Category Archives: Marvel
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 2023
I’m doing what I can to keep this blog alive. It took an extra week but I did go out to the theaters to see the latest MCU movie and I have a few opinions. Even though this was the worst critically performing movie after the Eternals (which I still haven’t seen but plan to… eventually) it has a high audience score so I was fairly certain I would still enjoy it. I did, though there were a few issues that bothered me after the fact, but not while watching the movie. I think some of the character complaints were valid and the ending was a little weak but the visuals were fantastic and the humor has its own little niche that’s similar to Guardians of the Galaxy while still having its own tone unique to Ant-Man and Peyton Reed despite the rocky start. Like with many of the middle MCU films where it’s a superhero film crossed with another unique genre, this still gives us something new with a revolution story mixed with a sci-fi twist. I thought it was a fun continuation of the Ant-Man character and I hope we get some more down the line. And as with every new movie reviewed here, I will be diving into spoiler territory beyond this point so you have been warned.
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Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special
Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special 2022
While I haven’t gotten the chance to see the new Black Panther movie I did manage to see the latest Marvel Special Presentation after Werewolf by Night. I still think these are long and varied enough to be considered mini-movies rather than short films or a TV anthology series and this one was a lot of fun so I wanted to write about it. This is a much smaller story and very much Christmas focused but there is one big character reveal that was a deleted scene in Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 that’s not all that surprising, but was surprisingly heartfelt. Music also plays a large part as it often does in the Guardians of the Galaxy films but this also includes a couple songs that the characters are singing themselves which brings it one step closer to a full musical. And while there’s not a whole lot to spoil in this holiday centered special there is that one reveal that will be discussed further in this review so here is your warning.
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Werewolf by Night
Once again it’s been a bit since I added something here but I managed to watch the first Marvel Special Presentation on Disney+ and while it’s only 55 minutes long, at this point I’m considering it a TV movie rather than a TV episode as there are likely more of these special presentations coming. As long as they’re longer than 40 minutes, I will likely continue to include them here as long as my subscription to Disney+ holds. This is the directorial debut of Michael Giacchino and he really comes out swinging with a visually interesting look and the MCU introductions of several lesser known characters. The mostly black and white with splashes of color really give this “special presentation” a different feel along with an excuse to add some additional gore that wouldn’t have been allowed in full color. Overall, I really enjoyed it though since this is a new release here’s my obligatory warning for spoilers ahead.
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Thor: Love and Thunder
Thor: Love and Thunder 2022
It’s time for yet another new Marvel movie and while I did manage to get out to see this movie opening weekend, I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write about it until now. I did however speak my thoughts on a recent Lambcast so you can hear more of my opinion along with 4 other Lamb members. I went into this movie hearing a fair mix of things, several people compared it negatively against Ragnarok so I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to get into. For the most part, I loved this film in a similar manner as Ragnarok and while I do see the complaints, they didn’t detract from the film too much for me. Not only that, but I felt like this had a much better emotional throughline for several of the characters. And since this is a new release, I’m always compelled to issue a spoiler warning and there are several things to spoil that have been left out of the trailers so be warned.
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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 2022
I keep telling myself that I’m not going to let this site lay fallow, and yet this is the second big release after The Batman that I’ve sat on. Of course not nearly as much as I’ve sat on The Batman as I still haven’t blocked out the three hour block of time to watch that at home on HBO Max. I managed to see this film in theaters on the second Sunday of release which as of writing this first paragraph was over a week ago. Meanwhile, I am hard at work on season 3 of It’s Time to Rewind and my new musical show Lyrical Innuendo. Despite all of this, I did enjoy the film. One of the biggest complaints that I had heard about the movie before I saw it was that it was “too Sam Raimi”. And while I can understand that argument, that’s honestly what I enjoyed the most about this film. It was that Sam Raimi horror with a little bit of comedy sensibility that permeated throughout the entire film along with some of that Spider-Man 2 pathos that helped endear us to the often self-important Doctor Strange. The new characters were nice, the Easter Eggs were occasionally surprising and I will be discussing them in the main portion of the review so if you somehow haven’t heard about them by now, you will be spoiled if you keep reading.
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Morbius
Morbius 2022
I’m honestly a little surprised that the first theatrical movie that I watched in 2022 was this one. Not only that, but it was this one despite the fact that the critically and fan acclaimed The Batman came out just a couple weeks ago and I let that one pass me by. It was for a couple reasons, one is that we do have an infant in the house so getting out to the theater is a little more difficult, even moreso for a nearly three hour movie. It was a little less guilt-inducing to pop out of the house by myself to watch a film that my wife had zero interest in that only ran for about 90 minutes. And I’m saying all of this because of how maligned this film was even years before release. It didn’t help that it was more or less supposed to come out sometime around 2020, was delayed six separate times and only half of those were delays due to covid. The trailers, the delays, and just starring Jared Leto himself were all plenty of potential turn-offs. But despite all of those, the movie still made a middling amount in the box office. Which by all accounts is more or less what the studio was expecting as it’s not an MCU movie or even a big name Spider-Man character. With all of this anti-hype surrounding the movie, I went in with fairly low expectations, and I must admit that I enjoyed my visit to the theater. I can’t sit here and call this film a good movie, but it hit some personal high marks and the low marks didn’t get too deep under my skin. And as is the case with new release movies, I will be discussing the story and end credits scene so beyond lays spoilers.
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Spider-Man: No Way Home
Spider-Man: No Way Home 2021
I ended up missing the past couple movie releases due to the arrival of a little bundle of joy that’s taken up much of my time lately. But I just couldn’t miss out on the latest Spider-Man movie especially with the multiverse aspect coming into play. And I’m very glad that I was able to see it as soon as I did. I’m not big on the anti-spoiler culture that has permeated a lot of the nerd fandom lately, I was just excited to see it as soon as possible. Plus I signed up for the latest Lambcast discussing this and every other Spider-Man film so I had an extra reason to see it. I’ve enjoyed every Spider-Man movie to some degree or another with my least favorite: Amazing Spider-Man 2 still being ranked as a fun-but-very-flawed film so I was happy to see them all come together in this film. There was plenty of fanservice to be had, but for the most part, it was all done with a degree of reverence, plus it all made sense to further the story or the characters. There were some more changes to this MCU Spider-Man timeline to help differentiate Tom Holland’s Peter Parker even more from the others than they already have but I loved this entry in this long-running and varied franchise. And as there are plenty of spoiler fanservice elements, beyond this paragraph will definitely be spoilers.
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Shang-Chi
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 2021
This is only just the start of the squeezed MCU timeline as this is the second of four MCU films coming out this year that started with Black Widow just a couple months ago, Eternals in a couple more months, and Spider-Man: Far From Home to end out the year. Many of these MCU films are generally split down the middle more or less. Half of the film follows a more or less typical Marvel movie format with light comedy mixed throughout and a big end battle filled with explosions. The other half of the film gets to branch out into many different genres like spy thriller, war movie, sci-fi comedy, what have you. This does that to a certain extent, but it feels like the split was closer to 70-30 in favor of a martial arts/Wuxia film and I am all on board for that shift. After Black Widow’s moderate disappointment in that it followed the Marvel format a little too much, I absolutely loved every minute of this film from his audience surrogate friend slash potential love interest to the sympathetic villain to the fantastic-yet-still-unique CGI-filled climactic final battle sequence. And as this is a new release, as with all my reviews there may be spoilers ahead so if you want to go in fresh be warned.
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The New Mutants
The New Mutants 2020
Of all of the superhero movies of the past few years, this one was probably talked about more than it was actually watched whenever it eventually came out. It had a hugely trouble production as the studio seemingly didn’t have a lot of faith in it compared to Fox’s other mainline projects Deadpool 2 and Dark Phoenix so it got pushed back, they did some reshoots, Disney bought Fox so it got pushed further, the pandemic happened so it got pushed back even further, they wanted more reshoots but too much time had passed for their younger cast. And the articles around the project are confusing, as some say that the director wanted more horror, yet the first round of reshoots were supposedly to add more horror. And yet what the movie really could have used was, you guessed it, more horror. In the end, it didn’t fail at the levels of something like Fant4stic, but this was clearly a result of studio meddling that left us with a B- movie when there is the skeleton of an A movie.
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Black Widow
Black Widow 2021
First off I just have to start out with holy crap it’s good to be back in a movie theater. Granted things are very different than they were when I saw Birds of Prey which I’m pretty sure was the last movie that I saw in theaters. We just survived a pandemic, at least everyone who has decided to get vaccinated has survived a pandemic but I won’t go further down that discussion right now. I’m living in the Atlanta suburbs after spending the previous six years in the Chicago suburbs, and this is the first Marvel movie to come out since Spider-Man: Far From Home back in the summer of 2019. So yeah, things are quite a bit different. But kicking off the theater going with the latest MCU movie felt like falling back into old patterns. It was definitely enjoyable with great action beats and enjoyable humor, but the climax felt rather uninspired and I just wish they could have done something a little bit different than falling right back into the MCU formula that I often like to think doesn’t really exist. And as this is the latest MCU movie, if you haven’t seen it yet from here on out there may be spoilers so be warned.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 