Why You (Probably) Didn’t Know that WB is Launching Their Own Streaming Service This Week to Compete with Disney+

Six months ago, it felt like the internet just couldn’t wait to start streaming movies and shows on Disney+. On launch day, use of the site actually exceeded expectations, and many users experienced crashes and were unable to access the service all together. Excited about all of the nostalgic content, and falling in love with “Baby Yoda” when he appeared in the first episode of The Mandalorian, many people (myself included) joked about whether people even needed Netflix anymore, since we had the chance to relive our childhood with the hours of entertainment suddenly available to us on Disney+.

Six months later, Disney+ remains a popular service, but it doesn’t seem to have made the cultural impact that many (again, myself included) thought it would. Anecdotally, in my social media bubble, it seems to be most regularly used by my friends/family that have children, while many adults have gone back filling their spare time with Netflix offerings like Tiger King (or, in my case, Hulu offerings like “Devs”, which I *HIGHLY RECOMMEND*). 

With Disney+ becoming a cultural mainstay, but moving past its initial hype, (and with many people currently spending more time at home), now might seem like a good time for a streaming service with a wide variety of entertainment to hit the market. Warner Brothers appears to be ready to cash in on this, as they are launching a streaming service this Wednesday (May 27th) that will have a *massive* amount of content (apologies to those who hate that word), including: popular shows (such as Friends, The Big Bang Theory, The Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, Doctor Who, and South Park), the entire collection of films from Studio Ghibli (films like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, and Prince Mononoke), plenty of recently-in-theaters films (such as Joker, Shazam!, It: Chapter 2, Detective Pikachu, and Lego Movie 2) with more being added all the time, and a huge list of classic films (including Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gone With the Wind, King Kong, and Singin’ in the Rain) which will also include a large offering of films from The Criterion Collection. 

At this point, you may be asking “why haven’t I heard about this?” Well, chances are you actually might have, you just didn’t know that this was coming from Warner Brothers. Which is understandable, given the name of this new streaming service: “HBO Max.” People who pay close attention to the business side of film may know that WB owns HBO, but it’s unlikely that many people make an immediate connection between the two. Which makes it all the more unusual that WB has decided to use the “HBO” label for their new service. Some might argue that HBO is seen as a more “prestigious” brand, however, I would argue that “WB” is the more well-known brand (and I have data to back this up, which I’ll get to in just a bit). 

Additionally, since those who currently subscribe to HBO will get HBO Max for free, it seems that if WB wanted to reach a wider audience that isn’t already subscribed to HBO, they should have gone with a different branding. Since HBO Max will include all of the content already available on HBO (plus a whole lot more), why not try an advertising campaign like: “Subscribe to WB+, it includes HBO for free!” This would have two advantages over their current direction: one, it makes people aware that this new service is from WB, and makes use of the brand recognition that comes with it; two, it continues to rely on the HBO name recognition, and makes the service seem like a better deal, since they get HBO for “free” with the rest of the service. (Also, WB+ is just a placeholder name here. I would say that they could probably come up with a better name that uses the “WB” branding, but since this is the same group of people that chose “HBO Max”, perhaps not. That said, Apple TV+ and Disney+ launched in the same month, and no one seemed to make a big deal about it. WB might as well just follow the trend and go with WB+). 

One thing that deserves mentioning is that Warner Brothers doesn’t have nearly as cohesive of a brand as Disney. Ask someone to name five Disney movies, and they could probably do it with relative ease. Ask that same person to name five WB movies, and they’ll probably have a harder time doing it (especially if they have to be five movies from different franchises, so they can’t just say Harry Potter 1-5). That said, people still know the name “Warner Brothers.” They recognize the logo. And they (probably) associate the name with the general idea of movies (and hopefully good ones). Ask non-HBO users what they equate the name “HBO” with, and they may say something like “Game of Thrones” or “that expensive cable channel that we never paid for” (depending on which generation they are from). While this reasoning may just be speculation on my part, a quick look at the social media pages for “Warner Brothers” and “HBO” does indicate, at least quantitatively, that WB has more brand loyalty that HBO: WB has 34.7M followers on Facebook and 4.5M on Twitter, whereas HBO only has 12.8M on Facebook and 2.5M on Twitter. Even more troubling are the results of this survey, which indicates that almost none of the respondents were aware of the major offerings that would be on HBO Max. Would they have been aware if the service was instead called “WB+”? Maybe not automatically, but I do think more people would be paying attention to the ads for the launch of a new WB streaming service than they are for a new service called “HBO Max”, especially if they aren’t already interested in HBO.

Interestingly enough, Warner Brothers doesn’t seem to be the only company going for a strange branding option in the near future. You may or may not have heard of another streaming service launching in July called “Peacock.” The reason for this name is because a peacock is the logo for NBC, and the service will include NBC content. However, just like HBO Max, its library will go far beyond the current slate of shows offered from NBC TV. NBC shares a parent company with the film studio Universal, and Universal films (both new and classic) will be a large part of that service’s offerings. A quick glance at social media again shows that “Universal” is a more popular brand than “NBC.” Could it be that they may also be losing out on potential subscribers by choosing to promote the TV brand, rather than film studio brand? (Not to mention the fact many may not realize the connection between the name “Peacock” and “NBC” anyway.)

And if we want to go ever further down the rabbit hole: the parent companies of CBS and Paramount have recently merged again (the two companies have had an on-again/off-again relationship for years now), and the executives are reportedly considering doing a massive overhaul of their “CBS All Access” streaming service to pair it with Paramount’s vast film and television library (in fact, the movie selection on CBS All Access has recently expanded greatly.) If they decide to re-launch and re-name “CBS All Access” into something else, will they choose to go with a Paramount branding, or will they also choose to stick with the TV channel over the film studio? (Social media once again shows that Paramount has significantly more followers than CBS). 

So what was the point of this whole post? Catharsis, mostly. This is something that has been bothering me pretty much ever since the service was announced, and I decided to finally take the time to rant about it. And since HBO Max launches this week, now seemed as good a time as any. 

So what do you think? Did you know that HBO Max was WB’s answer to Disney+? Would you have paid more attention to it if it chose a name like “WB+” instead? Are you planning to subscribe and, if so, were you planning to before or after you were aware of its connection to WB? Let me know what you think, including if you think that I’m just crazy and that HBO Max is a good name, or that you wouldn’t have subscribed no matter what it’s name. 

Also, if you enjoyed this, perhaps check out the last time I cared enough about something movie-related-but-not-actually-a-movie-itself to rant about it: Rotten Tomatoes (and specifically whether or not you should use it to choose which movies to watch). You can find that rant here. (Some of the information, such as the specific layout of the Rotten Tomatoes webpage, is slightly outdated now, but the ideas I expressed are still relevant.)

Revisiting Beauty and the Beast (1991)—A Reflective Review

Welcome to a new series that I’m hoping to do monthly: Reflective Reviews. For each review, I plan to take one movie that’s 10+ years old and write a review that examines why the movie is still discussion-worthy. For this inaugural post, I’ve chosen to examine 1991’s Beauty and the Beast.

Like many, I grew up enjoying this movie. While I tended to prefer The Lion King and Aladdin, there was still a lot about this movie that resonated (and continues to resonate) with me, starting with the music. I’ve gone on record before with my opinion that Tarzan has the best soundtrack out of any Disney movie. I still stand by that. But when I say that, I’m talking about the soundtrack divorced from the movie. Tarzan is one of the very few Disney soundtracks that I’ll listen to just because I feel like it. However, I think Beauty and the Beast has one of the most effective scores/soundtracks within the actual movie out of any Disney film. I may not listen to the soundtrack on its own all that often (or really at all), but it works extremely well when accompanying the film.

The movie starts with a dark and enchanting (no pun intended) melody as the prologue begins to unfold. We soon get a song that introduces us to Belle’s world (and shows us her love for books, which is something that I identified with as a kid). This song is only rivaled in “funness” by the big musical setpiece in the center of the film—“Be Our Guest.” (Which belongs in the ranks right along with other “fun, somewhat-early-in-the-story musical pieces like “Under the Sea”, “A Friend Like Me”, and “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.”) Typically, the title song “Beauty and the Beast” is seen as the main love theme for the film, but for me, the musical number that most effectively shows the growing romance between Belle and Beast is “Something There.” (More on this later.) And of course, who can forget the delightfully over-the-top “Gaston”, which is probably the best villain song in all of Disneydom. However, my favorite song, and probably the most overlooked one from the movie, is one that will probably make you do a double take, but bear with me: it’s “The Mob Song” (aka Kill the Beast!)

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t like this song for its message (which is terrible), I like the song for its execution (again, no pun intended … okay, maybe that one was a little bit intended.) This song may have kickstarted my love for intense, choral, epic scores that accompany invasion/siege/defense scenes, a love that was cemented by movies like The Lord of the Rings a decade later. Even as a kid, this scene always got me really excited, because I knew that there was a battle between good and evil coming up (and come on, the way that the enchanted servants defend the castle is both exciting and funny, especially for a kid). And as an adult, you also really start to notice the self-inflicted jabs that the lyrics impose upon the close-minded villagers (“we don’t like what we don’t understand in fact it scares us”), which also shows the dangers of idolizing a bully and letting him lead you into blind hate.

Another fantastic aspect that’s evident from the first moments of the film is the beautiful animation. And I don’t just mean things like the background scenery (often stunning), or various parts of the castle (often delightfully macabre), specifically I mean the facial expressions and body language of the characters. Anyone who thinks that the love story here doesn’t feel genuine needs to watch this movie. Like literally watch it. Much of the romance in the film is “show, don’t tell.” Look at the Belle’s and Beast’s physical actions and facial expressions throughout the entire song “Something There.” In the song “Beauty and the Beast,” look at the way that Belle rests her head on Beast’s chest as they dance. Look at both of their facial expressions as she does so. Look at how evidently distraught she is as Beast dies. The chemistry between the two that the animators created is fantastic, believable, and real. The animation and acting of both characters makes it quite evident that they are falling in love.

Likewise, the animation of the other characters is great too. How hard must it have been to bring life, movement, and humanization to a bunch of inanimate objects? And yet, the animators did it. At no point does Cogsworth, Lumiere, or Mrs. Potts seem strange or alien. Their movement and expressions always feel natural, which is a remarkable feat, because everyday objects coming to life and talking could easily seem horrific and terrifying.

That said, the animation on some of the “extras” occasionally suffers throughout the film, but I’m willing to overlook a few generic looking background characters in light of all that the animators were able to do with the main cast members.

One potential and legitimate criticism of the film is that Belle doesn’t get a lot of character development. Despite a significant change in her circumstances, she changes little (if at all) between the beginning and end of the film. However, there are still noteworthy things about her character, especially when you consider the “Disney princesses” prior to this film. Unlike pretty much every other princess before her, Belle’s motivation isn’t “I just need a man to love me.” She literally sings her motivation, which is: “I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can tell.” She lacks personal fulfillment, not love. And while she does find love by the end of the film (even though she wasn’t looking for it), she also gets the great adventure she was longing for (along with the escape from the small-town life that bored her.)

We do, however, get a lot of character growth from Beast. It could be said that his character is a bit of a gender-role reversal from previous Disney films, as one could argue that his main motivation in the movie is “I just need a woman to love me.” However, his inner conflict goes deeper than that, because he’s not just a person longing to find his true love—he’s a person longing to know that he deserves to be loved. He needs to know that he’s not just a spoiled brat, and an ugly beast, but that he’s a genuinely good person who deserves love just as much as anyone else. And throughout the course of the film, he goes from being selfish to being selfless. At the very end, that psychological need is fulfilled, as he realizes that his love is reciprocated, and that someone can indeed learn to love him, despite his beastly appearance. Belle may be a great character, and one of the best “Disney princesses”, but this whole movie is really Beast’s story. And it gives him probably the most believable love story in all of Disney (if you disagree, again, see my comments about the animation above—watch these characters interact. The genius of the animators is that they make it incredibly evident that these two care for each other.)

Also, can we talk about how Gaston is the perfect Disney villain? This is the pretty-boy trope subversion that Disney needed all along. A lot of people seem to think “oh, hey, wasn’t it cool how in Frozen they had this strong, handsome, likable prince who turned out to be the villain? What a great way to mess with our expectations.” Except that everything about Hans (both how he initially seems to be, and then his eventual reveal) is annoyingly self-aware. In a post-Shrek world, it often seems like Disney can’t be sincere any more. Their movies have to draw attention to themselves every time they do (or don’t) follow a trope, as if they expect you to laugh along with them when they do, and admire them for having the courage to break the mold when they don’t (while also mocking the mold at the same time). Whereas, in Beauty in the Beast there’s no in-your-face self-awareness of “we need to subvert a trope.” They just do it. Gaston is a handsome strong dude. He’s exactly the kind of character that would be the brave prince who rescues the damsel in distress in another film. In fact, he does try to “rescue” the damsel by killing Beast at the end of the film (never mind that he does it for extremely selfish reasons). He breaks all of the rules by following them, but by being the villain instead of the hero. And Belle is the only one in town smart enough to see right through him. It’s a better subversion of a fairy tale trope than anything else Disney has done in the modern era.

Lastly, let’s talk about a potential elephant in the room. “Okay, but whAt aBouT STocKhOLm sYndRoMe?”, asks a contrarian who wants to hate this movie because it’s popular. Lindsay Ellis did a great and in-depth video essay explaining why Beauty and the Beast is NOT an instance of Stockholm Syndrome (which you can watch here), but if you don’t want to watch the whole video, here’s the gist of it: (1) Stockholm Syndrome probably doesn’t actually exist anyway (there’s not a lot of scientific evidence to support it), and (2) Even if it does, there are some very specific “symptoms” that one has to show to fulfill the requirements for having Stockholm Syndrome, and almost none of them are present in this movie. Sure, there are some potentially troubling aspects in the way that Beast initially tries to control Belle, but she won’t have any of it. She fights every restriction placed upon her (the first thing she does when she’s on her own is go to the forbidden West wing), and she even successfully runs away the second Beast looks like he’s going to get violent. And then she chooses to stay because he saved her life. You could also say that it’s potentially problematic that an implied theme of the movie is that it’s a woman’s job to “fix” her man, but Belle actually does little to “fix” him in the course of the movie. He genuinely grows to love her, and he decides to fix himself. She’s just patient with him as he does so (and still doesn’t put up with his nonsense when it happens). So, sure, she may have been more patient with him than he initially deserved, but it’s not like she put up with or enabled any toxic habits. She chose to love him of her own accord, not because he manipulated her into it.

So, do I think this film has stood the test of time? With its well-developed characters that are brought to life by fantastic animation (and fantastic voice acting), and a soundtrack that’s full of memorable music (seriously, every single one of the songs is great, not a single one of them is “the song you skip”), Beauty and the Beast is one of Disney’s best movies, one of the best animated movies of all time, and just an all-around great movie.

Come back in one month if you’d like to see me tackle a somewhat controversial movie (or perhaps “polarizing” would be a better word) that just barely meets my requirement of being “10+ years old”—2008’s Cloverfield.

Dark Phoenix Review (no spoilers)

The Last Stand was better.

Thanks for reading my review, bye!

I’m guessing y’all want more than that. Fine. Here we go:

Let me start by saying that, contrary to what the trailers seemed to indicate, this is actually a very different movie than The Last Stand. Without getting into spoilers, I’ll just say that it has a lot more in common with the Dark Phoenix story from the comics than The Last Stand did. That said, it is still pretty substantially different, it’s just a little less different from the comics than Last Stand was. However, marginally more similarity to the source material does not equal better. For example, remember that the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was much more similar to the original book than the Gene Wilder Wonka movie was, but it was definitely not a better movie. The same could be said of Dark Phoenix.

Because I can’t think of a good transition, let’s talk about the villain: There was a lot of speculation going in to Dark Phoenix as to which character Jessica Chastain would be playing. Would it be Lilandra? Cassandra Nova? Some kind of physical or psychological manifestation of the Phoenix Force? Nope. She plays a character named (and this is no joke) … Vuk. (Also, I promise this is not a spoiler that in any way impacts your viewing of the movie.) While Vuk technically is a very minor and obscure character from the comics who does have a (rather indirect) connection to the Dark Phoenix storyline, I have no idea why the filmmakers chose Vuk as the primary antagonist of this film. Not just because of the silly, one-letter-away-from-being-vulgar name (though that is a big part of it – they’re willing to change Quicksilver’s name from Pietro to Peter, but they couldn’t be bothered change the name of a character named Vuk?), but also because she makes someone like Malekith look as compelling as Josh Brolin’s Thanos or Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk. While they do technically establish a (bare minimum) backstory to explain her actions, she really just comes off as a “I want to destroy the world, because I am evil!” two-dimensional villain. Even the majority of her dialogue sounds like it came from some kind of generic, stock script of villainy.

Okay, so the villain is lame, but what about the rest of the characters? Yeah, they mostly suck too, for a combination of two reasons: One, while Dark Phoenix has an A-list cast, very few of them of them brought their A-game (I’m looking at you especially, Nicholas Hoult. You’re one of my favorite actors, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever not liked your performance in a movie. You’ve been in a couple movies that I didn’t like, but your performance has always been enjoyable even when the movie wasn’t. That was not the case here. You let me down, Nick). However, the second and more important reason that most of the characters weren’t great in this movie was because they were poorly written. Their actions (and motivations) were almost entirely driven by the plot, and not the other way around. There’s practically no character development at all. Instead of doing things that would feel like a natural thing for that specific character to do, everyone just does things because it moves the story from point A to B to C. There’s even an instance toward the end where some characters switch sides seemingly only because the writers were like “oh yeah, we need them to help the good guys, so I guess we should just have them literally say out loud that they’ve had a change of heart, and that should be good enough.” To be fair, there was a brief speech by one of the good guys before this “change of heart” scene that seemed to be the catalyst, but that did not seem to be nearly enough justification for these characters to be like “I know we just had huge fight scene where we tried to kill you because you were trying to stop us from doing a bad thing, but now we’re suddenly going to help you to stop other people from doing that same bad thing, because reasons” especially since this happened after one of the change-of-heart-characters literally said that he was tired of hearing [good guy]’s speeches.

Say what you will about The Last Stand, but that final battle scene on Alcatraz (aka the actual “Last Stand” part of The Last Stand) was so much cooler, exciting, and more interesting than anything in Dark Phoenix, and it definitely served as a much better final battle scene than the one we got in Dark Phoenix. The Last Stand may not be great, but at least it’s memorable. Dark Phoenix, on the other hand, just seems like the most bland, safe, generic thing they could have done with this story.

Two notes of humor to end this review:

First, here’s meme that I made that summed up my feelings of this movie –

Second, (and this part is vaguely spoilery, so if you want to avoid spoilers at all costs, you can go ahead and check out now), here is an interesting observation that I made about this movie on Twitter –

Ways that the ending of Dark Phoenix is similar to the ending of The Dark Knight Rises:

• A new plaque is placed outside of a mansion that houses children
• A character has taken up the mantle that was recently given up by another character who has retired
• A scene takes place at an outdoor café in Europe
• A character who appeared to sacrifice themselves is revealed to be not dead
• The score by Hans Zimmer swells aaaaannnnddd … roll credits

Aladdin (2019) Mini-Review

I’ll keep this short and sweet: overall, I liked the original better, though this new version offered some improvements. I especially liked the addition of the new character Dalia, and I enjoyed the new subplot that they gave Jasmine (even if I was a little iffy on the new song(s?) that accompanied it.) That said, a lot of the cartoony stuff definitely felt better-handled in the cartoon version (unsurprisingly), but there there were some parts in this one where it brought depth to see the story in a (seemingly) real-world setting. Also, my thoughts on Genie: Will Smith’s genie works when he’s creating a new iteration of the character (which is most of the time), but fails when he’s trying to recreate Robin Williams’ version. One other minor complaint: if there was one scene that I thought would be cooler in this live-action version, it would have been the Cave of Wonders, but I found it disappointingly underwhelming (especially when compared with the animated version).

Literally everything else I have to say would just be nit-picky comparisons between the two versions of the movie, pointing out which things I liked better from which version, some of which would be because of artistic/film-making reasons, and others just because of personal preferences. Since I don’t particularly feel like doing that (and it would be kind of spoilery), I’ll just end with this: 2019’s Aladdin was enjoyable enough, as long as you don’t hold the original as sacred and untouchable. If you do, just re-watch that. Otherwise, if you want to see this version: see it. If you don’t: don’t. If you’re on the fence: flip a coin?

Pokémon: Detective Pikachu Review (no spoilers)

First, a brief disclaimer: As I mentioned in my tweet mini-review, I’ve never been a big Pokémon person. Growing up, I never played the video games, watched the cartoon, or collected the trading cards, though I definitely had a level of familiarity with it, simply because it was a cultural phenomenon, and it’s hard to escape those. I did play Pokémon Go for about six months when that first came out (which is admittedly about five months longer than most other people seemed to play it), but that’s about it.

With that in mind, the biggest compliment that I have to give this movie is that it, surprisingly, worked. When it was first announced, I thought it sounded like a strange, blatant, reliant-on-nostalgia cash-grab attempt. When I later heard that Ryan Reynolds was cast as Pikachu, my thoughts were something like, “Why, Ryan? You’re better than this.” But when the first trailer dropped, I was surprised to see that it actually looked like it could be entertaining. This strange bit of film alchemy might actually work. And it did.

However, that’s about the best thing I can say about this movie: it worked. It didn’t suck. It was a funny and entertaining way to spend two hours. Beyond that, if you were to remove the Pokémon element of the movie, it was a very generic (and mildly cheesy) family summer blockbuster. For those who *are* Pokémon fans, I’m sure it is probably very rewarding to see these creatures portrayed onscreen in a (semi-)photorealistic look, and I’m sure the movie was full of Easter eggs for you to enjoy. As a non-Pokémon fan though, this movie didn’t have much for me. The Pokémon looked cool, but they were mostly just there. I mean, sure, many of them served as characters or plot devices that moved the story forward, but I feel like you could probably switch them out for some other generic fantasy creatures, and the movie wouldn’t be much different. I really wish this movie had done one of two things. Either: 1) Lean HARD into the Pokémon aspect of the movie and give us a ton more world-building and lore, OR 2) If you’re just gonna have the Pokémon be there, at least focus on making the story unique or interesting.

That said, I’m pretty sure the lore that I was craving was probably something that Pokémon fans brought with them into the movie. So, as I said, if you are a fan, I’d imagine that you’d enjoy seeing this world brought to the screen. But it didn’t do much to draw in those of us who weren’t already familiar with the lore. In short: it was funny, and I enjoyed it, but it’s probably not a movie that I would ever watch a second time.

Edit: also, for the record, Psyduck was my favorite character in this movie.

Avengers: Endgame Review (with SPOILERS)

Disclaimer: while I typically try to make my reviews spoiler-free, or at least include a spoiler-free section at the beginning, I honestly do not think that I can fully convey my thoughts on this movie without discussing some spoilers in detail, so please consider this your official SPOILER WARNING and do not proceed if you have not seen it. (Seriously, MASSIVE MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD.) Here we go:

Wow. You’ll pardon the somewhat crude expression, but this might be the most nerdgasm-inducing movie that I’ve ever seen. This entire movie serves as a payoff and reward to the fans who have been there for every movie (which honestly makes this movie hard to judge in isolation, since it is heavily reliant on everything that has come before it). Let’s just dive in to some of the elements that I want to discuss:

The 5 year time jump – I have a strange love for post-apocalyptic settings (especially done well), so I thoroughly enjoyed seeing what a MCU world would look like in the wake of a devastating event. I honestly would love to see something that explores the world of this period (either via another movie or a Disney+ show that takes place during this time). Unfortunately though, I don’t think we will get that, simply because I don’t think that the MCU wants to address this rather problematic time in their history moving forward.

The Time Heist – THIS MOVIE VALIDATES THOR: THE DARK WORLD. SUCK IT, HATERS. I actually genuinely enjoy Dark World. While Malekith is a lame villain, pretty much everything else about that movie is great. (I’ll get into that more in a post that I’m planning/hoping to write, but for now, let’s just say that I really enjoy it.) As such, I’m glad that this movie took the time to not only acknowledge Dark World, but to recognize that Dark World upped the stakes of the MCU—Thor’s mom died, which had a profound effect on both Thor and Loki moving forward, and Endgame reminded us that Dark World is not a movie to be overlooked. Aside from that though, I really enjoyed the time heist element of the movie. Not only did it work surprisingly well, but it was a great way to wrap up the whole series so far by revisiting some key MCU moments. And speaking of revisiting moments – this movie was full of so many callbacks and references to the previous films (and not just during the time heist scenes). I could honestly probably record an audio commentary pointing out every time the movie references a past event; I may actually sit down and write out a post detailing all of the ones that I notice when the movie finally comes out for home viewing, so that I can pause it as much as necessary and write about them as they happen.

JARVIS! – Just a brief sidenote: if you would have told me that Endgame would feature one, and ONLY one, character from a Marvel TV show, I never would have guessed that that character would be Jarvis (the original/human Jarvis aka Howard Stark’s butler in the 1970s scene), but I was so happy to see him here! Man, I wish they would bring back the Agent Carter TV show. (Looking at you, Disney+).

Black Widow’s death – So the moment that Widow and Hawkeye left Morag for Vormir (which was probably about 40ish minutes before her actual death scene), I unintentionally shouted “NO!!!!!!” in the theater (which probably confused some of my fellow moviegoers), because I suddenly realized that if the two of them were the ones headed to Vormir, one of them wouldn’t be coming back. I spent the next 40 or so minutes in extreme suspense wondering which of the two would die. While I was, of course, ultimately sad about Widow’s death (and would have been equally sad about Hawkeye’s death), I wasn’t as sad as I thought I’d be, for reasons that I will detail shortly.

The final battle – This scene was literally everything I’ve been waiting for since the MCU began. Between Cap finally wielding Mjolnir, or finally hearing the line “Avengers Assemble!”, or just seeing everyone together in one epic battle that finally brings to the big screen the feeling of the epic splash pages that you see in the comics. (I’ve included some images at the end of this to let you see what I’m talking about.) This whole scene just took everything that is great about the comics and put it on the big screen.

Tony’s death – Expected, yet sad. However, by far the saddest parts (for me) were all of the character’s reactions. Seeing Rhodey, Peter, and Pepper being there with him in his last moments was definitely tear-jerking, but the part that gets me every time? “I’ll get you all the cheeseburgers you want.” 😭😭😭 (And what a great call back to the first Iron Man movie!) Also, let’s talk about that random teenager who was at Tony’s funeral. Do you know who that was? IT WAS HARLEY, THE KID FROM IRON MAN 3, ALL GROWN UP. That’s right, that relationship is still important! This movie not only validates Thor: The Dark World, it also validates Iron Man 3, which is not only the most underrated MCU movie, but also the best Iron Man movie. (Sorry, it just is, I don’t make the rules. I’ll also explain this more in the post that I will hopefully write that I mentioned with the Dark World section above.) That said, I wasn’t as moved by Tony’s death as I thought I’d be (just like Black Widow’s). Why? Well, that brings me to my next section…

This movie’s relationship to the comic books – Hear me out. I’m hoping not to sound like an elitist comic book snob, but here we go: I love the MCU movies. I genuinely really love them. I love them because they take some of my favorite characters and stories, and translate them into a movie format, which is my favorite storytelling art form (sorry regular books, comic books, plays, and TV shows, among other things. Admittedly though, this discussion of why film is my favorite art form could be its own separate post, so I’ll save that discussion for hopefully some other time). However, while film is my favorite art form, that doesn’t mean that I automatically like a film version of a specific story better. Watching the Harry Potter movies, for example, is clearly nowhere near as fulfilling of an experience as reading the Harry Potter books. Likewise, while I love seeing some of my favorite characters on a big screen, the relationships and experiences that I have with these characters is so much more fulfilling in their comic book forms. While I was sad about Tony and Natasha dying, and had bittersweet feelings about Cap’s ending, for me, I wasn’t saying goodbye to the “REAL” Steve/Tony/Natasha, just a certain version of them. For me, the “real” versions of these characters are the ones that I encounter in every issue of the comics. And while I’ll miss seeing Chris Evans, and Robert Downey Jr., and Scarlett Johansson portray their characters, I don’t think I’ll miss them any more than when I miss a writer who leaves a comic series after a long writing gig. I was sad, for example, to see Dan Slott recently conclude his historic ten-year run writing Amazing Spider-Man, and I’m certainly going to miss Jason Aaron, as he is about to finish up his seven-year run writing Thor comics. But the characters are still there – I’ve been really enjoying Nick Spencer’s stories so far on Amazing Spider-Man since he took over writing last year, and I’m looking forward to the new direction that Thor will take whenever they announce and bring on the new writer for his series. Likewise, while I immensely enjoyed the epic battle scene at the end of Endgame, the thought that I kept thinking throughout that scene was “they’re finally bringing the epic scope of the comics to life.” And while it was amazingly fulfilling to see that here, that’s still something that I’ve seen in the comics several times, and it’s also fulfilling to see it there. And I think that’s why, as I teased in a Facebook post earlier today, that I still think that Yondu’s death is the saddest in the MCU, and that X-Men: Days of Future Past is still PROBABLY my favorite superhero movie (I haven’t rewatched it in a bit though, and Endgame may eventually win me over, as my views on movies are constantly changing.) Concerning Yondu, I honestly don’t think I’ve read any comics featuring him, (if I have, it’s been very few), simply because a) he’s a pretty obscure character who doesn’t really appear in many of the modern comics, and b) his character is completely 100% different in comics (for one, he’s from the future, and he’s also just kind of an alien Hawkeye; that special arrow that he uses actually goes with a special bow.) So when he died at the end of Guardians 2, I was sad because that was the only version of the character that I really knew, and I had grown incredibly attached to him (especially during the second Guardians movie, because it does an amazing job developing his character). So, to me, the “real” version of that character (AKA, the version that I was most personally connected to) was actually dying. Likewise, the original X-Men movies were an incredibly formative part of my superhero movie fandom. The original trilogy all came out before I started reading comics (I started reading comics in 2007), and I became incredibly attached to those versions of the characters. And even now, while I do read some X-Men comics, it’s not among my favorite series, and I honestly do feel more connected to original movie versions of many of the X-Men characters than I do to the comic book versions of them. Thus, when Days of Future Past gave what I saw as pretty much a perfect closure to that original X-Men trilogy and cast of characters, it was concluding one of my favorite film franchises from my adolescent years, and it gave that franchise and those characters a pretty much perfect ending. Endgame, on the other hand, has given an incredibly satisfying conclusion to many of the characters in the MCU. However, my relationships with the comic book versions of many of those characters predates and is stronger than my relationships with their MCU iterations. So while I, again, genuinely really enjoyed the closure that Endgame brought to several stories and characters, that closure was for versions of the characters that I don’t feel as strongly connected to as their comic book counterparts. Hopefully that makes sense.

Let’s talk about two more things:

1. How do the events of this movie affect the rest of the MCU? – A lot has been said about the “timey wimey wibbly wobbly” aspect of this movie, so I’ll give a few brief thoughts with the stipulation that these are *MY* thoughts, and we’ll see if the MCU addresses any of these things canonically in a future movie. It seems to me that this movie actually addresses and resolves any of the potential problems that people seem to be having about the way that it uses time travel. It establishes two main rules: 1. You can’t change the past. 2. If it seems like you *DO* change the past, what you’ve actually done is create a new branch reality (thus adding to the multiverse.) Thus, despite their best efforts, the characters in this movie seem to have created three potential branch realities with their time travel shenanigans. In addition to the main MCU that we know and love (which is where this movie begins and ends – we are still in the main MCU reality at the end of this movie), there also seems to now be three additional, separate, distinct realities: 1. There is a reality where Loki escaped with the Tesseract after the events of the first Avengers movie, and is presumably still at large. 2. There is now a reality where Nebula and Thanos died in 2014 and the snap never happened. (Well, technically, they died in 2023 of the MCU reality after being plucked from the now alternate 2014 reality, but you get the point). This alternate 2014 is the reality that the new Gamora is from, and she is presumably still running around in the 2023 MCU somewhere (which is why Star-Lord is looking for her by the end of the movie). The original MCU Gamora (the one we know and love) is still dead, having died on Vormir in Infinity War. 3. There may be a reality where Steve went back and married Peggy. Some people have speculated that this was NOT a branch reality, and that Steve was always Peggy’s husband in the MCU, and that he must have simply tried to keep his existence a secret or something. While this is possible, it seems simpler to me to say that Steve simply went and lived in a branch reality, and that the MCU’s Peggy had a different story. To add fuel to the speculation fire, the directors of Endgame said in an interview that they feel that Steve created a new alternate timeline by living with Peggy, while the screenwriters of Endgame said in a separate interview that they feel that Steve was always Peggy’s husband, and that that happened in our MCU. So speculate from that what you will. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ However, in addition to these three realities, Endgame also seems to have established a fourth branch reality that many people don’t seem to be talking about. I’m referring to the alternate reality of Marvel TV. While the Marvel TV shows (Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Defenders, Punisher, Runaways, and Cloak & Dagger) have all been pretty separate from the movies so far, there has still been the implication in many of them that they take place in the same universe as the movies. However, I genuinely don’t see how that’s possible (for most of these shows) after Endgame. Let’s break it down real quick: the end of season 5 of SHIELD establishes that the events of that season finale are happening at the same time as Thanos’ invasion of Wakanda in Infinity War. While season 6 doesn’t premiere until this Friday (and may end up totally addressing everything that I’m about to say), I highly doubt (based on how last season ended) that they’re going to address the 5 year gap where half of the universe was dead (I may be wrong about that though). Similarly, I don’t expect them to address that in Runaways or in Cloak & Dagger, because it would be hard to fit it into their overall story. (Though I have admittedly not watched any of C&D season 2 yet, as I’ve been busy – maybe it addresses it; I’ll catch up on that soon.) Thus, if they don’t, the only option for those shows is that they’re in an alternate timeline. Similarly, while all of the Netflix shows (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Defenders, Punisher) have been cancelled by Netflix, there is still some hope that Marvel will revive them somewhere (perhaps Hulu). If they do, it would also be very difficult to address the 5 year gap in their established narratives. (Though if they stay cancelled, I suppose you can create your own headcanon as to how those characters were affected by the Snap.) Interestingly enough, I think the only show that would be completely unaffected by the events of Endgame is Agent Carter (since it’s all in the past), so you can likewise create your own headcanon as to what reality that is in. [Edit: Lol, after re-reading this section, I realized that I completely forgot about Inhumans. I’m going to leave it as is though, because that show deserves to be forgotten.]

2. What might happen next? – I’ve been pretty vocal about just letting the movies happen, and not spending too much effort speculating and creating your own version of future movies in your brain. (I feel like that’s one of the main lessons that The Last Jedi taught us – if you develop what you think is the definitive version of a future movie in your head, you’ll ultimately be disappointed when the actual movie is incredibly different, even if that movie is incredibly good, which Last Jedi was.) That said, here as some of my thoughts as to what MIGHT happen in MCU in the future, though I’d love to see whatever surprises are in store for me if I turn out to be wrong. I think it’ll be few years until the next movie with “Avengers” in the title, probably at least three for four, and that we’ll probably have one or two Avengers movies with lower stakes before we get another crazy, every-character-in-one-movie event like we got in Infinity War/Endgame. I think it would be cool if we got a character like Kang the Conqueror to be the villain in Avengers 5, as he is a time-travelling villain, and I could see him showing up as a direct result of the time travel shenanigans in Endgame. Then, Avengers 6 might have another somewhat low-stakes threat (and by that, I mean merely save-the-world type threat, rather than save-the-universe), such as Dr. Doom, Galactus, Magneto, or Namor. It could also be cool to see Zemo return from Civil War to form the cheesily-named Masters of Evil, which is a group of supervillains that he leads in the comics and they even once gave the Avengers a very significant defeat. (The Avengers eventually regrouped and beat them, obviously.) Finally, in what I’m guessing will probably be 8-10 years from now, we’ll get another massive, potentially universe-ending threat, that will also probably take the form of a two-part movie. If I had to guess, I would think it could be a movie based on the 2015 Secret Wars event (not the original Secret Wars from 1984), which is literally about not just the potential end of the universe, but the potential end of the entire multiverse. We’ll see though. Regardless, I look forward to everything the MCU has in store for us.

Here are the comic book images that I mentioned. The first one is from an event called Fear Itself, the last three are from Secret Invasion:

 

 

 

 

Captain Marvel Review (no spoilers)

So I’m FINALLY getting around to writing this (sorry about that), but here are my thoughts on Captain Marvel:

I really enjoyed many of the characters in this movie, including Fury (“JUST Fury!”), the Skrulls (especially Talos and “Science Guy”), Goose (because who doesn’t like Goose), and Carol. YES, Carol. I’ve seen a lot of people complain about Brie Larson’s more subdued performance, but I actually really enjoyed the dry and sarcastic tone that she brought to the character. Not everyone has to be a big, loud, and bombastic character in the MCU. I think she adds a nice flavor to the mix. I’m pretty sure Larson’s specific portrayal of Carol was a deliberate choice made by her and/or the directors. Anyone who thinks that Brie can’t act clearly hasn’t seen her Oscar-winning performance in “Room” (not to be confused with “The Room,” which is a completely different movie.)

Another one of my favorite aspects of Captain Marvel is that it really leaned in to the cosmic and sci-fi elements in Carol’s story. Being an avid reader of some of Marvel’s more space-based and cosmic comics in general (if not necessarily Captain Marvel comics specifically), I really enjoyed seeing things like the Kree, Hala, the Skrulls, the Supreme Intelligence, a Flerken, and even MCU-continuity stuff, like acknowledging that the Kree use the same space jump technology that we see the Guardians and Ravagers use in the Guardians movies. In general, as someone who geeks out over this stuff, I just really appreciated how sci-fi this movie is.

That said, I also appreciated when this movie deviated from the comics (and it deviates in some pretty big ways), because I feel like it made me even more surprised by some of the plot twists that this movie has in store. This movie is pretty good at making you assume that the characters or story are moving in one way (especially when that way is fairly close to the comics), and then surprising you with some kind of twist (which can be especially surprising for the comic book readers when they realize that the movie is breaking with some pretty well-established comic book lore.)

However, while this movie did contain a lot of pleasant surprises, I do think its overall biggest weakness was its story. It has a lot of familiar beats, and many aspects feel like slightly different versions of things that we saw in the first Thor and/or Captain America movies. Likewise, the conflict at the end was wrapped up a little too quickly and simply for me. To me, this really does feel more like a MCU movie from the era before the first Avengers movie, rather than more current MCU movie.

Overall, this isn’t among my top-tier favorite MCU movies, but I still really enjoyed it. If you’re in the mood for some pretty typical superhero fare, or if you like your superhero movies to be a little more on the sci-fi side, then Captain Marvel is worth watching.

Glass Review (no spoilers)

Glass is a movie that is made specifically for fans of Unbreakable and Split. If you’re just a casual observer (maybe you saw one of those movies once, at some point in time), this movie isn’t for you. This movie really expects you to be familiar with the events of the previous two movies, and it provides very few recaps of past events, so I’d highly recommend rewatching those two movies first if you’re planning to watch this.

So does this movie reward the devoted fans? Maybe. Glass has a lot of nods (some subtle, some not-so-subtle) to the events of the previous two movies, and I really enjoyed (most of) those moments. However, Glass also did a lot to expand the lore of the world of Unbreakable/Split. Partially this means that we were provided with more details about the backstories of the three main characters, which I enjoyed (I especially enjoyed seeing how the relationship between David and his son has developed since the first film). However, much of the added backstory in Glass is about the actual world of this series. If you want to know more about the role and history (or lack thereof) of super-powered individuals in this world, you’re gonna get a lot of info (especially in the last 30 minutes of the movie). I feel like some viewers will really enjoy this expanded lore, while others won’t. Personally, I wasn’t a fan. I wasn’t really interested in the history of this world, and I was only mildly interested in its potential future. I was mostly interested in seeing the resolution of the conflict between the three main characters. And, while we got that, the resolution was much more abrupt than I was expecting. This choice seems to have been done to in order to spend more time developing the larger mythology of this world. Personally, I would have preferred to see a tighter focus on (and more satisfying resolution for) these three characters.

Taking off my fandom hat, and looking at this movie from a filmmaking point of view, I was similarly torn about whether I liked some of the choices that were made. The strength of Unbreakable was the extremely well-designed visual storytelling of the film. It was definitely a movie that required you to pay close attention to everything you saw on the screen (and rewarded you if you did). Split, on the other hand, was all about showing off the incredibly good acting range of James McAvoy. I still think he was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Split, which could have been aptly retitled as James McAvoy Can Act: The Movie. While you do get some interesting visual storytelling in Glass (I really liked the use of the color theme for each of the three characters, especially how by the end of the film, that color scheme started to spill over to the other individuals associated with each character), and you do get more demonstrations of James McAvoy’s acting range, these two aspects seem to be only a secondary focus, with the primary focus being worldbuilding. And as I noted above, I wasn’t a particularly a huge fan of the worldbuilding.

All-in-all, while I didn’t hate this movie, I did find it unsatisfying, even though there were definitely some aspects that I enjoyed. That said, I could definitely see some fans really enjoying the direction that this movie went. I would say that Glass is something you could probably wait to rent, but if you’re dying to know what happens in this movie, I wouldn’t discourage you from seeing it theaters either.

December Movie Roundup – Mary Poppins Returns, Aquaman, Bumblebee (no spoilers)

I’ll be totally honest – Has it been nearly two weeks since I saw these? Yup. Did I intend to write this much earlier? Definitely, sorry. But hey, better late than never right? Here we go:

Mary Poppins Returns – I remember thinking several times throughout this movie “I love this.” I think one of its biggest appeals for me was that it felt like old-style Hollywood cinema. Perhaps when I saw this, I was just feeling nostalgic for a time period that I never got to experience, but this movie really made me feel like I was transported back in time to the era of pre-CGI Hollywood spectacle. (And yes, I realize that some CGI was used in this movie, but this movie felt a lot more tangible than most “spectacle” movies I seen in the last several years). Some people have accused this movie of trying too hard, and while that may be true, for me it worked. I’ll agree that the music wasn’t as memorable as in the original Mary Poppins (though the opening and closing song “Lovely London Sky” has been stuck in my head a few times since watching this movie), but I still enjoyed it (except for whatever the heck was happening in the Meryl Streep scene/musical number – I could’ve done without that). This movie may have been overly sentimental, with its conflicts resolved a little too easily, but the same could have been said of the original. The original Mary Poppins will always hold its place in my heart as my favorite “traditional” Disney movie, but I still enjoyed this one quite a bit.

Aquaman – This was an incredibly fun movie. Speaking of spectacle movies above, Aquaman reeks (in all of the best ways) of modern Hollywood spectacle. Was the story full of stuff we’ve seen a million times before? Absolutely. Was the acting kinda meh? Yup. Was it cheesier than a great slice of pizza? Definitely. But did it make me feel like a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons again? YES. The action was fantastic,the special effects were (mostly) mind-blowingly good, and, above all else, this movie was just fun. If you’re looking for a movie to wear the crown of the 2018 Dumb-But-Fun Movie of the Year, Aquaman is your king (sorry, Venom).

Bumblebee – Is this movie just The Iron Giant but with Transformers? Absolutely. But that didn’t stop it from being absolutely delightful. While Bumblebee has some cool action scenes in the prologue and the finale, most of the movie was a sweet, character-driven story about a girl and her sentient-alien-robot-car. I wasn’t a huge fan of the first Transformers movie, hated the second, and never watched any of the rest (WHY are there FIVE of them?!) But some stellar reviews from some film critics and commentators that I trust convinced me to give this movie a try. And I’m genuinely glad that I did. As I mentioned on Facebook, this movie proved that all Hollywood needed to do to finally make a good Transformers movie was rip Michael Bay out of the director’s chair. While Rotten Tomatoes is nowhere near to best way to gauge to the “good-ness” of a film, there’s a reason that Bumblebee has a 93% score. So give Bumblebee a chance. It’s a genuinely enjoyable film.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Review (no spoilers)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a remarkably well-crafted film, with some of the most innovative visual storytelling that I’ve ever seen. It’s an enjoyable movie with plenty of humor. Yet, for some reason, I didn’t love it. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it. But for a film that’s receiving massive amounts of praise from critics and fans alike, I’m genuinely surprised that I didn’t like it more, and I honestly can’t put my finger on why. Did I hype myself up too much and expect too much from it? Did I Last Jedi myself by imaging a completely different movie, and end up being disappointed when what I got was a totally different, though still good, movie? Did I expect it to be truer to the comics than it was? It’s possible that each of those contributed a little bit. But I don’t think any of them were the major source of my discontent. While I like Miles Morales in the comics, for me he’s not some sacred untouchable character where I’m pained every time they make a significant change to his mythos in his movie iteration (see: Peter Parker and Thor, among others). And while I did hope that some certain events would happen in this movie, my first thoughts when I left the theater weren’t “dang, I really wish they would have included x and y.” And, while I did certainly have high expectations for this movie, it wasn’t like I was sitting there critiquing every minute of it. I just never experienced any strong emotions while watching this movie.

It’s almost like there was some weird disconnect between the logical part of my brain and the emotional one. Throughout the movie, there were several times when I thought “wow, that is some incredibly good filmmaking.” But not once was there a time when I thought “wow, I love this!” The best I can figure is that this may be a Lego Movie situation. When I walked out of the theater after seeing the Lego Movie for the first time, my general reaction was “well, that was weird.” It wasn’t until I saw the movie a second time several months later that I fell in love with it. Perhaps it just needs to grow on me. Regardless, as I mentioned earlier, virtually everyone else seems to be loving this movie, so if you’re considering seeing it, you’ll probably enjoy it (and again, I did enjoy it), and hopefully you’ll love it. But if you don’t love it, let me know, and perhaps you can help me figure out what it was that didn’t push it over that edge for me.

It should also go without saying that you absolutely need to stay until the very end of the credits.