"Invincible" Year Three

Minor spoilers ahead.

Well, "Invincible" is back with a vengeance.  Having spent its previous season mostly on Mark Grayson's angsty personal life and setting up a new status quo, "Invincible" is putting Mark through the wringer again as a superhero.  In the early part of the season, we find Mark still recovering from his confrontation with Angstrom, and trying to strike out on his own away from Cecil's influence.  Episodes are devoted to his relationships with a new girlfriend and his family members.  Younger brother Oliver (Christian Convery) is now old enough to be a budding superhero himself, though one who needs a lot of guidance from Mark and his mother.  

However, most of the season is spent on Mark discovering that he's woefully unprepared for the threats he has to face as the most powerful superhero on Earth.  There's a sense of foreboding that carries through the whole season.  As the danger keeps escalating, Mark is confronted with more difficult moral questions.  In one episode, he ends up on a dystopian future Earth where the only way to save everyone is to do something unthinkable.  In another, he's faced with a sympathetic new enemy that hates Invincible to the point of self-destruction.  We have some excellent guest stars, including Aaron Paul as the superpowered Powerplex, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a Viltrumite named Conquest.    

The pacing this year is much better, with no midseason hiatus and far more momentum driving the bigger storylines.  Supporting characters like Debbie are still very much in the picture - she's got a new love interest named Paul (Cliff Curtis) this season - but they're far less prominent than they've been in the past.  Mark is at the center of almost every single episode, and it's to the show's benefit.  The time we do spend with secondary characters like Eve and Rex (Jason Mantzoukas) feels less like filler and more like necessary character building.  It's nice to see these characters grow and change in "Invincible," some for the better and some for the worse.  There are still the occasional check-ins with Nolan and Allen the Alien (Seth Rogan) in outer space that don't seem to be going anywhere, but we have plenty more going.

I feel like many "Invincible" fans are really interested in the show for its carnage-filled action scenes, and this season does not disappoint.  The action is more brutal than ever, with most of the animation budget saved for the last two episodes of the season, where it's almost wall-to-wall superhero beat-downs and wide scale destruction.  There are several points where the creators are really pushing at the limits of what's acceptable to show, so those who are sensitive to gore may want to steer clear.  Also, we get a love scene at last, not quite a sex scene, but probably as close as we're going to get in an American-made superhero production.  It's clumsy stuff, but I appreciate the attempt.  

I prefer the episodes that aren't so reliant on shock value.  The introduction of PowerPlex was the highlight of the year for me, representing the kind of ethically troubling conflict that most superhero media is keen to ignore.  "Invincible" is doing a far better job at exploring the more morally gray parts of the superhero mythos than shows like "The Boys," and taking advantage of the animated medium to dramatize situations that would be prohibitively expensive in live action - or just too gruesome.  It's also incredibly indulgent, of course, but the darker material is never played for laughs, and there's a certain grim, but refreshing candidness to the way that "Invincible" shows the amount of physical damage that would realistically result from a superhero brawl.  

After four years and twenty-five episodes, I am sorely tempted to go read the comic books, because I'm sure it'll be a long wait for future seasons.  However, it's comforting to know that the adaptation is in good hands, with "Invincible" creator Robert Kirkman still heavily involved, and Amazon Prime committed to finishing the series.   

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I Heart "Ironheart"

"Ironheart" was hastily dumped on Disney+ a few weeks ago, premiering its six episodes over just two weeks.  And it in no way deserved this treatment.  Created by Chinaka Hodge, the series is about Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), the young genius who built her own Iron Man-style armor.  She was introduced in "Wakanda Forever" a few years ago as an American university student.  However, in the opening scene of "Ironheart," Riri is expelled from MIT after one lab mishap too many, and goes home to Chicago to stay with her mother Ronnie (Anji White).  

Riri has sky-high ambitions, but coming from a working class background, she'll need to find her own way forward.  In order to make some easy cash, she ends up falling in with Parker Robbins, a charming villain known as the Hood (Anthony Ramos), and his gang of talented criminals.  She also makes the acquaintance of an oddball black market arms dealer, Joe (Alden Ehrenreich), and attracts the attention of other sinister forces.  It emerges that Riri is still grieving the deaths of her beloved stepfather Gary (LaRoyce Hawkins) and her best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross), who were killed in a drive-by shooting.  Eric André, Shea Couleé, and Sacha Baron Cohen show up in roles that I will not spoil, except to say that this may be the best use of Sacha Baron Cohen in years.       

"Ironheart" is chaotic and juggling too many ideas, but it's also a refreshingly different entry for the MCU.  Riri Williams is a genius like Tony Stark, but she's also prone to making terrible choices like Tony Stark, and suffers for those choices.  Every time she does something brilliant, she tends to do something equally dunderheaded, like trusting the wrong person or taking the easy way out.  Riri could be a hero, but by the end of "Ironheart" she seems just as likely to become a villain, and it's her own fault.  I really enjoy Dominique Thorne in the role, who keeps Riri a compelling and sympathetic presence throughout.  The creators crucially give her a family life and a history that feel very genuine, and there's an attention to the way she talks and dresses and interacts with others that grounds her in an emphatically African-American milieu before all the genre elements start coming into play.     

The supporting cast boasts a deep bench of acting talent.  Lyric Ross as Natalie stands out for her bright personality and skill at banter.  I also like Anji White as supportive Ronnie and Alden Ehrenreich as the schlubby paranoiac Joe.  However, I'm not sold on Anthony Ramos as The Hood.  He's  very generic and the various pieces of his origin don't quite fit together.  I suspect that there were multiple versions of The Hood that ended up all being combined in the end, with poor results.  Or it might just be my indifference to Ramos, who I've seen in enough major projects to know that he doesn't work for me in roles like this.  Fortunately, he's not the only villain in the show; the others are significantly more effective.

There were clearly a lot of ambitions behind "Ironheart," going by the caliber of the talent involved and the expensive looking production.  With such a large cast and so many connections to different parts of the MCU, it feels like a miracle that the show actually coheres as well as it does.  It takes a few episodes for the show's different priorities to all get sorted out, but once they do "Ironheart" is actually one of the better MCU shows.  I think it helps that while Riri Williams is definitely living in the MCU, she's not on the familiar hero path, at least not yet.  Her story is playing more like "Agatha" or "Loki" than "Miss Marvel" right now, and that's exciting.

Unfortunately, it looks like the support for "Ironheart" at Marvel has disappeared, probably due to the current political climate.  It's an awful shame, because Riri Williams has a lot of potential, and her show gets a lot of things right that previous MCU series like "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" didn't.  I hope that this isn't the last we see of Riri and this group of characters, but I'm grateful that they got a chance at the spotlight in any case.

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Rank 'Em: The Phase Five Marvel Movies

The release of "Thunderbolts*" means the end of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  It has not been a good one for Marvel, and I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about some of the franchise's more systemic issues as we go.  I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to rank the Disney+ shows of this phase, since it'll require catching up on a few programs I don't have much interest in.   

Watch out for all the spoilers ahead.

1. Thunderbolts* - I just posted a full review a few days ago, so I won't say too much here.  However, what I appreciate the most about "Thunderbolts" is that it's venturing into some new territory for Marvel.  We've seen plenty of takes on antiheroes, big team-ups, and evil Superman figures before, but approaching all of this from a mental health angle is something novel, and very effective.  The Void and his Hiroshima shadows and shame boxes are horrifying on a level I've never seen in the MCU before - and how he's defeated is absolutely perfect.  

2. Deadpool & Wolverine - This is the closest to a pure comedy as any MCU film has ever gotten, and it's definitely the first R-rating.  The results couldn't have been better.  Sure, the plot is just an excuse to be juvenile, super nerdy, and nostalgic for FOX media of yore, but the movie is really good at being all of those things, and wildly entertaining to boot.  Some commentators seem aghast that Ryan Reynolds and Shawn Levy now have a blank check at Marvel, but frankly I'm thrilled that the MCU is getting a shot of new energy from these guys right when it needs it the most.  

3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - Farewell James Gunn.  I'm glad that you got to leave on your own terms after the firing and rehiring drama that happened in 2018.  The movie was delayed, but ended up being worth the wait.  I was cool on the first two "Guardians" films, but connected to the third, where Rocket Racoon takes center stage.  There's such a boundless creativity on display, and a real sense of weirdo vision to the film that is easy to appreciate, even if Gunn's tastes don't really align with mine.  If this is goodbye to this corner of the MCU, then it went out on a high note.        

4. The Marvels - This is not a bad movie.  There are a lot of things that I like in it, particularly Iman Vellani's Ms. Marvel and a new use for alien cats.  Unfortunately, Monica Rambeau still doesn't have much of a personality.  Honestly, Carol Danvers doesn't either, and the less said about the villain Dar-Benn the better.  Still, I like this considerably more than "Captain Marvel," and the low box office performance reflects the changing attitudes of the audience toward the MCU more than anything else.  If this had been released a few years earliers, it would have done at least as well as…

5. Captain America: Brave New World - I didn't bother writing a full review for this.  While it's perfectly watchable, it's also perfectly disposable.  I like Anthony Mackie as Cap, I like Danny Ramirez as the new Falcon, and watching Harrison Ford return to the White House was diverting.  Not much else of interest is going on though.  There was clearly some trouble behind the scenes, as evidenced by the multiple delays, title changes, muddled script, and whatever happened with Tim Blake Nelson's character.  At least this was better than "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," though not by much.  

6. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - Boy is this movie depressing.  The first "Ant-Man" is one of the better solo superhero movies in the entire MCU, and it's just been steadily downhill from there.  "Quantumania" has my vote for the absolute worst film of the entire franchise.  It's awful as an "Ant-Man" film, taking place in a fantasy world that totally negates the fun of the Ant-Man powers.  Most of the plot involves setting up a villain for later movies who had to be scrapped.  MODOK happened.  Bill Murray happened.  The more I think about this movie, the worse it gets.

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"Thunderbolts*" Hits the Mark

Okay, I was wrong about the stupid asterisk thing. I still think the antics with the title are silly and bothersome.

Anyway, "Thunderbolts*" is the best MCU movie since "Avengers: Endgame," though there hasn't been much competition.  It collects up an assortment of oddball villains and side characters from several other MCU projects, and shows how they become their own unlikely superhero team.  And while it's full of shameless callbacks, especially to the first "Avengers" movie, there are a lot of things that it does surprisingly well. 

Yeleva Belova (Florence Pugh), Natasha Romanov's younger adopted sister, is our lead character.  She's initially working as a mercenary for the very sketchy Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus), who is finally revealed in this movie to be the director of the CIA.  Valentina is being investigated for her involvement in a new supersoldier project called Sentry.  While she and her assistant Mel (Geraldine Vishwanathan) are busy getting rid of all the evidence, Yelena is sent to a remote facility to stop an infiltrator from stealing secrets.  However, it turns out Valentina has sent Yelena, John Walker aka US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) to the same place with the same orders, intending for them to kill each other, thus wrapping up loose ends.  There's also a strange amnesiac guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman) at the facility, who has no idea how he got there.  

You can probably work out most of the plot from there.  As the bickering antiheroes learn to work together to escape Valentina's hordes of murderous minions, they start to become a team.  Yelena's adoptive father Alexei aka the Crimson Guardian (David Harbour) gets involved.  So does a recently elected New York congressman, Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), who is doing his own investigation into Valentina's crimes.  This is one of the most interconnected MCU installments, but you really don't need much knowledge of anything except the first "Avengers" movie to follow the story.  The dialogue is rife with  ironic, self-aware banter, punctuated by a lot of spiffy action scenes.  All of the "Thunderbolts*" team members are fairly underpowered, low-level fighters, so their fights are pretty grounded, with a lot of hand-to-hand combat.  We get a nice car chase sequence, plenty of picturesque shootouts, and the final showdown happens in New York City.  

And if you think that this all sounds very rote and familiar so far, you're right.  What makes "Thunderbolts*" special is that the whole film turns out to be one big mental health allegory, and it's a good one.  From the very first frame, Yelena is depicted struggling with her emotional well-being, and as she's building her team she's also building a support network.  The big bad of the movie is referred to as "The Void," and has the most unnerving character design and power set I've seen in a superhero film in a long time.  It resembles nothing so much as depression incarnate, which several of the characters are dealing with to various degrees.  The movie is surprisingly dark at times, and the discussions of mental health, trauma, and loneliness are handled with refreshing seriousness.  It turns out to be very easy to root for the Thunderbolts because they're classic underdogs - criminals and losers and D-listers - who find themselves massively outgunned at every turn.  However, the much bigger obstacles are their own flaws, failures, and self-doubt. 

So our leads get to have full, interesting arcs in this movie, and come to personal and emotional resolutions that are immensely satisfying.  That's practically unheard of in an MCU film.  It's so gratifying that the filmmakers understand that Yelena winning a fight isn't nearly as compelling as Yelena making up with Alexei, or Yelena giving Bob a hug when he really needs one.  For all the one-liners and cynical quips, there's an earnestness and emotional honesty to these characters that I didn't expect.  Florence Pugh anchors the movie and reveals herself to be one of the best actors in the current MCU roster.  Julia Louis Dreyfus and David Harbour remain incredibly fun to watch every time they show up onscreen, and I can't help liking Sebastian Stan a little more as Bucky every time I see him.  Lewis Pullman is doing just fine, and I hope the rest of the team get more chances to build on their appearances here.  Alas, it seems you can't have a superhero team-up movie without a few characters feeling shortchanged.

There are definitely some rough spots, and I suspect I would have liked the movie a bit better with the originally cast Steven Yeun and Ayo Edibiri.  Still, I'm looking forward to the next appearance of the Thunderbolts* in the upcoming "Avengers" movie. 

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"Daredevil: Born Again," Year One

Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

The new "Daredevil" series on Disney+ is decent.  Despite all the chaos happening behind the scenes with showrunners being replaced and part of the season retooled, the resulting nine episodes that debuted on the service earlier this year are a perfectly acceptable continuation of the Netflix show created by Drew Goddard.  However, it's not the same by any means.  The first episode immediately breaks the old formula and sets up a changed version of Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock operating without his old support network.

The biggest problem with "Born Again" is that it decided to ditch Foggy and Karen, in favor of a new group of characters that are difficult to care about.  Murdock has a new girlfriend, therapist Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), who is boring and easy to ignore.  He starts a new law firm with a new partner, Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James), who is even more of a non-entity.  These are perfunctory attempts to show that Murdock still has some semblance of a personal life, except that nobody buys for a minute that these are people that anybody should be very invested in.  His arc this season is all about getting over the traumatic events of the premiere that have made him swear off ever becoming Daredevil again.  We know, of course, that he'll break this promise, because he still lives and practices law in crime-ridden New York City, which has a new mayor - and surprise!  It's Wilson Fisk.

Fisk has the more successful storyline this year, struggling to navigate the world of politics and avoid his own worst impulses.  His marriage to his beloved Vanessa has hit a rough patch.  There are some new flunkies around him, including a slimy up-and-comer named Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini).  Inevitably, however, he winds up employing all his old tactics to consolidate his power.  This includes putting together an anti-vigilante task force of loyal thugs, who target some of our favorite local heroes.  "Daredevil: Born Again" keeps its head above water because Murdock and Fisk are still both very compelling characters, and the show is pretty good about giving them both compelling things to do.  You can see some of the indecision about the show's new direction in the chaotic story structure.  Some episodes are stand-alone and feel like part of a network procedural.  Others are more tightly serialized, including episodes about a serial killer, Muse (Hunter Doohan), and Murdock representing another vigilante, Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes).  

Anyone worried that airing on Disney+ would mean a watered down version of "Daredevil" should have their fears assuaged by the amount of violence in the first episode.  This is a very adult series, despite a few loose connections to the more family-friendly parts of the MCU.  I don't think it's saying too much to confirm that Jon Bernthal is still around as The Punisher.  The fights are still bloody, and some of the villains are particularly brutal.  There's a graphic killing in the finale that wouldn't be out of place in a horror movie.  Having Disney's resources ensures that the production values are excellent, though the show doesn't do anything too stylistically ambitious.  Probably the only major difference from the Netflix "Daredevil" is the introduction of documentary style "man on the street" sequences, and these never really play into the actual plot of any episodes.     

It's been long enough since the original series that I don't mind too much that Disney has made major character adjustments.  A more cynical Murdock and media savvy Mayor Fisk feel like reasonable evolutions of these characters.  The new show is very uneven, understandably, but I like that the creators ultimately decided to stick with darker, more mature storylines and a bleaker, meaner version of New York.  I also like the greater degree of experimentation that means there's room for the one-off episodes like the one with Murdock caught up in a bank heist.  I don't think that "Born Again" is as good as the best of the Netflix series, but it's good enough that I'll keep watching and hoping that the show can straighten itself out a little more for next season.  

And I find myself very glad that there will be a next season.

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"What If…?" Year Three and "Creature Commandos"

I did "Rank 'Em" posts for the first two seasons of "What If…?" but I don't have much to say about the individual episodes of the third season.  And since this is also the concluding season, I thought I'd put down some final thoughts on the series as a whole.  

So, this season of "What If…?" feels like an afterthought.  Most of its eight episodes are spent on oddball pairings of characters from the MCU's Phase Four, like Shang Chi and Kate Bishop, and Agatha Harkness and Kingo the Eternal.  We get another original character, Byrdie the Duck (Natasha Lyonne), who is the daughter of Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and Howard the Duck (Seth Green).  The episode explaining how Darcy and Howard got together is far and away the best episode of the season, because it's something so weird and nutty that it could only happen in this series.  The slapstick humor premise, where all the biggest baddies in the universe end up chasing Byrdie's egg, actually works.  

Like the previous season, there's an ongoing plot involving the Watcher that ultimately turns into another big multiverse-spanning fight involving Captain Carter, Kahhori, and other recurring characters.  It's completely unnecessary, but in the interest of giving the series a definite ending, I guess it's fine.  I have more of a bone to pick with the lackluster individual plots this year, like "What If… the Emergence Destroyed the Earth?" which spotlights Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) in a post-apocalyptic universe, or "What If… the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?" where a motley collection of second stringers fight kaiju.  The ideas aren't bad, but the execution is lackluster, and it's very apparent that the show  is trying to boost the profiles of some characters it wants us to care about.  Meanwhile, hardly any of the original Avengers lineup even show up for a cameo.  There are a few surprises and the humor is generally better, but this season of "What If…" appears to have been severely limited in its choice of material, and it's something of a relief to see it go.  The series as a whole has been an interesting experiment, but always felt very constrained by studio politics.

Meanwhile, over in another comic book universe, the animated "Creature Commandos" on Max is the first official project to come from James Gunn's new creative leadership on the DC superhero franchise.  It's essentially "The Suicide Squad" with monsters.  Under the command of Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo), Task Force M is made up of dangerous individuals who aren't technically human but capable of heroism.  These include G.I. Robot (Sean Gunn), the radioactive Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), Frankenstein's monster (David Harbour) and the Bride (Indira Varma), the amphibious Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), and the Weasel (Sean Gunn).  James Gunn wrote every episode and is very gung-ho about this being a launching point for all kinds of media to come.  Unfortunately, "Creature Commandos" completely failed to win me over.

I think if I had seen this series a few years ago, before the "Harley Quinn" series and before "Invincible," I would have found it more interesting.  Unfortunately, after the most recent batch of edgy animated series based on comic books, "Creature Commandos" can't help but feel derivative.  None of the characters particularly stand out.  The production values are decent, but nothing special - the animation, action scenes, and level of violence are all fairly middling.  Despite the big names in the cast, I didn't particularly like any of the characters.  They're all extreme personalities who eventually learn to get along and bond with each other, while fighting much less interesting villains.  Each episode fills in the backstory of one of the Taskforce M members, which are all predictably tragic and violent.  

I've liked most of James Gunn's comic book movies up to this point, but the tone is something I've had to get used to.  There are always a lot of juvenile assholes and hostile reprobates trading one liners, and everyone seems to have a lot of pent-up aggression.  While everyone eventually becomes like family to each other, the learning curves can be pretty steep, and the universe is far too grim and mean for the show to be a good time.  This approach is perfect for "Creature Commandos," a show aimed at angry adolescents, where everyone has an awful backstory and plenty of excuses to behave badly.  However, I'm not an angry adolescent, but a bored elder Millennial who has seen this kind of thing too often.  Good luck to Gunn, but I can recognize when a piece of media is definitely not for me.       

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"Common Side Effects" and a "Harley Quinn" Check-In

"Common Side Effects" was co-created by Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely, and shares a lot of crew with the short-lived Max series "Scavengers' Reign."  "Common Side Effects," however, takes place in the present day and has a very different style and verve.  Our hero is an eco-warrior fungi expert named Marshall Cuso (Dave King), who discovers a Blue Angel mushroom in Peru that can cure all ills, and even revive the dying.  He's constantly on the run from the DEA, specifically Agent Harrington (Martha Kelly) and Agent Copano (Joseph Lee Anderson) for his possession of controlled substances, but makes his way back to the U.S. to try and cultivate the mushroom there.  He happens across his old high school crush, Frances (Emily Pendergast) and shares his discovery with her, unaware that she works for a pharmaceutical executive named Rick Kruger (Mike Judge). 

I've seen the show promoted as an adult thriller that is critical of the pharmaceutical industry, but it's actually much lighter and stranger than it seems at first glance.  "Common Side Effects" features an interesting mix of conspiracy theory what-if, ensemble comedy, and trippy tall tale.  There are certainly exciting developments as everyone fights for control of the Blue Angel, and more than a few resort to violence.  However, this is a show where death is awfully impermanent, and the big emotional throughline comes down to Marshall and Frances figuring out how to be friends again as they deal with all the chaos that they inadvertently cause with the mushroom.  Yes, there are environmental and anti-Capitalist messages in the story, but our hero is also a rotund hippie who spends a lot of time getting into and out of ridiculous situations, so the primary goal here is definitely to amuse and entertain.  Also, there are the wonderfully trippy hallucination sequences that happen whenever anybody eats a Blue Angel, which could only happen in animation.  

A note about the visuals, while we're on the subject.  The look of "Common SIde Effects" is very distinct, because all the characters have oversized heads, and oddly proportioned faces, so they all look a little bug-eyed and weird at first.  The characters include an interesting variety of types - law enforcement, business opportunists, scientists, Marshall's community of mycology oddballs, and related allies.  Nearly everyone is sympathetic and relatable to some degree,  but most have pretty skewed priorities, and react to the existence of the mushroom in foolhardy ways.  Even Marshall, who wants to use the mushroom to cure the world, repeatedly puts his trust in people he shouldn't be trusting.  However, he's also not the only good guy we meet, and I really enjoyed watching a couple of characters figure things out and end up on the right side of the fight in the end.  Also, gotta love that Peruvian flute theme.

And now, a quick check-in with Max's "Harley Quinn" series, which recently finished its fifth season.  Because we have a new "Superman" movie coming out, corporate synergy likely decreed that there should be a season of the show set in Metropolis.  Harley and Ivy use the excuse that they've thoroughly screwed up Gotham City to the point where they don't have much else to do, and move to the unnervingly perfect Metropolis, where even Superman (Clark Kent) is feeling obsolete because of how well the city is running.  New adversaries this season include Lena Luthor (Aisha Taylor) and Brainiac (Stephen Fry), with more attention on characters like Lois Lane (Natalie Morales) and King Shark's son Shaun (Kimberly Brooks).

Any show getting five seasons is an achievement these days, but "Harley Quinn" isn't in very good shape this year.  A lot of the original roster of regulars has moved on, and there just aren't compelling stakes to their adventures anymore, even though the show's stakes have always been pretty low.  We meet Ivy's ex and get into Harley's family troubles a bit, and both of the major villains this year are pretty good.  However, it's clear that our leading ladies are never going to break up and don't face any threats that are beyond their ability to handle, so there's not much excitement to be had.  It's not a bad watch as a hangout show, but way too many of the characters are now the kids or relatives of other characters, and the creators have apparently exhausted the supply of obscure comic book characters they can dredge out of the DC archives.  It may be time to let Harley and friends have one last hurrah, and bow out.  

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Can't Take a "Joker"

Well, "Joker: Folie à Deux" is not the blockbuster that Warner Brothers was hoping for.  And it's certainly not the film that the fans of  the Joker character were hoping for either.  Todd Phillips, by all accounts, was given carte blanche with the sequel to the surprisingly successful 2019 "Joker" movie, and he made a movie that will only be of interest to a very, very few.  I'm honestly not sure whether or not it's a good movie, but as one of the few people who actually seems to be in the target audience for "Joker: Folie à Deux," I admit that I came away entertained.  However, I completely understand why most viewers were appalled and the studio is treating this as a complete disaster.

Since the first "Joker" was an homage to the early films of Martin Scorsese, and "Joker: Folie à Deux" was rumored to be a musical, I prepped for it by rewatching "New York, New York," and Francis Ford Coppola's "One From the Heart."  "Joker: Folie à Deux," despite Phillips' protestations, is definitely a musical film, but the one I find myself comparing it to is "Pennies From Heaven," the tragic Depression-era anti-musical that juxtaposes its heroes' increasingly miserable lives with elaborate fantasy musical numbers.    "Joker: Folie à Deux" does something similar, taking place mostly in Arkham State Hospital, where Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) has been locked up, awaiting trial for the murders he committed in "Joker."  After he connects with a fellow patient, Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), in a music class, he starts imagining himself in musical numbers set to oldies and show tunes.  Yes, Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "The Joker" is on the soundtrack.  

The common criticism I've seen of "Joker: Folie à Deux" is that it's determined not to be a crowd-pleaser on any level, and I don't disagree.  The movie actively undercuts the notion that Arthur Fleck is any kind of heroic figure, so the fans who saw him as a pro-anarchy icon in "Joker" get no satisfaction.  Nearly all the violence in the film is directed against him, with no opportunity for reprisal.  The courtroom drama is farcical and devolves into nonsense.  The romance is promising, but comes up pretty half-baked.  Despite the involvement of Lady Gaga, the musical numbers aren't up the standard of your typical song-and-dance picture.  The raw style and Joaquin Phoenix's shaky vocals match the tone of the piece, but none if it's very memorable.  Plus, there are a couple of fake-outs that seem deliberately positioned to frustrate the audience even further.  

It's admirable that Todd Fields has committed to such a starkly bleak vision for this character, and used Warners' money and resources to do it, but my trouble with the film is that the execution is so lacking.  While the film looks gorgeous and expensive, "Joker: Folie à Deux" is badly paced, with a second act that drags interminably.  The scripting is repetitive, disjointed, and dwells on the unpleasantness.  For the first hour or so, I was keeping an open mind as the love story was being set up, and the first few musical numbers were introduced.  However, the movie is not good at actually being a romance or a musical, and wastes the talents of so many talented people.  Lady Gaga is earnestly striving to distinguish her version of Harley Quinn, but gets little of interest to actually do.  Brendan Gleeson plays a guard who is Arthur's primary tormeter in Arkham, and Catherine Keener is his lawyer - both doing their best with pretty empty roles.  As for Joaquin Phoenix, who won an Oscar for playing Arthur Fleck - well, the singing and dancing is new, but the misguided romance and the mental unwinding isn't.  

I'm very happy that Phillips took such a big swing with "Joker: Folie à Deux," even if it didn't turn out the way that anyone wanted.  I think that he could have gone much harder on the spectacle and violence, and darker on the themes and relationships.  I'm glad that there was no attempt whatsoever to make this more related to the Batman universe, but at the same time Philips has also given up on the Scorsese pastiche, which leaves his movie stylistically adrift.  There are a few individual sequences that I enjoyed, and the use of old standards like "That's Entertainment!" and opening with a Sylvain Chomet  animated sequence are points in its favor, but "Joker: Folie à Deux" never seems to find its footing.  Even the ending feels less like a shocker than just putting the movie out of its misery.  

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"Batman: Caped Crusader," Year One"

I've been a fan of the animated DC universe, starting with "Batman: the Animated Series" from way back in the early '90s.  However, with the proliferation of different titles and projects that often don't exist in the same timelines, or have much to do with each other at all, I've been pretty selective of which animated Bat-projects I watch these days.  "Batman: Caped Crusader" is the newest animated Bat-series, based on the earliest "Batman" comics from the 1940s and 1950s.  It has an all-star cast, and "Batman: the Animated Series" creator Bruce Timm serving as showrunner.  The first season consists of ten serialized episodes, and is aimed at an older audience - not the "Harley Quinn" series audience, but viewers who will appreciate stories that are a little darker and little meaner.

The first thing you'll notice is that this is a very different Batman (Hamish Linklater) from the modern versions of the character.  He's still pretty early in his career as a crimefighter, and has a lot of unprocessed trauma, so he's harsher and colder.  He calls his devoted butler Pennyworth (Jason Watkins) instead of Alfred, and is treated as a dangerous criminal by the police, led by Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart).  Gotham City looks like something out of the 40s, but Gordon and his public defender daughter Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown) are people of color.  There are also several crooked cops on the force, including Harvey Bullock (John DiMaggio) and Arnold Flass (Gary Anthony Williams).  The ambitious district attorney, Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader), has some shady dealings too.  Other characters include the rare trustworthy cop, Renee Montoya (Michelle C. Bonilla), an Asian Harleen Quinzel (Jamie Chung), who becomes Bruce Wayne's therapist, and a female Penguin (Minnie Driver), who is still a vicious criminal.

So, while "Caped Crusader" is designed to look like the oldest old school "Batman," it's taking elements from source material from every era, and creating some new variations specifically for this series.  Obscure villains like Firebug (Tom Kenny), Onomatopoeia (Reid Scott), and Gentleman Ghost (Toby Stephens) join perennial favorites like Catwoman (Christina Ricci) and Two Face (Bader).  This gives Timm and his crew the opportunity to play around with the Batman mythos, trying out more complex and interesting takes on the material while exploring some of the deepest deep cuts that only true Batman obsessives will know about.  I like that the series really gets back to its roots as a crime story, with Barbara Gordon and Renee Montoya serving as secondary protagonists trying to tackle corruption and injustice in many different forms.  I like that a lot of familiar faces show up, but often in different roles, or with different personalities.  Harley Quinn is a fascinating case, a character who didn't exist in the early comics, and has always been defined by her relationship to the Joker.  The "Caped Crusader" Harley is a formidable villain in her own right, a calculating manipulator with a downright scary modus operandi.      

The show's weak point is its animation.  The character designs often diverge from  expectations on purpose - less colorful and a bit more grotesque when it comes to characters like Two-Face - but the animation is noticeably lackluster compared to the older "Batman" shows.  An episode featuring Clayface (Dan Donohue), for example, looks noticeably stiff and clunky, without any of the transformation sequences usually associated with the character.  The tone of the series is harder edged, more pulp than noir, and in getting the visuals to match, the show often looks cruder and less polished than I expected.  If "Caped Crusader" were totally focused on street level crimefighting I'd find this more understandable, but there are a few episodes with supernatural and fantastical elements that could have benefitted from a little more visual flair.  I'm hopeful, however, that this will improve if the show gets additional seasons.       

And I'm very glad that "Caped Crusader" got made, and found a home with Amazon Prime away from David Zaslav's interference.  It's a unique, clearly very personal version of Batman from Timm, who has been away from animated superheroes for too long.  It's niche and not as viewer-friendly, and might have an uphill battle attracting fans, but I really want to see where this one goes.  

    

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Five Years After "Endgame"

I planned to write a new installment of "State of the Superhero" for 2024, but I really only have anything to say about the MCU.  The rebooted DC films under James Gunn haven't really gotten off the ground yet, and their television offerings have been scarce under David Zaslav.  There aren't any more upcoming Sony Spider-Verse movies after "Kraven," aside from the far-off promise of "Beyond the Spider-Verse," and "Spider-Noir."

So, let's talk about what's going on with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  In short, the Multiverse Saga (Phases 4-6) is not going well.  Phase Four was massively impacted by the pandemic, and the quality of the television and film output was hit-or-miss, introducing a lot of new characters like Shang-Chi and the Eternals.  There was some grumbling about sub-par sequels, but the box office was still mostly okay.  Then came Phase Five, and the wheels really started coming off.  2023 was the worst year for Marvel Studios to date, with the awful "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," and "Secret Invasion."  "The Marvels" bombed spectacularly, though it didn't deserve it.  The allegations against Jonathan Majors came out around the time "Quantumania" did, prompting his removal from the franchise, despite playing the villain, Kang, who was set to be the big bad of the next "Avengers" film.  Then along came the SAG/WGA strikes, which meant more disruption and delay.  

I'm not going to get into all the turmoil going on at Disney and Marvel Studios behind the scenes that has contributed to the chaos, but everyone seems to agree that the increased amount of Marvel content due to the Disney+ streaming service has drastically affected its quality across the board.  Nearly every announced project has seen multi-year delays, and I've lost track of all the directors who have come and gone from the perpetually in-limbo "Blade" move with Mahershalla Ali, which was initially announced back in 2019 was recentlly taken off the schedule entirely.  The new "Daredevil" series had to be extensively retooled after several episodes had already been shot.  I'm not going to say much more about the upcoming Disney+series, because they'll be dealing with a backlog of already announced projects for at least the next year - none of them very interesting.  However, at least they're hiring more seasoned showrunners for future streaming projects.

What prompted this post was the 2024 Comic-Con announcements, which promised some big things going forward, and signaled that there have been a lot of frantic attempts to fix things out of the public eye.  The biggest news is that Jonathan Majors' Kang is being replaced by a new Big Bad - Doctor Doom, who will be played by Robert Downey Jr.  The fifth Avengers movie, formerly known as "Avengers: Kang Dynasty," has been renamed "Avengers: Doomsday."  The sixth Avengers film is still "Avengers: Secret Wars."  The Russo brothers, who have made some underwhelming films since "Endgame," are returning to helm both.  In other words, Marvel's getting the band responsible for their most lucrative movies back together.  I've seen some disappointment that Marvel is playing it safe and playing the hits, but I honestly think this is a pretty good outcome for everyone involved.  The Russos get a steady paycheck for a few years, and the next "Avengers" films are in the hands of directors with a lot of  experience.

We also got a much better look at the next few MCU films coming our way.  2025 will see the release of "Captain America: Brave New World," "Thunderbolts*," and "The Fantastic Four: First Steps."  I'm not too enthused about any of them.  "Brave New World,"  is going to be another espionage thriller in the same vein as "Winter Soldier," more grounded and realistic, despite Harrison Ford Hulking out in some of the leaked footage.  "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" series was such a mess, I'm glad that Anthony Mackie will have a chance to relaunch his version of Captain America, but the best case scenario that I can see is that this ends up being a homage to political thrillers of the 90s like Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan movies.  "Thunderbolts*" (I expect the asterisk is meant to represent the six main characters coming together) is a team-up movie for the MCU's antiheroes and reformed villains - mostly from "Black Widow" and " The Falcon and the Winter Soldier."  Frankly, it looks like a much less interesting version of "The Suicide Squad," and I'm not really a fan of any of the featured characters.  Florence Pugh's Yelena, the new Black Widow, is okay, I guess.  Bucky's charms continue to elude me.     

Finally, we have "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" which Marvel is pinning a lot of their hopes on.  It's kicking off Phase Six, and will likely lead straight into "Avengers: Doomsday."  However, this has been a difficult piece of material to adapt, and frankly I've never seen any adaptation of "The Fantastic Four" that I've liked.  Nothing about the new attempt is catching my interest so far.  The '60s setting isn't going to help bring in audiences, the "First Steps" title is meh, and the cast is not anybody's first choices for these characters.  The hovering car makes me think this movie is going to be aimed at an audience a lot younger than the ones for the three movies it's following - one of which is the R-rated "Deadpool & Wolverine" that made a billion dollars.

At the time of writing the next "Spider-man" movie was just announced for 2026. It seems awfully fast, but Marvel is going to need those reinforcements.    

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Missmediajunkie v. "The People's Joker"

So, several critics I respect have been gushing about "The People's Joker."  It's an independent film that's been difficult to see because of legal issues around its use of DC intellectual property, including the Joker and other "Batman" universe characters. Directed, co-written, edited, and starring Vera Drew as "Joker the Harlequin," the movie is a parody of a showbiz biopic that uses the familiar superhero tropes and imagery to explore our protagonist's journey of self-discovery.  The project started out as a re-edit of Todd Haynes' "Joker" film, but has transmogrified into something quite different.  And frankly, I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

There have been several extremely low-budget films like "Molli and Max in the Future" and "Hundreds of Beavers" that have made good impressions this year, using the visual language of internet memes and viral videos to put their own spin on familiar genre stories.  The production of "The People's Joker" is even more rudimentary than these projects, using crowdfunded art and animation, haphazardly shot footage of the actors, and even a few shots of Robert Wuhl appearing via Cameo.  The result is barely watchable, a mixed media collage of garish Joker pastiches accompanying the sad tale of Vera, an overmedicated, deeply repressed trans-woman who moves to Gotham City to become a comedian.  Alas, the Kafkaesque entertainment industry is predatory and allows no real artistic expression, so Vera takes on the persona of Joker the Harlequin (a fusion of the Joker and Harley Quinn characters), gathers a few like-minded freaks, and embarks on a career in criminal "anti-comedy."

My biggest problem with "The People's Joker" is that Vera Drew isn't much of an actor or a comedian.  She made her name as a professional editor and has a long list of editing credits, including work on "Tim and Eric" and "Comedy Bang! Bang!"  I suspect this is why actors like Maria Bamford and Scott Aukerman drop in for brief appearances in the movie.  Several of the supporting players are professionals, but they can't make up for the fact that Drew is the lead, and she clearly has next to no experience as a performer.  So even though some of the writing is clever, and the depiction of the trans experience is heartfelt, it's conveyed so awkwardly that I found most of the movie incredibly difficult to watch.  I can respect the artistic impulse behind the film that spurred Drew and friends to create "The People's Joker" as a piece of transgressive art.  Sometimes you have to cheer on the efforts of artists who don't let their lack of talent and skill get in the way of their  impassioned self-expression.  However, that doesn't mean I enjoy sitting through the results.     

As a "Batman" fan, I'm also not impressed with the use of "Batman" IP to tell this story.  Most of the characters are very loose versions of "Batman" villains, including The Penguin (Nathan Fustyn), Ra's al Ghul (David Liebe Hart), and Vera's eventual paramour Mr. J (Kane Distler), who is based on the Jared Leto Joker from "Suicide Squad."  I understand using the persona of the Joker, who has become symbolic of anarchy and the dispossessed over the years.  However, the rest of the analogy is a mess, with characters assigned to various roles seemingly at random.  The big villain of the piece isn't Batman, a closeted fascist numbskull in this universe, but Lorne Michaels (Bamford), who controls and sets the rules for acceptable comedy in Gotham.  Drew spends a lot of the movie throwing barbs at the entertainment establishment, including "Upright Citizens Brigade" and "Saturday Night Live."  I found most of this material unpleasantly indulgent, and it takes up way too much time.  

I think I would have responded better to "The People's Joker" if it had been a more straightforward trans allegory, and had been less squeamish about actually using all the Batman IP for this purpose.  I'm sure that staying on the right side of DC and Warner Bros. was a major consideration - the film opens with an impressively wordy disclaimer - but it would have helped a lot thematically if the Batman characters were able to actually resemble the original IP more closely.  Mr. J is the only one who actually looks like who they're parodying, while everyone else is a mishmash of bad wigs and worse makeup.  I can appreciate  camp, but it's no excuse for this level of ineptitude.  I'm sure the aesthetics are mostly deliberate, and I find them off-putting in the extreme.  It also didn't help that I watched "I Saw the TV Glow" recently, which does trans narrative via pop culture remix so much better.

As far as I can tell, the only thing setting "The People's Joker" apart from other amateur Batman fan films is that Vera Drew managed to sell this as a genuine, personal transgender narrative.  I'm willing to go with that up to a point, but even the fan films these days have production values better than this, and transgender narratives aren't exactly rare birds anymore.  "The People's Joker" also managed to hit a lot of my pet peeves - anti-Hollywood screeds, crummy meme art, and Vera Drew fumbling her way through too many lines.  Good grief, it was tough getting through this movie.     

 

If this inspires more people to make their own amateur films in the same vein, great.  More trans filmmakers and representation are always good to see.  However, I have no goddamned idea what the appeal of this movie is to anyone outside of Vera Drew's immediate circle.  It didn't work for me on any level, and none of the praise I've seen seems applicable to the movie I saw.  I really wish I could have figured out a way to connect to this one, but it's just not happening.  I just didn't get the joke. 

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"Deadpool & Wolverine" (With Spoilers)

This is your final spoiler warning.  Ready?

Okay, so we've been inundated with nostalgia-mining multiverse movies for a couple of years now, including "Flash" and "Spider-man: No Way Home."  The reason one worked and the other didn't was because Marvel is really the only studio with the deep well of IP, the resources, and most importantly the clout to actually make these kinds of movies work.  Henry Cavill and Chris Evans will say yes to them.  They have the deep pockets and knowhow to make ridiculous things look kinda plausible.  They will commit to an iffy idea so hard that it seems like a stroke of genius by the time they're through.

And in "Deadpool & Wolverine," the one thing that absolutely works is paying homage to Fox's (and New Line's) Marvel films, without which the MCU may not have been possible.  Kevin Feige said yes, because that's where Kevin Feige got his start in superhero movies.  So did Ryan Reynolds, not in "Wolverine Origins," but in the third "Blade" movie where he played a scruffy vampire hunter named Hannibal King.  An unbelievable amount of resources have been spent on a movie with jokes so obscure that only a handful of people on the planet will get them.  Tons of younger viewers must have been scratching their heads when not-Captain America suddenly burst into flames, and Channing Tatum showed up as Gambit.  And it works because the whole point is giving a little love and attention to versions of the Marvel superheroes that have been forgotten - Blade, Elektra, the 2005 Fantastic Four lineup, and alumni from a lot of bad "Wolverine" movies - before Marvel Studios goes off and reboots everything.  It's not a full-scale tribute to all of these movies, or else we would've seen far more X-men participation, but to the real cast-offs and afterthoughts.  And there's something sweet about that.  

The rest of the movie is very serviceable, and very slickly produced.  Director Shawn Levy knows how to do funny spectacle, and there's plenty.  Aside from the R-rated content, this feels like a typical MCU film, just sort of glibly bouncing from one fight scene and bit of nonsense exposition to the next.  The story doesn't add up at all, but it's only here for joke scaffolding anyway, so why complain?  I think it's important to point out how little of the MCU actually gets used here, despite Deadpool fanboying the Avengers.  We see none of the marquee characters for more than a few seconds, though concepts from the "Loki" television series enable most of the multiverse-hopping.  This is in line with how "Deadpool" movies are supposed to function, however, operating on the extreme margins with tertiary characters like Happy Hogan and Wunmi Mosaku's Hunter B-15.  I expect more of the same from any forthcoming sequels.  

Jackman and Reynolds are great at the Odd Couple bickering, which turns into some very entertaining carnage, and I wish that they could've gotten the character arcs a little better sorted out.  I was mixed on the prior "Deadpool" films - the first one worked for me and the second one didn't - but there was very, very little that gave me any emotional stakes in what Wade was doing this time out, and some of the running jokes like Peter and Dogpool had me checking the clock.  Conversely, I liked the "worst" Wolverine, and I thought that nearly everything about the character worked - Jackman's performance, the costume (and the cowl reveal!), and the slow recovery from self-loathing and trauma.  I disagree that having Laura and Logan sharing a serious scene undermined the end of "Logan," since this clearly wasn't her Logan.  

  

I thought the movie had surprisingly strong villains.  Paradox is too good of a slimeball not to come back again at some point, right?  Matthew MacFadyen is such an entertaining weasel.  And then there's Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, who is genuinely one of my favorite MCU villains.  She's so viscerally creepy and unsettling, and the depiction of her telepathy as feeling around in people's heads is prime nightmare fuel.  Her execution of Johnny Storm was wisely played for laughs as much as possible, but is still one of the most horrifying things we've ever seen in a superhero film.  If Cassandra is really dead, I hope Emma Corrin ends up back in the MCU in some way in the future.

I've never seen a film with so much fanservice jammed in, and was happy to enjoy multiple Wolverines and Deadpools, the right costumes, the wrong costumes, and nostalgic needle drops at every turn.  Whoever put together that credits montage and set it to the Green Day song that played at every late 90s graduation deserves a medal.  Finally, of all the alumni, I think I was happiest to see Wesley Snipes as Blade again, looking actually happy to be in the movie.  I'm glad that Channing Tatum got his chance to play Gambit, even if it was a very exaggerated version for comedic purposes.  Frankly, he looked totally ridiculous and I kind of love him for it.  

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"Deadpool & Wolverine" (Without Spoilers)

I'm not really sure how to review "Deadpool & Wolverine," because this movie is doing a lot, and is going to be different things to different audiences.  This definitely needs to be split into non-spoiler and spoiler posts, and this one will be the non-spoiler review.  Let's set the stage first.

Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is taking a break from being the superhero Deadpool, after he was rejected by the Avengers and broke up with his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin).  Attempts to live a normal life, however, are unfulfilling.  One day he's arrested by the Time Variance Authority, in charge of multiversal matters, where a guy named Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) tells Wade his whole timeline is going to be destroyed because the "anchor being" for his timeline has died - one Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).  Wade is spurred to go universe hopping to find another Wolverine - any Wolverine - to save his timeline and everyone in it from doom.

It is equally important to know that Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019, gaining control over all the Marvel characters that Fox had the rights to, including "The X-men" and "Fantastic Four."  Disney plans to make their own versions in the future.  A few characters like the fourth wall breaking Deadpool will carry over, but for the most part Disney has consigned the Fox-created Marvel movies to obscurity, and "Deadpool & Wolverine" turns out to be a weirdly earnest exploration into what that might look like for the unwanted characters involved, using all the MCU multiversal nonsense set up over the past few years by the "Loki" series and the last "Doctor Strange" movie.  Viewers can expect cameos galore, pulling from a bunch of late 90s and 2000s era Fox superhero films, Deadpool's anarchic commentary offering very little help for the uninformed, and obscure in-jokes every few seconds.  

So,"Deadpool & Wolverine" is pretty good as a curtain call for the Fox superhero movies (with a nostalgic elder Millennial soundtrack to boot), but that's not going to be enough to satisfy general audiences.  It's been far too long since most of those movies came out, and most viewers simply will not care.  Fortunately, "Deadpool & Wolverine" is also trying to be several others movies, and we may as well just review all of them separately:

Does this movie work as a buddy film?  Reasonably well, when the film decides it wants to be a buddy film, which is not often enough.  Hugh Jackman is a better straight man than Josh Brolin, and Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have pretty good chemistry.  You absolutely buy that these two would work well together after being at each other's throats for a while, and that hanging around with Deadpool would get Wolverine to finally lose it and bring some real satisfying R-rated comic book violence to the screen.

Does this movie work as a comedy?  Sometimes.  The problem is that some of the callbacks are so obscure, a high percentage of them just aren't going to hit.  Still, Ryan Reynolds' motormouth routine is as filthy and vulgar and oddly charming as always, and by now audiences know whether the Deadpool schtick is for them or not.  I do appreciate that there's room for other characters in the film to be funny, and that there's some good, old-fashioned slapstick, very stupid puns, and decent character humor amidst all the references, so at least there's variety.  

Does this movie work as an MCU movie?  Well, it certainly operates by the formula for one.  The Marvel money is put to good use, making the action sequences look cool and paying for stuff the other "Deadpool" movies couldn't afford.  I like that the requisite British villains, including one performed by a creepy Emma Corrin, are all played straight.  They help us to take at least a little of the plot more seriously, even though the attempts to inject some emotional stakes all feel pretty awkward.  There's really not much of a story here, except some leftovers from "Loki" and a second act stolen from "Furiosa," but I'm not watching MCU movies for the plot.  

Does this movie work as a Wolverine movie?  I'd say that "Deadpool & Wolverine" actually works very well as a Wolverine movie.  They avoid stepping on the toes of "Logan," lean into the fan wish-fulfillment, and it really is good to see Hugh Jackman back onscreen playing any version of Wolverine again.  I'm not saying I want this to be a regular occurrence, but there aren't many characters as iconic as Wolverine where nobody's really played around with their screen image very much.  Boy do the filmmakers make up for that here.  

Finally, does this movie work as a "Deadpool" movie?  Yes.  It feels a little wrong that a "Deadpool" movie is this expensive, but the fourth wall breaking has never been more extreme, Deadpool has never felt more zany and comics-accurate, and getting some closure on the Fox superhero universe feels like Deadpool's meta powers being used for good for once.

I'll get into many more of the spoilery details next time.  

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The Uncanny "X-men '97"

It can't be overstated how important the 1992 "X-men" animated series was to the current state of superhero media.  Without it, we wouldn't have the modern "X-men" films, and probably no Marvel Cinematic Universe.  There have been several other "X-men" animated series made since, but nothing quite like the original.  And that's what makes "X-men '97" so special.  The Disney+ series picks up right where the 1992 series left off, using the same visual style and ripped-from-the-comics storylines, but with a massive boost in production quality.  If you watch any of the episodes of the old series today, they're very dated with clunky animation.  "X-men '97," however, somehow captures what it felt like to watch the show thirty years ago, when it was a Saturday morning highlight, and introduced so many of us to Wolverine, Rogue, Professor Xavier, and all the rest.   

It's strange to see an animated superhero series that doesn't seem interested in attracting the current generation of young viewers, as much as reconnecting to the old one.  "X-men '97" immediately plunges us into a world where human/mutant relations are in crisis, with hate groups and genocidal plots around every corner.  Nearly all the primary characters are adults, and full of passionate feelings, so melodrama abounds.  I counted two different love triangles set up in the first two episodes, along with a pregnancy, clones, tragic deaths, surprise family connections, and much more.  The mutant soap opera was always a major component of the series, and I'm so glad that the revival not only kept it going, but really leaned into it.  The show is also closer to the original "X-men" comics than any other adaptation, and cheerfully includes time travel, aliens, and interdimensional beings without much explanation.  The storytelling is straightforward enough that newcomers will be able to follow what's going on, but it's not interested in getting the uninformed up to speed.  And while it's mostly safe for kids, the violence and intensity has definitely been kicked up a few notches.     

This feels like a passion project for the creators, who clearly all adored the 1992 series.  Marvel Studios seems to have tracked down every surviving member of the original voice cast to appear in the show somewhere, even if their roles were recast.  Some key characters return with their original voice actors - Wolverine (Cal Dodd), Rogue (Lenore Zann), Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith), and Beast (George Buza).  Those with new actors include Cyclops (Ray Chase), Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale), Morph (J.P. Karliak), Gambit (A.J. LoCasio), Jubilee (Holly Chou), Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith), Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough), Magneto (Matthew Waterson), Cable (Chris Potter), and of course Professor Xavier (Ross Marquand).   

There are a few minor adjustments to some of the characterizations - Jubilee's been allowed to mature a bit and gets a love interest in closeted mutant Roberto DaCosta (Gui Agustini), for instance.  However it's a relief to find that "X-men '97" is very committed to letting these versions of the X-men be as over-the-top, out of date, and of their own comic book milieu as they ever were.  We've got Storm summoning the elements like she's reciting Shakespeare, and Rogue calling everybody "Sugar," and Gambit sporting a hot pink crop top (the '90s, remember?), and Beast still getting the best one-liners.  But more importantly, the stories are unapologetically allegories for ongoing social strife, with blunt discussion of the competing interests and worldviews behind the violent clashes.

And oh boy, are there violent clashes.  The animation team pulls off some miracles, from recreating the iconic opening sequence to making some very silly concepts (mostly involving the villains) look absolutely magnificent.  The attention to detail and greater intensity of the violence (mostly against Sentinel robots) really help to set this apart.  As we've seen time and again, animation is the best medium for superhero stories because you can do things in animation that you can't in live action.  One thing the "X-men" movies were never able to get right was the sheer visceral thrill of the fight scenes - seeing Rogue toss around Sentinels three times her size, or Wolverine's berserker rages causing massive scale destruction.    

Because we're going to be seeing a live action "X-men" revival from Marvel Studios soon, there are several ties to the current MCU in "X-men '97" including cameos and connections to other projects.  These are kept very minor and discreet, and I love that the superheroes who do appear, like Captain America and Daredevil, appear with their original comic book character designs.  It helps to emphasize that the animated "X-men" is very much its own universe, and one I'm happy to have found my way back to at last.    

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"Invincible," Year Two

Spoilers for the first season ahead.

Mark Grayson graduates high school and goes to college, while continuing to work for Cecil as a superhero.  However, his work life balance is a mess and his relationships with his mother and girlfriend become strained, as the fight with Omniman continues to haunt him.  There is a new villain this year, a man named Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown) who can create portals to other universes.  Angstrom reveals that Mark is evil in most other universes, and usually helps his father with the conquest of Earth.  We also learn what happened to Omniman after the fight with Invincible, and what Cecil, the Guardians, and Allen the Alien have all been up to.  

"Invincible" is back to show us the aftermath of its shattering first season finale, and immediately reveals why the show might be in some trouble.  The second season does what second seasons usually do - dig a little deeper into the characters, expand the worldbuilding, and set up bigger arcs down the line.  However, season two is coming back after a hiatus of over two years, because of the long production times for animated shows.  All the fans hyped up for more carnage were instead treated to a season full of angsty introspection  and soul searching as the characters try to process a massive amount of trauma and pain.  What's worse, the eight-episode season was split in half, with an additional three month wait for the last four episodes.

The season does a lot of heavy lifting, but because the big bloody fights are relatively few, and none of them are remotely on the same dramatic level as the father-son clash from the first season, a lot of these episodes feel like filler.  Angstrom is an interesting villain, but not a particularly effective one in the grand scheme of things.  The shock value of the extreme violence has mostly worn off, and the show's creators wisely don't attempt to up the ante, but the show doesn't offer anything as compelling to replace it.  I've pointed out before that "Invincible" isn't as edgy and dark as it seems to be at first glance.  When you get past the violence, the character interactions are written for the YA crowd.  The romances are chaste and hardly anyone uses profanity.  

This isn't a bad thing in the slightest.  Initially I was worried that characters like Debbie and Amber were being kept around longer than they originally had been in the comics.  However, they both give the show a greater sense of emotional reality that grounds Mark, and keeps him from coming off as too much of a tortured hero stereotype.  I'm certainly still enjoying "Invincible" and look forward to its future seasons.  However, I'm worried that the show has attracted the kind of audience that's just looking for extreme content, similar to "The Boys."  There's extreme violence in "Invincible," but that violence has more consequences here, and I'm worried that the audience is not going to be patient enough for it.

Compared to other recent animated projects like "Blue Eye Samurai" and "X-men '97," "Invincible" doesn't match up as far as animation quality.  It's especially apparent this year with one sequence even pointing out all the different techniques that animators use to save time and draw less.  The bulk of the effort is poured into the action scenes, and everything else is secondary.  I'm not complaining, because the action scenes remain very impressive and memorable.  I think a bigger problem might be the hour-long episodes, which often feel sluggish and weirdly paced.  I'm also not a fan of the little winks and nods at other comic book characters - it's awfully cutesy for a show with this many superpowered homicidal maniacs.  

Easily the best episode from this set is the standalone "Atom Eve" special that explores Eve's origins and uncomfortable family dynamics.  It was released several months before the second season, and is as bleak and horrific as anything "Invincible" has ever done.  I wouldn't mind a few more specials like this, but I'd prefer if the creators kept their focus on the show itself, at least until it's on firmer footing. 

   

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