Take Two Tuesday: Justice League (2017) or... Looking at the League through Snyder-Colored Glasses, Everything is Whedon Now

Last year, I spent more than four months going through Batman v Superman in exhaustive detail, and so it may not come as a surprise to readers of this blog that I do occasionally find it difficult to remain objective about this sort of thing. Though I maintain that there is objective gold in BvS, occluded by its occasional thematic indigestibility, I freely admit that much of what I like about Justice League is born out of my desire to like the movie.

I can see why the average filmgoer would not have liked this film, and I can certainly sympathize with the disciples of Zack Snyder (largely being one myself). As before, I do not want to relitigate the “Snyder v Whedon: Dawn of Reshoots” guessing game; indeed, I’d wager that within five years, if Snyder’s recent social media presence is any barometer, we’ll know more concretely about one or both sides of the question. What I think is key, though, is not to think of this as a Snyder film – it isn’t. It is closer to a Joss Whedon film, particularly his Avengers duology, but like the Justice League comic itself it more closely resembles a “greatest hits” collection of all the things that work so far about the DC universe. We have the strong casting of Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, and Henry Cavill; we have the striking visual design of Gotham, Metropolis, and Themyscira; and we get new pieces bolted on to those aspects, including – most striking on this rewatch – a terrifically engaging Ezra Miller as The Flash, whose boisterous Spider-Man charm is a brilliant audience substitute for a guy who’s really just excited to be in the company of gods and heroes.

Sitting a few feet from the screen on home video rather than dozens of feet in the theater, the film looks different. Some of the CGI on Henry Cavill’s Gumby mouth looks dodgier, though Steppenwolf acquits himself better, and there are at least two surprising moments when a green screen is solidly visible (once on Aquaman’s cheek, once on Flash’s boot). Where Batman v Superman worked very hard to bring superheroes into our world and give us a stylized vision of the struggles of their souls, Justice League follows instead the giddiness of The Flash and runs with an aesthetic that reminds one of the original X-Men film, in which the prevailing mood was, “Look, the comics are walking around!” While a lot of folks took Whedon to task for apparently altering the color grading of the film, I think it helps distance the film from the “Snyder Cut” we may never see, instead taking the movie into a surrealistic cartoon corner that feels more like a comic book come to life, rather than a comic book coming into my life.

On rewatch, consciously trying to watch Justice League as the next superhero film in a long tradition and looking for points of connection rather than disconnect, it does feel very much like an episode of the 2001-2004 Justice League cartoon as informed by The Avengers. We have the same emphasis on team dynamics, informed by the unhealthy mistrust that, for better or for worse, holds the Avengers together. Whedon (or Snyder – at this point, who cares?) cribs a few notes from his playbook with a scene that echoes the “we’re a timebomb” argument from The Avengers; in the film’s climax, which I previously described as “airlifted from Sokovia,” reprises the family-as-microcosm we saw menaced by Ultron, which in turn syncs up with Batman’s direction to The Flash: “Save one.” Save one, then a truck, then the world. These heroes ought to be about hope, about the belief that one human being can become something greater and can save the world, and in Justice League I believe that Batman learns that lesson enough to teach it to the next generation. I buy that Wonder Woman is the gifted and capable leader of the team. I buy that Flash and Cyborg rise to the challenge. And I completely accept that the very idea of Superman is enough to make them all believe in the promise of tomorrow, not least because I believe that too.

Back in November, I found myself enjoying Justice League. Five months later, I still liked Justice League, but I liked it from a different angle, a sideways enjoyment of the film for what it was and not in spite of what it could have been. I don’t know that I will go to the mat for Justice League in the way that I will, every time, for Batman v Superman, and I will always believe that there is a universe out there somewhere in which Zack Snyder was given the time and the resources to complete the vision he introduced with Man of Steel. I had hoped to change minds about Batman v Superman with my “10 @ a Time” series, but I accept that it’s not worth the effort to try with Justice League. You get out of this movie what you seek to find in it, and as it stands, this Justice League is fun enough to justify each matching set of hours I choose to spend with it.

Justice League (2017)

I haven’t seen Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express yet, but I had a real Hercule Poirot moment as the credits rolled on Justice League, because I was of two minds about the whole thing. On the one hand, I’d had a great time with the film and felt a charge of excitement as I tried to calculate when I could see it next. On the other hand, I felt a distinct note of sadness for the Justice League I hadn’t seen, the one Zack Snyder had been unable to finish (Joss Whedon famously stepped in during post-production, and it shows). But as I looked around the theater, I heard people clapping (I can’t remember the last time that happened), saw them turning in their seats to talk to complete strangers about this or that aspect of the film – Justice League had brought us all together just as its protagonists are united. In these times, that alone is a superheroic feat.

The death of Superman (Henry Cavill) has opened the world to new threats, and Batman (Ben Affleck) knows that something wicked this way comes. With the help of his sardonic butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons), Batman brings together Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) to honor the legacy of Superman and repel the invading apocalyptic forces of Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds), who’s come to earth to finish the job of conquest he began millennia ago.

Having just spent the last eighteen weeks poring over Batman v Superman in exhaustive detail, it was difficult not to hope that Justice League had been a little more like its predecessor. The overall good feeling engendered by the film puts much of that yearning to bed, but a part of me will always wonder (at least, unless we get yet another “extended cut”) what Snyder had up his sleeve. Given the gratifying points of contact between Man of Steel and BvS, how much more might Snyder have pulled his trilogy together? We get glimpses of that Justice League, to be sure – as when Batman clings hopefully to “a fragment of a chance,” having previously feared “even a one-percent chance” – but the sheer volume of unused footage from the trailers makes me hope that one day, somehow, we’ll see an unfettered version of Snyder’s vision (perhaps, dare I say it, as a comic book?).

Indeed, it’s difficult to overstate the influence of Joss Whedon. There are many scenes reminiscent of his Avengers duology, up to and including the presence of two post-credits sequences. (I know, I didn’t think DC was doing those, either.) There are several scenes of the League bickering, recalling the internecine quarrels aboard the helicarrier in Avengers, and there’s a pretty striking reprise from Age of Ultron that seems airlifted from Sokovia. Moreover, Whedon’s penchant for quippy dialogue is abundant in Justice League, and it fits characters like The Flash and Alfred quite perfectly. Batman benefits from this brighter side, something foreshadowed in his evolution in BvS’s third act, though Whedon builds a bridge perhaps too far, with only one false note where a Batman one-liner might have better suited Aquaman or The Flash (a second gag flops when it verges crassly anatomical but is rescued by the appearance of the Lasso of Truth). Even Danny Elfman, who replaced Junkie XL at the eleventh hour and performed similarly for Whedon on Age of Ultron, gets in on the riffing game with a score that seems to have a few notes from the Marvel side of the street.

Setting aside the might-have-beens and the what-ifs for the version we did get, though, it’s a real crowd-pleaser. Tightly edited at just this side of two hours, Justice League clips along with barely any perceptible dead weight; though teasing multiple films to come (and with less interruption than in BvS), many of those teases are in service to introducing Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg to the DC filmic universe. Cyborg in particular acquits himself quite well by fitting into the larger narrative tapestry, though it’s Ezra Miller’s Flash who ought to become a fan favorite, quickly distinguishing himself from television’s Grant Gustin as an alternate but no less recognizable Barry Allen. Of course, I’m quite fond of Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot, who continue to develop their respective heroes through the cauldron of BvS into real team players, and I do hope to see more of them in standalone franchises.

Without losing the broad appeal of a crowd-pleaser, Justice League manages to pack in a number of surprises, many of them in the category of “Wow, they went there!” Batman v Superman wasn’t long on courage, you’ll recall, taking the exact opposite of the easy path, where Justice League plays it a little safer – a villain whose plan is quite simple, team dynamics that proceed without complication, and in-universe references that should seem quite familiar to audiences, like J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon, whom everyone ought to recognize by his mustache alone if not by his ignition of the Bat-signal. There are some risks taken in the film, as when Aquaman’s backstory is given brief allusion in a conversation with the merwoman who would be queen (Amber Heard as Mera) – and while I don’t want to play “Snyder or Whedon?” too much, this scene’s dense mythology is precisely the sort of thing of which I wanted to see considerably more, for I loved BvS’s profoundly immersive sense of depth.

But I can’t overstate how good Justice League felt. I had a big grin on my face for most of the movie, partly because I loved all the small references that the general audience might have missed but also because Justice League reminded me very much of the 2001 cartoon of the same name. Like the eponymous cartoon, Justice League does a solid job distilling its characters to their cores, bouncing them off each other, and uniting them against a threat that merits their collective attention. It is just jolly good fun to see these mythic archetypes bouncing off each other, and I do wish there could have been more of it because this is a movie that accesses the hopefulness of superheroes and the inherent wish-fulfillment of how awesome (in multiple senses of the words) these characters are. It’s a film that clips by so briskly that you’re ready to queue it up as soon as the credits have rolled. I don’t think too many people will be surprised to hear I enjoyed the film – I did go in with a clear head and am willing to admit when things didn’t work – but I do think audiences will be surprised at how grievously the critical majority have misjudged this film.

Justice League is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi violence and action.” Directed by Zack Snyder (and Joss Whedon). Written by Chris Terrio, Zack Snyder, and Joss Whedon. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, and Ciarán Hinds.

The Grand Marvel Rewatch: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Face front, true believers! Welcome to the next astonishing addition to “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” designed to get us all sufficiently amped up for Captain America: Civil War, which comes out May 6, 2016. Each Wednesday, The Cinema King casts his eye back upon the twelve films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and offers five salient observations about the caliber of the films and the way they might play into Marvel’s latest installment in America’s favorite franchise.

Today’s fantastic feature film takes us to 2015 for Avengers: Age of Ultron, to which Civil War is almost certainly a direct sequel.

1. Shots fired! We saw some personality clashes on display in The Avengers, but here those tensions boil over into physical conflict regarding the Avengers’ methods. Perhaps not surprisingly, the battle lines look pretty similar to those we’ve seen teased for Civil War – Team Cap vs. Team Iron Man. This isn’t just Thor fighting The Avengers for custody of Loki; these are deep-rooted frictions in the team playing out over a question of whether superheroes are going too far. Interesting, though, that it’s Cap who argues for restraint while Iron Man constructs another robotic weapon... 
2. Movie magic. Age of Ultron throws the MCU into a world where magic exists. Previously, everything “super” was explainable by science (either Asgardian or earth-based) – super-soldier serum, iron suits, flying hammers, gamma radiation. With Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and the Vision, though, the Infinity Stones walk us into an age of “miracles,” in which honest-to-goodness superpowers stand side-by-side with the technologically upgraded folks we’ve come to love. And to Joss Whedon’s credit, it never feels like a step too far – in fact, it took me until this latest rewatch to notice that Scarlet Witch’s magical red energies were something brand new in the MCU. 
3. Whedon’s got Vision. If you took everything about Age of Ultron and boiled it into one character, it’d be Vision (Paul Bettany). He’s a comics character adapted for the film’s needs, powered by the Infinity Stones, and something wholly unique yet of a piece with the rest of his team. In the same way, Age of Ultron bears a passing resemblance to the Brian Michael Bendis comic of the same name, it foregrounds the Infinity Stones as the narrative thread holding the MCU together, and it’s both different and familiar (see #2). Plus, Vision/Age is vibrantly colored, powerful yet sensitive, funny but packs a punch. And it’s hard to believe they’re barely a year old. 
4. And speaking of the Stones... We’re up to four of six stones discovered thus far, with Vision powered by the yellow Mind Stone (confirmed, now, to have been previously in Loki’s scepter). The Space Stone is on Asgard, the Reality Stone is (probably) still with The Collector, and the Power Stone is in the hands of the Nova Corps. In terms of the comic book line-up, that leaves Time and Soul Stones yet to be accounted for, and dollars to donuts says that at least one is destined to show up in Doctor Strange. Plus we finally get confirmation that Thanos is looking to collect all six to bind in an Infinity Gauntlet. Writing sentences like that last one just reminds me that this is truly the best time to be alive. 
5. (New) Avengers a-- At any given time in the comics, there are numerous flavors of Avengers teams running around – New, Secret, All-New All-Different, Uncanny, Dark, Mighty, Giant-Size, West Coast, Pet, Young, or just plain The. After the PR crisis caused by Hulk... well, hulking out, it looks like Cap is in charge of the first franchised Avengers team, the New Avengers (only some of whom will take his side in Civil War). But it seems we’ll have to wait a little longer to hear the battle cry “Avengers Assemble!” – Whedon cruelly cuts to black before Chris Evans can enunciate those final syllables. Speaking of franchises, Hydra’s been branching out, too – Baron Von Strucker’s group doesn’t seem in cooperation with the two Hydra heads we’ve seen on Agents of SHIELD (led by Daniel Whitehall and Gideon Malick). Cut off one head on film, it seems two more rise on television.

There’s so much more to be said about Avengers: Age of Ultron, so be sure to check out my original review. Join me in the Grand Marvel Rewatch over the coming weeks, and hit the comments to share your thoughts about the MCU. And don’t forget to tune in next Wednesday for the next installment, in which we take a closer look at 2015’s Ant-Man. Excelsior!

The Grand Marvel Rewatch: The Avengers

Face front, true believers! Welcome to the next astonishing addition to “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” designed to get us all sufficiently amped up for Captain America: Civil War, which comes out May 6, 2016. Each Wednesday, The Cinema King casts his eye back upon the twelve films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and offers five salient observations about the caliber of the films and the way they might play into Marvel’s latest installment in America’s favorite franchise.

Today’s fantastic feature film takes us to 2012 for The Avengers, a film which The Cinema King can confirm is best enjoyed with a nice shawarma sandwich.

1. Can we take a second to talk about how good this movie is? This flick is airtight. Joss Whedon had to pull together multiple disparate threads from other directorial/authorial voices, and he accomplished it in spades. The Avengers does an amazingly effective job (re)introducing all the main characters for experts and neophytes alike, and he does so in a way that never loses sight of either its main storyline or its infectious sense of fun. Simply put, this film is an accomplishment, well-crafted and perennially entertaining. I’ve seen it umpteen times by now, and there’s not a dull moment. This thing just clips. 
2. Civil War prologue? “What are we, a team?” Bruce Banner asks in a particularly heated moment in The Avengers; “No, no, no, we’re a timebomb.” It looks like that timebomb is set to go off in Civil War, and we can see the seeds of that conflict already being sown. These are superheroes with personality clashes like you wouldn’t believe, who find it intensely difficult to work together. They’re heroes because they manage to set those differences aside, but every situation has a breaking point. We can already see the debates about the limits and abuses of power; with SHIELD out of the picture, The Avengers will have to field those questions. 
3. The Avengers Initiative. Remember Nick Fury’s words at the end of Iron Man? In hindsight, a preexisting team of Avengers didn’t really pan out in the MCU plot, so those words are retconned into a failed experiment based on the aforementioned clash of personalities. Instead, The Avengers become literal instantiations of their name, avenging both the late (well...) Phil Coulson and promising to avenge the earth, if need be. It’s also much stronger characterization to give the Avengers a reason to assemble beyond Nick Fury and the government asking them to work together. Every character has a valid motivation, telegraphed with immense clarity.
4. Hail Hydra! This movie sure looks different in hindsight, though. With the revelation in The Winter Soldier that SHIELD is pervaded with Hydra agents, you can’t help but cast an eye askance at nearly everyone in the film. Why does SHIELD want to recreate Hydra weapons? Hey, isn’t that Agent Sitwell on the Helicarrier? Why did Gideon Malick (Powers Boothe, now a major antagonist on Agents of SHIELD) really want to nuke Manhattan? And was the guy playing Galaga secretly sabotaging SHIELD in his own slacker way? Of course, it’s unclear whether that twist was planned out two years in advance, but it’s fantastic continuity either way. 
5. To Infinity and beyond! Having praised the forwards and backwards interconnectivity of The Avengers, I’ve got to quibble with its treatment of the Infinity Stones. Thanos gives Loki a scepter powered, as we learn in Age of Ultron, by the Mind Stone. Did Thanos know the scepter had an Infinity Stone? If so, why relinquish it? Then again, Erik Selvig tells us that the scepter is powered by the Tesseract – “You can’t protect against yourself.” And yet the Tesseract is its own Infinity Stone, the Space Stone. So are the gems interrelated, or is Selvig just wrong? We have to get to six Infinity Stones in time for Infinity War, but I don’t think the films have done a very clear job of sussing out which are which.
6. Bonus round: Can anyone explain to me how Chief Sousa got all the way from 1947 Hollywood to the Battle of New York? Please tell me that this cop is actually the grandson of Peggy and Sousa, and he's finally meeting the man he heard his grandmother talk so much about.
   

There’s so much more to be said about The Avengers, so be sure to check out my original review. Join me in the Grand Marvel Rewatch over the coming weeks, and hit the comments to share your thoughts about the MCU. And don’t forget to tune in next Wednesday for the next installment, in which we take a closer look at the beginning of Phase Two, 2013’s Iron Man 3. Excelsior!

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

The world is a darker place in the wake of the news that Joss Whedon won’t be helming the two-part Avengers: Infinity War (due out in 2018 and 2019). To wit, Avengers: Age of Ultron is a darker, moodier installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe than its predecessor. But if this truly is Whedon’s swan song in the world of The Avengers, it’s a damned good note on which to end, better than the original and a close contender for the MCU’s finest hour.

After a knockout opening sequence that doesn’t waste any time getting to the action, all your favorite Avengers have assembled. When Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) develop an artificial intelligence project that goes awry, the other Avengers – Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) – face the threat of annihilation when the AI builds itself a body and becomes Ultron (James Spader). Along the way, the Avengers are threatened by superpowered twins (Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) left in the wake of the fall of Hydra.

It seems clunky to type with all those parentheticals, but the Joss Whedon trademark has always been gracefulness when it comes to large ensemble casts. As in the first film, there is an organicity to the assembling of these Avengers, but where The Avengers spent the better part of its first half in assembly-mode (a really lovely first half, actually, perhaps stronger than the action-heavy climax), Age of Ultron throws the group into a cauldron already boiling with tension and camaraderie. The script is well-crafted as ever, with distinct arcs for its characters (which ought to be the norm but, sadly, isn’t) and a tight narrative focus that finds a way to expand the universe without dithering and losing focus.

I don’t want to say more about expanding the universe for fear of spoiling the film, so on the occasion of May the Fourth – Star Wars Day – I’d like to comment on Age of Ultron being ostensibly the franchise’s “Empire Strikes Back” moment, the middle and darkest entry in a trilogy. The mood in Age of Ultron is considerably grimmer than in The Avengers, though it’s by no means unbearable; in fact, what’s surprising about the film is just how much humor it includes among all the foreboding. The Avengers was funny, but Age of Ultron seems to have imported the raucous tempo of Guardians of the Galaxy’s punchlines. “Keep ’em laughing” seems to be the word of the day here, to the point where I began to wonder, amid all the franchise’s one-liners and character resurrections (Nick Fury, Phil Coulson, Pepper Potts, Bucky Barnes, et al), whether Age of Ultron would actually pull the emotional trigger and give us something truly tragic. Suffice it to say, Age of Ultron does go there, and in a way that works better than it actually ought to.

I could lather up the performers, as I usually do, but you’ve seen it all before. The cast continues to do that at which they are best while also successfully navigating through their respective character evolutions. Ruffalo, for one, is still doing the exposed-nerve timidity, but the romantic wrinkles given to his character equally compelling and don’t feel the least bit out of Bruce Banner’s rhythm. Renner gets the closest thing to the film’s center stage (an apology, perhaps, for spending much of The Avengers under Loki’s mind-control) with a development so surprisingly unanticipated that a pin drop would have deafened the audience on opening night.

The true surprises are in the incoming cast, who distinguish themselves quite nicely while also integrating into the ensemble without that feeling of intrusion. Spader in particular stands out as one of the MCU’s better villains, very well-developed and extremely menacing in a creepy sort of way – in other words, exactly the kind of character you’d expect from James Spader. The twins, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, work very well in the context of the film, and they’re the sort of people you’d like to see more of in future films.

One final note must be made of the way that Age of Ultron very consciously engages with the superhero film genre overall. We all have this sense that the bubble is going to burst at some point (with four superhero movies coming out in July 2018 – one a week!), but Age of Ultron never feels overfull or weary. Instead, there’s an interesting way that the film comments on the trend of superhero movies toward ungrounded violence, by which I don’t mean the odd tendency of Marvel films to end with airborne combat and explosions galore. No, there seems to be a very clear commentary on Man of Steel’s ignorance (willful or otherwise) of civilian casualties. At many points in Age of Ultron, The Avengers take great pains to guarantee the safety of the innocent, at the point of risking their own lives to save the citizenry. While I’m one of the few who maintains that Man of Steel’s carnage will actually be a motivating factor for Superman in the sequels, Age of Ultron tackles the issue head-on to demonstrate that the sanctity of life ought to be the hero’s first prerogative.

Is Age of Ultron a bid for a kinder, gentler superhero film? I’m not sure that’s the message, but it is certainly a bid for a more thoughtful one. And while I’m not ready to say it’s dethroned The Winter Soldier at the top of my MCU power rankings, I will say that Whedon had made an indelible stamp on the superhero genre, and the future would do well to take its cues from him – particularly the well-crafted yet innovative juggling act of Age of Ultron.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi action, violence and destruction, and for some suggestive comments.” The action scenes are standard superhero fare, with all the punching, explosions, and gunfire you’d expect. Most of it is bloodless, as you’d expect from fights with robots, but some of the more personal action beats include blood. The film also includes the standard amount of innuendo and a few scenes of flirting.

By the way, today is May the Fourth – Star Wars Day! – so flashback to 2014 and take a look at my reviews of the Star Wars saga!

Monday at the Movies - February 23, 2015

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.”  Joss Whedon is set to have the biggest movie of the summer with Avengers: Age of Ultron, the sequel to his billion-dollar film The Avengers. To prepare, we’re going back to his first film from ten (Ten!) whole years ago.

Serenity (2005) – Here’s the thing about Serenity: it is barely a film, and I don’t mean that as the snarky insult it might initially seem.  Bear with me.  What Serenity is is a two-hour epilogue to the television show about whose cancellation much consternation has been made amongst its cult followers.  Indeed, it is for those followers that the film exists, and though I liked the show when I watched it a few years ago, I have the feeling that I would have enjoyed Serenity a bit more if Firefly were fresher in my mind.  And look, I don’t suspect Joss Whedon is out to make a proper film here; there is so much about Serenity, up to and including its overall refusal to (re)introduce the main characters, that suggests Whedon is catering to a crowd of diehards.  That said, as someone halfway on the outside looking in (someone certain that full devotees will love it), I enjoyed Serenity even without fully remembering all the nuances of the Firefly universe.  The element I liked the most, even more than Nathan Fillion’s swaggering space captain Malcolm Reynolds (think Han Solo by way of John Wayne), was Chiwetel Ejiofor’s villainous turn as a nameless apostle of the crooked transgalactic regime; Ejiofor does a very entertaining heartless disciple, a nice spin on the scenery-chewing villain most cinematic science fiction brings us.  The script has Whedon’s trademark sense of humor and an impressively tight cast of characters, though it does lose points for simply revisiting and not reintroducing or developing those characters (beyond killing a few off).

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week! 

Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Films - #2-1!

With Guardians of the Galaxy, the Marvel Cinematic Universe enters the double-digits club.  The job of a Top 10 list in this case is especially difficult because I knew precisely which would be #1 and which would be #10, but the rest I don’t have much complaint about.  The Marvel brand has been very reliable, so assigning ranks becomes a somewhat arbitrary game of quibbling and comparing.  That said, I feel fairly confident in assessing “The Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Films!”  And now we've made it to the Top Two, so without further ado...

2.  The Avengers (2012)

“It works because the movie is so infectiously fun that it quickly sweeps the audience into its world and recruits us into the superteam. ... Honestly, I can’t sell short just how fun this movie is.”

From day one, we knew the Universe was building toward The Avengers, but I don’t think that any of us was quite ready for what we got.  Joss Whedon, nerd-king and archduke of seemingly effortless storytelling, writes and directs the hell out of what might have been a disastrous omnishambles of multiple storylines and vastly different characters.  Instead, all the moving parts coalesce into what might be a perfect film; no knowledge needed of the various franchises at work, because the film introduces them, gives them all something to do, and keeps all the plates spinning while sacrificing neither momentum nor entertainment value.  While some of the final action sequences may be derided as mere cannon fodder, note the way Whedon uses them to wrap up character beats and give closure to the impracticality of uniting so many disparate elements.  Perhaps best of all, The Avengers doesn’t feel like a lowly best-of cover band, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like Whedon is betraying the characters; their trajectories and behaviors fit perfectly with the earlier characterizations while moving them forward in exciting ways.  Dang, now I just want to go rewatch The Avengers – who’s with me?

1.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

“Winter Soldier’s willingness to tackle pressing issues in current events might mark a sea change toward greater cultural relevance beyond merely making a literal ton of money.” 

As incredible as The Avengers was, I always had a nagging thought in the back of my mind that it was too big to fail – there was no way we’d get a disappointing Avengers film, not after how good the lead-up had been.  With Captain America, though, we’ve got a “Most Improved” winner on our hands.  The older I get, the more I find myself seeing films more than once in a movie theater; though this is often a casual decision, in the case of Winter Soldier it was a compulsion – I needed to see this film more than once.  While this is, in a sense, Avengers 1.5, Winter Soldier is a perfectly contained unit with an impressive amount of risk-taking and innovating.  The former I won’t spoil because it’s one of those fantastic slack-jawed moments, feeding into the film’s intensely relevant message about surveillance and oversight, but the latter comes in the form of a contagiously compelling performance by Anthony Mackie as The Falcon, a veritable scene-stealer in a film littered with scenes worth stealing.  It moves from character beat to action beat without stalling the plot, a relentless espionage piece that you’d be excused for forgetting was a superhero film to begin with.  This isn’t a “comic book movie” in the derisive sense of the word – this is a proper film.  Plus it has the best Stan Lee cameo to date – ’nuff said!

What do you think, true believers?  Excelsior or excrement?  Sound off in the Comments with your picks for the Top Marvel Cinematic Universe film!  As for next Monday?  Well, we wouldn’t spoil the surprise just yet – in the best Stan Lee tradition, to be continued!

PS - This is the 400th post here at The Cinema King - thanks for reading!  Here's to 400 more, eh?

Monday at the Movies - April 8, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, an exemplary horror film from fan favorite Joss Whedon.

Cabin in the Woods (2012) – Post-Avengers, I’ve been on a quest to find out more about this man called Joss Whedon, and so far I haven’t been disappointed; Firefly is as clever as its devotees declaim, though Alien Resurrection left something to be desired.  Cabin in the Woods, though, counts among the former; screenwriter Whedon brings his tongue-in-cheek self-awareness to bear on this horror/sci-fi satire, which trots out that oldest and ignoblest of horror tropes – a mixed bag of coeds in the titular cabin – and does something delightfully original with it.  It’s Evil Dead by way of Shaun of the Dead.  Without spoiling too much, the film quickly reveals that the five college students are being watched by cameras wired to a control booth, where two blue collar technicians (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) are manipulating the supernatural goings-on in the woods.  I’ll stop there, because Whedon and director/cowriter Drew Goddard are up to something quite smart here, original without disobeying the classic rules of the horror game.  Much of the fun of the movie comes from trying to understand the relationship between the cabin and the technicians, and the payoff is well worth the cognitive exertion.  Avengers fans will likely revel in the presence of Chris Hemsworth in the cabin, his football jock a far cry from his regal turn as the Asgardian lead in Thor; the rest of the cast of coeds, though, is mostly negligible.  The real entertainment value – Jenkins aside, though he’s sharp as always – comes from the script, which wears its affection for the genre on its bloodied zombie sleeve.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - September 10, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-Four of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week we continue our long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy,” concluding the series proper.

Alien Resurrection (1997) – As the final installment of the “Alien Quadrilogy,” Alien Resurrection is an entirely bizarre film that never quite knows its own identity and consequently very nearly resists being enjoyable.  Sigourney Weaver is back, this time as the clone Ripley-8 who’s been induced to give birth to yet another Alien Queen.  Wonky biology ensues, and Ripley-8 ends up helping Winona Ryder and Ron Perlman escape from yet another ship filled with Xenomorphs.  There’s a definite tension between the script by Joss Whedon and the direction by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a written tongue-in-cheekness that never comes across in the hypersexualized horror of the visual.  Instead, we have a film with a tonally uncertain first act (in which Dan Hedaya’s broad caricature of a military man is never played as anything less than genuine), a too-pat second act that doesn’t do anything new, and a third act that’s so far beyond the pale that it’s more grotesquely uncomfortable than thrilling or entertaining.  As not-quite-Ripley, Weaver’s work is difficult to assess, in part because the film never knows quite how much of her core is still Ripley and how much isn’t; the other cast members aren’t well-developed and often devolve into clichés (Ryder’s character seems to exist only to drop F-bombs for unintentional comic relief and to retread issues of otherness from Alien and Aliens).  There are a few moments worth mentioning – the aquatic Xenomorphs end up being scarier than you’d expect, and Brad Dourif’s obsessive scientist doesn’t get enough screentime – but overall this is a disappointing end to a series that I’ve enjoyed more than I expected.

That wraps up our look at the “Alien Quadrilogy,” but you can read the review that started it all with Prometheus (2012), Ridley Scott’s demi-prequel to the series.  There are, of course, more Xenomorph movies yet to be reviewed – two entries in the Alien vs. Predator series.  Is there interest in seeing reviews of those?  Let me know!

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

The Avengers (2012)

If you had any question about when the summer movie season begins, seeing most of your favorite summer movie icons assembled in one film should assuage your confusion.

We’ve been waiting since 2008 for The Avengers to assemble, and under the direction (and script) of fan favorite Joss Whedon, they’ve done just that.  Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) – the gang’s all here.  (Even Clark Gregg, who manages to make Agent Coulson even more likeable, as he has with each successive appearance of this great character.)

And when The Avengers assemble... it’s amazing.

Taking little threads from each of the existing Marvel Cinematic Universe films, The Avengers finds the team gathering for the first time after Thor’s brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) steals a weapon of unimaginable power from S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.

That’s it.  That’s the premise.  But without spoiling any of the film’s delightful surprises, it’s a deceptively simple plot which allows plenty of room for character interactions.  So while the story won’t surprise anyone, the relationships will; we’ve been fantasizing about a time when Iron Man and Thor would meet Captain America, and here we get to put them all in the same room and see what’s shaking.

Joss Whedon’s greatest strength here is in balancing an enormous cast of characters, something he does far better here than he ever did on the abbreviated Firefly.  Pulling double duty on scripting and directing, Whedon never loses focus on any of the heroes – even the unpowered Black Widow and Hawkeye, who highlight how out of their league they are in a key emotional scene.  Rather, each gets a moment to shine, a line or action that’ll elicit applause or hooted cheers from an audience which is already glad to be there.

Even better, these are the same characters we’ve already met in other films – excepting, of course, Ruffalo’s Hulk, a vast improvement over lackluster predecessors.  By “same,” I mean that Whedon has kept their voices intact; Iron Man still possesses the same narcissistic wit, Thor seems to have walked straight off a Shakespearean stage, and Captain America hasn’t lost any of his 1940s flair despite being more than 70 years out of his time (better yet, we’re not asked to laugh at him for it).

What makes The Avengers a hit is that it’s a successful whole built on successful parts.  Marvel has made a string of delightful films in the lead-up to The Avengers, and if even one of those had fallen flat, this whole enterprise would have been fruitless.  If Thor had floundered or if Iron Man had missed the mark, we’d be stuck with a dud in a team of winners.  Instead, what we have is grade-A comic book movie.

And I say “comic book movie” with no derision in my voice.  Where The Dark Knight took comics and applied filmic realism to spectacular effect, The Avengers translates perfectly to film the experience of reading a comic book.  Flashy colors, exorbitant explosions, clever angles, and costumes that ought to look out of place but don’t (I’m looking at you, Loki) – these are what we’d expect on the newsstands, not in a post-Nolan world.  But it works here.

It works because the movie is so infectiously fun that it quickly sweeps the audience into its world and recruits us into the superteam.  The Avengers isn’t a team of demigods like the Justice League (an updated Greek pantheon in Grant Morrison’s 1997-2000 comics run), it’s a cluster of (mostly) human characters with human foibles.  Tony Stark’s attempts to provoke Bruce Banner into changing into the Hulk isn’t something you’d ever see Batman doing to Superman, but here it’s perfectly in line with what a group of misfits do when they’re assembled in a tight space.

It’s also extremely entertaining to watch.  Whedon singles out each character’s defining traits and pits them against each other; take Downey’s playful lack of sincerity and Ruffalo’s tortured repression, and you’ve got sparks.  Blast Nick Fury’s dedication to the task against Thor’s sense of cosmic perspective, and you’ll be chuckling right alongside Thor. 

Honestly, I can’t sell short just how fun this movie is.  See it with a full house, if you can.  But see it.  It’s the kind of film that makes my cheeks numb from smiling all the time.  Well, not all the time.  There’s a moment – true believers will know it – when the film hits a surprisingly heartfelt beat, but it sweetens, not sours, the film.  I’m already eagerly awaiting the DVD – and a second showing before that.

The Avengers is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, and a mild drug reference.”  It’s more of the same comic book violence we’ve come to expect from Marvel’s stable, often not bloody (with one notable exception) but dominated by explosions.  I think the aforementioned drug reference is Tony Stark’s continued abuse of alcohol, which would have been a disappointing omission.

 

Welcome back to the summer of full reviews, true believers – we’ll see you next week!