the silver screen.  This however has been more difficult than one would imagine.  Legendary B-Movie veteran Roger Corman took his stab at it in the early 90’s, and while earnest it’s safe to say that his version is not exactly an all time classic of the genre.  A decade later, after the comic book genre was finally starting to be taken seriously by Hollywood, 20th Century Fox tried to do their attempt at launching the Fantastic Four in it’s franchise.  There are good things to say about some of their Fantastic Four (2005), particularly with casting choices like Chris Evans as Johnny Storm and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, but it also paled in comparison to other comic book films of the time.  It did manage to spawn a 2007 sequel that introduced the Silver Surfer for the first time to the big screen, but it also bombed at the box office and killed any further attempts to grow the franchise.  By this time, Chris Evans had already taken on the role of Captain America as Marvel Studios was starting up their own line of films.  But, Fox still wanted to hold onto the rights to the Fantastic Four and keep it out of the hands of Marvel’s parent company Disney.  Sadly what resulted was one of the worst comic book movies in history.

2015’s Fant4stic is an epically bad movie, and a shining example of how not to adapt a comic book to the big screen.  For some reason, Fox wanted to give the usually bright and colorful Fantastic Four comics a dark and gritty adaptation, akin to what DC was currently doing with their Snyderverse movies.  The result was a movie that pleased no one and ended up destroying Fox’s share of the comic book movie market even more.  The sad thing is, because Fox refused to play ball with Disney, like what Sony did with their special arrangement that allowed Spider-man to be a part of the MCU, it prevented the Fantastic Four from being apart of the Marvel’s on-going story-line leading into the Infinity War arc.  But, things would change once Fox ended up being put on the market and were bought up by Disney in the process.  Now the Fantastic Four were finally home at Marvel Studios and could take their place in the MCU.  But, plans changed due to the Covid pandemic.  Because so many projects got pushed back, the world had to wait a bit longer to see Marvel’s first family make their debut in their new home.  And in those couple of years of waiting, Marvel’s box office track record started to wane.  The studio hadn’t been able to live up to the stellar box office results of the 2010’s, and it prompted Disney to start cutting back on the output of Marvel Studios.  But, thankfully the re-shuffling may have timed out right for the studio because in the last year it seems that a lot of the production woes that plagued the films of the previous couple of years are not dragging Marvel down anymore.  Their last film, Thunderbolts* (2025) had some of the best critical reviews that the studio has seen in many years, and that has helped to build some extra confidence for this new Fantastic Four adaptation heading into theaters right on it’s heels.  But what is interesting is just how exactly Marvel is fitting their first family into their on-going story.  The Fantastic Four are coming into the MCU pretty late into it’s history, which means their introduction can’t just be yet another origin story like all the others before.  The only question is, does The Fantastic Four: First Steps do justice to the comic book icons or does it continue the string of bad luck they’ve had up to now on the big screen.

One of the biggest gambles this movie takes is that it introduces the First Family of Marvel in an entirely separate universe than the one we are familiar with in the MCU.  This Fantastic Four exists on Earth 828, while the MCU is on Earth 616, dubbed the “Sacred Timeline.”  Given that Marvel is currently in it’s Multiverse phase, it stand to reason that these two parallel universes will collide eventually.  In this particular timeline, the Fantastic Four have been around as a team for the last 4 years, reaching a point where they have become the guardians of the Earth.  They are treated like celebrities in this world, which seems to be an advanced version of Mid-20th Century America.  While on break from their crime fighting duties, the Four make their home in the lavish Baxter Building in the heart of Manhattan.  One day, Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) makes an important discovery that she immediately shares with her husband Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), the smarted man in the world.  She has learned that she’s pregnant.  Reed is excited, but also troubled, because he’s worried about the effect that the cosmic radiation that gave them their super powers may have on their unborn child.  The news of the welcome pregnancy is celebrated by both Sue’s brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and the world is collectively excited about the newest addition to the Fantastic family.  But the good times come to an end once a mysterious visitor comes to Earth.  The powerful alien being, named Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner), aka the Silver Surfer, has come to deliver a message, heralding the coming of the planet devouring entity known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson).  The Fantastic Four vow to the people of Earth that they will protect them from this Galactus threat, so they head back to space, following the Silver Surfer’s power signature.  They arrive many light years away from home to find the destroyed remains of a planet that’s currently in the process of being consumed by Galactus’ enormous intergalactic ship.  They find the giant super being, who reveals that he has plans for something other than the destruction of Earth.  He gives the Fantastic Four the most difficult of ultimatums; he’ll spare the Earth if they give up their unborn child to him.  Given that impossible choice, which path will the Fantastic Four choose; save their world, or their son?

Up to this point the Fantastic Four were adrift in the old way of doing things with Marvel licenses where the studios had all the creative control and not Marvel themselves.  Now that the Fantastic Four are back in the fold with Marvel Studios firmly established, people are eagerly anticipating how they will be debuting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Considering what has come before, Marvel had a fairly low bar to cross, but this is also a time where Marvel has lost a step from their peak days.  So, how well did the Fantastic Four do in their big debut?  I’d say that the results vary depending on the way you look at it.  As far as Fantastic Four movies go, First Steps is far and away the best film we have seen yet from the super team.  For once we are actually seeing the Fantastic Four as more than just super heroes.  In this movie, they are an actual family and that dynamic is what drives most of the film’s best moments.  But, I also have to look at this film with regards to it’s place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has had a much stronger track record over the years than the Fantastic Four movies.  And viewing it through that, I’d say that First Steps is slightly above average for a MCU film.  It’s certainly a very good movie, and even at times great.  But it doesn’t quite grab a hold of you the same way that Marvel movies at their very best do.  I feel like a big part of that is because First Steps is trying to do a lot of heavy lifting in a short amount of time, and it comes at the cost of having moments where the movie is able to let us sit and absorb the film.  It also hurts the film that it comes so soon after DC’s Superman debuted; another movie that also had to speed through a lot of world-building in a short amount of time.  While I think that both movies are successful at what they set out to do, Superman just slightly beats it out thanks to it’s more graceful landing.  What First Steps manages to do is basically get it’s super hero quartet to be on par with what Marvel has done in the past.

Where the movie succeeds very well is establishing the Fantastic Four and their world which seems to be custom shaped just for them.  It’s an interesting creative choice to have this movie set in an alternate timeline, but it’s one that makes sense because it quickly distinguishes this film from all the other versions of the Fantastic Four that we’ve seen.  The movie is very much a love letter to Jack Kirby, even down to naming their universe Earth 828 (a reference to Kirby’s birthday of August 28).  We see the Four living in a Earth where the mid-century modern aesthetic took hold and continued to influence everything beyond, in architecture and fashion.  It’s a world permanently frozen in the 1960’s, but with all the same technological advances we’ve seen in the same 60 plus years since then.  Every travels in flying cars, but they all have that shiny chrome look of Cadillacs from that era.  The movie also pays homage to the Silver Age origins of the Fantastic Four by making references to all of the different foes that they fought through the years, including the very cheesy ones.  Giganto, the lizard like behemoth that appeared on the cover of Fantastic Four #1 even makes a cameo here.  But, when the movie moves away from the cheese towards heavier stuff, it also does a fairly good job of that too.  One of the biggest upgrades that this film has over past film versions is the villain Galactus.  While still a bit limited in character development, Galactus is nevertheless far better realized here than he was in his last appearance in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, where he was depicted as a giant dust cloud.  Here, we finally get a Galactus that is true to his comic book design, and to the movie’s credit, he is a fairly terrifying presence.  If you see this movie, please choose to watch this in IMAX, purely for the Galactus scenes alone, because he will indeed feel every bit as gargantuan as he’s meant to be.

One of the movie’s other strong points is it’s cast.  One thing that the movie had to get right was the line-up of actors who had to play the iconic characters, and I’d say that they did a great job with casting all of them.  The stand out here is Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm.  In all the past versions, Sue was often the least defined character of the group, because back when those movies were made we hadn’t really seen the genre define how to write for female super heroes.  Now in a world where both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel have broken down barriers in the genre, we’re able to see the writers of these movie bring more depth to a character like Sue.  Vanessa Kirby has to do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting in this movie and she really excels at portraying Sue as a mother who will move heaven and earth to protect her child.  Another character that also gets a lot more depth this time around is Johnny Storm.  It’s interesting how the movie portrays his brash personality and shows how it acts as a shield for some of his insecurity.  In the film, we learn that he wants to show his worth to the team beyond his super power to generate fire from his body, particularly when it comes to his intelligence.  Joseph Quinn does a great job of portraying this aspect, and he also still manages to successfully capture the playful side of Johnny too; which is pretty impressive considering the big shoes he had to fill inheriting the role from Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan.  Ebon Moss-Bachrach had a bit of an easier time considering that he’s playing the affable Ben Grimm, the movie’s most light hearted character.  At the same time, he’s also got to act through a CGI shell which is not easy, but somehow his personality manages to shine through the motion capture performance and he makes an instantly lovable Thing.  Unfortunately, with a cast of lead characters this big, one is inevitably going to get the short end of the stick, and that would be Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards.  Pedro’s performance is naturally very strong, but Reed is not really focused on in this movie.  He’s the guy who comes up with the solutions, but we don’t explore that much of his character beyond that.  It makes me think that a lot of his character development is being saved for future sequels, and of course the Avengers films.

The other spotlight of the movie is the way that it looks.  Of course the mid-century modern aesthetic is a bold choice on Marvel’s part, and it’s a great way to try something new and different with this property.  One of the biggest complaints levied at Marvel in recent years is that all their movies look the same, and it’s a criticism that is not unwarranted.  I can still remember just how bland and unremarkable Captain America: Brave New World (2025) was, and this is a vast improvement over that movie in every way.  The visual effects are also better utilized here than some of Marvel’s other recent movies.  The Thing in particular is a great achievement.  He looks so much like the Jack Kirby design, but you can still see the actor’s mannerisms shine through in the model without it looking off.  He very much looks like he’s occupying the same space with his live action co-stars, which is what the best CGI animated Marvel characters like Thanos and Rocket Raccoon have managed to do.  Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer is also beautifully realized.  I especially like that her silver skin is now perfectly polished either; that there’s tarnish in there as well, indicating that she’s a being of very advanced age as well.  The movie also does a great job of filling every scene with a lot of creative details.  It will probably take quite a few watches to spot all the little mid-century style touches they added to fill out their alternate timeline Manhattan skyline.  But, if there is one thing that I think will be far more memorable from this movie, it’s the musical score from Michael Giacchino.  The award winning composer (who’s also responsible for the Marvel Studios fanfare by the way) delivers some of his best work here, creating a score that could very well be as iconic as John Williams’ Superman them or Danny Elfman’s Batman theme.  Marvel has struggled to find music themes that become as iconic as the ones from DC, other than Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme itself, but I think Giacchino may have struck gold here with an epic score that not only feels right with the mid-century aesthetic, but also fits perfectly with these particular heroes.

So, while I would say that it just falls a bit short of top tier Marvel, I will without question also say that the Fantastic Four have finally broken their cinematic curse.  This is a movie that does justice to this super hero team, particularly the version of the team dreamed up by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.  I just think that there is room for improvement, and I have a feeling that we’ve got a lot to look forward to with regards to the Four in Marvel’s future.  We already know that they have a part to play in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday (2026), and the teaser at the end of Thunderbolts* hinted at just how they’ll be making their way into the MCU proper.  I would certainly like to see them explore Reed Richards as a character more in the Avengers movies, because it seemed to me that a talent as big as Pedro Pascal was underutilized in this movie.  But, nitpicks aside, there is still a lot to like about this movie.  The visuals are top notch, and the cast is likable and well-suited to their characters.  I also like the fact that even if you aren’t familiar with Silver Age Fantastic Four, you can still easily get into the flow of this movie.  Like James Gunn’s Superman, it foregoes the origin story and just throws you into the fray with the Fantastic Four already firmly established as a super hero team.  All we need is a short little montage to catch us up to speed, which this movie cleverly does through a TV special package, and then it’s all fun from there.  A lot of credit goes to director Matt Shakman for getting the tone of this film right.  He carried over his expertise of handling classic genres on television, including Marvel’s own Wandavision series, and helped give First Steps an authentic feel of the mid-century world it was supposed to convey.  Riding off the critical success of Thunderbolts*, as well as the strong responses to their TV properties Daredevil: Born Again and Ironheart, it seems that Marvel has gotten a bit of their mojo back, and The Fantastic Four is continuing that win streak.  It’s coming at a good time too, as Avengers: Doomsday is just around the corner, as well as Secret Wars, which is supposed to culminate this current era of Marvel.  Marvel needed to find it’s footing again, and while First Steps isn’t top tier Marvel, it’s still a solid effort that shows they still got it, and that things are looking up as they head into the home stretch.  And that is just fantastic for all of us.

Rating: 8/10

It’s surprising that one of the characters that’s been the hardest for DC Comics to bring to the big screen is also their most iconic on the page.  Superman is undeniably one of the most well known comic book characters ever created, and probably the most famous one of all worldwide.  But, bringing him faithfully to the big screen has been somewhat of a challenge.  This is perhaps due to the fact that his first cinematic outing was just too hard of an act to follow.  Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) captured the character perfectly in a movie that honestly was the catalyst for the super hero boom that has happened in cinema over the last few decades.  While Donner’s direction was certainly a big part of making the film a success, the even bigger reason the movie worked as well as it did was because actor Christopher Reeve flawlessly embodied the character of Superman and made him a hero worth rooting for.  Reeve’s charm mixed in with his incredible physical presence really made us all believe that a man could fly.  And the part rightly came to define Reeve’s career, as well as his own life thereafter, especially after the tragic accident that left him paralyzed.  Over the years, DC and their parent company Warner Brothers came to realize that it was going to be very hard filling those bright red boots that Reeve wore on screen.  After the box office failure of the Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), it would be a whole 19 years before we would see Superman on the big screen again.  Unfortunately, Bryan Singer’s attempt at rebooting the franchise with Superman Returns (2006) was a pale imitation of Richard Donner’s original, despite a game performance from Brandon Routh taking over from Christopher Reeve.  While Superman was struggling to find his footing on film, his DC colleague Batman was taking charge at the box office thanks to Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy.  In order to capitalize on Batman’s success, Warner Brothers decided to apply it’s more gritty style to adaptations of all their Super Heroes, starting with Superman himself.  The studio looked to filmmaker Zach Snyder to revamp their iconic hero into something as iconic as their Batman, but this unfortunately didn’t work out as well as they hoped.

While Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013) did deliver some strong box office numbers, it was also sharply criticized for missing the point about the character.  In Man of Steel, Superman resorts to killing the villainous General Zod in order to save people who were in the supervillain’s line of fire.  This was antithetical to the many years of comic book lore that showed Superman as being pure of heart and never once resorting to murder, even in justifiable cases.  It was a case where Snyder was conforming the character to his own storytelling sensibilities, which fell into a gloomier and hard edged viewing of the world.  This kind of grit is fine for heroes like Batman, but just feels wrong for the character of Superman.  Unfortunately, DC and Warner Brothers meant for Man of Steel to be the launching off point for a cinematic universe akin to their rivals over at Marvel.  The fact that they started off with such a divisive film like Man of Steel as their foundation is a testament to why the DCEU (also known as the Snyderverse) ultimately failed.  And this was truly unfortunate given that they had cast an actor like Henry Cavill who if placed in a more faithful adaptation of Superman on the big screen could’ve been as great as Christopher Reeve.  But, with Snyder out at DC, it’s time to take another shot at bringing Superman to life on screen.  After his departure from Marvel, director James Gunn found a new and welcome home at DC, where he was granted the opportunity to do his take on The Suicide Squad (2021).  Though the movie’s box office was dampened due to the Covid pandemic, Gunn nevertheless received high marks for Suicide Squad, and DC was eager to work with him again.  He was granted a quick return to Marvel to close out his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy before moving on this his next assignment, which became more than just one movie.  DC and Warner Brothers wanted him to take over as the Creative Director of their entire Cinematic Universe, becoming essentially DC’s equivalent of Kevin Feige over at Marvel.  Gunn would be the one who would decide which projects would be getting made, and it’s only natural that he would choose Superman to be the one who would help launch this new, revamped Cinematic Universe.  And, in taking on the duties of writer and director, he would be putting it on himself to get this relaunch on the right footing.  The only question is, does Superman soar or is cinema his unfortunate kryptonite.

In an interesting creative choice, James Gunn is re-launching Superman on the big screen without going over his entire backstory again like his previous films had.  In this version, we meet Superman (David Corenswet) as he is three years into the gig.  Despite being the world’s strongest hero, he still is struggling to do the right thing by saving as many people as he can.  He soon learns that a lot of his well intention deeds also run contrary to the rule of law.  In particular, his intervention between two warring nations called Boravia and Jarhanpur has made him run afoul of the US State department.  In order to reign in Superman, the government has granted billionaire tycoon Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) the opportunity to use his resources to contain Superman and hold him in captivity.  Lex has long resented Superman and other meta-humans that have called Earth their home, and he uses all the tools he has to bring Superman down.  Meanwhile, the reporters at the Daily Planet, where Superman works under his alias Clark Kent, are attempting to break apart the conspiracy that Lex has concocted in order to sour public opinion against Superman and learn about the whereabouts of where he’s being held prisoner.  Clark Kent’s colleague, and girlfriend, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) even seeks help from a group of corporate sponsored Super Heroes who are under the working title of the “Justice Gang”  They include the Green Lantern Guy Gardener (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and the tech savvy Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi).  Another Daily Planet reporter, Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) has an insider source feeding him information on Lex Luthor’s duplicitous deeds.  Superman, over the course of these crucial days, must learn what is the most important part of being a super hero, which is to put the safety of others above his own self.  But he also must deal with the fact that someone like Lex Luthor will use his inate kindness against him, by forcing Superman to make unfair compromises that only end up serving Lex’s goals.  Can Superman still be the hero while being forced into the position where he has to make the toughest of choices in order to serve the greater good?

There’s a lot of pressure on James Gunn’s part to get this re-boot of Superman right.  Superman is a true icon, and the mishandling of the character over the last couple decades has in turn also doomed the larger plans for the cinematic universes that were to be built on his shoulders.  But, James Gunn has had a stellar track record at both Marvel and DC, and no one doubts that he can deliver a movie that both is revolutionary in it’s style while at the same time being faithful to the comics.  I’m happy to say that he does not disappoint with his version of Superman.  While it may not be my favorite film of his, I certainly do think he delivers a movie that does an honorable job of bringing Superman to life, while also still being entertaining in that very Gunn-esque way.  The movie has a fair share of laughs and bombastic action sequences, but at the same time it does what it needs to do to deliver us a compelling Superman story-line.  I would even say that this is the best we’ve seen of the “man of steel” since the Christopher Reeve days.  What Gunn really excels at here is a general sense of fun, which is what we also got from Richard Donner in his film.  But he isn’t just merely trying to ape what Donner did with his Superman, which was the fatal flaw of Bryan Singer’s version.  This is the same James Gunn sense of fun that we saw him use in both Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad.  It’s pleasing to see it apply so well to Superman and his narrative.  There’s not a cynical bone in this movie’s body.  When it wants to be profound, it earns it and when it wants to make a statement, it comes from a sincere place.  And for the most part, the humor lands.  The one flaw I would give this movie is that James Gunn seems to be wrapping his arms around a bit too much, to the point where I feel like some elements kind of lose impact as they get lost in the shuffle.  Some characters, especially Lois Lane, feel like their development was truncated a bit in order to fit more plot elements in.  For the most part, James Gunn manages to bring it all together in the end, but it’s a movie that does indeed throw a lot at you, and a few things do get forgotten in the process.  One thing that does help is that the movie hits the ground running right from the start, so that way we are not bogged down with too much exposition.  No origin story here, since it’s Superman and we should all know his beginnings by now.

And speaking of Superman, he is undoubtedly the movie’s greatest triumph.  A lot of the movie’s shortcomings are easily overlooked due to the fact that they managed to get the character right.  David Corenswet definitely fits the look of the character, with a wide build and tall frame.  But what he also does a great job with is making Superman relatable.  This movie gives a lot more time towards breaking down who Superman is as a person than perhaps any other version of the character we’ve seen.  The movie is far less about how Superman is going to save the day and more about what the day to day work of being a super hero does to him mentally.  This is a portrayal of the character that actually shows him to be vulnerable, showing that he is indeed more human than we think.  He’s put through a far more personal journey here, where the conflict revolves around whether he has a right to be the protector of this world despite not being from it originally.  James Gunn has stated in interviews that he views Superman’s story as an allegory for the immigrant experience.  For many immigrants, they have to work much harder in order to convince others that they should have a place in their new home.  Despite having grown up in Smallville America, Superman is still set apart due to his metahuman powers, and that sadly makes him a pariah to those who don’t like anyone different than them, including and especially Lex Luthor.  David Corenswet portrays this more vulnerable and relatable version of the character, being equal parts charming as well as physically imposing.  And he’s a perfect fit for what James Gunn wanted to explore with this character.  Christopher Reeve will still remain the gold standard of the character, much in the same way Sean Connery was for James Bond, but David’s portrayal perhaps comes the closest to reaching that high water mark.  Not that Henry Cavill and Brandon Routh were lightweights.  Those two were unfortunately the right guys at the wrong times, with movies failing to give them the opportunities to get the character right.

But it’s not just David Corenswet that delivers a great performance in this movie, as he is complimented by an excellent ensemble.  The biggest standout is Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor.  Luthor is a character that has long been neglected on the big screen.  You have to go all the way back to the Donner original with the late great Gene Hackman’s brilliant performance to find a worthy Luthor on the big screen.  Hoult’s portrayal here may be the best one we’ve seen yet.  He perfectly captures the pettiness of Luthor and makes him an absolute, irredeemable asshole in the movie.  It’s refreshing to see an unapologetic villain in one of these kinds of movies again, after there have been so many attempts at making sympathetic villains who unfortunately are never that interesting.  Hoult really does a great job of getting that smarmy bravado of an entitled brat that most mega billionaires usually end up being.  And kudos for actually shaving his head bald for this role too, because he does indeed look like the comic book character come to life.  There are a lot of other great performances here as well.  The “Justice Gang” are all fun personalities that add some flavor to the film.  Nathan Fillion (a James Gunn regular) gives a hilarious portrayal as a cocky, self-aggrandizing Green Lantern and Isabela Merced is also quite amusing in her Hawkgirl portrayal.  However, the standout is Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific.  The character is a fairly recent creation from DC and is not widely known to fans outside of the comic book world, but spotlighting obscure characters has been a specialty of James Gunn and he makes Mr. Terrific one of the film’s breakout characters.  Just like what he did with the Guardians characters, I’m sure Mr. Terrific will soon become a fan favorite for many people thanks to Mr. Gunn.  I also want to spotlight the brief appearances of Ma and Pa Kent (played by Neva Howell and Pruitt Taylor Vince respectively).  They are so adorably folksy in this film and really help to underline the heart of the movie, which is showing the simple beginnings that helped to shape Superman into who he is.

One of the biggest improvements Gunn has made to this adaptation of Superman is with the visuals.  One of the biggest complaints about the Snyderverse films was their washed out color palettes.  Instead of the vibrant colors that you would see on the comic book page, Zach Snyder just muted everything in metallic grays and blacks, which just did not fit with the character of Superman at all.  Superman as a character represents a beacon of hope, and beacons should shine brightly.  Thankfully, James Gunn has brought back rich and vibrant colors.  This is especially evident in the bright reds and deep blues of Superman’s outfit.  Also most of the movie takes place in broad daylight; another improvement over the perpetual twilight of Zach Snyder’s vision.  Like all of James Gunn’s other comic book adaptations, he wants to take what’s on the comic page and bring it to life.  And it’s the fearlessness of balancing the silly with the serious that has come to define his work.  I love that he embraces the weirder side of comic books, and he surprisingly manages to find appropriate places to make it work in Superman’s story.  One of the best visual gags in the movie is a tender scene between Clark and Lois taking place while the Justice Gang battles a monster outside in the background.  The juxtaposition is what James Gunn manages to perfectly handle in his films, and there are plenty of moments in the movie where there are extra details in the background that help to make the scenes a whole lot funnier.  Thankfully, Gunn isn’t too indulgent; he doesn’t resort to tons of Easter eggs that foreshadow future films in the franchise.  All of the surprises work in service towards the world-building and story being told.  But, there are some clever nods to Richard Donner’s Superman thrown in here and there, and the movie also incorporates some of John Williams iconic theme into it’s musical score.  There also seems to be some little jabs at the Snyderverse as well, especially in a scene where Superman goes out of his way to avoid creating city wide destruction.  Overall, it demonstrates the high quality attention to detail that James Gunn has developed as a filmmaker working in this medium of comic book films.

It’s an unenviable task that James Gunn has put himself in having to set this new era of DC comic book movies on the right footing.  He was to win over a lot of fans, many of whom are growing fatigued over the abundance of comic book media we have had over the last decade.  The unfortunate thing is that his re-boot is coming on the heels of the demise of the very divisive Snyderverse.  The die-hard Zach Snyder fans are already getting their knives out to tear this new movie apart.  And if this movie doesn’t perform well, it could halt James Gunn’s long term plans for DC as a result.  Thankfully, the forecasts are indicating that Superman is poised to have a strong opening weekend.  How it performs beyond that is anyone’s guess, but hopefully it does well enough to instill confidence at Warner Brothers to get the ball rolling on all the future plans for Gunn’s DC Universe.  I for one feel like this is a good place to start, as the movie is just a fun, adventurous ride that is worthy of the Superman name.  You need a strong foundation to build a multi-film franchise, much like what Iron Man (2008) did for Marvel, and what was missing from the Snyderverse from the get go.  It’s not perfect, but what it gets right it gets very right.  David Corenswet makes for a great “man of steel” and I can’t wait to see him play this character again, including in future films that will inevitably reintroduce us to the Justice League.  It gets me excited because if they can get Superman right, then the rest of DC’s greatest heroes will also get much improved adaptations as well.  One thing you can really tell from this movie is James Gunn’s love for this cinematic universe.  He’s not some cynical director for hire.  He loves these characters and he wants us to love them all too.  Sure, DC still has a lot of catching up to do to be where Marvel is, but with Gunn in charge things are lookin bright, especially if we see more results like this.  And that in turn will help Marvel too, because nothing works better to improve the quality of your product than having a strong competitor be your motivator.  James Gunn’s Superman is one of this summer’s most satisfying blockbuster experiences and a fun time at the movies that thankfully makes us believe that a man can fly again, and hopefully for a good long time after.

Rating: 8.5/10

It’s becoming more and more difficult for an original idea to break through in the increasingly competitive world of animation.  Once a rarity, sequels have become the driving force of animation studios, with more and more of the top brands relying on established franchises in order to keep the lights on.  But at the same time, none of these franchises would exist had one original film managed to connect with audiences.  So, there has to exist a balance between studios investing in their future by coming up with the next big idea for a movie, while at the same time still continuing to milk their franchises for what their worth.  Sadly, the balance is becoming more heavily favored in the sequel department, and that’s partly because those are the films that generate the strongest results at the box office.  But the flooding of the marketplace with established franchises has made it difficult for something original to stand out, and the number of them that do is becoming far smaller each year.  This is even true with what is regarded as the best animation studio of them all; Pixar Animation.  All of their highest grossing films are sequels, including Inside Out 2 (2024), Incredibles 2 (2018), Finding Dory (2016) and Toy Story 4 (2019), and there more on the horizon, including another Toy Story.  But, they are a studio that still tries to put out something original into theaters, not just in order to plan for the future, but to also allow themselves a chance to be experimental as well.  They have a lot more leeway than other animation studios in this regard, mainly due to the strength of their brand name which is a selling point in itself.  But, circumstances in recent years have made even this selling point difficult for them.  After Toy Story 4 hit theaters and generated a handsome total at the box office, Pixar had an upcoming slate that was going to be primarily originals; a bode of confidence in their ability to deliver on the strength of their brand alone.  But, unfortunately the Coivd-19 pandemic ruined their plans.  Onward (2020) only got two weeks into it’s run before movie theaters everywhere closed and Pixar would not have anything seen on the big screen for another 2 years.

In that meantime, three films of theirs were dropped onto streaming; Soul (2020), Luca (2021), Turning Red (2022).  And when it finally came time to return to the big screen, Pixar unfortunately were re-entering the race with a bum horse called Lightyear (2022).  Essentially, all of the brand value that they had in the previous decade was undercut by their parent company’s decision to have them drive up their streaming service’s membership instead.  And this was despite the positive critical response that these movies received; Soul even went on to win a couple of Oscars.  These movies were finding an audience thankfully, but their absence from the movie theaters was affecting the brand’s selling power as well.  People were just not being drawn to theaters anymore because they had to see the new Pixar movie.  This was evident by the weak opening weekend numbers of Pixar’s next film, Elemental (2023).  The movie thankfully managed to stay afloat thanks to strong word of mouth, but even still it was far from Pixar’s peak performance.  But then came a sequel to the studio’s rescue; Inside Out 2.  People figured that the sequel to the award winning 2015 original would do much better at the box office, but I’m sure few imagined just how well it would do.  The movie became Pixar’s biggest moneymaker ever both at the domestic and worldwide box office.  It’s unfortunate that it had to be a franchise film that turned around Pixar’s fortunes, but at the same time Inside Out 2 was still made with the high quality animation and storytelling that has become a bedrock of the studio.  With a big win in their column now, Pixar is hoping that it will have strong downhill effects for their follow-ups.  Originally, their newest film, Elio (2025) was supposed to precede Inside Out 2, but considering that it’s production was delayed a bit by the strikes in 2023, it was decided to push the film a full year and let Inside Out 2 carry the slack for the year.  It may have worked to Elio’s benefit because now they can ride the crest of the wave of it’s predecessor’s huge win.  The only question is, is Elio another positive step in the right direction for Pixar, or is it another flop waiting to happen that can’t carry the weight of Pixar’s valuable brand.

Elio is another in a long line of coming-of-age stories that have been central to Pixar’s body of work.  A young little boy named Elio (Yonas Kibreab) has recently lost his parents in an accident and now has to live under the care of his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana), an Air Force major responsible for running a program that tracks space debris.  While spending time with her on the base, Elio wanders into an exhibit that details the history of the Voyager 1 spacecraft and how it has explored deep into outer space, sending a message from Earth to distant worlds within the cosmos.  Blown away by all this, he wishes to explore the cosmos himself.  A couple years later, he has devised a plan to get himself abducted by aliens.  His obsession has left him isolated from his community, and estranged from his stressed out aunt.  Things come to a head when Elio ends up using the satellites on the base to send out a message to outer space in the hopes that someone will hear him.  This incident leads Olga to put Elio in a youth camp where he’ll be trained to be more disciplined.  But, while trying to stay out of the wrath of bullies at the camp, Elio ends up finding out that his message was received.  An alien spacecraft arrives and beams him light years away to another world.  He soon finds himself at a space station that operates like a intergalactic United Nations, and they are seeking new worlds to join their ranks, including Earth.  With the help of a super computer named Ooooo (Shirley Henderson), he’s given a universal translator that helps him communicate with all of the Alien ambassadors present there, including Ambassador Questa (Jameela Jamil), Ambassador Tegmen (Matthias Schweighofer) and Ambassador Helix (Brandon Moon).  There’s only one problem, they are all under the impression that Elio is the leader of Earth.  Complicating things even more, a war lord Emperor named Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) is also threatening the council of the Communiverse if they don’t honor his membership.  In order to fit in and continue his charade, Elio volunteers to speak with Lord Grigon on his dreadnought ship, but he soon learns he’s out of his league and becomes imprisoned.  On the ship, Elio meets Grigon’s young son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), who may be his ticket out of trouble.  Is Elio able to fit in with this weird and often dangerous alien world, or will he learn that he needs to make things right on Earth first.

Elio is the first directorial effort of Pixar veteran after Adrian Molina after his co-directing work with Lee Unkrich on Coco (2017).  It’s easy to see that coming-of-age stories are something that he’s drawn to as a storyteller as there are quite a few parallels between the two movies.  Both involve an adolescent boy with big dreams getting a chance to visit a fantastical world where he’s able to live out his fantasy; but along the way they realize that their dreams also clash with reality and it makes them confront something about themselves that challenges their viewpoints.  All of this isn’t to say that Elio is directly copying Coco beat for beat; it just shows that Molina seems to work comfortably with this kind of narrative.  And indeed he does make Elio’s story a wonderful and engaging one.  Elio will indeed be a crowd pleasing movie for many people.  It’s funny, colorful, and even has a good heart that hits some powerful emotional beats.  I’d say the one thing that works against the film is that it isn’t terribly original either.  It does cook with all of the Pixar movie ingredients that we all like and uses them well, but it all comes together in a meal that feels perhaps a tad bit familiar.  Elio isn’t quite as groundbreaking in it’s concept, as demonstrated with it’s similarities to Coco, and visually it is borrowing a lot of inspiration from a lot of things that we’ve already seen done in other Pixar Animation movies.  Is it just me, or does some of the designs of the Communiverse station feel like they were pulled out of the world of Inside Out.  With all that said, everything is still done well in the movie.  It may be formulaic, but the movie doesn’t suffer too much from that.  I for one was still finding myself entertained throughout.  But you can definitely tell when the movie was falling back on already tread ground when it was struggling to find it’s way.  Oddly enough, it’s the Earthbound stuff that was where the movie was finding it’s most inspired moments.  I especially loved the way they dealt with what Aunt Olga was going through while Elio was off on his adventure.

The movie’s greatest asset overall is the character of Elio.  He’s certainly not the first young protagonist in a Pixar movie, and he’s actually part of a recent trend of the studio focusing on adolescent stories.  Elio comes to us after the likes of Miguel from Coco, Luca from Luca and Meilin from Turning Red, but he’s still able to stand out amidst all of them.  The thing that makes the character of Elio so enjoyable to watch in the film is that the filmmakers aren’t afraid to make him a bit of a problem child.  There are a lot of similarities between him and Lilo from Lilo & Stitch (2002), and that’s not a bad comparison at all.  Elio is essentially a nice kid, but he also has a bad temper and is a bit of a habitual liar as well.  The movie also makes a strong point that this obsession he has had with exploring the universe has made him withdrawn and alone, which is an interesting character flaw to give to a young character like him.  Elio’s journey is much more than getting the chance to explore the universe; it’s also about coming to understand that having a myopic obsession becomes a roadblock to your maturity as a person.  The movie thankfully never shames Elio for being a bit of a weirdo.  But it does confront Elio with the fact that he does need to grow up in order to be a better person.  When he is taken to the Communiverse, he realizes very quickly that his dreams have done little to prepare him for real world situations.  It does the coming-of-age trope very well in this regard, and the many layers of Elio’s character help to make the story resonate.  I have a feeling that many kids are going to find the character relatable, and the message that Pixar is sending with the movie is one that is worthwhile for young viewers.  It’s okay to dream and be a free spirit, but also have a sense of your responsibilities to those you love and the world you live in.  All the while, Pixar does a great job giving Elio a winning personality that makes him feel both animated but also real at the same time.  I especially like the fact that he not only has come up with his own language (which is a very kid thing to do) but he also figured out the correct grammar in that language as well.  His voice, provided by a talented young actor named Yonas Kibreab, also brings a lot of warmth and humor to the role.  You know when Pixar is working well with it’s storytelling when they can make yet another child protagonist in their long line of movies still feel wholly unique and different.

The remainder of the cast are more of a mixed bag.  The one drawback of having such a strong main character in the movie is that his development kind of takes away from all of the other secondary characters in the story.  Elio’s Aunt Olga perhaps suffers the most in available screen-time, because for the sake of building up the middle act of the movie, her character needs to be sidelined.  That being said, she does come across as a fully rounded character herself.  It’s helpful that she’s voice by newly minted Oscar winner Zoe Saldana, whose adding yet another prime role in her body of work for Disney, following appearances in the Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar franchises.  Her vocal performance hits the right marks with showing Olga’s frustrations with all of Elio’s bad behavior as well as her desire to do right in raising him up in the absence of his parents.  The alien characters also are a mixed bag, as many of them don’t really stand out given the short amount of run time we spend with them.  One of the stand outs is Brad Garrett as Lord Grigon.  Garrett is a veteran of many different Pixar films, including playing Bloat in Finding Nemo (2003) and Gusteau in Ratatouille (2007), and he brings his comically bassy voice to yet another memorable character in one of their films.  I like the fact that his vocal performance is able to find range between menacing and comical without making the shifts feel out of character.  It’s a character that could’ve easily turned one note, and thankfully Brad Garrett is a veteran of the medium to where he can make the character a lot more multi-faceted.  Newcomer Remy Edgerly is also a standout with his hilariously upbeat performance as Grigon’s young son Glordon.  The contrast between Glordon’s more monstrous appearance (kind of like a mini version of the sand worms from Dune) and his hyperactive childish personality is especially fun to watch, and the movie gets a lot of humorous mileage out of the character.  Edgerly also has strong chemistry with Elio’s voice actor Yonas, and the interaction between the two is a definite highlight of the movie.  And in the Pixar tradition, the strength of the cast is not in the names on the marquee but rather by how well the actor fit their role.  Zoe Saldana is perhaps the biggest name in this cast, and she’s not even the main character.  Everyone is perfectly suited for their roles in the film, and it makes for another great Pixar cast of characters.

The film also has a strong visual sense too, even though a lot of it does feel derivative.  Pixar has never faltered when it comes to their visuals, even on some of their lesser films, and Elio continues their winning streak in this department.  I especially like the contrast that the movie delivers with the Earthbound moment and the celestial ones.  The Earth scenes feel natural with a muted color palette.  Then once the aliens come to “abduct” Elio, the palette begins to pop.  It’s a lot like the shift found in The Wizard of Oz (1939), though no sepia was used this time.  While the visual motif of the Communiverse feels perhaps a bit too close to the organic looking fantasy-scape of Inside Out, it still had a lot of beauty to it as well.  It’s also cool to see the work put into making all of the aliens unique in their designs. There aren’t a lot of repeating alien types in those scenes, which tells you that Pixar allowed their artists to go wild with their imaginations, and most of it does make it on the screen.  The movie definitely gives the story a very adventurous feel, surprising us at every corner with all the stuff we are about to see.  And while there is a lot of familiarity to a lot of the sci-fi tropes in this movie, many of them are fun send-ups of those cliches as well.  What they do with cloning in this movie is especially imaginative, and it leads to some of the best laughs in the movie.  In many ways, I feel like this movie pays homage to a lot of kid-centric sci-fi movies of the 80’s and 90’s, like Flight of the Navigator (1986) and Explorers (1985) and helps to modernize those kinds of imaginative adventures for young audiences living today.  At the same time, it does have the same heart-string pulling moments that have become a hallmark of Pixar.  While the movie didn’t leave me misty eyed like the ending of Coco, the film does hit some emotional moments that I’m sure will warm the hearts of audiences both young and old.  Also, I especially dug the music in this movie, provided by Rob Simonsen.  It’s got a techno futuristic beat to it, but also it also hits those emotional moments very well, reminding me a lot of the Oscar winning work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the Soul soundtrack.  Overall, another extremely well crafted film from Pixar Animation.

It’s too early to tell just yet how Elio will be received.  It will not be anywhere near the record-breaking box office of Inside Out 2, and early indicators suggest it may actually struggle out of the gate.  The hope is that Inside Out 2’s success may have rebuilt the brand prestige to Pixar, but that will only be determined by Elio’s ability to stand on it’s own as a follow-up.  There’s no doubt that Pixar still has the creative drive to deliver a worthwhile original film, but it’s going to be hard to convince audiences of that in this current animation market.  Even now, the box office is dominated by not one but two live action remakes of classic animated movies; Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon.  One positive that may work in Elio’s favor is that Pixar films are known to leg out well past their opening weekend.  This was true with Elemental, which overcame a weak opening weekend to turn into a modest success at the box office.  And all of those films that opened on streaming instead of in theaters have since gone on to become some of Pixar’s most popular recent films.  Hopefully audiences will discover Elio over the course of the summer and if they don’t come in droves on opening weekend, hopefully word of mouth will keep it around for a long while.  As far as Pixar movies go, I think it stands very well in contrast with some of their best work.  I wouldn’t say it’s one of their all time greats (which is becoming an increasingly high bar to clear), but it’s definitely in the upper half of their filmography.  The only thing that holds it back from a more perfect score is that a lot of it is formulaic and falls back on the familiar too many times.  But, everything is still done extremely well, so there isn’t too much to complain about.  It’s got one of their best main characters ever and has a story that still has a lot of charm, humor and warmth to it.  And it should be said that we need to root for more movies like it, especially in an animation industry that is increasingly reliant on franchise appeal.  There needs to be more fresh ideas in the animation market, and these new ideas need to be nurtured through audience interest.  That’s how we can get a vibrant and bustling animation market back to not feeling like it’s not a cash grab anymore.  Definitely see Elio if you can in a theater and keep looking up at those stars.

Rating: 8.5/10

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

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

There are few titles in movie history as monumental as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937).  Once considered Disney’s folly, the original Snow White became a landmark in movie history by becoming the first feature length animated film ever made.  And had it not also been a financial success, it’s possible that the animation industry would have looked a whole lot different.  While Mickey Mouse may have made Walt Disney Animation a household name, it was Snow White that turned Disney into an empire.  With the massive profits that Walt Disney gained from the record breaking box office of Snow White, he was able to build a new studio to house his rapidly growing company and continue to create more animated masterpieces in the same vein as Snow White.  But even as the years have passed, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has never lost it’s relevancy.  It is still celebrated today by all generations.  Even nearly 90 years later, young audiences still are discovering the film and becoming  whole new generation of fans.  Disney certainly still holds their crown jewel in high esteem.  Snow White as a character is still represented as a key member of their Disney Princess line-up, which has become an immensely powerful brand within itself.  Both her and the Dwarves are still visibly present in their theme parks around the world and have a strong presence in everything from books, to games, to all sorts of merchandise put out by the Disney company.  Snow White is still a valuable name in the animation business, and even if Disney doesn’t have a claim to the character due to public domain laws, their version of the character is still the one that most people will think of first.  Over the years, Snow White has also been a part of all the changing business plans of the Disney company as well.  In recent years, Disney has been revisiting all of their animated features of the past and giving them live action (ish) adaptations, hoping to generate more profits off of already built in fandom.  The results have been mixed creatively, but very fruitful financially.  It was hoped by many that Disney would leave the films of Walt’s era alone and just remake the more recent Disney movies, but alas in the last five years we’ve seen remakes for Dumbo (2019), Pinocchio (2022) and now Snow White (2025) gets the live action treatment.

Like I said, the Disney live action remake trend has been a mixed bag.  Sure, there are movies like Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Lion King (2019) that fall way short of the original films creatively, but at the same time there’s a movie like The Little Mermaid (2023) that turns out to be a pleasant surprise.  And I would argue, some of their remakes measure up really well to the original like Cinderella (2015); a perfect example of taking the already familiar elements of a beloved animated classic and giving it a fresh re-imagination.  But, the fact that Disney has been relying on this trend a tad too heavily in place of taking any actual creative risks and making something new is leading to a lot of discontent with audiences and even fans.  For the most part, Disney has been playing things a bit too safe with their remakes, either just copy and pasting the animated films completely in fear of changing the formula, or making nonsensical changes that rob the films of the edges that made them stand out in the first place.  It making a lot of Disney fans nervous now that Disney is now taking the re-make approach to the movie that started it all.  Snow White holds a special place in Disney history, because without out it, none of what followed would have happened.  But, Disney has had a rough time financially in a post-pandemic and post-strike environment and love or hate the remakes, they have been making money for Disney.  Even the most hated ones of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King still grossed over a billion dollars each.  So, it’s inevitable that Disney was going to eventually get to Snow White.  The only thing we can hope for is that the execution of the remake does justice to the original.  Sadly, Disney has had a lot of struggles with this one.  With the shake-up during the strike, Snow White was delayed a full year from it’s original Spring 2024 release.  And there was plenty of controversy around the casting of the film, with Snow White being played by a non-Caucasian actress and the Dwarves not being played by actual little people but instead being animated.  And of course, this led to a pretty toxic discourse around the movie, especially targeted at actress Rachel Zegler who plays the title role.  Sadly this has created negative buzz around the movie and Disney could be seeing the folly of trying to remake one of their beloved classics.  But discourse aside, it ultimately comes down to whether it’s a good movie or not, and ultimately we shouldn’t judge this film unless we’ve seen it.  So, is Disney’s Snow White the fairest one of all or another poisoned apple?

It’s difficult to recap the plot to Snow White considering that it’s a re-telling of one of the most famous fairy tales in the world.  But, there little changes to the original tale that does make this a little different, so I’ll go through the basic details here.  After a peaceful kingdom loses their beloved and kind queen, the King (Hadley Fraser) falls into despair after the loss, but finds solace in the arrival of a beautiful young woman who comes to his court.  He takes her hand and remarries, giving the kingdom a new queen.  But The Queen (Gal Gadot) proves to be a deceiver and manipulates her way to the throne after tricking the King into going on a crusade far outside of the kingdom.  With the King gone, the Queen now has supreme power and she imposes her will on all her subjects.  The princess, Snow White (Rachel Zegler), is forced into servitude in the Queen’s castle and she spends her days wishing for an escape from the wicked queen’s rule.  One day, she finds a thief in the castle pantry named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) who proves himself to be shockingly defiant in response to the Queen’s oppression and he swears fealty to the true king; something that catches Snow White’s attention.  The queen dooms him to a slow death, but Snow White helps Jonathan escape, showing mercy that has too long disappeared in the kingdom.  Her kind action prompts the Queen to consult her magic mirror, to reaffirm that she is the “fairest one of all.”  But this time, the mirror reveals that Snow White has supplanted her as the fairest, and the Queen’s jealous temper erupts.  She instructs her Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to take Snow White far outside the castle and have Snow White slain, with her heart returned to her in a jeweled case.  The Huntsman does not go through with the order and tells Snow White to hide far into the woods to escape the Queen’s wrath.  Snow White eventually finds shelter in a small cabin, where she finds tiny beds to sleep on.  But, the cabin belongs to the magical dwarves who mine diamonds in the mountains.  The dwarves, named Doc (Jeremy Swift), Grumpy (Martin Klebba), Happy (George Salazar), Sleepy (Andy Grotelueschen) Sneezy (Jason Kravits), Bashful (Tituss Burgess), and Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman) agree to let Snow White stay so she can be safe.  But, Snow White means to find out what happened to her father the King, and doing so will put her in danger of being discovered by the Queen and her royal guard.  Will Snow White bring back peace to the kingdom and find a way to overcome the evil might of the Queen?

There’s really no way to compare this film to the original animated classic.  Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is one of the most monumental film achievements ever made.  It’s impossible to escape the long shadow that that movie cast, and really that has been the thing that has affected every adaptation that has come out since.  No other Snow White stands out against the classic animated one, because they inevitably have to be contrasted against it, and so far, all have come short.  This new Snow White, by being so closely tied with the original as it’s being released by the same studio, is almost inevitably going to end up the same way and that assertion is correct.  The live action remake of Snow White is undoubtedly inferior to the original in every way, but it’s a bit unfair to compare this new film to a long time established masterpiece.  So, yeah I’m grading on a curve, but I feel it’s more enlightening to put the movie in perspective of the kind of film it actually represents, and judge it on it’s merits based on that.  This film is part of a wave of live action remakes of Disney’s own animated classics, and that’s the field of films in which I’m judging the movie in it’s proper context.  So, how does it fare as a remake?  It’s frankly just average.  It is no where near the best of the remakes, nor is it anywhere near the worst.  There are things about the movie that I do genuinely think work and come close to making the film much better than expected.  But then, it also has things that absolutely don’t work at all and end up dragging the movie down.  The biggest problem with this movie is it’s inconsistency.  I do admire the effort that was put into the movie; it’s not a lazy copy and paste effort like The Lion King was, nor a overly produced mess like Beauty and the Beast.  It’s just that you can tell that there was a lack of focus in this movie.  There are islands of brilliance in the film, but they disconnected by a coherent vision.  The film was made by Mark Webb, who previously helmed the two Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies as well as the indie romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer (2009).  Webb is putting in a effort to make the movie feel grand and meaningful, but his limitations as a director, especially when directing musical numbers, is very apparent.

I have to compare this with what helped make The Little Mermaid (2023) work for me.  Mermaid was directed by Rob Marshall; someone with plenty of experience directing musicals both for the stage and on screen.  His musical numbers in Mermaid were visually inventive and kinetic, and that helped to make the movie a much more visual feast than it otherwise could have been.  Mark Webb’s background is more in drama and action, and while he puts that experience to good use in some of the more grounded moments in Snow White, his lack of musical direction is very apparent.  The musical sequences here, for the most part, are shot flat and without flair.  It especially doesn’t bode well for Snow White that it’s coming out on the heels of Universal’s mega-hit musical Wicked (2024), which featured extravagant musical sequences done by director Jon M. Chu; someone with a lot of experience directing to music.  While the original Snow White was itself a fully musical production, this film dispenses with all but two of the original songs from the animated classic, and instead creates almost an entirely new musical soundtrack, courtesy of the songwriting team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, best known for their work on La La Land (2016) and The Greatest Showman (2017).  The new songs here are not great but also not the worst I’ve ever heard, but they don’t really fit into this story either.  Really, the best musical sequences in the movie are the ones that reuse the songs from the original film, those being “Whistle While You Work” and “Heigh-Ho.”  It think it’s a lesson in not trying to reinvent the wheel.  It’s only more glaring how the new songs don’t work as well when you also include the classic songs which everyone already loves.  But, at the same time I still see passion put into trying to make the musical sequences work.  It’s not the butchering of the same songs that we saw in The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.  In a way, the fact that Snow White actually is attempting to do something new as opposed to constantly reminding us about something much better, is a plus in it’s favor.  Over time, I just accepted that it wasn’t going to follow the original exactly, and that helped to make most of the movie feel more surprising.  But, at the same time, the movies best moments are the one that come closest to how they played out in the animated film.

The movie does have one saving grace that helps to elevate it from being much worse than it could’ve been.  Ironically, it’s the thing that most internet naysayers thought was going to sink the film in the first place, and that’s the lead actress in the role of Snow White herself.  From the moment she was cast in the role, the worst corners of the internet immediately started to hound her.  The worst of them pointed out that she was a Latina actress playing a role that more often is played by white Caucasian performers, highlighting the line “skin white as snow” as gospel to the portrayal of the character.  Others were upset by public statements the actress made about politics and what she thinks about the more outdated aspects of Snow White’s story.  And to those complaints, I say who cares what she looks like or what she believes or says as a public figure.  What matters is can she do justice to the role of Snow White, and I can definitively say yes.  Rachel Zegler is far and away the best thing about this movie.  She has a wonderful singing voice and is a compelling actor as well.  And I think she pulled of the look of Snow White just fine, especially when she is wearing the iconic blue and yellow dress. A lot of other complaints and worries were leveled at the Seven Dwarves themselves.  Some speculated that the year long delay was due to an unconfirmed rumor that real little actors were being replaced with CGI characters, purely because actor Peter Dinklage made a complaint about it in an interview one time.  I don’t buy it because to me it seemed like the Dwarves here were always meant to be animated.  The problem is that making animated humanoid characters in a live action film runs the risk of heading into the uncanny valley with the final result.  The Dwarves here do take some getting used to, but ultimately I warmed up to them.  They are some of the more entertaining characters and I thought they worked well in relation to Zegler’s Snow White.  The portrayal of Dopey was especially well done, and there are some wonderful moments in the movie that center around his character.  Oddly enough, when the movie actually centers on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which is the very core of the story itself, that’s when the film actually works best.

It’s all of the stuff surrounding Snow White and the Dwarves that falls short.  Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the movie is the Queen herself.  The Evil Queen of the original animated is one of cinema’s most unforgettable and terrifying villains.  While the movie does a good job of making Gal Gadot look like the classic villainess with those incredible Sandy Powell designed dresses, everything else about the character pales in comparison.  The character is poorly written, and Gal’s performance tries to compensate by going full vamp and it just doesn’t work in the movie’s favor.  Gal Gadot also is not the greatest singer, and one can only imagine what it would’ve been like if someone with a more powerful voice had the part instead.  But not everything about her performance is a waste.  I actually thought her best work in the film came when she performs as the Old Hag.  Buried under some good make-up effects, Gal is able to disappear into a character, and she delivers some decent moments of menace there in disguise.  While definitely not as terrifying as the hag from the original, it at least allows Gal Gadot a chance to show some acting chops other than just looking the part.  One other wasted element of the movie is the romantic lead.  I understand the plan around changing this part of the story.  By removing the Prince from the original, and making Snow White fall in love with a brave commoner, it allows for her to have more agency over her own story rather than a damsel in distress.  But, the character of Jonathan does not have much character to speak of, so he’s little more than a plot device.  It would be an insult to the movie, but the Prince in the original was barely a character as well.  The actor Andrew Burnap does the best he can, and has a fine singing voice, but the character is fundamentally superfluous to the film overall, other than delivering on the love’s first kiss part of the story.

If you had been following any of the discourse around this movie, and God help you if you did, you would be led to believe that this movie was doomed from the very start, and that this is going to be the movie that destroys Disney.  The worst avenues of the internet has been especially cruel to the actors in this movie, particularly Rachel Zegler who it turns out is the saving grace of the movie.  My worst fear is that if this movie doesn’t perform well at the box office, Disney is going to take the wrong lesson and fault Rachel for the film’s failure, and that it will lead to more restrictions placed on actor’s being able to speak their minds (as is their right) during the making and promotions of the film.  Rachel Zegler never spoke ill of the movie she was working on and she’ll probably tell you that she adores the original animated film, but she just saw there were inherent problems in the original fairy tale itself that she was eager to deliver a modern reinterpretation of.  You may not have agreed with her opinions, but she should have the right to still say it.  And Disney should recognize that her role in this movie is the thing that helps to salvage it.  To the complaint that this movie is going to ruin Disney for good, I would say that if they were able to survive box office disasters like John Carter (2012), The Lone Ranger (2013) and Tomorrowland (2015), as well as surviving Covid and the string of flops they had in 2023, then they’ll weather it here as well if that’s what happens to Snow White.  Maybe Disney’s reliance on live action remakes will flounder after a disappointing run for this movie, but I doubt it, especially with the upcoming Lilo and Stitch remake already generating massive hype.  For me, I do wish I enjoyed this movie more, but at the same time it didn’t make me hate and resent the film either.  There are good things there, particularly Rachel Zegler’s spirited performance and surprisingly also the Dwarves.  In essence, there’s a good Snow White and the Seven Dwarves movie in there, surrounded by a lot of mediocrity in everything else.  It’s definitely not the fairest one of all, but at the same time it’s far from the worst.  It’s very, very average.  I definitely wouldn’t say that you should immediately Heigh-Ho off to the theater to see it, but if you have young children eager to watch it, I think they’ll have a good time.  Other than that, stick with the original classic and you’ve have a better happy ending.

Rating: 7/10

It’s been a long six years since Bong Joon-ho last had a new film hit theaters.  With his last film, Parasite (2019) taking him to the peak success of his celebrated career, winning both the Palme d’Or at Cannes as well as Best Picture at the Academy Awards, people were interested in what he was going to do for a follow-up.  Bong Joon-ho has been a filmmaker that has worked in two different worlds through his bod of work.  He has made small scale thrillers in his native South Korea, of which Parasite is one of them.  He also has worked in Hollywood, making ambitious high concept science fiction films like Snowpiercer (2014) and Okja (2017).  After achieving the industry’s highest honor with Parasite, there was a lot of speculation about what his next move would be.  Bong decided to jump on the capital he built through Parasite’s success and look to Hollywood once again for his follow-up project.  And indeed, he was making the most of the opportunity by getting a big studio like Warner Brothers on board.  For his new film, Bong found his project in the science fiction novel Mickey 7, about a space explorer who gets re-cloned every time he dies on an expedition.  No doubt he saw potential there in the idea of a man being re-carnated over and over again for the sake of science and exploration, as well a areas in which to inject some social and political satire into the story, which is another trait that his films all share.  It’s quite the shift for him given how Parasite was a far more scaled down production compared to what he had been making.  Would it be the right choice after winning over so much universal praise for his Oscar winner?  A lot of that would certainly ride upon the execution and whether he could hit the right tone and message with his story.

One thing to Bong’s benefit is that this movie put him on a collision course with actor Robert Pattinson.  The British actor who became a household name due to his work on the divisive Twilight movie series, has been spending the last decade trying to shake off the glittery vampire aura of that popular franchise and show the world what kind of actor he really wants to be.  Pattison in reality is a character actor who just also happens to have movie star good looks.  He could easily be the next Brad Pitt, but instead he wants to be the next Gary Oldman; an actor who prefers to disappear into a performance and even make some strange choices along the way.  He has been able to prove that through some bold choices in his roles, whether it’s playing a paranoid lighthouse keeper in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019) or a strung out bank robber in the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time (2017).  Even still, Pattison will occasionally use his star power to work in a big Hollywood film once and a while, like appearing as the caped crusader in Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022).  But in general, he has done a great job at redefining who he is as an actor to audiences, and I’m sure that he’s very happy that he’s no longer looked at as the “Twilight” actor anymore.  At this point in his career, it makes sense that he would want to work with Bong Joon-ho, because he’s a filmmaker who values actors giving unconventional performances in his movies.  Bong’s not afraid to let his actors go big and broad in their performances, and that seemed like the ideal parameters that Pattinson was looking for.  And with a movie like this that allows for him to play the same character in a multitude of different ways, the pairing of actor and director was a natural fit.  The only question is, does Mickey 17 manage to bring out the best in both the filmmaker and actor, or do their artistic instincts end up spoiling the potential of this movie?

The movie takes place a couple hundred years into the future.  Earth’s climate has been thrown into chaos by pollution and neglect, and human beings are looking to flee to other across the galaxy.  Meanwhile, the governments of Earth are also dealing with the ethical questions about human cloning as the science behind that has advance to the point that a human being can be 3D printed out like new.  Disgraced politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) proposes a solution for both problems.  He will command an expedition to another livable planet far beyond Earth and use human clones to do some of the more dangerous work on the expedition since the practice is not illegal in space.  He dubs the human clones that will be a part of the mission Expendables, and seeks willing volunteers for the mission.  Enter Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) who signs up for the Expendables program as a means of getting off the planet due to him and his business partner Timo (Steven Yeun) being hounded by a ruthless loan shark.  Mickey quickly learns that being an Expendable means that he’ll have to get used to dying.  By the time the expedition reaches the new, icy planet they’ve dubbed Nifelheim, Mickey has been re-printed a total of 16 times, after previous versions were killed due to solar radiation, temperature extremes, and air borne viruses.  But, even as the expedition advances, and is increasingly ruled over by Marshall and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) like a monarch through cult of personality, Mickey has found companionship with a fellow crew member named Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who becomes his girlfriend.  But, on one scouting expedition, Mickey 17 has come across the native creatures of the planet, giant pill bug looking beings they’ve dubbed Creepers.  He falls into their cave, but surprisingly doesn’t die.  In fact the Creepers help him out of the cave.  Mickey 17 does finally find a way back to base, but when he reaches his quarters, he finds a shocking surprise, that another version of him, Mickey 18 (also Pattinson) is already there.  Now both Mickeys have to deal with the dilemma of being “multiples” which is forbidden even in space.  The only question is, which one will get to live and who will get erased?

With a budget ranging around $120 million, this is Bong Joon-ho’s biggest budgeted film to date.  But the large scale of the production was not the only factor that accounted for the long gap between this and Parasite‘s release.  No doubt Covid delayed much of the development of this film, but even after cameras stopped rolling, it still took a while for his movie to make it to the big screen.  The first teaser for this film was release in early 2023, a full two years before it would actually hit theaters.  The change in management at the Warner Brothers studios no doubt also contributed to it’s delay, with the new regime under David Zaslev not quite sure what to do with this film, but also having it too far down the production pipeline to change course.  So, it kept getting pushed back as the studio kept re-shuffling their release calendar.  It went from a Spring 2024 release to getting delayed a full year to Spring 2025, but thankfully one final move actually moved it ahead a month to March instead of April, with it swapping places wit Ryan Coogler’s upcoming Sinners, which is the first sign of confidence that Warner Brothers has shown in this film.  And with all of those delays, one has to wonder if it did the movie any harm or good.  At least the film finally is getting the chance to be seen.  The only thing is that those unfamiliar with Bong Joon-ho’s style of filmmaking may find the experience to be a little jarring.  This movie has very little in common with Parasite, which while it had it’s bizarre and comical moments, was for the most part a thriller with social commentary behind it.  Mickey 17 is a far broader and less restrained film that harkens back a bit more to his earlier movies like The Host (2006) or Okja (2017), and like those films, Mickey 17 is heavy on the social commentary and broad when it comes to it’s sense of humor.  The only difference is he’s got a significantly larger budget to work with.  Sometimes a director may lose a bit of their sense of style when playing around with more resources at his disposal, but for the most part Mickey 17 still feels true to Bong’s sensibilities as a filmmaker.  Unfortunately, the bigger production also elevates his shortcomings as a director as well.

If Mickey 17 has a major flaw at it’s core, it’s that Bong Joon-ho can’t quite resolve the tone of the film.  The movie swings wildly from broad comedy to tense action thriller, and it doesn’t give you much time to connect with either side.  In it’s individual parts, it has really inspired moments, but puzzle just doesn’t have all the right pieces to full come together.  In general, the movie works best as a slapstick comedy, with Bong Joon-ho really unafraid to make the violence feel gratuitous to the point where you just have to laugh at it in how extreme it goes.  The social commentary, while a tad bit on the nose, also gets plenty of laughs as well, and I do appreciate just how much Bong is willing to mine the situations in the movie to the point of absurdity.  The way Nasha takes advantage of having two Mickeys in her company adds a hilarious wrinkle to her character, and yes the movie goes where you think it will with that aspect of their relationship.  The problem with the movie is that Bong kind of gets stuck within these scenes and makes them go longer than they should.  The film is nearly 2 hours and 20 minutes long, which is pretty lengthy for a film like this.  The fact that the scenes go longer than they should leads to the disjointed feeling that the movie has as a whole.  The transitions from the comedic to the thrilling don’t quite sync up and the movie as a result feels to be at war with itself.  The best was I would describe the film is that it’s Snowpiercer with Okja’s comedic tone, and it’s not a perfect marriage between those type of movies.  At the same time, you don’t get the sense that Bong Joon-ho is phoning it in.  He’s trying to make this movie work as best as he can, but the project just seems to have slipped out of his grasp and the result ends up being a bit messy.  The ambition is there, but the production just couldn’t quite come together.

If there is one thing that does help this movie rise above it’s failings, it’s Robert Pattinson’s outstanding performance.  He instantly makes Mickey a uniquely original character, putting on a showcase for his talents as a character driven actor.  You would hardly believe that this is the same actor who has recently donned the cape and cowl as Batman.  In both voice and physicality, Pattinson disappears into the character, and on top of that he even gets to play that character twice with distinct personalities that make them feel like different people.  The film of course follows it’s title, and makes Mickey 17 the main protagonist of the story.  Mickey 18 is identical in body and voice, but as we learn he is far more assertive and aggressive in his persona compared to Mickey 17’s shy and good-natured behavior.  This dynamic between the two really helps to fuel the best parts of the movie, and Pattison brilliantly makes each Mickey not only their own character, but also fully rounded and engaging as well.  It really mattered that Bong Joon-ho needed the right actor for this part, and he certainly landed on the perfect guy with Pattinson.  It’s the subtleties that really make the performance shine; from the different postures that the Mickeys have to the Steve Buscemi-like high pitched voice he uses and making two variations on that as well.  Pattison definitely carries the movie and helps to smooth out the short comings of the script.  He’s also supported by a strong supporting cast as well, all of whom are also delivering on the broad, screwball comedy aspect of the film.  Mark Ruffalo is also a standout as Kenneth Marshall.  He’s an obvious allegory for real life cult of personality demagogues we’ve seen in politics recently, and Ruffalo clearly knew the assignment well and makes Marshall as hilariously repulsive as possible.  Toni Colette, whose great in just about everything she’s in, also does a great send-up of the vapid politician’s wife.  A lot of the minor characters also are wonderful to watch in this movie, particularly in the way they show how amateurish this space expedition is to it’s core with the actors hilariously playing up the ineptitude they display in their daily roles.  But overall, it’s Robert Pattinson’s movie and this film is the best showcase yet for displaying his talents as a chameleon like actor.

When making a science fiction adventure, there inevitably needs to be some inspired, imaginative ideas on display in the story you are telling.  Mickey 17 I would say is half inspired.  There are some really fun sci-fi concepts found in this movie, but they are mostly centered around the space station setting where most of the film takes place.  It’s when they land on the planet Nifelheim that the movie starts to lose it’s creative spark.  The most creative moments involve the day to day atmosphere of the Marshall expedition’s home base, because you can just tell the half-assed nature of the entire operation just through the visual story-telling of the way that the base looks.  The space station looks very much like a hastily assembled factory where things are just duct taped together enough to keep from falling down completely.  And meanwhile, the Marshall’s living quarters are furnished with lavish furniture and bright colors, clearly showing the obvious class divide between management and the workers.  It is nice to see much of the movie relying on fully built sets rather than filling out the ship with green screen.  It works better for the message of the movie when the space ship is claustrophobic and full of cold, ugly steel.  The movie’s imagination unfortunately runs out once you leave the spaceship.  The planet Nifelheim is about as generic and unimaginative as you can imagine.  We’ve seen ice planets before in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Interstellar (2014), and they were far more visually interesting than what we see in this film.  Pretty much all we see is barren open tundra with no interesting features, and it’s all blurred out by an omnipresent snow storm.  Maybe this was to save on the budget with the visuals, but it just comes across as dull in the end.  Even the Creeper’s cave feels boring, with no visually imaginative touches to be seen.  The Creepers themselves are animated well, but the fact that they are just essentially giant versions of a bug we are all familiar with on Earth is another missed opportunity to show a little imagination with this science fiction concept.  So, the movie is half inspired as a science fiction fantasy, but there are so many missed opportunities that you can tell would have helped to make the movie better if they had gone a different way.

It’s hard to follow-up an Oscar winning film with something that can equally perform on the same level; even for some of the best filmmakers.  One cannot blame Bong Joon-ho for striking while the iron is hot and getting a major studio on board for his next, ambitious project.  And it certainly was not a wasted opportunity either.  You can definitely see that Bong put the money up on that screen and delivered a film that not only is ambitious, but also satisfies his tastes as a filmmaker.  It’s just unfortunate that all the pieces don’t quite come together despite all of his well-meaning efforts.  A lot of the elements in the movie, the screwball comedy, the high concept science fiction, and the social commentary just feel like they were done better in some of his other movies like Snowpiercer.  But, there are things about the movie that really do shine too.  The movie is definitely worth seeing for Robert Pattison’s performance alone.  He really did create a true original character that I’m sure is going to be endearing to most audiences who see this movie.  Even if the film gets mixed reviews, I feel like you’ll see almost universal praise for Pattison’s performance, and I hope it opens the door more for him to continue to play these kinds of oddball characters in future films.  And while the satirical elements are a bit on the nose they are still nevertheless funny and for the most part earn their laughs.  I just wish the overall movie had a tighter edit and a more imaginative setting on the alien planet that they ultimately land on.  In general, it’s a slightly above average movie mainly due to the performances, and especially because of it’s main character.  For Bong Joon-ho, it’s not easy getting a movie like this made and as it turned out it was a struggle getting it released as well.  But, I hope the experience doesn’t deter him from being a risk taker either.  It will be interesting to see where he goes from here; either staying in Hollywood or returning to his roots in Korean cinema.  Either way, Mickey 17 may be a flawed but still worthwhile experiment on his part and hopefully it’s a stepping stone to something even better for him as a filmmaker in the future.

Rating: 7/10

It’s interesting to see what taking some time off can do to your health.  For Marvel Studios, the post-Endgame years have been a bit of a roller coaster.  The delay in releases caused by the Covid-19 pandemic forced Marvel to reshuffle their plans, and this created a bit of a backlog for them as they were trying to move forward with their newest phases.  As a result, their yearly output nearly doubled, with as many as three or four new titles making it to theaters within a given year.  This was coupled with the studio also making their big push into streaming aboard their parent company’s newest platform, Disney+.  For a moment, audiences were happy to see the MCU back on the big screen, but as the bombardment of new titles kept coming as Marvel tried to relieve themselves of the backlog, audiences started to feel a sense of fatigue from all of the stuff Marvel had to offer.  Couple this with the inner turmoil at the Disney Corporate offices with the chaos caused in the short lived Chapek era, and people were starting to believe that Marvel had lost it’s magic touch.  The movies were not being received as warmly as the ones released in the lead up to the end of the Infinity Saga, and people cared even less about the shows that were appearing on Disney+, with some notable exceptions.  This growing super hero fatigue was also not unique to Marvel either, as DC was also experiencing the final death throws of their struggling DCEU.  It all came to a head in the year 2023, where Marvel saw it’s biggest losses as a brand.  Though Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 managed to succeed at the box office, the other films that year (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels) became the first ever money losers in MCU’s stellar history.  All of this led to Disney CEO Bob Iger making the decision to slam on the brakes with Marvel’s output and have the studio take a break in order to get things back on track.

In the whole of 2024, Marvel only had one film release in theaters; a significant reduction in their yearly output.  But, that single film would end up being the sure fire Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), a long awaited sequel to one of the bigger franchises around one of Marvel’s most popular characters.  While Marvel didn’t have the benefit of multiple mega-hits to carry them through the whole year, they still benefited from having Deadpool & Wolverine carry the spotlight all by itself.  The movie would end up grossing $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office, their biggest hit in years, and second only to Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) in the post-Endgame era.  The pause in the output also allowed the studio more time to re-organize themselves and put more work into the projects that were having trouble in production.  This year, Marvel is getting back to their regular ambitious output of 3 in one year.  Later this summer, we are getting the team up movie called Thunderbolts* (2025) and the long anticipated The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025).  But before then, we are getting the release of one of the more troubled productions Marvel has had in their whole history.  This new film is Captain America: Brave New World (2025), which is the fourth film centered around the iconic character, although this version is not the same Captain that we’ve known up to now.  At the end of Avengers: Endgame (2019), the original Captain America Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) literally aged out of the persona, and he left his iconic shield to his trusted friend Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), aka The Falcon.  In between then and now, there was a Disney+ plus series called The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which followed up the events of Endgame by having Sam Wilson make that transition even more towards accepting the role of Captain America, a position that he was reluctant to take before.  Now, having finally donned the red, white, and blue, Brave New World gives Sam Wilson’s Captain the full cinematic spotlight.  The only question is, does the new direction of Captain America as a character mark a fresh new path for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or does the film unfortunately still bear the scars of their misfortune and disorganization over the last couple of years.

The story of Brave New World begins after the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.  Sam Wilson (Mackie) has fully assumed the mantle of Captain America, fulfilling the wishes of the late Steve Rogers who bestowed him the Vibranium shield.  The next generation Captain America has been conducting missions in assistance of the United States army alongside his wingman Joaquin Torres, who has inherited the role of The Falcon from him.  After successfully retrieving a key piece of cargo necessary for the US Government to sign a peace treaty, Wilson and Torres are invited to the White House to meet with the newly elected President, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford).  Ross wants Sam to rebuild the Avengers team, which is a shocking proposition from him considering he used his influence to dismantle the Avengers with the implementation of the Sakovia Accords, which landed Sam in prison for a brief while.  Along with Sam and Joaquin is an old friend named Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), who is a super soldier serum enhanced fighter that later was abandoned by his country and thrown into prison for decades in order to hide the truth about his powers.  While President Ross is giving a presentation to world leaders at this White House Summit, Bradley suddenly stands up and attempts to assassinate him.  He is arrested and after questioning reveals that he has no memory of the incident.  Against the President’s wishes, Sam seeks answers and begins investigating further based on his assumption that Bradley had been set up.  He does some digging and finds a secluded, off the grid army base where it appears secret scientific experimentations had been taking place.  There, they find Dr. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), who had been imprisoned there ever since he helped create the Abomination that attacked the Hulk over 16 years prior.  After being exposed to gamma radiation himself, Sterns’ brain had doubled in size and functionality, and he had been exploited for his intellect by then General Ross for all these years.  He’s now seeking revenge on Ross, and it involves manipulating world governments into fighting each other over a new element called Adamantium that was discovered in the newly emerged Celestial Island in the Indian Ocean.  Complicating matters even more, Captain America is also dealing with a rogue mercenary named Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), head of a group named Serpent.  Captain America and the Falcon must act fast in order to unravel Sterns’ master plan and clear Bradley’s name.  But Stern’s plans run even deeper than they thought, including a stealth plan in place involving President Ross himself.

The road to the big screen was not easy for Captain America: Brave New World.  Greenlit towards the end of the Chapek era, the movie seemed to struggle from the very beginning.  It was delayed multiple times, with a major one forced upon it in the middle of shooting by the strikes of 2023.  It also faced multiple rewrites and reshoots, as it seemed like Marvel and Disney were desperately trying to salvage what had been a poorly planned out production.  But, the movie has finally arrived in theaters at a time that Marvel hopes to start off a major revival of their struggling MCU.  And after all the trouble that went into making the movie, it unfortunately results in a movie that is just okay.  It’s far from the worst thing that Marvel has made, and yet it also pales in comparison to it’s best.  Of the four Captain America movies that have been made by Marvel, this is unfortunately the weakest one, which is a sad thing to say for a movie that is meant to introduce us to the next generation of the beloved character.  The main problem with the movie is that you can  really feel the mechanics of all the re-workings this movie went through.  The different acts of the film all feel like they came from entirely different drafts by different writing teams.  The first act is an exposition heavy re-introduction of the characters, while the middle act is a taut mystery thriller, and the final act is yet another bombastic, CGI-enhanced Marvel action sequence.  There are individual moments throughout that do work on their own, but the movie struggles to hold it all together.  And you can definitely feel where the reshoots happened in contrast with the other scenes; they stick out like sore thumbs.  Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder was one of those late editions to the film added in reshoots, and you can definitely tell that he was shoe-horned into the movie.  None of it though is exactly awful to watch; it’s just disappointing when all the different elements don’t lead to a cohesive whole.

One of Marvel’s major problems since Avengers: Endgame is that they have struggled to define their direction in the next phase.  The Multiverse Saga as it’s been defined has certainly had some high points, but the track record that Marvel had sustained for most of the last decade at a high point has more recently been more of a roller coaster.  The big problem is that more of their movies now feel more like a new episode of an on-going series rather than films that can stand well on their own.  That’s what made the MCU so special in the Infinity Saga years; that they were working with so many different flavors and allowing them to define themselves in addition to serving toward the ultimate goal of the Avengers films.  Now, each Marvel property is beginning to feel the same.  Some of it has still worked (Guardians, Deadpool), and I’ve been a bit more forgiving than other critics of Marvel’s recent direction, because as long as I come away entertained I will still give a movie a pass for some of it’s faults.  The problem with Brave New World is that the faults get in the way of the entertainment value of the movie.  It’s humorless for the most part, and the action scenes are showing me nothing new that I haven’t seen before from Marvel.  There is still some competency in it’s production that helps it to avoid the basement of the MCU.  I wasn’t angered by the film like I was by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or Iron Man 3 (2013).  But, the lack of anything special about the movie also leaves this in the bottom half of the MCU.  But, Marvel at it’s worst can still be better than most.  The best thing I can say about the movie is that I would definitely choose it over any of Sony’s Spiderverse films, but that’s a phenomenally low bar.  It’s about on par with some of the average DCEU films at worst.  Marvel definitely needs to relearn how to allow these movies to stand on their own again.  For this movie, not only is it necessary to have seen The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ series, but the film also references the previous Captain America movies, the Avengers movies, 2008’s nearly long forgotten The Incredible Hulk, and surprisingly also Eternals, which thankfully gets a long overdue resolution to one of it’s hanging plot threads.  And with the introduction of Adamantium in this film, it’s likely that this movie will be a stepping stone for the eventual introduction of the X-Men in the MCU.  There’s a lot going on in this film, but what it’s not doing is making you care for the actual plot that’s happening in the moment within the movie.

The saving grace for this movie is the very talented and entirely game cast.  Anthony Mackie is charming as ever, and brings an infectious magnetism to the role.  While the character himself seems to feel lost in his own movie, Mackie’s performance still shines through and you can’t help but like the guy through all the movie’s faults.  What is really impressive though is just how well Harrison Ford fits in playing the role of President Ross.  Ford is taking over a role that had previously been played by the late William Hurt in a span of 13 years and 5 movies.  He had some big shoes to fill in a role that so many people associated with another legendary actor, and yet Ford manages to make the part his own and successfully carry on the legacy of the character into this new chapter.  I love the sincerity of Ford’s performance here.  Though this is Ford’s first ever performance in any super hero movie, let alone a Marvel one, he actually feels right at home and you quickly get used to him in the role of Thunderbolt Ross.  The villains of the movie also stand out.  Credit to Tim Blake Nelson for patiently waiting for his chance to return to the role of Samuel Sterns after a 16 year absence.  While some of his villainous plan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the script, Nelson still gives Sterns a menacing presence that helps him to feel like an actual threat.  And despite feeling like a last minute addition shoehorned into an already crowded film, Giancarlo Esposito does make the most of his time and steals every scene he is in as Sidewinder.  But perhaps the best performance of the film belong to Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley.  He brings a subtle bit of gravitas to the character, and you really feel the weight of the history of this forgotten man.  He brings a lot of powerful emotion into the film that it otherwise lacks, and you can imagine a whole film’s worth of backstory that would be worth exploring about his character.  So while the script leaves a lot to be desired, the actors still make the film enjoyable enough to warrant at least a watch.

The visuals are a bit of a mixed bag.  In some moments, the movie feels flat like an episode of a Disney+ Marvel series.  But in other moments, it has some impressive visuals that live up to the high standards of the MCU.  The finale in particular really feels like it had the majority of the budget invested into it, as we see Captain America go into battle with a big CGI creature that you probably already can guess who it is.  The third act, which is by far the most cohesive part of the movie, feels like the section that experienced the least amount of changes during the re-working of the film, and it shows in the visuals.  The way that some scenes feel bland and lacking in style while others are inventive in their visuals is another tell tale sign of the re-shoots that occured after principle photography.  The re-shoots probably had a very different crew working on them, and that’s what leads to this feeling of inconsistency in the look of the film.  The movie definitely lacks the visual punch that the Russo Brothers brought to the other Captain America movies, or the distinct styles of Taika Waititi, James Gunn, or Ryan Coogler who left their mark on the MCU over the years.  Director Julius Onah is a competent enough director, but his approach here doesn’t deliver anything striking.  His style just falls into the same house style that Marvel movies have become increasingly more reliant upon.  The air battles in particular don’t have the visceral impact that they should.  Marvel probably should’ve taken some cues from the flight scenes in Top Gun: Maverick to help make their moments feel more exciting.  Again, it’s not terrible, but you really get the sense that it could have been better.  There’s no risk-taking involved in the making of this movie.  You can sense the makings of a great MCU movie within the ingredients on display here, but the complete product just stands as safe and predictable.  As Marvel heads towards their final phase of their Multiverse Saga, they need to do a bit better than safe and predictable.

Captain America: Brave New World has elements that work, and potential to be great; but unfortunately it just doesn’t justify it’s need to exist in the greater continuity of the MCU.  It’s a small chapter in a greater narrative, and one that most people are likely going to forget they even watched at all.  Marvel is loosing the way that their movies felt like events.  While they can still knock one out of the park occasionally, like last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, they are more often making films that just barely cross the line into acceptability.  There are some great performances in the film, notably from Mackie, Ford and Lumbly.  But, the plot feels thin and inconsequential compared to Marvel at it’s best.  The sad thing is that it undermines Anthony Mackie’s debut as the star of the Captain America franchise, which should matter especially if he’s got a bigger future as a part of the MCU going forward.  He’s demonstrated that he can fill the part quite well; it’s just that Marvel needs to find a better story to play to his strengths as an actor much more.  I would like to see a more about his friendship with Isiah Bradley, and why it matters to Sam Wilson to be carrying that torch of Captain America, which holds a special kind of burden in itself, especially given the fact that unlike Steve Rogers and Isaiah Bradley, he has not been enhanced with super soldier serum.  My hope is that the mediocre elements of this film were more of a bi-product of the tumultuous Chapek era, where Marvel had less in-house creative control, and that the future films in the MCU are able to stand well enough on their own in addition to being part of the cinematic universe.  I’m actually really looking forward to the rest of the 2025 MCU slate; especially with the very promising Fantastic Four reboot.  Captain America: Brave New World is a shining example of the things that Marvel has been loosing their grip with in terms of quality control in their movies, but hopefully it’s also the point where their creative backslide starts to reverse itself.  It’s hard to know if the reshoots did more good than bad for this film.  We do know that they weren’t enough to reverse course completely.  Brave New World still resulted in a flawed by still watchable film.  Longtime Marvel fans may get a kick out of some of the more fan service moments in this movie, but otherwise most people will move on quickly to the greener pastures that are on Marvel’s horizon coming later this year and into the future.

Rating: 6.5/10

No other studio can claim to be the one and only home of cinema’s greatest monsters as Universal Studios has become.  Going back to their early years, it can be said that Movie Monsters made Universal what it is today.  Whether it’s Frankenstein’s Monster, Count Dracula, the Invisible Man or the Creature from the Black Lagoon, these monsters are an institution that Universal proudly claims as their own.  But, apart from the Creature from the Black Lagoon which is an original cinematic creation, none of the other movie monsters belong solely to Universal, mostly originating from literary sources well before cinema existed.  So, to keep their profile up as the kings of monster movies, Universal has had to find new ways to refresh their stable of monster characters for new generations.  One of the most ill-fated attempts to bring Universal Monsters back to the big screen was the bungled attempt at creating a Marvel style Cinematic Universe that tied all the monsters together called Dark Universe.  Universal had high hopes that they could sustain a blockbuster cinematic universe based around their monsters, and they were getting many big names on board to participate, including casting Javier Bardem for their Wolf Man and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man.  Unfortunately, the Dark Universe flamed out fast due to the failure of The Mummy (2017), which even the star power of Tom Cruise couldn’t save.  The Wolf Man and Invisible Man films were quickly scrapped before they even started cameras rolling, and the Dark Universe was effectively deader than Dracula in less than a year.  With the future of the Universal Monsters in limbo, the studio needed to find a new path forward to help revitalize these characters again.  And they found their savior in a surprising collaborator that would turn out to be the ideal shepherds in giving new life for these monsters; a production company called Blumhouse.

Blumhouse, the company founded by producer Jason Blum, revolutionized the horror movie genre by putting an emphasis on economically made horror films that were more auteur driven.  Because their films were more experimental and cost a fraction of what other horror films were made with, Blumhouse managed to consistently turn a profit and this got the attention of Hollywood who saw their blueprint for success as a perfect way to revitalize a horror genre that had become bloated and stagnant.  Universal, who wanted to save face from the failure of the Dark Universe and bring new life to their monster properties, were eager to partner with Blumhouse, and so an exclusive pact was made by the two entities.  Blumhouse would now have the backing of a major studio, while Universal would have proven horror powerhouse managing their characters in a way that would peak audience interest again.  One of the key new horror filmmakers to emerge within the Blumhouse family was Australian actor turned director Leigh Whannell.  Whannell developed his horror resume as the writer for some of James Wan’s most notable films in the genre, namely Saw (2004) and Insidious (2010).  Starting with Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) he has been directing and writing horror films, and was given the opportunity by Blumhouse to launch their new partnership with Universal in re-imagining their stable of classic monsters.  His first feature under this experiment was a modern re-telling of The Invisible Man (2020).  Though the film had it’s box office run cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, it still managed to land well with both critics and audiences.  People praised it’s fresh take on the classic movie monster, with it’s POV shifted to the vicitim of the Invisible Man (an unforgettable Elisabeth Moss) whose story became an effective allegory about domestic violence committed on women.  For his follow-up, Whannell is now getting the chance to take on another classic Universal Monster with his re-imagining of the Wolf Man (2025).  The only question is, can it live up to the bold new take that we saw in The Invisible Man, or does it fall short and makes the Blumhouse experiment unfortunately short-lived.

The film opens 30 years in the past, where a young boy named Blake (Zac Chandler) is taken out hunting with his father Grady (Sam Jaeger).  Grady is tough on his son, wanting him to take the idea of hunting and survival in the wild seriously.  While deep in the woods in a secluded valley in the Oregon mountains, the encounter a mysterious creature that is unlike anything else they’ve seen before; something like a wolf, but one that can stand up straight like a human.  The close encounter spooks Grady and Blake, and they quickly retreat from the forest.  Locals consider Grady crazy, but he’s determined to get proof of what he saw.  Cut forward to the present day, grown up Blake (Christopher Abbott) is now a father himself, to a young girl named Ginger (Matilda Firth).  Both Blake and Ginger have a strong bond with each other, with Blake demonstrating a more compassionate hand at parenting than his father.  Ginger’s mom, Charlotte (Julia Garner) on the other hand is too pre-occupied with work to be invested in her daughters life, and it causes some friction between them as well as with Blake.  One day, Blake receives the news that his father, who has been missing for quite some time, has now been legally declared dead by authorities in the State of Oregon, and that Blake has now inherited the farm house that they used to live in 30 years ago.  Blake convinces his wife and daughter that they should get away from the city and stay at the farm for a couple of weeks in order to reconnect as a family.  On their way there, Blake swerves off the road after seeing a scary looking creature in the middle of the road.  After their camper crashes, Blake tries to escape the vehicle, but ends up getting his arm slashed by the same beast that caused him to crash in the first place.  They safely make it to the farm house, but while inside, Blake begins to feel very sick.  Over time, his illness worsens, upsetting his family.  More and more his body becomes more twisted and beast like, and he can no longer communicate with his family.  As the night goes further on, Charlotte and Ginger have to come to terms that their protector himself may in fact attack them as he slowly turns into a Wolf Man.

One thing that the movie has to contend with is the familiarity of the Wolf Man in cinema.  Lon Chaney Jr. famously brought the character to life originally on the big screen in 1941’s The Wolf Man.  Universal would once again revisit the character with the 2010 film starring Benicio Del Toro.  Both films are notable for setting the story within a Victorian setting, which Leigh Whannell departs from in his mostly original, modern adaptation of the classic story.  Here he leaves foggy, cold England for foggy, cold Oregon, which ultimately still works thematically for this story.  In general, Leigh makes quite a few changes to the overall character that I would say mostly benefits the story as a whole.  The thing that I like the most about the movie is the way it handles the transformation of the Blake into a Wolf Man.  It still follows the mythology that we all know, where the wolf’s curse is like a contagion; once you’ve been attacked by a Wolf Man and survive, you become one yourself.  The thing that this movie does different is that it’s not an instantaneous change.  Blake gradually turns into the Wolf Man, with the movie really selling us on the fact that it is a painful process.  The middle section of this movie, where most of the transformation is happening, is the strongest part, where you slowly see Blake’s humanity slipping away with every new wolf trait he develops.  It starts with a stronger sense of smell, then acute hearing, and then ultimately seeing the world through a broader color spectrum in a stunning visual.  The movie treats the tragedy of this Wolf Man curse more seriously than most other versions of this story we’ve seen, and it’s also fairly bleak about it too.  There’s no salvation for Blake; no reversal after the light of a full moon is gone.  Once he’s been bled by the creature, he’s already doomed.

The problem that keeps the movie from being a bigger success is that after the transformation happens, the movie gets a bit repetitive.  With the focus shifted to the characters of Charlotte and Ginger, they unfortunately spend the whole rest of the movie on the run from both Blake and the other Wolf Man haunting the woods around the farm.  There’s no more development to their characters other than that.  The movie could have played more into the mother and the daughter mending their strained relationship through the shared ordeal, but the movie doesn’t make a lot of time for that.  Instead, it sort of pads the run time, with the characters making decisions to run and hide in different ways.  The go outside for a bit, than run back into the farm house, then back outside again, and then back into the house.  The repetition of the third act really begins to undermine the stronger parts of the story found in the film’s first half.  None of it is bad per say, it makes you wish that the film had just a little bit more to say other than having it’s two main heroines constantly be put into harms’ way.  It’s a downgrade from what Whannell was able to do with The Invisible Man, which really did a great job of building the tension of the movie into something fresh and unexpected.  It was a movie that took the familiar movie monster and took the story in a different direction than what you’d expect, which really enhanced the tension and the fear factor as well.  There’s beginnings of some good ideas in the early part of this movie, and some of them lead to a great re-imagining of the wolf man’s transformation, but when the movie decides it wants to go into an action movie climax, that’s where it definitely falls short.

One the things that definitely holds the movie together are the performances.  Christopher Abbott in particular really shines in what is very much a demanding role.  A lot of the success of the transformation scenes has to come from the effectiveness of the performance of the actor.  Abbott does a great job of portraying a man going through a terrifying and painful transformation.  The best part of this is that he never goes over the top with any of it.  When he is dealing with the most painful parts of his transformation, he characterizes it like a man drowning in a deep fever, balled up and trembling.  And once he goes into the final steps of his transformation, he believably portrays the physicality of a wild creature.  There’s a chilling moment early on before he makes his full transformation, where he begins gnawing at his open wound on his arm, like how a real wolf would tackle a piece of meat.  It’s a moment in the performance where an actor could get the physicality wrong, and it shows that Christopher Abbott must have studied up on how to act like a wolf in that scene.  The make-up effects are pretty convincing too, which follows in the proud tradition of the Wolf Man being a ground-breaking character in the art of prosthetic make-up, going all the way back to when Cheney played him.  Abbott completely disappears once the creature takes his final form, and it’s a testament to the make-up artists and Abbott’s committed physical acting that helps to make the transformation feel believably realistic.  Julia Garner’s character may be a tad underwritten, but she still does a fine job acting in this role.  I like the fact that she refrains from going over the top in her more frightened scenes.  The way she plays it, as someone who tries to remain in control even as she is paralyzed with fear, is just the right angle to take with the character.  Matilda Firth also works well enough as Ginger, helping her feel natural as the child in this scenario.  She’s sweet, but not saccharine or creepy, which is the binary dynamic that most children in horror movies tend to fall on either side of.  The movie overall has a very limited cast to work with, and thankfully the three main players here all have strong on screen chemistry with each other.

While Leigh Whannell’s adaptation of the Wolf Man may lack something in it’s storytelling, it makes up for some of that with it’s style.  Whannell does some really creative things with this re-telling of the familiar story, particularly in the visuals and with the sound-editing.  One of the best visual ideas is in showing shifting perspectives between the characters once Blake begins his transformation.  This really helps to sell the horrifying change that is going on with his body.  He begins to have the eyesight of a wolf, which allows him to see things through an infrared spectrum.  He’s better able to see things in the dark, and all the colors are take on a weird psychedelic look too.  There’s a really effective scene where it shifts from his family’s perspective, where Charlotte and Ginger are hiding within pitch black darkness inside of a barn and the camera moves away from them and shifts midway through the shot into the night vision of Blake’s POV before shifting back to the darkness again, all in a oner shot.  The way that they use sound in the movie is also incredible.  The films does an effective job of creating the cacophony of exaggerated sound that Blake now hears after his transformation, and how he no longer can hear his family speak to him clearly anymore.  There’s also a grotesque, crunchiness to the sounds his body makes when the bones inside of him change during the transformation.  And once he is in wolf mode, the movie makes his deep breath growling sound all the more otherworldly.  There’s a lot of great craft put to use in this movie, and Whannell succeeds in grounding his Wolf Man story in an almost realistic portrayal.  You really get the visceral feel of the horrific transformation that Blake goes through, and it does builds the fear up of what this creature ultimately becomes, with something that both feels of the natural world but also out of pure fantasy as well.

Overall, Leigh Whannell does a good job of giving the classic character of the Wolf Man a fresh new portrayal on the big screen.  It does seem like he was overly concerned with getting the transformation part right, and the rest was treated more as an afterthought.  When Blake goes through his transformation, it’s where the movie works the best, and it’s a testament to the make-up effects team, the visual and audio effects engineers, and Christopher Abbott all delivering together for making this a more engaging experience overall.  It’s only when Leigh Whannell takes the movie into the repetitive final act that you see the shortcomings of this adaptation, because it ultimately leads nowhere.  The Invisible Man ultimately stood out much better because of the unexpected turns it took with it’s story, which also gave us an interesting twist on the narrative you wouldn’t have seen in any other version.  Ultimately, this Wolf Man does go down the road you expect it to, and that is disappointing, given all the other things it gets right.  The surprising thing is that it’s a very bleak take on the story.  There’s no salvation for Blake; once he’s infected, he’s done for, and the movie is a sad march to death for him as you see his humanity slip away.  Not every horror movie needs to have a message to it, but I would’ve liked to see the film present some idea of what this arc for Blake was all about.  Was it saying something about inherited trauma, and how violence is passed down through generations?  I just wish there was a more clever edge to this story.  In the end, it’s definitely a strong presentation of style, as Whannell does a great job with setting up atmosphere and giving a visceral portrayal of the horrific Wolf Man transformation.  It makes me wonder what other fresh new takes we’ll see of Universal’s Movie Monsters from Blumhouse in the coming years.  This movie, and to a greater extant The Invisible Man, demonstrate that it was a good idea for Universal to make Blumhouse the caretakers of these characters.  Let’s hope that both studios continue to do brave new things with these classic movie monsters so that more generations can continue to appreciate these icons for years to come.  It’s not a perfect horror adaptation, but it can still work as a howling good time with some really terrifying and effective horror elements there to give us a good fright.

Rating: 7/10