Tag: comic-book

Supergirl, on its 40th anniversary

  By

★★★
“Revisiting the original Maid of Might”

Before Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow arrives on our screens in 2025, starring Milly Alcock from House of the Dragon in the title role, I thought, it would be a good time to revisit the original Supergirl movie, which was released in the United States forty years ago this month. So what is Supergirl? A campy trash/cult classic? A fine, forgotten superhero movie? A guilty pleasure? A lame forgettable flop of the 80s? Hopefully, after reading this review you’ll be able to make your own, well-informed judgment!

Originally, the character of Superman’s cousin was supposed to appear in Superman III, but after a new script was written, the character was moved to her own movie. Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the producers who had given Superman life on the big screen in form of Christopher Reeve, probably thought they might score as big with Supergirl as they had with the first two Superman movies. Unfortunately, when Superman III came out in 1983 it was heavily criticized, and fell well below financial expectations, which caused Warner Brothers to give distribution rights to the Salkinds, who would sell it to Tri-Star.

It may not have been the best move, for it seems the film got little marketing (though did get a royal premiere in Britain), and was also sharply edited down. It’s a bit difficult to be certain how many versions of the film exist, but three are well-known: 1) The theatrical cut that runs a bit over 90 minutes. 2) The international version, also called “European theatrical”, though that did not come out in German cinemas. 3) The so-called director’s cut of 138 minutes, which is overly long, especially by 80’s standards. Nowadays, you’re happy when a big movie doesn’t exceed the 2-½ hour mark. How times have changed!

The box-office also ended far, far below expectations and resulted in the Salkinds selling their rights to make any further Superman-related movies. Which is… kind of regrettable, I think, because this movie is not half as bad as it is usually made out to be. I’ll go into its obvious flaws later. But what is the story about? Introducing Supergirl to the film world was not so easy. After we had all seen Superman’s home world Krypton blow up in the original movie. But the film actually followed, without really explaining how scientists did it, the original comics which introduced Supergirl in 1959. Argo City, home of Kara Zor-El’s (Slater), was saved from the catastrophe that befell Krypton and in the film survived in “inner space”, whatever that might be – today we would probably call this another dimension.

Here, Kara lives with her parents, other families and scientist mentor Zaltar (Peter O’Toole). The parents are played by Mia Farrow and Simon Ward in cameos; obviously the producers wanted to give Supergirl the same support, with famous or well-known actors, as they did the Man of Steel. After losing the Omegahedron, the power source of the city, Kara follows it via unexplained Kryptonian technology to our Earth to bring it back. Unfortunately, evil wanna-be witch, quack doctor and esoteric Selena (Dunaway) has taken it with plans to conquer the world. Their mutual interest in young gardener Ethan (Bochner) and Kara’s need to conceal her real identity, going by the alias of school girl Linda Lee, complicate matters further.

From that summary, you should be clued in to what the movie is. It’s loosely a repackaging of the Superman story; though some aspects are different here, at the core it’s the same. Maybe this was one of the reasons why the movie failed to attract audiences. But the story and some characters chosen for it come with problems too. While Superman could still be seen as science fiction, Supergirl seems more like a fantasy movie. While Clark Kent’s continuous attempts to dupe Lois that he is Superman were used in the original two movies to wonderfully hilarious effect, this aspect doesn’t appear here at all.

Then again, how could it? Supergirl has just arrived on Earth, differently to Superman. Christopher Reeve’s Superman was originally heavily involved in the script but Reeve politely declined; maybe he didn’t want to play second fiddle to someone else? So the script was rewritten, with Superman on a “special mission” in another galaxy. Neither her room mate – who happens to be the younger sister of Lois Lane – nor Jimmy Olsen, the only character from the Superman movies to appear, know her, so there can be no “A-ha!” moment. Nor can love-struck gardener Ethan see that the brunette school girl he was just talking to, is also the blonde girl in the super-dress. Whoever wrote this should get a “D-” in basic logic. At least Superman changed totally in behavior and wore glasses when he played Clark Kent. Here, there is no believable excuse for it.

The film has other problems. One is a lot of unnecessary characters that are neither needed, nor add anything essential to the plot. It’s especially apparent with actors probably cast for their comedic talents. Peter Cook, often well-matched with Dudley Moore on stage and film, might be a good comedian but is totally unfunny here. The same goes for Brenda Vaccaro as Dunaway’s sidekick: compare her to Ned Beatty’s Otis, alongside Gene Hackman, and you’ll see how ineffective Vaccaro’s role is here. I’ve already mentioned Lucy Lane and Jimmy Olsen. Why are there here? What do they add to the story? Do they do anything that has an impact?

Trimming should have happened in the writing phase. If they would have eliminated, reduced or at least given these characters something of meaning to do in the plot, the movie might have been much better. Additionally, there is a side-plot of female bullies picking on Kara, seeming only to serve the purpose of showing that Kara has the same heat-vision as her cousin. Other strange decisions were made by the screenwriter, and slid past the producer and director. When Kara lands on Earth the first people she meets are two drunk, wannabe rapists who try to molest her. Hurray for feminism, I guess, Kara showing them a Kryptonian teen can defend herself. It’s an ill-fitting scene in a movie apparently intended to be family- and kid-friendly. Wonder Woman 1984 also had such a stupid, distracting scene. So either there is something I  don’t understand, or film directors and screenwriters have not learned much over the four decades between the movies!

Also, the “love story” between Ethan and Kara is essentially a “non-love story”. His love for her is induced by Selena’s magical potion, who wants the man for herself. If the first person Ethan saw after waking up had been a cow, would he have fallen in love with a cow? The length of the movie was already criticized when it originally came out, even though it was shorter at the time. And the version that I knew from seeing the movie in the late eighties on German TV was shorter still. You can hardly expect a movie, of whatever quality, that has been edited down so much to still make much sense at all.

It’s no surprise O’Toole and Dunaway were nominated for Razzie Awards, though it’s not all their fault. Obviously, director Jeannot Szwarc had no problem with Dunaway going as campy as she wanted. It’s a pity because her role could have been convincing or even menacing, played straight. There is no doubt Dunaway, with a fine reputation of playing difficult characters, could have given a good, villainous performance. Heck, she already played a first class femme fatale in the Musketeer movies for the Salkinds in the 70’s. Of course when you go camp, you can hardly blame Dunaway for trying to repeat what Gene Hackman successfully did as Lex Luthor, But you have to be really funny, something that worked for the Hackman-Beatty pairing but not here.

O’Toole has only two significant scenes in the movie, at the beginning and the end. His performance in the first seems a bit uninspired and odd. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was drunk while doing it; the actor was famous for this, like Richard Burton or Oliver Reed. The second, where Zaltar seems to have given up all hope and sacrifices himself for Kara, is quite well done and touching. Although a strange decision was made in the German dubbing, where someone came up with the idea of casting the German voice of Clint Eastwood for him!

For all the negatives I have listed, there are quite a few positives, shining bright in this movie pursued by bad luck. Helen Slater probably gave the performance of her career. She is really, really good playing the female version of the true-blue hero, as well as the innocent-looking big-eyed teenager in Argo City, and her cute school girl role of Linda Lee. Slater was even nominated for a Saturn Award for her performance. If the film had been better – or at least financially successful – maybe she could have had a similar career to the one Christopher Reeve enjoyed due to his Superman role? Alas, it wasn’t to be…

The special effects of the film may look dated today – and they are. But considering all of it was before the advent of CGI, digital and computer effects, it’s impressive what could be achieved by in-camera-tricks, visual illusions, miniature and composite effects. Sure, a lot of effects could be simply generated on the computer today. But even a cardboard photo cut-out of Supergirl, drawn quickly out of the water, is astonishingly effective and can only be recognized for what it is today, due to DVDs and Blu-Rays. How do you show Supergirl almost torn to pieces by a monster in 1984? At that time all the filmmakers had were some distortion effects by a changed perspective – nevertheless, it works, and there are some very nice effects.

As kitschy as it seems, I personally loved the aerial ballet of Supergirl when she arrives. For the first time too, we get to see the Phantom Zone: it’s constantly mentioned in the Superman movies, but here is actually a set in Britain’s Pinewood studios (used for many Bond movies), and must have been one helluva work to create. Selena’s traps and the shaking, fiery ground are impressive, as are her manipulations in the abandoned event park. My favourite effect might be Kara fighting an invisible monster which you only can recognize by its impact on the environment, e.g. giant prints on the ground, breaking fences, etc. This seems directly inspired by the classic “ID” monster from Forbidden Planet.

All in all, the effects were as good as possible at the time, so shouldn’t be judged by today’s standards. The film in addition boasts great production design, luscious exterior shots, a well-timed tractor-on-the-loose action sequence, appropriate and good-looking costumes (especially for Dunaway), all of which are undeniable pluses. Then there is the – as always – great Jerry Goldsmith score which makes up more than half the movie’s atmosphere. It’s especially impressive, considering I could hardly imagine anyone else able to step in the shoes of John Williams, who scored the original Superman score.

Supergirl is still not a great comic book superhero movie. Nor a bad one: more somewhat mediocre, but kind of sympathetic. As mentioned, the movie had bad luck, being both too late and too early. Too late, as it seems audiences had started to grow tired of the whole Superman circus: within six years people had been exposed to four Superman-related movies. The “All-American” hero had become kind of passé with Schwarzenegger, Stallone and co. introducing the new, harder and gritty anti-hero who would dominate the screens for the next decade. Alternatively, you had more goofy heroes like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop or the Ghostbusters. A simple, straightforward hero didn’t fit into this time anymore.

But the movie might have been too early as well. At that time, audiences were simply not interested in female comic book heroes as flops like Red Sonja, Sheena and Brenda Starr proved again and again. Even a further attempt in the early 2000 with Elektra, Catwoman and the like failed. It’s only recently that movies like Black Widow, Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman are really scoring big at the box-office. This was also before the “girl power” era. In the late 90s and early 2000s, with TV shows like Charmed, Buffy, Xena, Kim Possible and movies like The Craft, Mean Girls or Legally Blonde, a movie about a school girl fighting an evil, powerful witch could have scored big – but well… not in the 80s!

So… maybe “Supergirl” was just a bit ahead of its time. Judge for yourself.  What about my interest in the movie? Well, I saw photos of it in film magazines, years after it was in cinemas. At that time the movie had not been shown on TV and my family had no VCR yet. All I had was some photos and my imagination to tell me what the movie might be about. For me the film belongs in the category of enjoyable fantasy movies of the 1980s together with fare like The Neverending Story or Highlander. That photo of young Helen Slater with her clenched fist, flying with the glowing sun in the background, still hangs on my wall! So I may be a bit biased concerning the film. But aren’t we all regarding our favourites?

Dir: Jeannot Szwarc
Star: Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway, Hart Bochner, Peter Cook

Knuckle Girl

  By

★★★
“Punches below its weight.”

This film is based on a Korean webcomic, but has been relocated to Japan. I can’t help wondering if something was lost in the process, because it feels like I should have liked this more than I did. Ran Tachibana (Miyoshi) is a promising amateur boxer, who gets devastating news when the body of her sister Yuzuki is found inside a burned-out vehicle. The cops call it suicide and quickly close the case. Except Ran doesn’t believe the corpse is Yuzuki, and begins to investigate what might have happened. The search leads her to an underground fight club run by the brutal Nikaido (Ito), who is holding Yuzuki hostage. He makes Ran an offer: beat his undefeated champion, and he’ll let Yuzuki go.

Naturally, it’s not as simple as that, with Nikaido reneging on his word. Fortunately, Ran has help in the shape of bike mechanic Kamiya (Maeda) and hacker Naruse (Hosoda), who help her go after Nikaido and take down his operation. There’s also concerns on the criminal side, with Nikaido’s bosses feeling he’s a loose cannon. It all feels too much to cram into a single movie, and I suspect it might have been better served in the form of a TV series. As is, elements like Yuzuki’s “magic blood” don’t appear to have much purpose. They seem there purely so fans of the comic will go “Oh, yeah!” and make little or no sense to casual viewers like me.

I think it’s probably a case whee less would have been more in terms of plotting. Keep it simple, perhaps removing side characters like Kamiya or Naurse, and focus just on Ran infiltrating the fight club and working her way up through it. Sure, it wouldn’t score points for originality, but it might have sustained my attention better. As is, in between the action, I must confess this sometimes struggled to retain focus. Considering the obviously non-trivial amount of resources that went into the production, it’s a shame they didn’t put as much effort into the story. For this undeniably looks spiffy, with the underground arena, in the shape of an eye, well-designed, and I liked the over-perky pair of MCs as well.

But I’m here for the fights, and these were… decent enough. I appreciated that the film acknowledged the heroine’s lack of size, and explicitly discussed how she would need to use her speed and agility to beat larger opponents. That’s true, even with the equalizer of knuckle-dusters, given to her by Nikaido to even up the betting odds a little. Miyoshi only had a few months training, but it’s likely easier to train an actress to fake fight, than a fighter to fake act, and it’s adequately convincing. But there are really only three or four sequences in the whole thing, with the story having to rush past most of them, because it has to deal with all the other elements. It’s all okay, I suppose, yet definitely feels like a wasted opportunity.

Dir: Hong-Seung Yoon
Star: Ayaka Miyoshi, Gôki Maeda, Hideaki Ito, Kanata Hosoda

The Marvels

  By

★★
“Bombs away!”

Like it or not, the history of action heroines is littered with commercial failures. Cutthroat Island set the gold standard for a long time, but there have been many others, from Barb Wire through to Mulan (no – the other one…). The reasons for their failure varied: sometimes the film was at least partly to blame; sometimes, it was external factors. But last year, The Marvels took things to a new height. Not just the biggest bomb of the year. Or even the biggest bomb in girls with guns movies. While Hollywood accounting will always leave such things uncertain, The Marvels may well be the biggest loss-maker in film history. It had a production budget of $270 million, which doesn’t take into account marketing or other post-production costs, and took in only about $206 million worldwide. Take off things like the cinemas’ cut, and the loss for Disney and Co. is estimated at a staggering $237 million.

Why did The Marvels fall so hard? To be honest, discussing that is perhaps more interesting than talking about the film itself. Not that it’s terrible. There are movies where, you see three minutes and are left wondering, “What the hell were they thinking?” and whose failure was inevitable. Cats, for example: even as something of a connoisseur of bad movies, I’ve not been able to bring myself to watch more than clips. The Marvels is not on that level. Sure, it’s not very good, and we will get to that. But it’s no worse than other movies from the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes. Line this up with Morbius, Suicide Squad and Madame Web – I’d defy someone without prior knowledge to point the finger at The Marvels as being the worst-ever bomb.

I think a whole slew of factors went into its failure, beyond the quality of the movie. As we saw recently with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, even good films can tank abysmally. Here, in no particular order, are the elements I think were involved:

  • Superhero fatigue. After Avengers: Endgame, interest and ticket sales could only go down.
  • A sequel to a film no-one wanted. Sure, Captain Marvel did well. But it was certainly helped because it came between Infinity War and Endgame. She is not anything like an iconic character.
  • A run of underwhelming Marvel entries. Thor, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy. All made less than the preceding films in those franchises, and were less well received critically. At some point people will just stop watching.
  • General downtown in cinema going. The pandemic whacked the legs out from box-office returns, and people haven’t come back. In this case, perhaps related to:
  • Quick release on streaming. It was available on Disney+ less than three months after hitting cinemas. Anyone on the fence would be forgiven for thinking, “I’ll just catch it at home.”

It’s worth mentioning a couple of reasons I don’t think had much impact. Some suggest the actors’ strike handcuffed the film, preventing the stars from doing publicity for it. Others blame a backlash against women-led movies. But neither of these seem to have affected other entries. For instance, you might have heard of this little woman-led film called Barbie? It did okay, or so I’ve heard. You don’t need to invoke conspiracy theories to explain The Marvels‘ failure. The fact it’s taken me, a devoted fan of action heroine movies, more than seven months to get round to watching it, probably tells you all you need to know.

So, let’s get to the film, which sees three action heroines for the prices of one! How can you go wrong? Well… As well as Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel (Larson), there’s Monica Rambeau (Parris), whom I last saw as a little girl in Captain Marvel, so I guess several decades have passed since then? Like so much here, don’t expect an explanation. She apparently got superpowers after some “Hex” thing, and can manipulate electromagnetic radiation. There’s also Kamala Khan (Vellani), Ms. Marvel, who is a dedicated Captain Marvel fan-girl, but has powers courtesy of a magical bangle. However, the other bangle is in the possession of Dar-Benn (Ashton), leader of the Kree who intends to use it for malicious purposes. Because reasons, Danvers, Rambeau and Khan swap places with each other whenever they use their powers, which complicates trying to stop Dar-Benn.

I’m not prepared to swear to all of the above, since the film makes the assumption I have seen the related TV shows WandaVision and Ms. Marvel, which fill in the background of both Monica and Kamala. I have, in fact, not. This, combined with my general apathy about the MCU, left me frequently confused and/or uninterested in the finer points of whatever was going on. The lack of internal characterization present here which resulted from it, left me not caring very much about anyone – especially Khan, who seems like an annoying teenager, shoehorned in purely to appeal to other annoying teenagers. [Memo to Marvel: make movies to appeal to a minority, and only a minority will find them appealing] Rambeau isn’t much better, and Danvers just seemed like your basic, overpowered superhero.

Most of the running-time – and, at least, it’s relatively short, not much more than 90 minutes before the closing credits start – is spent bipping around the galaxy, going to places the film presumes we know, and meeting people we are supposed to recognize. I would say, the budget shows up on screen, and the action is decent, especially when the three heroines figure out how to team-up properly. But it tends to have the same problem as in Captain Marvel, where the fights frequently feel so artificial as to be lacking in impact. The only sequence which genuinely entertained me had the crew of a space-station pursued and eaten by feline-shaped extra-terrestrials, while Midnight from the musical Cats plays. It’s utterly glorious. Shame it is also so totally at odds with the po-faced approach generally taken elsewhere, which leaves little or no impression at all.

To be honest, I’d rather have five $50 million movies than one costing $270 million, and if this brings an end to the fondness for ridiculously over-priced Hollywood movies, it’s a price I’m willing to pay. It’s a shame it will, almost certainly, have a negative impact on our genre, because we’ll be forced to hear again that nobody wants to see action heroines. That’s not the case, of course. But if you spend more than a quarter-billion dollars and this underwhelming result – complete with, inexplicably, musical numbers – is all you can manage, it’s not hard to conclude something needs to change.

Dir: Nia DaCosta
Star: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Zawe Ashton 

Madame Web

  By

★★★
“Adventures in Babysitting.”

Having read quite a number of articles on (p)reviews for this movie and now having seen it myself, I’m beginning to think you can buy negative reviews to torpedo product that might compete with yours. I’ve seen this before, e. g. when the press tore down John Carter so that The Hunger Games could become the defining blockbuster franchise of the decade. Or when it became very obvious Disney had ties to RottenTomatoes.com: the Internet may recall this as the “Great Captain Marvel online war” :) It seems this takes place in particular with comic-book or superhero movies not from Disney/Marvel. It happened regularly with the X-Men movies, when 20th Century Fox still existed as an independent studio. It happened when the – admittedly, very often not so good – DC movies came out: neither Black Adam nor Aquaman 2 were as bad as the reviews made them.

And now, it seems to happen with “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” (SSU). That the quality of these vary greatly is not in question. Of course they do. While the Spider-Man films with Tom Holland are beloved by fans, and seem to be well-regarded by critics, things don’t look so bright for the extended universe Sony is building. The first Venom movie with Tom Hardy was torn down by the media, but cheered by the cinema-going masses; the second was similarly split. Then Morbius with Jared Leto got almost entirely negative reviews and that trend continues with Madame Web. Things don’t look good for Kraven the Hunter, another entry in the universe due out later this year.

I’ll be honest and admit it: Madame Web is not a great cinematic revelation, it’s definitely not the “must-see” superhero film of the year and probably won’t blow your socks off. But – and this is where I feel I get justifiably angry – “not great” is not the same as “bad”. I’m coming to the conclusion you can’t trust sites like Rotten Tomatoes, and you shouldn’t read reviews before you watch. A movie review (and this counts for mine too) can’t tell if you will like a movie or not. Follow your instinct and make up your own mind, that’s my friendly advice to the dedicated film-goer. This is not to say Madame Web is perfect entertainment. But I will defend it against anyone saying it is a “bad” movie. You may call it bland, boring or mediocre if you like, but that’s not the same. I’ve seen enough bad movies in my lifetime to know, bad looks very different.

So, what’s up with Madame Web? The film starts in the South American jungle, where pregnant scientist Constance (Kerry Bishé) seeks a specific spider for its medical uses, but is killed by assistant Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who wants the spider for himself. Apparently – though it is never explained how – he uses it to become a wealthy and still astonishingly young looking man (this prologue happens in 1973, than jumps to 2003, so he should be around 60?). The so-called “spider people” can’t save Constance, who was bitten by a spider before giving birth, but give her daughter up for adoption.

Jump forward to 2003. Cassandra “Cassy” Webb (Johnson), Constance’s daughter, is a paramedic who saves lives everyday, but is strongly averse to emotional attachment. I wondered what she does in her leisure time – but then, the same could be said about me! After being drowned, dead for three minutes, and revived, she has visions which turn out to be clairvoyant; she can glimpse the future moments before it happens. After experiencing the death of a colleague, she realizes she can act to stop her visions taking place. [What a revelation!] While on a train she foresees the death of three girls, killed by a masked man with superpowers. She tries her best to save them; no easy job as she has to improvise and out-think her pursuer constantly, while taking care of young girls who don’t necessarily follow her orders. That’s the moment you realize this movie might be made with 30-year-old moms as its target audience, which is something I have not seen before on the big screen.. Kudos for originality, I think.

Some changes from the comics were obvious. I’m no expert on all things and characters around Spider-Man but last time I saw Madame Web, was a 90’s animated series where she was an old, blind woman in a wheel-chair, She controlled the web of time and sent ol’ Spidey on a mission. This film goes full circle, having Cassie at the end in a wheel-chair and wearing dark glasses – enough time to age, when she needs to appear in a Spidey movie playing 20-something years in the future. Also, the three girls who will be Spider-Women and -Girls of the future (played by Sweeney, O’Connor and Merced) are not really characters I know. Having had a thing for the Spider-Woman comic an eternity ago, I remember that Mattie Franklin was white and the niece of J. Jonah Jameson. Here she is black and her background has totally changed. I guess the aim is to be as diverse as possible.

I personally don’t mind a movie centered on female characters in the Spider-Man universe. Heck, for decades I’ve been waiting for a Black Cat or Silver Sable movie, though right now that prospect seems quite dim considering the reaction here. But having this movie precede the Tom Holland Spider-Man does give me the feeling this is another attempt to give a hero’s tale a backstory based on an earlier woman (as done terribly by British TV classic Doctor Who). That said, this movie is not “woke”. Yes, the villain is a man but there is no male-bashing or ridiculing, as has become so common nowadays e. g. by Disney. It just puts female characters at the focus of the story and that’s absolutely okay by me.

What did surprise me is the main protagonist. Madame Web is neither one of many charismatic villains the Spidey-universe offers, nor what I’d call a “hero”. Making her the center of the story is a gamble, with the need for a scenario where she becomes the main character. Which the screenplay does quite well, I’d say. It would have been easier to make a movie about the Spider-Women or Spider-Girl, but here we are. Also, the title character has no super-powers which are interesting to watch. She can’t crawl up walls, jump from roof to roof, or has super-strength. She can just see a bit into the future. That’s it, until the end when she develops the ability to be in several places at once to help her girls (yeah, it’s definitely a movie for moms!). It means the screenwriters really had to think hard to provide the necessary action. and have their protagonist use her wits to counter her opponent, who unfairly uses early face-identifying computer programs to find the three girls.

A word on the actors. Dakota Johnson (daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, granddaughter of Tippi Hedren) has long left the memories of her early Fifty Shades of Grey success behind her. She is a good, professional actress and I’ve never seen a bad performance from her. This movie is no exception. The “girl” actresses don’t register strongly here; their characters are hardly given much to do here, which can be considered a weakness of the script, except being kind of a pain in Cassie’s neck. Tahar Rahim as the villain, comes across a bit bland which might not be the actor’s fault – the character is just not very interesting. His main goal is to stop these girls, who may become dangerous for him later. Ironically, as Cassie realizes, it’s exactly this fear of the future which leads to his downfall here and now, at her hands.

Once again, I stress Madame Web is not a bad movie. It may be too long – though less than some of the bloated blockbusters Hollywood produces nowadays. It could have a more interesting villain, with better motivation. They could have chosen a more interesting main character. But if there is one real problem with all the new SSU movies, it is the lack of humor. A bit of it, integrated into the heroine’s or villain’s character, would go a long way in making a superhero movie a more entertaining product. But maybe that’s not the route Sony wants to go, perhaps to distance themselves from the style of Marvel. It would be regrettable: a surprise hit like Venom showed how that element is appreciated by audiences. If you give them drama, action and suspense, they must also have the chance to let go of the tension with laughter. An approach classic James Bond movies employed, to good effect, at the beginning of the action movie genre.

All in all, the movie, its direction, script, acting performances, etc., are solid. Not great. Also not terrible. It is an acceptable solid superhero comic-book movie, though the superhero thing comes across here as toned down. Just don’t expect the big typical blockbuster epic that too many people may nowadays associate with the genre. Who knows? If Sony continues in this manner maybe they can actually get their SSU to work for the large audience? If not, I imagine they can still put all of these newly released characters in the next Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland!

Dir: S. J. Clarkson
Star: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor

Jailbait

  By

★★★
“Old for her age.”

Of all the scathing reviews this has accumulated on Letterboxd.com, I think my favorite is the one which starts, “Obviously written by someone who knows absolutely nothing about the penal system.” Yes, seriously. I strongly suspect things like this were written by people who know absolutely nothing about women-in-prison films, and who inexplicably managed to overlook the title of the damn movie in their expectations. Me, I had initially overlooked this, believing it to be just a retitling of the same director’s Locked Up, a glorious slab of WiP insanity. When I discovered it was actually a different movie entirely. it went quickly to the top of my pending pile.

While an earlier work, and it’s clear Cohn is still honing his exploitation craft, this is still a fine slice of modern B-cinema, Not least is the casting of Lane, at that point in her thirties, as “teenager” Anna Nix. This certainly does not hang around. Inside five minutes, including opening credits, she has killed her step-father as he tries to be molest her, been tried convicted and sentenced to 4-9 years behind bars in juvenile detention. Only a few seconds later, we get our first of many looks at the lead actress’s spectacular breasts: artificially augmented, yet top tier work. It’s not long before there’s lesbian sex with her cellmate Genie (Jacobs); abusive sex with sleazy warden Frank Baragan (Hanks); drugs, first smoked, then injected; solitary confinement while naked; and coercion from Kody (O’Brien), the leader of the Low Riders prison gang, who says Anna must join them or face the consequences. Followed, eventually, by more lesbian sex.

In other words: everything you would expect from the genre. Of course, if you go in expecting Orange is the New Black – and, let’s be honest, making that comparison on the poster (above) was… unwise – then you’re probably not going to be happy. Me, though? I went in, looking for something along the lines of Locked Up, and will be checking “Satisfied” on my customer survey. Sure, the only thing less convincing than Anna’s teenage credentials is probably her cello playing (don’t ask), while both script and performances appear to be there, only because Cohn was told they were required elements in a feature film. This is me not caring.

To my surprise, the “Based on a graphic novel” claim is actually legit. I wondered what the creators thought when they heard the rights to their work had been bought by infamous studio The Asylum. Then I saw the cover of issue #1. I suspect the reaction was likely, “Cool! Where’s the cheque?”, and also that the resulting adaptation is a faithful one. Of course, this is a penal establishment where a SWAT team is immediately ready to rush in at the drop of a shiv, yet inmates are allowed to shoot up openly in the prison yard. It’s utterly ridiculous, and complete nonsense. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dir: Jared Cohn
Star: Sara Malakul Lane, Erin O’Brien, Steve Hanks, Jennifer Robyn Jacobs

Omega1

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★½
“Motion without emotion. “

It probably didn’t help that I watched this the same day as I finished off the slick, well-animated and occasionally downright beautiful Arcane. This is… not any of those. Well, that’s a bit unfair. The artwork in this “motion comic” is actually not bad (the cover, right, is certainly striking, if not exactly representative!). But being taken off the printed page diminishes the impact considerably, especially when combined with some genuinely terrible voice acting. The setting here is… let’s be honest, it’s Johnny Mnemonic, a good cyberpunk novel by William Gibson that became a not-so-good Keanu Reeves movie. In both worlds, data is now transferred in the heads of human couriers, this being deemed safer than online methods which are vulnerable to hackers. Megan is one such courier, capable of defending her cargo with extreme prejudice.

Except, it turns out there’s considerably more to her past than even she knows, as becomes clear after a client tries to assassinate her. Thereafter, things get increasingly complex, with a host of friends, enemies, enemies pretending to be friends, and a slew of Alphas, which are clones based on the DNA of Meg, a.k.a. Omega. It’s all a) rather confusing, and b) not very interesting. Though it’s a bit of a vicious cycle. b) triggers an attention deficit, which acts as a force multiplier on a), then this feeds back into b). I actually did give up about two-thirds of the way through. But much like Battered, the short running time (53 mins here) was its saving grace. Realizing there were barely 15 mins left, I put it back on. Though I will not be taking questions on plot developments in that final section. 

The structure here is also off-putting, with the story separated into episodes, no longer than five minutes, which interrupts the flow in an annoying and pointless fashion. Just tell the damn story. But my biggest gripe was the voices, though Andrei as Omega isn’t the problem. It’s a supporting cast who could, almost universally, be replaced by a speech-to-text program, with positive results. And that’s not even mentioning the bad, fake foreign accents, e.g. Russian (or maybe it was French. Hard to tell) and Spanish. Considering there’s not even lip-synching to consider, in this unanimated format, it’s a poor effort indeed.

Maybe it’s just me. Perhaps I need to watch one of these every few years, to be reminded of how crappy the motion comic concept is. For on the basis of this, it seems to combine the worst elements of both comic books and animation. However, it may not be fair to judge the whole medium, on the basis of what seems a badly executed example. There were a couple of moments where the conversion process was reasonabe, and the effect of the comic panels came through as adequately realized. But overall, this was a poor excuse for entertainment. The “To be continued” caption at the end, seemed more like a threat than a promise. 

Dir: Mark Edward Lewis
Star (voice): Alina Andrei, Mark Edward Lewis, Jan Shiva, Teresa Noreen

The Super Femmes

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★★
“Hardly super, thanks for asking…”

Running a crisp 58 minutes in its omnibus edition, this is a bit like Kung Fu Femmes. Both were originally web series, but have now made their way on to Amazon Prime, which is where I stumbled across them. This is rather less grounded, taking place in a world where superheroes and supervillains exist, doing battle in the usual manner. While not technically based on a comic-book, it might as well be – the poster makes that abundantly clear. The IMDb description calls it “filled with satire.” I’m not so sure, and think we probably need to have a talk about what “satire” actually is. Creator Garris seems largely to believe that simply repeating the cliches of the genre passes the bar. He’s wrong. There needs to be exaggeration of these tropes, and that’s largely missing here. Its absence leaves this mostly a bad comic-book, rather than being a parody of one. For example, adding visual effects like “POW!” to punches is hardly inventive, and certainly not satire.

The heroine is Cat Nips (Vanelle), who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of another superheroine, Smash Mistress (Caruana). She has been kidnapped by malevolent genius Mad Mort (Gordon), who has a machine which can absorb her powers, and inject them into his short-lived clones of Smash Mistress, which do his evil bidding. Not helping matters, the local superheroes group, led by The Smoking Cape (Paris), have gone on strike, to protest budget cuts proposed by the city’s mayor – who is actually their leader, in his daytime identity. What’s up with that? There’s also a guild of supervillains, though not everyone in it is happy at Mad Mort’s plans to take things over.

Occasionally, it does work, mostly when Garris pushes the boat out beyond the cliches into more imaginative territory. There’s the Golden Goddess, a retired superheroine now reduced to selling “magical” headbands on line. And some of the villains are entertainingly crap, such as Pasta Fingers and White Rapper Kid – not exactly useful powers. Things get thrown for a loop at the end with the unexpected arrival of a superheroine from the future, who states, “I’ve come from season three.” That’s the kind of self-referential nonsense which the series needs more of. It’s on considerably less solid ground when trying to take right-on jabs at, for example, the portrayal of women. Considering the costumes of the ones here, this comes off as empty cant.

The production here is low-end, but solid enough in most regards. That also applies to the performances, few of which are memorable in either direction. And that might be part of the problem: it’s all rather too low-key. If you think of comic-book movies, the characters which stand out e.g. the Joker (whether played by Jack Nicholson or Joaquin Phoenix, tend to be those that are over-the-top. But the delivery here skews more toward the prosaic, and character names like – and I wrote this down – “Sharon MaBooty” don’t go far enough towards making up the difference.

Dir: Dean Garris
Star: Vanelle, Leah Caruana, Roger Paris, Robert Gordon

Black Widow

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★★★★
“The name’s Widow. Black Widow…”

I said it in my review of Captain Marvel, but it probably bears repeating here. I’m basically completely unfamiliar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Avengers: Infinity War? It may have become the biggest film in cinema history, but I’ve never seen it, and that’s par for the course. Of the 13 MCU films released since the beginning of 2015, I have watched just three. So if this required any prior knowledge, or information not present in the actual movie, I was going to be hosed. Another concern coming in, stemmed from one of those three movies: Captain Marvel. It was the epitome of the dumb comic-book film, and more a chore than a pleasure.

This had been long-delayed too, and that’s never a good sign, though it’s hard to blame the makers in this case. It was originally slated for release in May 2020, but of course, COVID-19 scuppered that, causing several reschedulings. The split release, simultaneously coming out in theatres and on streaming service Disney+, also came as a bit of a red flag. That’s because I’ve found films which debuted on streaming have largely been underwhelming. From Mulan through Wonder Woman 1984, as well as non-GWG entries like Godzilla vs. Kong and Mortal Kombat, the results haven’t impressed me. Could Black Widow buck the trend and deliver the summer box-office blockbuster which never happened last year? Well, if you counted the stars at the top, you’ll probably have worked out that it did, more or less avoiding the potential pitfalls. 

However, it has also become the first four-star film not to get our seal of approval. Put simply, while it delivered 2+ hours of very solid entertainment, I have no interest in seeing it again. To me, that is a key element in awarding a seal; the film must be one capable of getting (and standing up to) repeat viewings. This didn’t – though again, I want to stress I’d be more than happy to go see the future installments, which seem highly likely to follow. I think it was mostly a lack of emotional involvement which capped my appreciation for it. While a fine, well-crafted spectacle, that does work as a stand-alone film, I still felt like I had arrived in the middle of the show. For example, a relatively brief explanation of her origins in a nineties Russian sleeper cell is followed by “21 years later,” and that’s an awful lot of water under the bridge.

Clearly, a lot of significant stuff had happened in that time. Piecing the parts together, it appears the two “sisters” from the sleeper cell, Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Pugh), became part of the “Red Room” program to create super-soldiers. Natasha defected back to the West to become part of SHIELD, and killed Dreykov, the man in charge. But Yelena remained in the system, until an encounter with a gas that undid her mind-control. She sent a batch of the gas to Natasha, which brought her into the sights of Dreykov, who was not so dead as previously assumed. He is very keen to get the antidote to his programming back under control, but Natasha and Yelena decide to take the fight to him instead. However, they need to start by finding out the Red Room’s location, which will involve an awkward “family re-union” with their pseudo-Mom (Weisz) and crypto-Dad (Harbour).

I was talking to Dieter about the film, which he had already seen (in the cinema, the mad, impetuous man!). He said it resembled “a classical spy-ploitation movie, like Bond movies might look today, if there hasn’t been that strong change in style and towards more realism with the Craig era.” That raised an eyebrow for me, and certainly didn’t seem a typical Marvel film approach. But having now seen it myself, I can definitely see where that’s coming from. In particular, I felt that Dreykov (played by British heavy Ray Winstone) would have fitted right in as a villain from that ‘classic Bond’ era. His lair makes the one inside a volcano from You Only Live Twice look like a doll’s house, and he even makes the classic, “Now you are helpless in my power, let me over-explain things to you” mistake. Notably, there’s a scene early on where Natasha is watching Moonraker on her lap-top, so I very much suspect none of this is by accident.

A couple of other elements also seem to echo Bond. Natasha has a somewhat Q-like “fixer”, Mason (O-T Fagbenle), who keep her supplied and gets irritated by her more outrageous demands. Dreykov has a monstrous and hyperviolent sidekick; despite her gender, she’s not unlike Jaws, who appears in the Moonraker clip mentioned above.  Like him, she is won over to the side of good by kindness. There’s also a dry humour present, which does hark back to the days of Roger Moore. Much of this comes from Harbour’s character, but Yelena also has a self-effacing wit. For example, she rags on Natasha about her fight poses, though inevitably, subsequently finds herself in the same posture. After the dour Captain Marvel, a little appreciation of the underlying silliness which is embodied by the comic-book genre, goes a surprisingly long way.

Indeed, I would not mind if, as the post-credit scene implies, Yelena becomes Black Widow going forward. [Though that scene was all but entirely lost on me, I believe a change is needed, due to things which happened in films I haven’t watched… He said vaguely!] Pugh, whom we enjoyed seeing on this site in Fighting With My Family, brings a no-nonsense approach to her character that I really liked. Johannson may, despite her complaints, have been getting paid the big bucks here, but I’d rather see Pugh step into the PVC body-suit going forward. Admittedly, I’d also rather see more genuine stunt-work and less obvious CGI. While it’s understandable at some points, e.g. the climax, there were times where it felt like a character couldn’t walk down a corridor without it being rendered against a green screen. I think I may be shouting at clouds in this department, however…

All told though, it’s the first film I’ve seen in a long time which made me at least somewhat sorry I hadn’t seen it at the movies. It has been about 20 months since my last cinema outing, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever again miss the theatrical experience. Black Widow has proven otherwise, so we’ll see if this does translate into an actual movie-going experience down the road.

Dir: Cate Shortland
Star: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz, David Harbour

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Wonder Woman 1984

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★★
“Left feeling quite Cheetah’d…”

Before COVID-19 hit, this was scheduled to be the year’s biggest action heroine movie. Originally slated for a June release, it was the sequel to a film which earned a well-deserved $800+ million worldwide, and a similar return seemed within reach. But its opening was first delayed, and then it was announced the movie would only get a limited release, coming out in North America on HBO’s streaming service, HBO Max. Difficult times. But the sad fact is, this feels more like a contractual cash-grab. Even with the same star and director, it seems sadly lacking in genuine, emotional heart.

There are quite a few other problems. Firstly, this is set in 1984, because… Well, there’s no real reason. At least Captain Marvel gave us a fight in a Blockbuster Video store. Here, the period flavour seems limited to one Frankie Goes to Hollywood song, randomly dropped in at a party. Otherwise, it could easily be set now. Another issue is the sheer length. This is 151 minutes: that’s only 10 minutes longer than its predecessor, but it feels a lot more. Part of this may be because after the opening, you then have to wait for over an hour, before there is any further significant action. While I’ve not pulled out a stopwatch, the ratio of that to talk overall just seems considerably worse.

Then we have the plot, which centres on a magic hunk of rock, the Dreamstone, that grants one wish to anyone who touches it. Diana Prince (Gadot) naturally wishes for the return of dead lover, Steve Trevor (Pine). Mousy work colleague Barbara Ann Minerva (Wiig) wishes to be like Prince, a process which ends up turning her into supervillainess Cheetah. And eventually gives her a tail, making her look like a refugee from Cats. At least dodgy oil-baron Maxwell Lord (Pascal, who amusingly also appeared in the much-derided 2011 Wonder Woman television pilot) reads the fine print, and uses the Dreamstone to try and take over the world. Of course, the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for” comes into play. You just KNOW Diana’s wish will have to be revoked, parting her from Steve once again. Which would be okay, if it hadn’t seemed like a cheat all along, robbing their separation of any emotional impact.

As is, Steve seems almost entirely superfluous here. His main contribution is a poorly-considered scene where this resurrected 1917 aviator is able to fly a modern jet with no trouble or instruction. This seems about as plausible as a 1917 accountant being able to sit down at a desk and immediately use QuickBooks, and that’s ignoring completely the fact that the Smithsonian would exhibit a plane that’s fully fuelled-up and ready for take-off Hey, he does somehow have a hand in teaching Wonder Woman to fly. Elsewhere, it doesn’t help that every time I saw Lord, I kept expecting Baby Yoda to show up, and Wiig is hardly convincing as a plain Jane. Maybe one day, Hollywood will realize that it takes more than just slapping a pair of glasses on an actress.

Gadot is still very good, but there just isn’t anything close to the sense of passion which she brought to the character in Wonder Woman. Here, saving the world seems like a day job, rather than something done out of a fierce, unbreakable conviction. The action sequences are merely alright. There’s some surprisingly poor CGI (even on a non-cinema screen), and they often seem short on physicality, with a couple of exceptions. A battle between WW and Cheetah in the White House is well-assembled, and there’s an opening sequence depicting a young Diana taking part in the Amazon Games. If it were a series, I’d be watching every week – my money would be on American Ninja Warrior star, Jessie Graff, who plays one of the competitors. That was nice.

However, even this falls short, both in emotional and technical aspects, of the iconic “No Man’s Land” sequence. And thus we reach the crux of the issue: in just about every way, it’s not as good as the previous movie. That was a genuinely groundbreaking effort, in which everyone involved seemed fully invested, and which deserves to rank among the best of the new wave of comic adaptations, be they Marvel or DC. This tastes more like heavily generic comic-book fare, with a story too heavily reliant on convenient happenstance, supporting characters that distract rather than support, and a resolution that is not much more than a 21st-century version of Wonder Woman demanding, “Clap your hands if you believe in fairies.”

Philosophically, I was intrigued by her explicitly stating at one point, “I hate guns.” I recently finished The Boys, with its slew of malevolent superheroes. In that world, firearms were one of the few things that could level the playing field and give “normal” humans a chance. Guns are, simply, a great equalizer, and hearing the super-powerful express blanket disdain for them is… interesting. Similarly, we were expected to believe Barbara Ann is simultaneously so plain nobody sees her, yet can barely take two steps without getting creeped on. Look, I expect Wonder Woman to be pro-feminist. But a degree of consistency is apparently too much. For when given a wish for anything, the two lead women want a) to be hot, and b) their boyfriend back? I am woman, hear me… whine?

There are some positives. If not exactly period appropriate, Hans Zimmer’s score is effective and elevates a number of scenes. And the film does, at least, leave the audience on a positive note with a really lovely mid-credit sequence. However, it’s also telling that those 60 seconds are likely more impactful – and, certainly, more emotional engaging – than the other 150 minutes combined. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a sequel, with the same director and star, that has fallen so far short. Maybe The Matrix: Reloaded? All told, you would be better off just watching the trailer. It certainly provides a greater jolt of eighties energy than the movie has any apparent interest in delivering.

Dir: Patty Jenkins
Star: Gail Gadot, Pedro Pascal, Kristen Wiig, Chris Pine

The New Mutants

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★★★½
“The end of an era”

We live in a strange world in which Wonder Woman ’84 gets delayed again while The New Mutants is suddenly getting its release. Over the years, the story surrounding this movie has become more interesting than the one it tells. Originally, the film was scheduled for 2018 but didn’t find much luck. Director Josh Boone (The Fate in Our Stars) had the interesting idea of doing a Breakfast Club-type movie set in the Horror genre. After initial enthusiasm from the studio, execs pulled back, wanting to make the film more accessible, less horrific. Than the studio head at 20th Century Fox left, which led to changes at the script.

Originally, the film was supposed to play in the 80s (after X-Men: Apocalypse) and would have included Professor X and Storm. The script at hand seemed to depict the caretakers of the New Mutants in a very negative way. This is apparent when you see the character of Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga), the replacement for Storm. As the original X-men characters were always the heroes of the franchise, their appearances were skipped. But the success of the first part of Stephen King adaptation It (2017), led to a rethink, that the film should not abandon its scarier elements. The next thing to happen was the acquisition of 20th Century Fox studio by Disney (is there anything the House of Mouse doesn’t already own?) which meant that Dark Phoenix as well as The New Mutants were now Disney’s to deal with.

And obviously Disney didn’t care too much for Fox’s leftovers. Dark Phoenix went into cinemas last year with little fanfare, remaking a storyline that had already been told (and according to many, much better) in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). The remake was a box-office failure – and this time the often overly negative criticism of fans, which I usually explain as Marvel fans who can’t stand that there is any competition for their beloved Disney films, might have been justified. I don’t know, because even I didn’t bother to watch the movie – and the X-Men movies were my entry into the Marvel universe. Why pay again to watch a story I saw 13 years ago, and own on DVD?

It seems to me that cinemagoers are tired of always seeing movies following the same old formula they have been watching, repeated again and again. That you can be successful by being different is proven by movies like Deadpool or Venom. The New Mutants tries to do something similar, but unfortunately, the caravan has moved on. After It and Netflix’s Stranger Things, the concept of the movie is nowhere near as original as it might have been a few years ago.

Based on Chris Claremont’s comic series from the 80s – at that time Marvel’s successful attempt to create a successful competing series to DC’s Teen Titans – New Mutants is about five misfits with the usual unusual abilities you know from the X-Men universe. Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) survives a catastrophe that killed her entire tribe, and wakes up in a hospital (which actually looks more like a nunnery!).

There, Dr. Reyes is trying therapy on four other mutants: Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams) who can turn into a were-wolf; Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Colossus’s little sister, who is able to jump in and out of the alternate dimension Limbo and can manifest a soulsword; Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), who can move extremely quickly in the air and creating so extreme energy while being invulnerable in this situation; and Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga), who can create when being excited solar energy, so he becomes actually burning hot. In the comics these characters are also known with their usual other names which are Wolfsbane, Magik, Cannonball and Sunspot but the movie never mentions these names.

Dr. Reyes intentions are to teach these young disturbed teens how to deal with their abilities and not hurt other people. It’s suggested by Reyes, they might then go to a school for gifted youngsters (hint, hint). Unfortunately, not all is as it seems and very soon the teenagers have to face their own anxieties and traumas. The evil power that killed off Dani’s people arrives at the facility and they are forced to work together to save Dani as well as defend their own lives and freedom.

Basically, this movie tries to go for a smaller scale, after a succession of X-Men movies that seemed to increase constantly in size. It’s a nice idea, and one I respect. This was even seen as the potential start of a new trilogy – although, which film nowadays isn’t? And I have to give the filmmakers this: at least they tried to do something different. That’s worth a lot in my book, considering we live in a time when Disney’s Marvel movies seem to be written and directed almost on autopilot (exception: The Avengers). Once a film series gets too big, the next logical step is to scale down. It can be a successful move: look at the James Bond movies, which seem to do so at regular intervals. However, it needs an audience that still cares. Unfortunately, I think that boat has sailed long ago for the X-Men. For most people, Logan (2017), Hugh Jackman’s final appearance in the role of Wolverine, was the last hurrah and end of the series.

There are a lot of good elements here. A darker, more sombre and psychological variation on the X-Men theme, it feels like Chris Carter’s TV series Millennium compared to his warmer, more sympathetic X-Files. This comparison is particularly appropriate, since The New Mutants was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, where the first few seasons of The X-Files were produced and here, too, the composer is Mark Snow.

The first half of the (fortunately not-too-long) movie – I really, really hate the lengthy running time of blockbuster movies today – focuses on the five misfits, their pasts and their relationship building. The second is when the action and the CGI comes into play, though is more restrained than you may be used to in these movies. The New Mutants really feels like the intimate stage-play of X-Men films. The main inspirations, apart from those already mentioned, seem to be the psychological drama Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the latter is watched by the mutants a couple of times, and seems to correspond with things we see later. But, while I said that the new movie is more psychological, don’t think it’s deep, beyond “Well, I’ve got these superpowers, didn’t know how to control them, killed some people and now I’m kind of a wreck.”

But still… I kind of liked that this went a different route than the usual overblown extravaganzas. Anya Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin, a.k.a. “Magik”, leaves a particular impression. Though I have to wonder why those in power found it necessary to change the backstories: Rahne (Williams) and Dani seem to be moving towards a lesbian relationship while the film subtly indicates that Illyana might have created the “limbus” (her magical world) due to sexual abuse as a child. Neither of this has any basis in the comics, it’s just Josh Boone overwriting existing lore, perhaps to make the characters more “realistic”. I don’t know why people do that. Is being kidnapped by a devil-like demon and being transported in some kind of hellish dimension not terrifying enough anymore? On the other side, the story of “Magik” has hardly been touched, so the possibility of a solo film that could dive deeper into the lore of the character still exists. Though I guess, we’ll never see this at all.

I stayed until the end titles were over. For, while the movie was not the best of the series (though far from the worst), I felt a little sad realizing this was finally, officially and really the end of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films. The first X-Men, in 2000, ushered in a new era of comic book movies and introduced me to Marvel superheroes. And while we have seen all sorts of similar films since, I always had a liking for this franchise. They tried out new things, and wanted to be different from that what Disney/Marvel did. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they failed – sometimes they succeeded and the result was still not that great. It’s always easy to do the safe, secure thing and laugh all the way to the bank. It’s less easy to constantly try to reinvent oneself.

Regardless of what their respective qualities or flaws were, I guess I’ll miss them.

Dir:  Josh Boone
Star: Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga