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Hey everyone! I have a website now to help better preserve and organize my old reviews. Feel free to check it out here: https://raventrireviews.com/hubs/main.html

Many thanks to all who are following along so far! And for any newcomers, welcome to the ride!

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Spider-Man Brand New Day Spoiler-Free Review:

A certified banger. The action is genuinely incredible, and the movie flows from plot point to plot point so well that you barely even realize just how much stuff is going on. Tom Holland nails it as both Peter and Spider-Man, and the other characters are no slouch. The movie handles MJ and Ned as best they could given how No Way Home ended, and it feels like a good continuation of the storyline even if the storyline itself is kinda stupid. I don't think the ending quite sticks the landing, even if it has some pretty good twists, but it isn't bad enough to put a damper on the whole excellent film leading up to it.

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New Mutants (2020) Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #52/76:

The premise for this film is interesting, taking the horror aspects of mutants developing their powers for the first time and turning that into a full-blown superhero-horror film where the kids have to face the literal manifestation of the fears they developed when they used their powers for the first time. The problem is that the execution is kinda ass. 

Spoilers Below:

The whole setup of the film is that Dani is making everybody relive their worst nightmares through her powers, with everybody’s nightmare being hurting someone or being hurt because of their powers, and then everybody has to overcome their fears to embrace their powers and themselves. Except nobody really overcomes their fears except for Dani and Illyana, with everyone just making the conscious decision to use their powers to help their friends. The idea is there, but they never have to overcome the literal embodiment of their greatest fear, which is such a wasted opportunity. Instead, the apparitions serve to act as exposition and ramp up the tension with a bit of horror, with the only exceptions being Dani's and Illyana's. Illyana gets to actually activate her powers to beat the everliving shit out of her greatest fear, when only moments before she couldn't do anything but scream. It's an awesome moment that actually feels like it's delivering on the premise. The only other time this happens is the finale, where Dani faces her fears and commands the Demon Bear to stand down. It’s kinda disappointing, but I do like that because the Demon Bear is Dani’s fear, her facing her fear gives her control over her powers and the fears they manifest.

Part of the problem is just that the movie isn't scary. The Faceless Men are creepy and you do really feel like the kids have no chance of winning against their fears, especially the Demon Bear, but nothing is actually all that scary. There's some tension and it does peak, but like, I was never really scared watching this movie. I feel for the characters, but not for myself. Everything is just too telegraphed, too fast, and too one-and-done to actually have any impact. I do think this movie is better as a superhero-horror movie than a horror-superhero movie, which I do think helps it fit better into the X-Men franchise. It just really doesn't deliver on the horror aspect, which is disappointing since Dani’s power lends itself so well to it. 

On the superhero aspect, the powers we see are pretty cool. Illyana's powers in particular are both gorgeous and thrilling to watch. She's so fast and so threatening that it's intense, and every one of her slices on the Demon Bear briefly opening a portal to Limbo is such a cool touch that they didn't need to add. Rahne doesn't do a lot in her wolf form, but her half-wolf form is really cool, both in how she uses it to track down Dani and in the visual effects. The Demon Bear itself looks incredible and is legitimately threatening, and the final fight is decent, especially for a movie of this caliber.

The other part where the movie is lacking is its characters. Sam and Roberto in particular get almost nothing to do aside from be the focus of first horror scenes we see, although I do like Sam snapping Illyana out of her panic response. Illyana is such a bitch early on, and there's no real point where she goes from being an asshole to being friends with everybody else. It's kinda when she realizes that Dr Reyes is planning to turn them all into weapons, but it feels like a flip switches instead of her actually becoming friends with them. I think the idea is that her bullying is a front to protect herself from getting close to others due to her trauma, but the movie doesn't really explore that, so the life-and-death friendship comes a bit too fast for me. It sucks the wind out of the hopeful ending when I don’t believe these characters actually like each other. The only really good relationship is that between Dani and Rahne, which is a good thing because it's the main relationship in the film. Even then, it's pretty much love at first sight and isn’t developed beyond that, but I do think Rahne sees herself in Dani when she reaches out. You do feel for the cast and they do kinda bond over the course of the film, but not enough for you to get fully invested in any of their relationships except for maybe Dani/Rahne. The actors are doing their best, it’s just not enough to save the writing. Dr Reyes is at least a decent villain due to the slow reveal of just how evil she is, and her death is good if a bit obvious.

This movie being an X-Men spin-off helps give it some weight, since you understand that superhumans exist and how they’re treated. Plus, the fact that Dr Reyes works for the same people who tortured Russell in Deadpool 2 and experimented on Wolverine in Apocalypse gives us more of a window into that universe. This film feels like the start of a series, and while I don't know if the sequels would necessarily have been better, I think the fact that we've spent this whole movie learning about these characters and watching them overcome their greatest fears would have helped. As it stands, this is the last X-Men movie ever made, although it's clearly not an ending point for the franchise.

I think if either the horror or the characters were good, this movie would be a lot better. Instead, it’s just a whole lot of nothing. All of the character arcs kinda work, and the horror kinda works, and the action mostly works, but almost none of it is interesting or engaging outside of the premise. As an X-Men movie, it’s an inoffensive addition, and as a standalone film, it's an experiment that simply didn’t pan out.

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Deadpool 2 Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #51/76:

Deadpool 2 is pretty much the first one but better in every way. It’s way funnier, has better action sequences, more heart, and a stronger story. It’s still got the gory violence and sex jokes, but elevates it with an actually engaging story. 

Spoilers Below:

The main draw of Deadpool is the humor, and this film knocks it out of the park. I was laughing out loud pretty frequently due to both the verbal and the visual comedy. My favorite general gag is how Domino uses her luck powers. Everytime she’s on screen something hilarious happens. Her fight in the orphanage and all the bad guys killing each other is great, but the highlight is her hijacking the train. It’s all the random things that cascade into being helpful, like her throwing a guy out the window to make the side mirror start spinning and then that temporarily blinds Cable and makes him miss. It’s an excellent showcase of luck powers, being both awesome and delightful to watch. I’m still mixed on the infamous X-Force genocide sequence, but the whole thing does make Domino’s bit way funnier. Her guessing the passcode at the end and it just being “7” is also a really good bit. 

Some of the my other favorite jokes include everybody pointing guns at Cable and Blind Al not only reacting late but also pointing in the wrong direction, Deadpool bitches about there being no X-Men and then they shut themselves in a room to avoid him, and Yukio and Deadpool just cheerily greeting each other, and Deadpool ignoring the entire plot to ask Cable if dubstep is still a thing.

Not all of the humor lands, unfortunately. If the first film had an overreliance on sex jokes, this one was an overreliance on reference humor. I personally find many of the references funny, but the film does occasionally go too far and reference the same thing two or three times. Once you make the reference once, it stops being funny, because part of why it’s funny is that the reference is even being made in the first place.

The action is also on point in this movie. The fight scenes are very dynamic, and make far better use of Deadpool’s powers. Cable’s and Firefist’s abilities also make things more interesting than just guys with guns and swords, allowing things to feel far more intense. I don’t think any of the fight scenes top the bullet counting fight from the first movie, but they’re far better on average. The two Domino fights come close, especially the first one when you’re not quite expecting it yet. The weakest fight is probably the Colossus/Juggernaut fight because you can just feel that the characters aren’t real, but the ending to the fight being electrocuting Juggernaut in a pool is pretty funny.

The big thing that sets this movie apart from the first one is the characters and story. This film juggles a lot of characters and it leaves a handful of them underdeveloped, mostly the returning bit characters from Deadpool 1. Negasonic Teenage Warhead in particular adds almost nothing aside from a few good lines and the “Hi Yukio” bit. The rest of the cast also doesn’t have a lot going on, but they have just enough going on to do what they need to do, whether that’s add to the story like Cable and Russell, add to the fight scenes like Domino and Juggernaut, or just be really funny like Dopinder.

The film’s themes and central character conflict are a bit more complex than in the first movie, centering around Deadpool trying to find meaning now that Vanessa is gone and there’s nobody for him to get revenge on. Russell and Cable are in a similar place, with Cable trying to get vengeance for the torture he suffered, and Cable trying to get revenge for his own dead family. While Deadpool gets depressed, Russell becomes a violent terrorist, and Cable does everything he can to get his family back. The three fall down different paths, but end up at the same solution: you can’t get back what you lost, but you can still find meaning with the others who care about you. Of course, Deadpool does get Vanessa back, and Cable could have reunited with his family, but we don’t have time travel in real life, so eh.

The story still isn’t perfect. Killing Vanessa is certainly a decision, but Deadpool’s entire character is centered around her death so it doesn’t quite feel like fridging. Deadpool still tries to kill himself to the last, though, and only decides to keep living because Cable forces him too. He does find a reason to live, but he still immediately brings Vanessa back. I don’t blame him, but it does make it seem like Deadpool never really resolves his internal conflict. The first movie is similar, so this may just be a theme with this franchise. 

Alongside Deadpool trying to kill himself, the film is all about what it means to do the right thing, and it never really answers that. Deadpool trying to kill Russell’s torturers in public is what leads to Russell becoming Firefist in the first place, and him killing all the criminals is what leads to Vanessa’s death. The movie also treats Cable trying to kill Russell as wrong, so the implication is that while bad guys need to be stopped, it’s better to talk them down than to just commit murder. That said, Dopinder still kills the guy who tortured Firefist and everybody’s chill with it, and the first movie is all about how it’s okay to kill people who deserve it. Deadpool isn’t supposed to be the best guy, but if he is a bad guy and murder is so wrong, then the X-Men are weirdly okay with it. That said, the other X-Men do shun Deadpool, so maybe Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead are also towing the line of heroism. 

I haven’t really talked about these movies as part of the X-Men franchise, and that’s because it doesn’t really matter. The X-Men are used as this idea of heroism that is more important to this movie than the first, but it doesn’t use any of the characters or plots from the main films. Instead, they use the franchise as a setting to have this heroic group and wacky mutant powers. This film makes better use of those powers than the first one, but I think both do benefit from assuming that audiences know and accept that superhumans live in this world.

Deadpool 2 isn’t perfect, but it’s still a damn good time. The comedy and action are excellent, and while the themes aren’t the strongest, the film’s heart is still in the right place.

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Deadpool (2016) Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #50/76:

A raunchy, gory comedy with a decent plot and not much in the way of character development. The comedy mostly hits, despite the overreliance on sex jokes, but if the comedy doesn’t hit, there’s not much here for you. The action is pretty good, even if it’s not as zany or out-there as you might expect from a Deadpool movie. Still, there’s enough fast-paced action mixed with the frequent quips and infrequent moments of heart to smooth over the shallow plot and characters.

Spoilers Below:

The comedy is mostly sex jokes and reference comedy, and they mostly work, even if you get a bit sick of them by the end. There are a few good jokes of other types though, such as Deadpool convincing Dopinder the Taxi Driver to kill his cousin to steal his wife, and Deadpool spelling the main villain’s name using the bodies of his dead soldiers. Deadpool living with Al the Old Blind Lady Who Does Coke is also hilarious. The comedy has a lot of momentum that makes each joke funnier than the last as you get swept up in it all, but the improvised quips in particular feel all over the place instead of feeling like a natural escalation of comedic intensity.

As for the action, it’s mostly standard if over-the-top gun and sword play without a lot of use of superpowers. The best use of Deadpool’s healing factor is probably when he cuts his hand off to escape Colossus, which is cool but not nearly the coolest thing they could have done. Negasonic Teenage Warhead gets one good use of her explosive energy powers to bomb the shipyard where the final battle takes place, but that’s about it. Aside from the lack of powers, the sword and gunplay are both very good. The fight where Deadpool is counting his bullets is hilarious.

The plot is very simple, being a simple love/revenge story with an element of tragedy. I actually like Deadpool’s backstory here, with him willing to try an experimental treatment to cure his cancer because he cares more about not dying than he does about living life to its fullest with his fiancee Vanessa. The treatment does make him immortal, but also makes him hideous, and he believes he can never face Vanessa again, so he goes on a revenge murder spree against Francis, the guy who transformed him. It’s a simple revenge plot, but Deadpool knowing that Vanessa is alive adds a cool layer of the story being as much about revenge as it is about Deadpool’s self-loathing. He refuses to see her because he thinks she won’t love him, so he goes and kills a whole bunch of people, when really he never needed to do that because she just wanted him. It’s a simple plot and nobody really changes that much, but it’s fine for the type of movie this is. 

The movie does really make you hate Francis due to how much he tortures Deadpool and how much glee he takes in it, but there’s not much to him beyond that. Deadpool’s friends Al and Weasel are similarly one-note, although I do like how far Weasel goes to protect Deadpool’s identity.

Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead also don’t have much going on, although Negasonic gets the teensy tiny character arc of deciding she kinda likes Deadpool’s vibe. The two are pretty funny, and try to add an element of whether Deadpool should choose revenge or be a hero and not murder everybody who wronged him. Of course, Deadpool gets to murder everybody and be a hero because the people he’s murdering are just that awful. Vanessa always knowing he was a hired assassin also helps, because she’s all he really wanted. So he gets his happy ending despite all the murder. He makes the choice to stay himself, and doesn’t change at all because he never needed to. So uh, I guess the experimental treatment did its job in curing Deadpool of cancer with no ill side effects.

The simple plot is mainly there to provide context for the comedy and action, and if it gets you invested in Deadpool’s romance/revenge story, all the better. It’s a violent, gory, raunchy comedy, and if that doesn’t do it for you, there isn’t much here. As one of those, though, it’s pretty unique for a superhero film, especially for when it released. You’ll probably know if this movie is for you based on the description alone, and that’s alright. Personally, I think it’s pretty good.

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X-Men: Dark Phoenix Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #49/76:

This is not a good movie. It tries to be a serious drama about the fall of a hero and how overwhelming power and oversensitivity makes you a danger to those around you. What it feels like is the world and characters being mean to each other for no real reason. The special effects are really good, but they aren’t utilized nearly enough to carry the film’s abysmal plot and unlikeable characters. 

Spoilers Below:

The core problem is that nobody is likeable. People are understandable, maybe, but nobody is likeable. Jean is one of the most sympathetic because none of this is really her fault, but she does not handle things well. She doesn’t communicate at all with her boyfriend, refuses to take responsibility for any of the problems she causes, even if she is under duress, and goes to Magneto to get advice after she just killed his best friend. Also, Jean is under duress! The only reason she’s dangerous is because she’s experiencing the trauma of killing her parents for the first time because Xavier blocked those emotions off, and almost all the bad things she does happen when she gets sensory overload. Like, her fighting the military guys and torturing Magneto and Xavier isn’t great, but they are kinda trying to kill her. She’s both evil and the victim, which is a weird-ass dichotomy that the film never reconciles. You’re supposed to feel bad for her, but also she clearly crosses the line at several points.

Then there’s Xavier. This movie goes the route of making him a jerk again, which is annoying. It mainly does this by having him block Jean’s trauma of her father abandoning her after she killed their mother, and this gives Jean sensory overload when it comes back all at once in the present. Everything is kinda his fault due to this, and it takes him way too long to admit it. It makes him unsympathetic when he’s supposed to be the hero. However, his big critic is Mystique, who also comes across as unsympathetic. She blames Xavier for putting the X-Men in danger just to save humanity, when the X-Men being heroes is the only thing keeping mutantkind in humanity’s good graces. As soon as one thing goes wrong, Xavier is excommunicated from the government after 10 years of heroism, which means that Xavier was right about putting the X-Men in danger. Jean is unsympathetic, Xavier is unsympathetic, and Mystique is unsympathetic, which means the most sympathetic one is Magneto. He’s chilling on his own mutant haven island, and only emerges to kill Jean after she killed Mystique. However, she killed Mystique by accident, so Magneto isn’t super sympathetic either. Who am I supposed to root for? Cyclops? He has no personality outside of being Jean’s boyfriend and Xavier’s lackey. Him, Storm, and Nightcrawler all just feel like Xavier’s henchmen in the same way that the two random mutants Magneto takes with him to fight Jean feel like henchmen. Nobody is likeable, so all the big moral dilemmas just fall flat on their face because I don’t care. I don’t want anybody to win, I just want these people to get over themselves and stop fighting.

To the film’s credit, the final battle is pretty good. Everybody gets their shit together to fight the aliens that want to use Jean to destroy the world (yes that’s the plot), and the action is very intense. Nightcrawler gets to kick ass, Storm gets to obliterate a bunch of people, and Magneto gets to crush a train car. Also, the scene prior to the finale of Jean making Xavier walk is appropriately horrifying. The actual ending to the battle is kinda lame because Jean just sacrifices herself to make the villain explode, but at least the big battle leading up to that is cool. The problem is that aside from the final battle, there’s basically no other action sequences. There’s the intro scene, the very brief scene where Jean mauls the X-Men and kills Mystique, and the two part final battle, the first of which is cool only because of how much the individual fights intersect. Xavier’s henchmen fight Magneto’s henchmen, and it actually feels like a proper 4v4 instead of 4 1v1s.

The lack of action sequences is even more disappointing because the special effects department goes all out for the powers. The Phoenix effects are awesome, and I love how Jean’s skin cracks and her hair flows with power when she loses control. Nightcrawler’s teleportation is awesome, as are the effects for Magneto. The makeup is also still on point, with both Beast and Nightcrawler looking really good. If the film made better use of these powers, it could at least have some merit as a spectacle film, but it doesn’t.

As an X-Men movie, this film is even worse than it is standalone. Mainly, it just does not treat the X-Men well. This is primarily because of the aforementioned asshole-ification of Xavier and Mystique, but Mystique’s death is also incredibly lame. She dies trying to talk Jean down, and only makes things worse. It’s cool that Mystique goes out trying to be a hero, but she accomplishes nothing, so it feels like a disappointing end for the tritagonist of this new set of movies. Oh and Quicksilver gets hospitalized in the same fight where Mystique dies, so we’re left with Cyclops, Storm, and Nightcrawler as our three X-Men, and none of them feel like people. They all have better characterization in Apocalypse somehow, and that movie gives no fucks.

The plot, too, hates the X-Men. They’ve been international heroes for 10 years after stopping Apocalypse, then the president rescinds their status after Jean goes rogue and attacks some cops. All that progress, gone for no reason, and this is never rectified. It’s barely even part of the story, except to have the X-Men get kidnapped (again) and to make Xavier look like more of a jerk. The movie ends with Xavier quitting and Beast taking over as the X-Men rebuild, but for what. This is the last X-Men movie, and it ends with the X-Men destroyed and mutantkind in a worse place than it was two movies ago. Like Last Stand, the franchise ends with mutants losing their battle for equality.

I do not like this movie. It tries to be the same type of character drama about bigotry and responsibility as the rest of the franchise, except it can’t write characters to save its life. It can only create drama by making everybody incapable of basic social problem solving. This movie could be solved in like 5 minutes if people just talked to each other. Mystique didn’t die because it was the perfect ending to her arc, she died because it would cause more drama and character conflict. I truly think this movie would be better if it wasn’t an X-Men film, because then at least it would be clear that everybody in this world just sucks instead of likeable characters becoming assholes because the writers need a conflict. Dark Phoenix makes the same mistakes Last Stand to end its series on a dud, with no third chance to rise from the ashes. Fortunately, as the audience, we have the power to watch things out of order and give the X-Men that chance. This franchise has spin-offs, after all, and ones that provide a better ending to the franchise than Dark Phoenix’s flickering ashes.

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Ranking Every Infinity Saga Movie* From Worst (#22) to Best (#1):

22) Incredible Hulk 21) Thor: The Dark World 20) Captain Marvel 19) Captain America: Civil War 18) Spider-Man: Homecoming 17) Captain America: First Avenger 16) Avengers: Age of Ultron 15) Iron Man 2 14) Ant-Man 13) Thor 12) Iron Man 3 11) Guardians of the Galaxy 10) Black Panther 9) Thor: Ragnarok 8) Doctor Strange 7) Ant-Man and the Wasp 6) Captain America: Winter Soldier 5) Avengers: Endgame 4) Avengers: Infinity War 3) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 2) Iron Man 1) Avengers

Really, everything above Age of Ultron is a pretty good movie

*except Spider-Man: Far From Home, which I'm gonna rank with the Multiverse Saga movies

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X-Men: Apocalypse Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #48/76:

An action movie bordering on so-bad-its-good that’s kept out of that group by actually being good due to the banger special effects used for stupid-ass action sequences. This movie exists purely to aura farm, and it damn well succeeds. The plot is paper-thin and the characters are thinner, yet there’s just enough there to keep everything cohesive while pushing things forward. 

Spoilers Below:

The opening is this dramatic shot of a masked pharaoh being marched through the city while throes of people bow and chant, and then he starts doing some magic ritual deep in the heart of his pyramid. It’s all very dramatic and impressive, and then two guards smash pillars with hammers to make this pair of giant bricks slide down perfectly cut ramps into the underground part of the pyramid and start smashing through all of its foundations like a Rube Goldberg machine. It’s so unbelievably silly while being played so straight that it becomes cool again. You can’t help but laugh and be in awe at the same time, because the characters never pretend that this is anything but the most serious shit. The whole movie is like this, and just expects you to get onboard. You’re also expected to just understand the superpowers and superhumans are real, and the movie jumps right in with the stuff they can do. Some guy disintegrates some other guys by using a force push to smash them into a wall at the five minute mark, and the movie never even pauses to emphasize how fantastical and intense this is. This is the world the X-Men live in, and things only escalate from there..

Other highlights of generally awesome yet also really goofy shit include Apocalypse just decapitating three people with sand, Cyclops obliterating a tree and then Xavier remarking that that was his favorite tree, Magneto making giant rotating rock structures all over the world at once, Jean casually walking on air, Xavier going bald because Apocalypse tries to possess him, and the entire Quicksilver mansion scene. The Quicksilver scene in particular is exceptionally goofy. Havoc literally dies 2 seconds earlier, but Quicksilver doesn’t know that, so he saves everybody in perfectly-timed slow motion while still chugging energy drinks and setting up sheets on trees to throw people into to slow their fall. It’s not quite as good as the Days of Future Past scene, but this one is still both really cool and also really really silly.

There’s a whole scene dedicated to just murdering a whole bunch of military guys. The X-Men get kidnapped for like twenty minutes and I’m pretty sure the whole thing exists as an excuse to have Wolverine murder a whole bunch of people. The scene where Jean calms him down is pretty cool, legitimately, but everything else is an excuse.

The final battle is also legitimately good, even if it’s still very goofy at parts. The X-Men are getting defeated so Magneto betrays Apocalypse by throwing two giant girders between Apocalypse and the X-Men. Girders that land in the shape of an X. For X-Men. Angel dies in a plane crash, and Psylocke just walks away while nobody’s looking. Quicksilver almost solos Apocalypse before Apocalypse telepathically traps his foot in rock because Quicksilver is just that fast. Xavier and Apocalypse have a psychic duel that ends with Apocalypse getting really big and ragdolling Xavier, and somehow the effects for this look good. Jean does the aforementioned walking on air thing, and then emits this sick-ass fiery aura in the shape of a Phoenix while she uses her flaming telepathy to disintegrate Apocalypse one layer at a time. It’s actually sick as fuck, no comedy at all, and is the perfect cap to the movie.

The special effects in this movie in general are pretty good. There’s like 5 minutes that are just dedicated to Magneto ripping rocks out of the ground at various points in the movie, and it all looks fantastic. The makeup is also really good, except for Apocalypse. Nightcrawler, Psylocke, Mystique, Storm, and Angel look phenomenal, yet Apocalypse’s comic-accurate makeup looks really bad whenever we get a closeup of him talking. His obvious drawn-on lips just don’t match his real lips at all. It makes him hard to take seriously, which is fine considering the rest of the movie is so goofy.

Normally I talk about the plot and characters first and then the action, but there’s honestly not a lot going on in this movie. There’s like twenty characters and maybe three character arcs. Jean and Mystique learn to embrace their powers, and Magneto learns to not commit genocide (again). Cyclops and Nightcrawler get some friends, but like, this is never acknowledged as an arc for them, it just happens. Nightcrawler just gets enrolled into the X-Men on accident during his first day at the school because the plot just so happens to occur while he’s there. The fact that he probably really shouldn’t be there is never acknowledged. It’s just “Nightcrawler’s here, woo!”. Cyclops’ brother dies and he’s sad about it for two scenes and then doesn’t mention it again. Nobody else is that torn up, either, even the characters who’ve known Havoc for years. It probably should be dramatic, but then the X-Men get kidnapped by the government, so we have bigger fish to fry.

I’m pretty sure the sudden government subplot is just an excuse for Wolverine to show up, but it’s also a connection to Days of Future Past and the original trilogy. It shows that the timeline is following similar paths even though Magneto was stopped in Days of Future Past, which is legit cool. Some thought went into this plot, even if it’s not the movie’s focus. It’s also completely irrelevant to the Apocalypse storyline. The Apocalypse storyline is, by the way: Apocalypse gets some recruits, blows up the world’s nukes in 30 seconds, kidnaps Xavier in less, then does mild terraforming until the X-Men show up to fight him. It’s so unbelievably simple, I genuinely don’t know how this movie is 2.5 hours. It doesn’t feel that long, though, because things still somehow never stop moving. 

I think a big part of the pacing never feeling off is that despite how goofy everything is, nothing comes out of nowhere. We’re introduced to Nightcrawler and Angel fighting in a cage match so Mystique can save them, and then Nightcrawler and Angel join the X-Men and Apocalypse, respectively. Magneto’s family gets a whole dedicated scene before we cut away to another scene, allowing their presence to breathe before we cut back to the scene where they die. Cyclops gets an appropriate amount of buildup, and Storm gets her own scene before running into Apocalypse. It allows everything to be introduced once before being forced into fight scenes, so nothing feels like it’s pulled out of the movie’s ass just to blow shit up. Nothing except the government, anyway, and even that’s tangentially connected to the X-Men’s whole thing of being hated and feared by the government.

I understand why people don’t like this film. Almost all the other X-Men films are serious superhero dramas about bigotry, heroism, and deep characters, and Apocalypse is a straight action film veering on action-comedy. As an action-comedy, though, it does a damn good job. The fights are good, and the large cast feels well-balanced. Nobody feels underutilized in the fights, and everyone’s powers are unique enough that every fight feels like it could only be fought by the characters in it. If First Class and Days of Future Past are full meals, then Apocalypse is a well-crafted dessert, and if you go into it with that mindset, you’re gonna have a good time.

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Avengers Endgame Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #47/76:

The perfect ending to the Infinity Saga. This isn’t a movie that happens to be the last one, this is a movie that was written from the ground up to be the last one. This is celebrating the whole franchise, putting its characters in old situations to extract new meaning out of them. Its themes and character arcs aren’t particularly deep on their own, but they’re instead building on the themes and arcs from previous movies to make something cohesive in context. It’s a celebration of the whole saga, even if it focuses on some characters more than others. Fortunately, the ones it focuses on are the ones who get focus in Infinity War, so the duology balances itself out. I don’t think all the characters are done excellently in this movie, mostly because we just see the ends of their journeys and not the path they took during the Snap, but we learn enough about the intervening years that it works for most of them.

Spoilers Below:

The stars of the show this time are Captain America and Iron Man, followed secondarily by Thor, Nebula, and Ant-Man of all people. Thor is the only character who’s really focused on in both Infinity War and Endgame, so it makes sense that he’s the most depressed because he’s the one who personally lost. I love his talk with his mom about becoming who he is instead of who he’s meant to be, and he puts up quite a fight against Thanos in the finale. He’s the only one of the big three still left at the film’s close, and I like that even he leaves Earth to find himself among the stars with his new friends, the Guardians of the Galaxy. He’s always been Asgard’s protector, and then Earth’s even if the role was in some ways placed upon him. With everything he loved gone, it makes sense that he’d leave to find a new sense of purpose, yet becoming a Guardian of the Galaxy means his responsibilities are even bigger than they were on Earth. Even if he no longer has to bear these heroics alone, even if he still feels lost, Thor is still growing into the hero he’s always been.

Nebula gets a surprising amount to do in this movie given that she’s a side character from the Guardians films, but it makes perfect sense considering that Thanos is her adoptive dad. I love that the Avengers’ plan goes wrong because Nebula didn’t predict that she’d connect to her past self, and I love that she takes this opportunity to bond with past Gamora. Gamora is already in the middle of betraying Thanos, so it makes sense that she’d help future Nebula so willingly. She wants them to get along, after all, even if she kinda hates past Nebula. Past Nebula was also on the verge of betraying Thanos, but I buy that she would fully lock in once she has the chance to prove herself more useful than Gamora. Present Nebula killing her past self is also really good, symbolizing that she’s not the villain she once was. It really completes her redemption arc from the Guardians films, both physically and symbolically, despite her not even being an Avenger.

Ant-Man is a bit underutilized, but I do like how he’s the lynchpin. It’s so funny that the time travel solution comes from the Ant-Man movies of all places, and it really makes everything feel connected. Scott emerging from the quantum tunnel five years later and just being completely blindsided by what happened is a great set of emotional scenes. I like that he’s the one who really sets things in motion, because he literally didn’t experience the despair of losing Infinity War. He still has hope, and that’s what brings everyone together, even if he doesn’t do much after telling Cap and Nat how quantum mechanics work.

If Scott is the spark that gives the Avengers hope, then Captain America is the fire. He’s the one who gets Tony to execute Scott’s plan, because he’s Captain Goddamn America. He’s always held out hope that things can be fixed, because that’s what he does. He and Nat still have hope, and once Scott gives them a way to fulfill that hope, Cap is able to bring the team back together by being the natural leader that he is. Him wielding Mjolnir is the perfect capstone to his arc, showing that he’s finally worthy of walking amongst the gods by standing up to a god-killer after weathering despair for five long years. Cap never stopped fighting, and at the end, when the world is finally saved, he gets to take his hard-earned dance with Peggy. He always believed in saving the past, and when it’s all over, Steve finally gets to live the past he lost when he went in the ice all those years ago.

Tony, then, is the opposite. Like Thor, he gives into despair and hides away, but unlike Thor, he still has people. He seems to mostly give up his work and heroing, but puts all his effort into raising his daughter. The old world is dead, but he still has the new one. It’s why it takes Cap to pull him back in, because he needs someone else to give him hope that he can fix things. He makes one last stand to save the universe, and while he can’t fix what’s been done, he can stop the future from being destroyed. He is the futurist, and his daughter is that future, so he sacrifices himself to destroy Thanos and secure that future. He can’t bring people back because he doesn’t believe he can fix the past, which is why Hulk has to be the one to undo the Snap. 

Banner and Hulk have integrated their two disparate halves together into one unified whole, so of course Banner is able to reunite the half of humanity that was Snapped away with the half that remained and moved on. It’s perfect poetry. I also like that even though Banner is in Hulk’s body, he never fights with it, only ever using Hulk’s strength to wield the Infinity Gauntlet and bring back half the universe. Hulk is no longer an agent of destruction, but a true heroic extension of Banner’s will.

I do think Banner is hurt pretty bad by not seeing the path he took to merging himself and Hulk. We get a line or two, but it doesn’t feel complete enough for such a radical change. The whole thing feels really goofy and kinda out of place, even if I do like the idea and what it means thematically.. 

The Avengers who are given the least attention, though, are definitely Black Widow and Hawkeye. Clint specifically wasn’t in Infinity War, and here he turns into a murderous, rage-filled vigilante during the time skip. This should be a huge deal, but nobody really talks about it, and there are no real repercussions for him going all Punisher on the mafias of the world. He’s in the movie, but aside from Nat sacrificing herself on Vormir, he doesn’t really change or contribute. Nat herself is basically just a second Cap, pouring everything she has into fixing the world because she not only believes that she can, but doesn’t know what she’ll do if she doesn’t. Her whole life since Clint saved her has been SHIELD and the Avengers, and without them, she’s lost. It’s the reason she dies on Vormir instead of Clint, even if I don’t really think it’s handled the most elegantly. 

I do really like the Vormir fight - you don’t see a lot of fights where two people are fighting each other to sacrifice themself - but it relegates Nat to being not just a second Cap, but also a second Tony. The whole movie is the end of the original Avengers, and this is where Nat meets her end. Clint has a family to go back to, but Nat is an Avenger through and through, so she sacrifices herself so Clint and everyone else after her can go home. It’s a nice sentiment, but it means that Nat never gets her happy ending. Tony dies too, but he had his time during the Snap to live the future he ensured for his daughter. Nat spends her whole time fighting, but unlike Cap, she has to die for it. It also means that Clint saving Nat in Budapest ultimately saves himself, instead of Nat getting to live the life he wanted for her. Of course, Clint being the one to sacrifice himself would mean that he isn’t in Infinity War, then shows up in this movie just to die, so it’s kind of a no-win scenario from a writing perspective. Ultimately, I think if Clint had died instead, this paragraph would have been about how Nat should have died, so I think the only thing the writers could have done would be to have Nat’s death carry more weight in the aftermath. Really, she’s the first of the original Avengers to go, and the one who lets the others live out their futures, which is poetic in its own way. Clint saved one person, and that person saved the world.

Thanos is also in this movie. Unlike Infinity War where he’s almost the main character, his job here is just to be an asshole for a final boss fight. I like how he gets to the present time, and it lines up with his motivation, but he doesn’t really do much beyond that. It works here because this film isn’t about him, but I do think Endgame Thanos is the weakest of the four Avengers villains, writing-wise. 

I actually think Thanos is too strong in-universe, like he should not be tanking Stormbreaker and Mjolnir with no Infinity Stones, but whatever. The final fight is still pretty good, with almost everyone having a chance to shine and break out their best abilities. Everyone also feels pretty appropriately powered and useful except for Thor, who is relegated to the same level as Iron Man and Captain Goddamn America when he was the tide-turner in Infinity War. Those five years really did a number on him.

I’ve mentioned before that Endgame is just the second half of Infinity War, and that’s partly because of how it interacts with the themes from that movie. I said in my Infinity War review that the heroes lose there because they’re too emotional while Thanos is logical, and that doesn’t really change in this movie. What does though, and what lines up with Infinity War, is that the heroes become unified. In Infinity War, the heroes are broken apart due to Civil War and also the Guardians are here, and it means that they can’t coordinate anything. Thanos and his army, meanwhile, operate like a well-oiled machine, getting every Stone in the exact order Thanos needs to get the next one. In Endgame, the heroes are working together, executing a perfect plan near-flawlessly and getting mass back-up from all of their allies while Thanos gets betrayed by one of his own (Gamora) and decides to bomb his own soldiers to kill the Avengers. He isn’t fighting as a team while the Avengers are, and that’s why he loses. Even in the finale, the Avengers doing a relay race with the Infinity Gauntlet is the perfect example of how they’re working together to overcome their own weaknesses.

Endgame is the perfect ending to the MCU. It feels like it knows the MCU intimately, to Hank Pym working with Howard Stark in the 70s to the Ancient One helping secretly assist against the Chithauri Invasion of New York to literally reusing the opening of Guardians 1 for Quill dancing on the Power Stone planet, and uses that to show how far our cast has come and progress them even further. Thor gets closure with his mother and Tony with his father, Cap gets to take advantage of his future knowledge to outsmart both himself and Hydra in the past, and Nebula gets to form a bond with Gamora before they try to kill each other.

Even the film’s final one-liner is a callback to the first film, and even that is done with intention. “I am Iron Man” works as the finale here not just because Thanos says “I am inevitable”, but because it shows the completion of Tony’s saga-long arc. Before, he was supporting his own ego because he couldn’t just not tell people that he was a superhero, but here he’s making a statement: he is a superhero, and that means the Earth is protected. Everyone gets their happy endings, as the heroic mantles are passed onto a new generation. Tony saves the future, Steve gets to regain his past, Thor breaks out of the cycle of despair to find new allies and become his own hero, and Spider-Man, Falcon, and Valkyrie will carry on their mantles of heroism. 

Even Captain Marvel contributes to make this even more of a finale. Fury learned there were aliens in the 90s, and with the best hero he knows off in space, he crafted the ultimate team of heroes to fight the ultimate alien. Avengers is the test run for Infinity War, both in-universe and out, and the Avengers’ success in-universe proves that Fury’s idea works, proves that heroes are what’s needed to save the world from those who would destroy it. There are really only two unresolved threads, that being Loki escaping with the Tesseract and the whereabouts of past Gamora in the present, but everything else is resolved. The heroes won, fighting the battles nobody else ever could. 

Endgame isn’t perfect. It’s thematically pretty shallow on its own, and it doesn’t have the chance to do many of its characters justice, even the one that kicks off the plot in the first place (Scott). What it does have is a clear love for everything that’s come before, and it’s channeling all that love to create the perfect ending for the main characters of the whole saga. It doesn’t need a deep plot or its own themes, because we have those from 21 previous movies. We know this world is about heroes, about overcoming corrupt institutions and genocidal dictators to use your powers for the greater good. Even if that means making sacrifices, one day those sacrifices will pay off, because you’ll have put everything you’ve got into making the world a better place for everyone in it. The only thing stronger than a mad god is a bunch of idiots standing in a circle with nothing but a reckless plan, a heart of gold, and enough hope to carry them through to the end. This is that end, and it’s a damn good one.

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Captain Marvel Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #46/76:

A decent action movie with a decent plot twist, decent thematic twist, and really good looking shapeshifter visuals. Who do you trust when you’re fighting shapeshifters in an interplanetary war? The only people you can trust: yourself and your brand new allies that aren’t suspicious at all. It’s also the 21st movie in the Infinity Saga, and maybe the 19th best.

Spoilers Below:

The movie seems to be about the idea that you’re allowed to show emotions, and that’s what makes you a good person instead of a good soldier. Lots of movies do the “lose your emotions to become the ultimate warrior” thing, and this movie looks like it’s going in that direction, with Yon-Rogg telling Carol that she has to control her emotions to control her powers. This seems poised to be her arc, but with the reveal that Yon-Rogg is evil, it naturally follows that her arc would be the reverse. She goes against her training to harness her emotions and the full range of her powers. However, her personality doesn’t change that much after learning that Yon-Rogg betrayed her, and she doesn’t show any new emotions aside from maybe rage. There’s an argument that she’s showing compassion, but that doesn’t seem to power her emotions at all. Plus, the finale is Yon-Rogg trying to bait her into him fighting hand-to-hand with no powers or weapons because he can’t win otherwise, and her solution is to not give into her anger or ego and just blast him. It’s the practical thing to do, not the emotional thing, which means that Carol’s arc is almost entirely switching sides. Arguably, the entire movie is instead about learning who the true enemies are, with the Kree actually being evil, the original bad guys being shapeshifters, said shapeshifters turning out to be good guys, and Fury being part of an international spy agency, but that theme doesn’t really change any of the characters at all.

None of the characters really gripped me in this movie. Carol’s snark is decently funny, and I like her arc of finding her true self, but it happens so casually, like these revelations barely leave any impact on her. She doesn’t have a breakdown about it, or really interrogate her sense of self, or really change at all. She just changes sides. Fury is also decently funny, feeling very much like a different character from his appearances in Iron Man 2 and Avengers. I think it works - it takes time for a man to get that jaded - but it is a bizarre choice. As much as Fury’s adventures with Carol shape his belief in heroes, they don’t turn him into the paranoid superspy he becomes later. That happens after this movie, with his personality also being barely different from the beginning of this film to the end. Yon-Rogg is really really boring. I like him trying to bait Carol into fighting without powers because he knows he’ll lose, but that’s it. Maria is also, unfortunately, kinda boring. She learns her dead best friend is alive and has like one scene of shock before she just rolls with it and goes to space. 

The two best characters are Telos and Monica, and they don’t have arcs either. Rather, they’re just written very well. Telos is proven to be smart and crafty and even cruel when he still thinks Carol is a villain, but his general demeanor after the fact really sells that he’s the good guy. He’s so chill, readily admitting to making mistakes and speaking naturally instead of in a pre-planned, authoritative way like Yon-Rogg does. Despite being a shapeshifter, you believe that he’s telling the truth about his goals. Monica is just super fun, and I do like how quickly she takes to Carol being back. Unlike Maria, she’s still a kid, so of course she believes Carol survived, and is thrilled to have her back. She wants to be a hero, and encourages her mom to do the same. Between this and Ant-Man and the Wasp, we’re 2 for 2 on based 12-year-olds. Also, Goose is really funny. Him being revealed to be an actual alien by casually eating people is probably the best joke payoff in the movie.

The plot is also just decent. The big twist is that the Kree are evil and the Skrulls are good, which does work. I don’t think the characters really give it the weight it deserves, but to some degree I do like that Carol just flips on the Kree. Fury just learned that the Skrulls are evil (and exist) like 24 hours ago, so I’m down with him just believing that they’re the good guys based on more evidence. The double twist that Wendy Lawson was a Kree, but a Kree traitor, is also pretty good. There are pieces to put together all these twists pretty early on, but they still work. Nothing is phenomenal, but it works. The plot has to carry the characters because they barely change at all, but it’s engaging enough to do that, alongside the Fury/Carol banter. I could see this movie being eye-opening for a 12-year-old who hasn’t had exposure to the horrors of war. The “bad guys” aren’t always the bad guys, and I think this movie will make this message land if you haven’t already been exposed to it a hundred times.

As an MCU movie, I think this movie is worse than it is standalone. It’s cool seeing Fury’s backstory and where the idea for the Avengers comes from, but it still doesn’t really show us how he becomes the no-nonsense Fury we see as the head of SHIELD. Carol getting her powers from the Tesseract is a nice touch to explain how strong she is, but it does make the Tesseract’s history unnecessarily complicated. Fury’s and the Tesseract’s backstories are added to, but instead of being elegantly simple like they were before, they’re now more complex than they need to be. Also, we’ve only ever seen the Kree as bad guys in Guardians 1, which really lessens the impact of the twist. We know these guys as genocidal bastards, so of course they’re genocidal bastards. This film is also another origin story with snarky humor, laser beam fight scenes, and a message about becoming your best self to be a hero. We’ve seen this like 5 times already, and the plot twist that the good guys are actually the bad guys is literally just Winter Soldier but worse.

This movie really just exists to explain Carol’s presence in Endgame, and it does work in that regard. The post-credits scene of her showing up on Earth and demanding to know where Fury is really works. Carol’s pissed, but you know she’ll be able to help. It also elevates Fury’s non-existent presence in Infinity War to actually being relevant, since his job is to do what he’s always done: gather heroes to save the day. Also, I don’t think Carol is ever called Captain Marvel in the movie, and why would she be? It’s not even her name, but that of her mentor, which she didn’t know until 6 years after she died. Weird.

Captain Marvel is a decent movie. It’s not as bad as all the haters say, but it’s definitely a lower tier Infinity Saga film, made even worse by how late it comes in continuity. Everything it does is good enough to keep you entertained, and I do think the movie would be more impactful if you haven’t seen other movies that do the same thing but better, but this film doesn’t do enough to make it stand out amongst the others in its genre or even series.

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Ant-Man and the Wasp Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #45/76:

A solid follow-up to the original Ant-Man that keeps its focus on the comedy, unique action, and family ties. It doesn’t do anything particularly unique, but it does everything it does extremely well. It takes the action in a unique direction while ramping up the comedy and embracing the inspirational heart of the first film by showing its heroes helping even their adversaries out of the rut that the law has stuck them all in.

Spoilers Below:

I don't think the action is quite as good in this movie as the original, partly because it's mostly characters swapping sizes in normal spaces instead of fully utilizing the ant-sized world. The ants are also almost barely used, which is disappointing considering how cool they are. There are some banger action scenes, namely Wasp's first fight in the kitchen and Ant-Man growing to giant size over the boat, but generally the fights are a downgrade from the first movie. 

The comedy, though, is on point. Everybody is hilarious in this movie, both in the dialogue and just the general scenarios they find themselves in. Like, Agent Woo trying to learn Scott's card tricks is funny enough, but his subordinate barging in on him doing them is hilarious. Sonny Burch is a wise-cracking asshole, Scott is just a generally chill and funny guy as demonstrated in the excellent opening where he and Cassie do a fake heist, Luis is as unhinged as ever, and even Hank Pym gets in some good one-liners. Hope and Ava are the most serious characters, which tracks for both of their circumstances. One of my favorite bits in the movie is Luis going on one of his signature tangents while on a drug the villains swear isn’t truth serum, and revealing a boatload of sensitive yet irrelevant information, and then Luis putting the villains on the truth serum later to make them incriminate themselves and finally admit that it is in fact truth serum. It's so damn funny. Wasp throws a giant Pez dispenser as a projectile weapon. A human-sized ant plays drums. What more do you want?

Oh, you want good characters? Okay, take your pick. Scott is trying to do right by everyone around him, even as his loyalties to Cassie and the Pyms tear him in two separate directions. Cassie is fucking adorable and not only proves that Scott is actually a good dad to her, but is able to inspire him in turn to save the Pyms after she covers for him in front of the FBI. She's like 10, for context, and she already understands how to be a hero. The scene of her mom and boyfriend being horrified to see Ant-Man breaking his house arrest on TV while Cassie just grins like an idiot is one of my favorites in the movie. Speaking of Cassie’s mom and boyfriend, I love that they continue to get along with Scott after repairing their relationship in the last movie. There's no conflict there at all; everybody knows exactly where they stand in the relationship and is perfectly happy with it. It’s such a good dynamic, even if it's a small part of the movie. 

Hope and Pym are pissed at Scott for sending them on the run, but they can't truly hate him once they get back in touch with him. Even if it's just to save Hope’s mom at the start, they see Scott as family too, even if he messed up big time. Hell, part of Hope's problem is that he didn't invite her to do crime in Civil War, meaning they're basically perfect for each other. We get to explore Pym being kind of a bitch in his past while still leaving it ambiguous how much was actually his fault and how much was just three brilliant men disagreeing with each other. And in the present, Hank does his best to make it up to them, even if he's focused on saving his wife first. His reunion with Janet in the Quantum Realm is so good.

I love that this movie has no real supervillain. Agent Woo is trying to arrest Scott and the Pyms because they're wanted fugitives, but he seems like a generally chill guy, even if he's a bit too eager to score an arrest. He also winds up being the one who solves the Sonny Burch problem for good after Luis' guys tase him. Sonny Burch is the only real villain, being a capitalist interested in nothing but profit. He has no morals and no higher goals, leaving him as just an asshat with guns instead of a true supervillain with a plan like Aldrich Killian or even Baron Zemo. He’s a petty representation of the system of power, which is perfect for this movie. 

Ava Starr aka Ghost is the main villain for most of the movie, but really she's just a parallel to Scott from the first movie if he was even worse off. The film never draws direct comparisons between her and Scott, but it can't be a coincidence that she's a down-on-her-luck criminal just trying to survive by stealing Hank Pym's tech. She even has a quantum scientist mentor in the form of Bill Foster. She’s even more down-on-her-luck since she’s about to die due to magic quantum bullshit, so it makes sense why her crimes are more heinous than Scott’s were. Still though, because the team knows what it’s like to be in Ava’s shoes, they never lose sympathy for her. Hank still wants to save his wife before he cures Ava, but it’s that very wife who saves Ava thanks to her magic quantum bullshit powers. Hank does help her, even if not the way he intended. She can live her life now, and now that she's not dying, she can be her own person instead of the desperate weapon that SHIELD made her. It's a perfect parallel, and a happy ending for everyone except the immoral businessman. 

Even Agent Woo wins by arresting Burch, and making an arrest seems to be his main goal because he's a representation of the force of nature that is The System. He wants friends too, though, because as much power as he has, he doesn't have the friends that the normal people like Scott do. The little people help the little people, taking down corrupt businessmen and surviving within the unchangeable system. Hank Pym being like a genius and former CEO does play against that, but he’s also on the run from the cops in this movie, so it still mostly works. All he has is his wits, his tech, and his daughter to support him, and his daughter has the same.

As an MCU film, it’s an interesting fit. It has to go after Infinity War due to that devastating post-credits scene, but it could really go anywhere after Civil War aside from that. Like the first Ant-Man, this film uses the MCU as a setting, taking the idea of the Sokovia Accords and making Scott and Hope navigate them and their consequences. Heroes, powers, and weird tech exist, and we can just accept that because their ramifications are explored in other movies. It’s a perfect use of the expanded universe, and that post-credits proves that it is still part of that universe.

I love this movie, genuinely. It’s not the best movie ever, and maybe not even as good as the first Ant-Man, but it’s close. The Scott/Cassie relationship is so wholesome, and exemplifies why I love these movies. They’re about powerless people doing everything in their power to make the world better for those around them, and inspiring those who will take after them. They’re not the biggest films, or the most morally complex, but they’re freaking awesome and genuinely inspirational. I can’t be Tony Stark or Thor, but I could be Scott, because everyone has a Cassie.

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Avengers: Infinity War Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #44/76:

The first half of the grand finale to the Infinity Saga can’t be viewed as anything but. As a standalone film, this movie is nigh-incomprehensible in a way that the first Avengers simply isn’t. The movie expects you to know who everyone is and what their deal is when they appear, sparing no time for introductions. As the finale in a series, though, it’s nearly perfect. By assuming you already know who everybody is, the film is able to hit the ground running and tell its sprawling story without ever feeling like there are pieces missing. Every scene is important, and almost every line of dialogue pushes the plot forward or further characterizes the characters since we’ve last seen them. There are maybe a few too many jokes, but they always come from characters who aren’t taking things as seriously as they should be, and the jokes dwindle over the course of the film to let the serious scenes be serious.

Spoilers Below:

The way the movie handles its sprawling cast is by splitting them into groups, each led by one or two focus characters that the supporting cast is there to support. By and large, this works, with everyone feeling as important as they should be. Falcon and Bucky for example don’t do much, but they’re there to support Captain America like they always have. Arguably, Captain America is there to support Wanda and Vision, since while he leads the new Avengers, he doesn’t have specific stakes in the battle against Thanos in the same way that Wanda and Vision do. We see them before we see Cap, and while Cap gets his moment holding off Thanos, the big emotional moment with this group is between Wanda and Vision when she breaks the Soul Stone out of his head.

It goes like this for the rest of the characters, too. Tony Stark gets a lot of focus because he’s the original hero of the MCU, but he doesn’t really do a lot except kill Ebony Maw. The star of his little group is instead Dr Strange, being the one who explains how all the Stones work and the one who comes up with the plan to stop Thanos by sacrificing the Time Stone to save Tony. Drax and Mantis don’t do a lot (Drax is maybe the one character who should do more), but the focus is placed on Quill and Gamora since Gamora has the most direct tie to Thanos, and they get some of the most emotional scenes in the movie. The scene where Quill tries to fulfill Gamora’s wish to kill her but is stopped when Thanos turns his gun into a bubble blower is heartbreaking. Gamora later trying to sacrifice herself again and Thanos doing the same thing is equally gut wrenching.

In my head, the star of the movie, aside from Thanos, is Thor. The movie starts Thanos slaughtering all the Asgardians that Thor spent Ragnarok saving, and then Loki sacrifices himself to save Thor. Heimdall sends Hulk to Earth, basically kicking off that whole half of the plot, even if Thanos would have shown up anyways. Thor is the most proactive throughout the movie, undertaking his own adventure to stop Thanos instead of reacting to what he’s doing like many of the others. The Guardians are also proactive, but only because Thor alerts them to what’s going on. Thor’s the one who turns the tide in the Battle of Wakanda, and the climax of the film is him coming within an inch of stopping Thanos by overpowering the Infinity Gauntlet. There’s a reason why “you should have gone for the head” became a meme, and it’s because it’s not the moment where Thanos wins, but the moment where Thor loses. He does the Goku arc of training off-world while everybody holds off the villain for as long as possible, and then fails to follow through by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at the last moment. If Thor stops Thanos, this is his movie, his equivalent of flying the nuke into the portal above New York.

Thanos is arguably the main character of this film, but that’s really only because he wins at the end. As seemingly committed to his noble goals of universal balance as he is, the man is also a right bastard. He straight up tortures Nebula to get information out of her and Gamora, and is fully willing to sacrifice Gamora to get what he wants. He does seem to love her, but his love is so twisted in pragmatism that it doesn’t have any emotional weight and ruined both Gamora’s and Nebula’s lives. They don’t want to be heartless warriors, they just wanted to be with their families, and Thanos ruined that for them in pursuit of his own ideals. The most damning evidence that Thanos is pure evil is the fact that he kills every dwarf but 1 on Nidavellir, presumably because they have the power to stop him. It completely breaks his half rule, and proves that he’s willing to break his own rules to get what he wants, even if what he wants is seemingly noble. The movie also ends with the harrowing shot of him sitting in that field of flowers, showing him content with his victory just like he said he’d be. He achieved inner peace, regardless of how many lives he had to take to get there.

This movie isn’t really about character arcs, but about the distances people are willing to go to get what they want. People have argued that the reason the heroes lose is because they aren’t willing to make any sacrifices - or “trade lives” as Cap puts it - but that is just untrue. Both Wanda and Quill try to kill their partner, and Thanos stops them both times. You could argue that if they had just killed their partner sooner, then Thanos wouldn’t have been able to stop them, which is probably true, but the point stands that they were willing to make the sacrifice when they needed to. Even Gamora is willing to sacrifice herself to stop Thanos, but Thanos stops that too. Plus, with the context of Endgame, Strange sacrificing the Stone to save Tony is the only reason the heroes win at all. 

The stronger argument is that the heroes lose because they are more emotional than Thanos, following their hearts instead of being purely pragmatic. Quill and Wanda really don’t want to kill their loved ones, not because they aren’t willing to make the sacrifice, but because it really hurts, and they believe there has to be another way. Gamora would rather sacrifice herself than Nebula, and Tony can’t make the call to Cap to warn him and Vision about Thanos’ Black Order. If he makes that call, then maybe Vision never destabilizes and they’re able to remove the Stone from his head before Thanos arrives. Hulk is also too scared to help after getting his ass kicked by Thanos in the opening scene, depriving the Avengers of one of their biggest guns. 

The two biggest pieces of evidence for this theme, though, are Quill on Titan and Thor not going for the head. Thanos killed the love of Quill’s life, and Quill loses it, enabling Thanos to break free from Mantis’ control and win. Mantis also controls emotions, and Thanos is the only character able to resist her - he resists even better than Ego did - because he’s simply not in touch with his emotions at all. Thor then misses his opportunity to kill Thanos because he wants to make him suffer for killing Loki, which he swore to do at the start of the film. Thor’s path has been doomed from the start because he and Thanos are on opposite ends of the emotional/pragmatic spectrum and Thanos is the one who wins. The thing that will let the heroes eventually win - Strange saving Tony - isn’t done out of emotions, but because Strange knows that this is the practical play in the long term. This emotionality even runs down to their armies. The Wakandans have to hype themselves up with chants and rallying cries, while Thanos’ army is a mass of identical unthinking monsters willing to slaughter and die for their master. That’s why Thanos wins: because he’s an emotionless pragmatist, and he surrounds himself with people who feel the same.

The movie is basically a 150 minute long action scene, and the action almost always works. The characters feel like they’re fighting like themselves, using their own unique abilities to pull out everything they’ve got. Everything feels intense, yet you’re always able to understand what’s going on. The fights also almost never cut around, so even though events kinda happen at the same time, you’re almost never focused on more than one thing at once. Even when the two final fights happen at the same time, they’re always cut where it always feels like a natural break in the fight choreography. It makes things easy to understand and follow, which is good because of just how many moving parts there are.

There are a few things I don’t like. I do wish Hulk got to come back in this movie, even if that’s probably partly because I know they skip his arc between this movie and Endgame. Hawkeye feels like he should be here since he’s the only Avenger missing. Him being there would lend more to the idea that this is the last movie, but since we miss out on the Avengers reunion, there has to be more. I’m fine with Ant-Man being absent because, really, he wasn’t gonna do much, and Fury at least gets his post-credits to contribute. 

The Infinity Stones also seem inconsistent. The Power Stone and Space Stone seem to have permanent effects, but the Reality Stone’s effects are undone as soon as Thanos leaves the area. You could argue he’s undoing them, but that doesn’t seem like something he would do, or you could argue that he has to keep the effects active, but that’s still inconsistent with the other Stones. I’m also literally not sure what the Soul Stone does, which is bizarre when a whole chunk of the movie is dedicated to Thanos killing Gamora to get it. It probably helps him delete half the universe, but that seems more like a Reality/Space/Power effect than Soul, especially since the bodies are disintegrated and not rendered lifeless. That said, they’re really minor complaints in the grand scheme of things. Of course the six Stones being together makes them powerful, and I understand why the characters are absent even if I wish they were there.

This movie is a certified banger in the context of what it is. This is what the whole MCU has been building towards, and it's a perfect juggling act of every single character to craft a tightly-knit yet sprawling story that is somehow easy to follow. Everyone gets their moment, and Thanos gets to be the threat that he was built up to be in the two Guardians films. The heroes lose, but it doesn’t feel unearned because you can see the path that they could have taken to win. The MCU is all about humans trying to be gods, and when a god-like threat shows up, even the real god acts all too human to truly stop him.

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Thor Ragnarok Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #43/76:

A delightful action comedy with a lot of heart that is nothing like the previous two Thor movies. This movie is split between two plotlines, the one about Thor and Loki on Sakaar and the one about Hela taking over Asgard, and when the two inevitably collide, the big Chekhov’s Gun comes from the prologue about Thor fighting Surtr. It feels like the movie should be a mess, but since Thor spends his whole time there trying to gather allies to escape and fight Hela, it still feels cohesive. Really though, those plotlines are secondary to the intense comedy and action that permeates the film.

Spoilers Below:

This movie is fucking hilarious. Not all of the jokes land, but a lot of them do, and the joke per minute ratio is so high that you hardly notice the flubs. Korg is delightfully deadpan, taking everything at face value and not understanding the gravity of what’s going on. Loki fully embodies his trickster persona, being funny without being malicious. He also gets to the butt of the joke a lot, like when Thor hits him in the head with a rock to see if he’s an illusion or when they do Get Help. It makes him appropriately pathetic while still letting him be cool and clever. Grandmaster is decent on his own, but his executioner Topaz being completely blunt while he tries to sugarcoat things is hilarious. Banner’s and Hulk’s humor somehow feels the most natural, keeping their goofy vibes from Avengers while having the seriousness of their arc played straight.

The weakest part of the humor is definitely Thor. He gets to be very funny when he’s the one making the joke, but he’s also made the butt of a lot of jokes that rely on him being weaker or dumber than he should be. It’s those jokes that don’t really land for me, since they’re going against Thor’s character instead of supporting it. 

The action is also phenomenal. The movie takes some cues from Guardians by using pop songs, but instead of littering the whole soundtrack with it, it just uses one. Immigration Song is played during Thor’s opening battle with Surtr, and is played once again when Thor powers up to battle Hela’s forces. It’s an awesome full circle moment that lets you know that this is the kick-ass climax. The fights aren’t super kinetic or deeply choreographed, but every hit feels weighty, especially in the Hulk/Thor fight. It feels like gods punching each other, and that carries into every fight in the film. Hela’s actions feel so fluid and calculated, while Hulk and Thor rely on brute strength and Valkyrie is winging it. Every character feels unique, which helps spice up the otherwise simple fights.

Outside of the action/comedy, Loki is the most interesting part of this film. He starts the film pretending to rule as Odin, but his rule seems pretty peaceful and not despotic at all. He takes steps to glorify himself, but everybody seems into it and there doesn’t seem to be any problems. Thor mentions that the other Realms are in chaos, but we never see any of that. Loki gets the rule he wants, and is chill to leave it that way. Even when he arrives on Sakaar, he rises in favor with the Grandmaster and just chills as one of his VIPs. He tries to betray Thor like once, but there is barely any malicious intent at all. He just wants to be adored, not rule with an iron fist, and once he gets that, he mellows out. If we had seen the other Realms in chaos, it would lend more credence to the idea that Loki did a bad job as ruler of Asgard, but we don’t, so he seems fine. Also, one of the ideas in the film is that Asgard got its power by intervening and taking over the other Realms, so Loki being isolationist might be a good thing, actually. Also also, despite this being the film where Loki completes his redemption arc to wind up back as Thor’s best friend from before Thor 1, this film also retcons in more malicious pranks that make him seem more evil, which is weirdly contradictory. His redemption arc here is still really well done, but it’s not handled as well as it could have been.

Thor goes through his arc from Dark World again, learning to trust his allies and draw out his own power, but this movie isn’t about his arc. He’s already the Hero of the Realms, and his job is to rally everyone else into fighting for their people again. The scene where he gets his new Thunder powers is awesome, but it’s really just the cherry on top to his more static arc. His subtle arc is about gathering allies to save his people, so it is fitting that he gets someone else (Surtr) to destroy Hela so he can save his people even if he destroys their homes. 

Sakaar is a planet of lost things, which is why Valkyrie, Loki, and Hulk all have positions of power there. They’re all lost, running from their sorrows and failures, and Thor is able to pull them out to lead a revolution by giving them a goal to aspire to and people to protect. It’s why the two halves of the film feel like they fit, because everything is about protecting the people. Thor destroys Asgard to save the Asgardians, and Korg overthrows the Grandmaster to save the people of Sakaar. I like that Thor plans to take all his people to his second people, moving the Asgardians to Earth so they can have a new home with the rest of his allies. The film isn’t super deep, but it is narratively and thematically cohesive.

The movie’s biggest flaw is how loosely it plays with continuity. It is firmly an action-comedy versus the original two films being dramas, and it makes Thor in particular feel out of character. Loki is normal and Heimdall and Odin stay serious, but Thor feels like a different character in a way that can’t be explained by his character development in Dark World and Age of Ultron. Thor and Jane broke up off-screen again, Thor never found the Infinity Stones that he went looking for at the end of Age of Ultron, the Warriors Three die ignominious deaths that Thor never acknowledges, Sif is never acknowledged, and the entire “Loki is pretending to be Odin” plot gets resolved in the first 20 minutes. Despite being a banger film, it feels disrespectful of what came before, caring little for continuity in favor of telling its own story, which is something of a problem when you’re three films into a trilogy and ~18 films into a franchise.

This film is almost better standalone than as Thor 3, but it’s still a banger. The plot and characters are just good enough to let the thrilling popcorn setpieces and laugh-out-loud jokes take center stage without leaving you empty in the aftermath.

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My ranking of every Amazing Digital Circus episode from Best to Worst:

1) Ep8: hjsakldfhl 2) Ep7: Beach Episode 3) Ep5: Untitled 4) Ep6: They All Get Guns 5) Ep3: The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor 6) Ep2: Candy Carrier Chaos 7) Ep1: Pilot 8) Ep9: Remember 9) Ep4: Fast Food Masquerade

Mystery of Mildenhall Manor is the first one that's great imo

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Ranking every DCU movie/series from worst (#6) to best (#1):

6) Creature Commandos 5) Supergirl 4) Peacemaker S2 3) The Suicide Squad 2) Peacemaker S1 1) Superman

I don't dislike any of these (I'd still give Creature Commandos a 7), but I barely have to think about this order

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Supergirl (2026) Review: Reviewing the DCU #6/6:

A good action movie that doesn’t quite do anything more than that. The plot is incredibly simple and uninteresting, but there are enough character moments to keep you invested between the fast-paced but shaky fights.

Spoilers Below:

The best shot in the movie isn’t even an action shot, but instead the Supergirl space scream. She flies up there after a devastating loss and you expect to hear that gut-wrenching scream, it’s sound amplified because she’s Kryptonian, only for nothing to come out because, yeah, there’s no sound in space. But even without the sound, the anguish is clear on her face. It’s so damn good, and I think I’ll remember this scene if nothing else. 

The other money-making shot is Supergirl smashing all the brigands around Ruthye while The Middle plays (today I learned that song is called The Middle). The focus isn’t on Supergirl, but instead on Ruthye realizing that Supergirl isn’t protecting her from the hollowness of revenge, but from the entire life of violence that it will bring. Kara has been broken to the point that she can’t save herself, but she can still save Ruthye, and she can save herself spiritually through her. Ruthye lost everything, but that doesn’t mean that she has to be alone, and this is the scene where both Kara and Ruthye realize that. The big flaw is that the lyrics are somehow too on the nose and yet not on the nose enough for how loud they are compared to the music, but it only takes away from the scene a little bit.

That last fight scene is also easily the best one in the movie. Most of the others feel too shaky or dark to really get invested in what’s going on. I really like the space fight, but it has the same problems. The last fight though is all in broad daylight, and every piece of choreography feels easy to follow and executed with intention. It’s a great cap to the film, even if the rest of the fights could be better. Also, the green sun making Kara lose her powers is hilarious. It makes no sense, but I’m down for it. I do like the implication that it’s not Kryptonite that kills Kryptonians, but whatever chemical makes them green that kills them, since that’s presumably what makes the sun green. Is it stupid? Yes. Is it funny? Also yes.

The heart of the film is Kara’s growing relationship with Ruthye, and honestly, it’s fine. They kinda go back and forth snipping at each other the whole movie, and while I do buy how close they get due to the life or death situations they're in (especially since Ruthye is not used to this), it just doesn’t really hit. Kara sees herself in Ruthye, as a young girl who lost everything, and Kara thinks she can save her from losing herself too. It’s a nice throughline, even if it’s really not fleshed out enough. I do like Supergirl’s take on why Ruthye shouldn’t kill though, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because it will make Ruthye worse, and her living is all the revenge she needs against the brigands. Kara kills them all too for good measure, since while the vengeance won’t heal Ruthye, it can’t make Kara any worse.

Most of Kara’s and Ruthye’s connection comes from the similarities between their backstories, and I do like Kara’s backstory. She’s born on a small pocket of Krypton her parents saved, and is sent to Earth because that too is fated to die. I do think it’s funny that Clark being sent to Earth before Krypton exploded made him better adjusted than Kara, who was born on “Krypton”. Trying to preserve what was just made things worse than fleeing before it went to shit. Granted, Kara was only born after Krypton exploded, so she wouldn’t exist if her parents hadn’t saved her city, but still, it's kinda funny. Her having a home to lose made her worse than losing it before she was born.

Lobo isn’t in the movie a lot, but it's clear that Jason Momoa is having the time of his life. Lobo’s gruff and brutal, but he isn’t dismissive. He respects that drive in other people, especially when they have a code of their own, and doesn’t go out of his way to kill people. He doesn’t care who gets caught in his collateral, but he doesn’t kill for no reason. He’s fun. The other aliens are really fun too. The designs all remind me of A New Hope in the best way possible. I think my favorite is the little Babu Frik bus driver with the really deep voice. He’s funny.

The weakest part of the movie is easily the plot. Despite it only being an hour-and-45-minutes, the plot still feels drawn out. I kept waiting for a new villain to pop up, but no it’s just the brigands from the beginning of the movie. They don’t feel like the threat they need to be for a Kryptonian, and Supergirl rightfully demolishes them once she actually gets a chance to fight them at full power. The plot is mostly just set dressing for the set pieces, with all the interesting connective tissue being handled by the characters. The villains being kidnapping rapists is surprisingly dark, and the movie never really tackles that. Maybe it doesn’t need to, because they’re just scum who exist to bring Kara and Ruthye together, but it makes them very boring.

The movie is a good time, and the action pieces mostly do their work. There are enough character moments that the film never feels empty, even if the plot is really weak. I’m excited to see this new Supergirl and Lobo in the future though, and I do hope Kara keeps some of her edge so she isn’t just Clark 2. It’s not the greatest film ever, but it’s a good enough expansion of the DCU if you’re looking for nothing more than a good time.

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #42/76:

A fantastic action-comedy with a lot of heart and a love for classic rock. The soundtrack both tells the story of the film and injects every action scene with a heightened sense of adrenaline and awe. All of the characters feel more fleshed out with their own arcs, partly because we already have everyone’s characterizations from the first film. Because the friend group is already established, we can trade generic prickliness for jabs that are a lot more personal. This makes them hit harder, but also makes them a lot funnier. These are people that know and like each other, even if they sometimes act like they want to kill each other.

Spoilers Below:

The two main characters who hate each other the most are obviously Quill and Rocket. Both feel the need to prove themself as the best, especially Rocket, who is still really not used to working with a team. He’s an asshole through and through, and hasn’t quite learned how to show that he cares about his friends yet. It’s through Yondu that he learns that he’s not alone, and really gives him the determination to work together to ensure as many of his friends live as possible. Him giving Yondu the spacesuit and jetpack and then  paralyzing Gamora to prevent her from going back for Quill because he can’t lose another friend is the capstone to his arc. It’s so good. Quill doesn’t have as much going on, but that’s because he’s still not used to relying on people either. He ignores them when they tell him that something is wrong with Ego because he wants to connect with the dad he never knew, but he regroups with his team a lot quicker than Rocket does. Once Rocket stops trying to prove himself, Quill is able to focus on leading the team instead of fighting with Rocket. I do love that what snaps Quill away from Ego’s influence is learning that Ego killed Quill’s mom. It’s all about family to him, and Ego isn’t part of that, but took it away. 

Gamora and Nebula play out a miniature version of the Quill/Rocket arc, except they’re haunted by their pasts instead of trying to claim their place in the future. They both want family, which is why Nebula seeks out Gamora and why Gamora thinks Quill should go with Ego when they first meet up. Quill has helped her open up, and now she can better connect with Nebula. Even if Nebula leaves at the end to kill Thanos, she knows she has an ally in her sister. Drax and Mantis have the least going on, but I still like their dynamic. Drax also has to learn to show he cares about people, although in case it's about people who are very unlike him. Mantis is not his type of person at all, and it takes him a bit to adjust to how to treat her. Mantis doesn’t have a lot going on aside from betraying Ego, but she’s like character #8 so it's fine.

Yondu is also way more fleshed out this film. We knew he cared deeply about Quill from the last movie, but here we learn that he kept Quill around because he couldn’t stand to hand him off to Ego to die. He sees Quill as his son, even though he can’t show it due to being head of a Ravager squad. Also, because Quill actually would have let Ego complete his plan, Yondu’s sentimentality saved the whole universe. Quill’s sentimentality too, since he turns on Ego because Ego killed his mom. 

Groot doesn’t have a lot going on because he’s a baby, but he ties into the whole theme of finding your family. Everyone openly cares about and protects him, even Drax and Gamora. The whole film is about finding your family and taking care of those around you, and the Guardians start the film off by taking care of Baby Groot. They are a family, and the rest of the film only enforces this. Rocket and Groot welcome Yondu onto the team, Yondu shows how much he cares for Quill, and Gamora is able to reconnect with Nebula. Ego, despite being Quill’s biological father, never truly cared about Quill and refused to let himself care about Quill’s mom, which is why he’s the villain. It’s the bonds that make family, not the blood.

Alongside the characters, the plot is also really tight. Even though Ego and the Sovereign have pretty much nothing to do with each other, it’s really Ego intruding on the Sovereign’s plot instead of them feeling like a tack-on to his. The Sovereign are only antagonists because of Rocket’s ego, and are not only how Ego gains the Guardians’ trust in the first place, but also the reason that the Ravagers get involved. Plus, they’re the focus of the post-credits scene. Ego intruding ends the Sovereign’s chance of being a real threat, playing into the bit that they’re way too self-important, but they never stop trying. Ego appearing works perfectly for his character too, since he’s someone who comes in and takes what he wants without caring about anybody else. It makes Ego feel like a big deal without making the Sovereign or the Ravagers feel like a B-plot, which helps the film feel cohesive.

Learning what Ego has been up to is really cool, and he lays out just enough pieces in the first half of the film to clue you in that something is wrong without letting you figure out exactly what. For example, Ego says he wants progeny, but only mentions falling in love with Quill’s mother, so you don’t realize that Ego has had thousands of children until Gamora and Nebula find the boneyard later in the movie. It’s a great set up, and even if the Ego plot is mostly the cast waiting around until they find out what’s happening, it's paired with the Rocket/Yondu plot where the characters can be active, meaning the movie never feels slow or stagnant.

On top of the writing, what makes this movie stand out is the music and action sequences. The film basically opens with an entire fight happening in the background while Groot dances to the credits sequence, and the movie only escalates from there. Rocket intentionally plays music while breaking out of the Ravager prison, partly because he seems to just like Quill’s music and partly to wake all the Ravagers up so he can Yondu can kill them all. Kraglin is listening to Wham Bam Shang-a-Lang when the Sovereign show up for the finale, and when they actually get to Ego’s core to fight the Guardians a few minutes later, the song kicks back in. It’s awesome. 

The finale is an incredible capstone, as everybody tries to stall time to stop Ego and then escape. Baby Groot follows instructions for the first time to not immediately kill everybody (since he never really found Yondu’s fin on the Ravager ship), and Yondu gives Quill one last piece of fatherly advice to help him activate his power and fight Ego. Quill effectively sacrifices himself to save everyone before Yondu saves him, and Yondu gets the heroic send-off he deserves. It’s damn near perfect.

As an MCU film, this movie is pretty disconnected. After the first film has both Thanos and an Infinity Stone, this film has neither. Thanos influences Gamora’s and Nebula’s relationships and arcs, but his story doesn’t progress aside from Nebula ending the film by leaving to kill him. Ego also claims to be a Celestial, but we saw Celestials in the last movie and they don’t look like Ego, so either Celestials are weird or Ego is lying to inflate his own importance. I personally like the latter interpretation.

This film is a certified banger. It takes everything the first film is trying to do, and does it way better. It has the benefit of us already knowing these characters, but it takes all of their arcs further instead of taking them a step back. The first film is about these characters coming together, and this film is about what it means to be together. The action sequences and soundtrack are also just blended way better than the first film, which you can’t contribute to us already knowing the characters and world. If Guardians 1 is the blueprint, Guardians 2 is the finished product, and it’s freaking awesome.