The footage, which leaked online last week but was quickly taken down, is entirely built around a reference to Warner Bros.’ other clown-based franchise. Much like Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, the studio is betting on audience attendance to spread the movie’s buzz instead of internet shares.
Assuming the leaked footage actually does represent the theater-only trailer, it features an overwhelming amount of Pennywise’s trademark red balloons, before Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn steps in and pops them with a massive hammer.
“I’m so f—ing over clowns,” Robbie says, followed by a quick sizzle reel of the movie’s many female comic characters.
The brief trailer is fairly similar to the “See You Soon” teaser that dropped in January, and only showcased the actors and their costumes. It: Chapter Two releases in cinemas tonight, and the teaser will surely play throughout that movie’s run in theaters.
Directed by Cathy Yan from a script by Christina Hodson, Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) stars Margot Robbie, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosie Perez, Ewan McGregor, Steven Williams, Derek Wilson, Dana Lee, Francois Chau, Charlene Amoia, Chris Messina and Matthew Willig. The film is scheduled for release on Feb. 7, 2020.
The specifics of the title of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood have become a subject of much debate over the past few weeks. Is the title Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood? Is it Once Upon a time in…Hollywood? Is the ellipsis even necessary? Now, this debate wasn’t half of the shitstorm that was the Angry Scorsese Discourse and the Tarantino Rankings Discourse, but the varying forms of the title in different pieces of marketing perplexed a lot of us: in the end, why are there two variations on the title? Thankfully, the movie (which I’ll just refer to without the ellipsis) offers a conclusive answer — it’s both. But before we get there, we need to look back at just what the filmmaker was evoking with these two variations in the first place. And look, I know you didn’t click on a review of the new Tarantino movie just for the whole thing to be about the title, but bear with me — I got this.
In 1968, Italian Western filmmaker Sergio Leone, a clear inspiration on basically everything Tarantino’s ever done, released Once Upon a Time in the West, a beautiful western that many consider his masterpiece. Cinema has seen this title turn into something of a genre in its own right, defining films epic in scale and length that frequently attempt cap off a popular genre with an ode to the movies that came before. From Leone’s own gangster-themed follow-up Once Upon a Time in America to Robert Rodriguez’ Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the title evokes Leone’s seminal Western while offering an air of gravitas to the movie itself. Tarantino’s latest, itself a film about the industry, goes all in on the meta-commentary, and uses the title to bolster those themes. By placing the ellipsis just before the word “Hollywood,” “Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood” draws attention to the way Tarantino plays with film history in the movie itself.
Throughout the film, Tarantino obviously uses the movie’s 1969 Hollywood to voice his own thoughts on the industry itself, but it seems the director has learned a touch of finesse he’s never quite shown before. In previous outings, when the filmmaker takes inspiration from film history itself, it can often seem like being hit in the head by a Film Bro’s Superior Intellect, and it’s often just exhausting. But when the lead characters of OUATIH, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton and Brad Pitt as his stuntman Cliff Booth, interact with the period-accurate film industry, it’s never overbearing. These almost slice-of-life moments compose a heavy percentage of the movie’s runtime, as Dalton, who feels like a failed version of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood combined together, simply does his job. DiCaprio and Pitt excel throughout the runtime, but it’s a transcendent combination of a director helming a scene about filmmaking that’s draped in a reverence for the process, and actors playing actors in a scene that’s equally as reverent to the art of acting. Now this might be all lofty, but these are some of the best moments in the story; they’re a love letter to film history and the art of cinema itself without ever becoming too clouded with nostalgia or bogged-down in specific inspirations. There are some moments where it feels like the story might be going to a more meaningful place, critiquing the inherent flaws of what the film industry once was and how it’s improved, but they’re just played off for laughs. I can see how this can become a gamebreaking issue for some, as the Love Letter to Cinema is half of the movie’s conceit and it almost feels empty without having much to say, but I would say it works in spite of feeling quite shallow.
On the other side of the title’s meaning, “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” draws attention to the fairytale nature of the film, as he inserts two fictional characters into a much-studied piece of cinematic, and American, history. Dalton is a next-door neighbor to Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate, and Tarantino uses this to tell her story in a way we haven’t ever really seen before. So much of the story of the Tate murders and the crimes of the Manson family are buried in the cold, calculated style of true crime. Instead of telling the audience about who Tate was, true crime stories condense the person down just to what happened to her. This story rejects that and films her scenes with the wonder of a fairy tale, allowing Tarantino to finally, fully let go of the bitter, cynical artist that made The Hateful Eight.
Robbie, as the third lead of the story, is the only lead playing a real person, and had a tough task ahead of her. Most of the film takes place in early 1969, when Tate was three months pregnant, but five months away from her murder at the hands of the Manson Family. If the scenes of 1969-style film production are a love letter to cinema, the sequences that follow Tate are a sacred text, as Tarantino treats the late star as a shining example of the best that Hollywood could be. We see her go out of her way to show kindness to people, gleefully soak in crowd reactions to her own movie, and live life with a free joy that so many of us can only dream of. Without needing to say anything, these extended episodes make you appreciate the person she was, and wonder what could’ve been. Though I had never seen a movie with Sharon Tate, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood makes an earnest plea to seek her out, to see the legend she could’ve become, and to understand how much she could’ve done. Tarantino captures all of this with an earnest, sincere sense of admiration and melancholy, and I hope he doesn’t abandon it after this movie.
When Spider-Man: Homecoming was released in 2017, fans and critics fell head over heels for director Jon Watts’ take on Marvel’s web-slinger. It was a refreshingly small-stakes blast, but it lacked the one thing it needed most: a vision of Peter Parker that actually lives up to the source material. Thankfully, Spider-Man: Far From Home is nearly a complete reversal, spring-boarding off the tragedy of Avengers: Endgame to create a fully realized, and wholly new, wall-crawler.
Between its fun style and star Tom Holland’s magnetic performance, Homecoming was easy to like, but Peter lacked the depth of previous iterations. It worked well as an extension of the Marvel Universe, and the depiction of his life as a high-school student was brilliant, but by focusing primarily on Peter’s relationship with Tony Stark, it failed to deliver emotional depth. By looking to the history of the character, both on and off the big screen, Watts, with writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, finally gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe the Spider-Man it deserves.
In 2002, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man was a smash hit because it fired on all cylinders. Raimi’s dynamic direction, combined with a story of hope buried beneath a layer of tragedy, created the perfect movie for the moment. Around the end of the first act, Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben is murdered, and he blames himself. By focusing Peter’s story on his growth after Uncle Ben’s death, it laid the groundwork for the character’s emotional arc across the trilogy. Though Peter continued to crack jokes and find hope in the darkness, it almost acted as a veil for the despair that would plague him otherwise.
Although Peter’s history with Uncle Ben clearly happened in some way in the MCU, it’s mostly glossed over. Despite some references to a sad past, and a briefcase marked “BFP,” Peter’s backstory goes unaddressed over five films featuring the character. Everyone involved likely wanted to avoid the issues with Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man, which rehashed the story, the decision to skip over it entirely undoes a central part of what makes Spider-Man so great.
Additionally, Raimi’s vision, as with most other adaptations, took Uncle Ben’s death as Peter’s motivator. Just hours before his death in the first Spider-Man film, Ben echoed his comic book counterpart’s most famous line, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Peter takes that to heart, and although he doesn’t always want to be the superhero, he acknowledges his abilities give him a responsibility to help people. While Tom Holland’s Peter echoes that sentiment in Captain America: Civil War, something is lost in translation on the way to Homecoming, and it’s kind of dropped from the character.
The baffling decision to bypass the emotional fallout of Uncle Ben’s death led directly to losing the character’s most interesting dramatic motivator: the internal battle between power and responsibility. Now, Homecoming still has plenty of drama to supplant that, but it never quite clicks into place. Peter’s relationship with Liz and the surprise of Adrian Toomes (aka The Vulture) as her father played out in a fun, roller-coaster ride of a movie, but it lost the gravity that made Raimi’s movies so effective.
In 2015, when work began on Spider-Man: Homecoming, the public had largely grown tired of origin stories. Ant-Man had just come out, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had under-performed at the box office the year before. So, it’s likely they chose to dodge Peter’s relationship with Uncle Ben’s tragedy because they didn’t want to completely redo a story that had already been told twice before.
Nevertheless, they could have used everyone’s knowledge of Peter’s past as an emotional groundwork for the story they told. There’s even precedent in the MCU, as The Incredible Hulk opens with a title sequence that recaps Bruce Banner’s familiar story. Homecoming didn’t need to take that route, and could have looked to the brilliant 2008 animated series, The Spectacular Spider-Man, for influence. Like last year’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it basically assumes you already know Spider-Man’s origin, and goes from there.
They both still acknowledge the inherent tragedy to Peter’s story and the dramatic tension of grappling with the responsibility of being a hero, but don’t beat you over the head with Uncle Ben’s death. Instead, Jon Watts settled for a middling, shallow interpretation of the character his first time around, a movie that delivered thrills and laughs and not much else.
Thankfully, Watts and co. completely stepped their game up with the sequel, and delivered a glorious return to form in Spider-Man: Far From Home. It’s a triumphant return to a recognizable interpretation of Peter Parker as Spider-Man, with enough extensions and adjustments to make it feel like a breath of fresh air. In Tom Holland’s fifth performance as the character in the span of only three years, the best portrayal of Spider-Man is finally given a script to fit the talent.
In one fell swoop, the movie solves all of the issues and obstacles placed in its way by Homecoming with the death of Tony Stark. Peter struggles to overcome his mentor’s tragic death, but he’s also coming to terms with how to fill his shoes. His internal journey throughout the story heavily revolves around learning to move on and live in a way that would’ve made Tony proud.
That’s not to say Far From Home is remotely as dramatic as Avengers: Endgame, but it provides a necessary grounding point for the otherwise cheerful character. It doesn’t remove any focus from Peter’s relationship with his classmates or his life in high school, instead of lending additional weight to the whole story. On top of this, Peter has been left a technological gift from Tony that forces Peter to reckon with his own responsibility to help people and brings the character full circle.
By basically replacing the death of Uncle Ben with the sacrifice of Tony Stark as Peter’s emotional grounding, Spider-Man: Far From Home may alienate some die-hard comic absolutists, but it works so well that it’s easy to forgive. Director Tom Watts followed up a fairly weak outing for the webhead with one of his absolute best, along with this bold declaration: this iteration of the character is in firmly MCU, and he’s here to stay. He’s not just a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man anymore, and that might just be a good thing.
Directed by Jon Watts, Spider-Man: Far From Home stars Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Zendaya, Cobie Smulders, Jon Favreau, JB Smoove, Jacob Batalon and Martin Starr, with Marisa Tomei and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Questionable marketing and rough CGI led audiences to fear Guy Ritchie’s 2019 Aladdin remake. After all, why even remake the movie if it’s just going to be a lesser rehash of the 1992 classic? Fortunately, the end product is better than many anticipated, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that Disney squandered the chance to make something truly special.
In an unintentional, metatextual metaphor for the studio itself, 2019’s Aladdin starts with daring, clever choices and devolves into a safe, easy cash grab. It shows viewers how these remakes, in theory, could work, and then proves that Disney lacks the bold vision to recapture the magic it once had.
There were signs. After Aladdin‘s first trailer dropped, the internet exploded with angry questions: Why does everything look fake? Why does the genie look like that? Why release a clip of “Prince Ali” when it’s just Will Smith doing a bad Robin Williams impression? Again, why does the genie look like that?
In just the first few minutes, though, Ritchie is able to show that the movie isn’t just a hollow remake, shifting and tweaking the characters and the way the story unfolds, providing more depth and his own trademark style. But as the film approaches the original’s recognizable set piece sequences at the midpoint, these updates start to fade, and the movie transitions into the sort of bland reskin that was Beauty and the Beast.
When work first began on the original Aladdin 1988, Disney Animation Studios was in desperate need of a hit. After a string of box office flops, the studio made the gutsy call to move forward with projects that had been kicking around for a while, and by the time Aladdin made it to release in ’92, the Disney Renaissance was in full swing.
It was a time packed to the brim with some of the best animated features ever, including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. The Renaissance saw the studio embrace risky moves out of necessity, and it paid off tremendously.
Just as The Little Mermaid showed the animation studio the proper way forward in terms of making animated fairy tales that feel simultaneously modern and magical, pieces of Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin remake illuminate the proper way to remake one of these cherished classics.
First and foremost, the script, from Guy Ritchie and John August, reworks much of the story, improving bits and pieces in many ways. From Jasmine’s newfound depth as a character to an overall willingness to embrace Agrabah as a setting in an actual world, many pieces click together beautifully.
On top of this, there are moments sprinkled throughout that allow Ritchie to embrace his own style. Though a filmmaker known for kinetic British crime stories and underrated big budget failures seemed an odd choice, he brings a sense of life when he’s given room to work.
This is especially on display in “One Jump Ahead,” the song in which Aladdin leads Jasmine across the city, running away from the palace guards after stealing food. While the song’s beat stays the same, the movement of the characters fluctuates between high speed and slow motion, bringing a palpable sense of energy and tension to the scene. Unfortunately, that pace quickly fades out, and the movie’s true colors start to show.
Though the movie on the whole isn’t quite as disappointing as Disney’s remakes of Alice in Wonderland and Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin falls prey to similar issues. Every time Aladdin gets going, it’s dragged back down to recreate diet versions of moments from the original movie.
Ritchie and Will Smith try their hardest when introducing Smith’s Genie character to the tune of “Friend Like Me,” but it just comes off as a lame recreation of Robin Williams’ terrific rendition. This happens over and over in these movies, sucking all the energy out and delivering lifeless, boring sequences simply because they couldn’t deviate too greatly from the source material, and it’s a major bummer.
With something like the brilliant 2016 remake of Pete’s Dragon, it was a different case because the original was little remembered and little loved, allowing director David Lowery more freedom. The big ones, like Aladdin,are packed with memorable, beloved sequences, and it’s clear Disney is too afraid to move too far away from them.
These days, Walt Disney Studios, as a company, sits atop the filmmaking world, miles removed from where they were just 30 years ago. Now they rely on sequels, remakes and reboots, increasingly abandoning strong choices for easy money, and it’s more than a little disheartening to see.
Theaters are inundated with these lackluster nostalgia trips, from Dumbo a couple of months ago to The Rise of Skywalker this December, with at least half a dozen remakes and sequels between them. If the brilliant additions and changes to Aladdin prove that live-action remakes of Disney’s most beloved movies can actually work, the very nature of the studio today proves they may never be worthwhile.
For the company to allow their directors enough freedom to make daring choices, they’d have to lay off the nostalgia-mongering, and anyone who’s seen the studio’s six-year slate knows that likely won’t happen anytime soon.
Just a few months from now, Disney will release Jon Favreau’s remake of The Lion King. If there’s anyone in the world that Disney CEO Bob Iger would trust to make a courageous reimagining of their most beloved movie, it’s Favreau.
By directing Iron Man and The Jungle Book, he helped give birth to two of Disney’s most reliable sources of income — the Marvel Cinematic Universe and these remakes. Maybe Favreau will deliver a significant departure from the source material and we’ll actually get something worthwhile, maybe that will be the studio’s proverbial “diamond in the rough.” But from there, we may have a dark, dull road ahead.
Directed by Guy Ritchie, Aladdin stars Mena Massoud as Aladdin, Will Smith as Genie, Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine, Marwan Kenzari as Jafar, Navid Negahban as the Sultan of Agrabah, Billy Magnussen as new character Prince Anders, and Frank Welker and Alan Tudyk as the voices of Abu and Iago, respectively. The film is now in theaters.
Originally published at Cinapse.co on April 26, 2019.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a wild achievement. The most ambitious project in cinema history and seemingly the only successful interconnected universe, it has attracted a massive amount of conversation over the last 11 years. The debates have ranged in topic from the usefulness of corporate art to the existence of Superhero Fatigue to Marvel’s lackluster color palette to the importance of representation to the Death of Cinema. Obviously, hyperbole has followed viewers at every turn, but it’s undeniable that producer Kevin Feige has engineered the franchise to dominate the cultural conversation, and it has for over a decade. And now we’re here at the “End,” whatever that means to a story defined by its inability to cease. With Avengers: Endgame, Marvel’s task was as large as the universe itself — directly follow-up Avengers: Infinity War, deliver a satisfying conclusion to this saga, and, most importantly, justify the existence of the last 21 films. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo, along with their writing partners Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, return as the first directors to make a fourth entry in the universe, and somehow, they pull off a massive success on every level. Miraculously, the team has created an overwhelming triumph on every front with the universe’s strongest, most impactful, and best entry to date.
The task of approaching a pre-release review for a film of this magnitude is tough, as I obviously want to stay entirely spoiler-free, but also need to figure out how to convey the truly momentous accomplishment of Endgame. Typically, this is the part of the review that features a brief breakdown of the plot and the characters, but how necessary could that possibly be for the 22nd entry in the biggest franchise ever, on a follow-up to a bonkers cliffhanger? So here’s all I can muster: Thanos won and killed half of the universe. The original six Avengers survived, plus a few of their less-important friends. Tony Stark is stuck in space. Captain Marvel is here now. They have to devise a plan and figure out just what it is superheroes do after suffering their greatest failure.
The closest thing to a main character in Avengers: Infinity War was Thanos, which finally added depth to a villain who’d been teased for six years, but sacrificed some of the time spent with the huge roster of heroes. As a result, the breakneck pace and disregard for character introductions put many off from the movie, making it feel more like a “fans only” experience than a standalone entry. In Endgame, the Russos fix some of these issues, but it’s not a 360-turnaround. Whereas Infinity War felt like the duo fully embracing their style of Marvel movie, convoluted plot and all, Endgamefeels more like a traditional Avengers movie. The added running time (and shortened character roster) provides breathing room, allowing the movie to be truly character-focused in the way that Joss Whedon’s two Avengers films were. And though this creates a more welcoming tone for viewers, the script is so saturated with reverence for the universe that even die hard series fans might miss moments, and newcomers could be entirely lost.
The secret of Marvel’s success doesn’t lie, like many other franchises, in grand stories that ape ancient myths or even the impeccable casting of heroes, but in the rewarding payoff of an intersecting universe. By placing all of their heroes in a single, frequently overlapping world, Kevin Feige helped create a series that is always seconds away from a little injection of fun from another time, place or tone. Need an Avenger to make your small-scale Ant-Man movie feel important? Boom, Falcon is here. Need to connect your space saga to the main story? Blam, Thanos pops in to act menacing. Not sure where to take the last Thor movie? Try popping in The Hulk just to see what happens. Sure, some of these were cheap ploys to achieve something the movie hadn’t earned, but it was almost always rewarding to see characters you love surprisingly stop in when you weren’t expecting them. Avengers films were meant to take that feeling and run with it for two hours, but nothing has ever quite succeeded in this regard like Avengers: Endgame. As the climax of the series, it delivers the longest and most powerful sustained payoff I’ve ever witnessed outside of the Japanese Zombie hit One Cut of the Dead (it rules). And once this thing approaches its third act, it ratchets up to a whole other level, packing in an entirely earned hour of pure bliss. Some are sure to deridingly call it fanservice, but when something is perfectly set up and well-earned, does that word even apply anymore? Nevertheless, the finale is so brilliant and so powerful, it justifies every moment that’s come before, even The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World.
In 2012’s The Avengers, Tony Stark knows that Loki has gone to Stark Tower because of his vanity: “He wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered on it.” Avengers: Endgame is Marvel’s monument built to the skies. It’s massive, prideful, and unquestionably in love with itself. Viewers who’ve found themselves disenfranchised will find little to love, but True Believers will relish in every moment, callback, and interaction. And why wouldn’t they? This saga has been a comforting, reliable bit of positive escapism for the past 11 years, and now the fans and filmmakers are taking one last victory lap together. It’s with us till the end of the line.
Captain Marvel is something of a miracle. It somehow took the most massive franchise in cinema history almost a decade to star a female superhero, as well as let a woman co-direct, and after all of that fervor there was almost no way it could live up to what it needed to be. As a sequel to the previous films in the series, it needed to be funny, look like a Marvel Movie, have a franchise-relevant MacGuffin, and feature a beloved actor as a villain. To adequately tell a story for female fans of the series, it couldn’t just be unique because it starred a woman, it needed to address this, but also show her as a strong hero independent of her gender. As a response to all of the children on the internet who couldn’t handle a female superhero, it needed to — well it didn’t need to do anything, but it would be nice to poke fun at them. Thankfully, it succeeds on all of these levels, and though it bears the flaws of most Marvel movies, isn’t that kind of the point?
Brie Larson takes the title role as Carol Danvers (aka Vers), who begins the film as some sort of alien super-soldier on the alien planet of Hala, home of alien race The Kree. Though The Kree were the villains of 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, they’re just people in their own civilization here, ruled by a being known only as The Supreme Intelligence. Gifted with the power to shoot weird beams of power from her fists, he works together with a team that basically functions as a Kree answer to the Guardians of the Galaxy, led by their very own Normal White Guy, Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg. Yon-Rogg and the rest of the Kree, in their own Jedi Order-like way, insist that emotion is the enemy, and the only way to properly control her power is by suppressing it. The first act is full-on space-fantasy, focusing heavily on the Kree’s war with the Skrull, a villainous, shape-shifting race. It takes a surprisingly dark tone that is sure to turn some people off, as it’s a bit of a break against form for the franchise, but it works quite well — we’re introduced to the mostly brutal life of a soldier in space, and then the whole thing starts to unravel.
Inevitably, the war leads Carol to Earth, a place she’s seemingly never been, but it awakens dormant memories of life as a normal human. Everything takes a hard turn in the second act, as directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck shift everything on its head, pairing Carol with a young Nick Fury (Samuel C.G.I. Jackson). This wildly fun midsection swings fully into Jason Bourne-meets-Shane Black, as they try to decipher her past whilst slinging banter and fighting enemies. The visual effects that make Jackson look like the 90s version of himself are pretty astounding, miles ahead of Michael Douglas’ rubbery face in 2015’s Ant-Man. Jackson works brilliantly in the role again, convincingly naive but still the cynical character we know as an adult. As we see him start to understand his own place in the larger universe, Jackson is probably the best he’s been as Fury since first putting on the eyepatch 11 years ago. He plays brilliantly against Larson, who herself delivers a powerful performance that embodies the uncertainty and courage of a super-weapon learning to become a superhero. Her stoic demeanor at the beginning starts to fade away as she becomes a sort of fun-loving cornball, impressed with her own powers.
Basically every performance in Captain Marvel rules, but Boden and Fleck’s greatest success is the film’s always-interesting, frequently shifting tone. The very dark, war-heavy opening is a great way to introduce the person who Carol is at the film’s start, but it transforms just as she does. As she (and filmmakers Boden and Fleck) clearly starts to become more comfortable, the movie embraces a sense of fun. It’s not a joke factory, the way your Ant-Mans and Iron Mans are, but the jokes have a wickedly high success rate. The filmmakers are even able to milk some hilarious moments from the villainous Skrull Talos, played tremendously by Ben Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn adopts a variety of accents for his many forms, each more ridiculous than the last, but always keeps a humorously aloof face, even under pounds of prosthetic makeup. He’s also not the only one to mine facial humor, which seems to be a style choice by Boden and Fleck — basically everyone in this movie delivers odd, perfectly timed bits of physical humor, and it’s a great departure from the MCU’s typical quip-based humor.
Because of this perfectly executed tone and a cast packed full of lovable, smaller characters that I won’t spoil in this review, the 124-minute runtime flies by. This is a very good thing, but it makes it easy to overlook some of the issues that arise when looking back on the film. When you piece together the story and look at everything as a whole, there isn’t anything too uncommon about the story itself. Deftly handled subtext aside, it’s just another Marvel story with a forgettable villain and a simple, a-to-b-to-c plot. Additionally, there’s an unfortunate fact that most Marvel fans don’t care to admit, but has always been true: these films are usually ugly. Aside from outliers like Black Panther and Guardians of the Galaxy, they usually lack any sense of visual style. Grays dominate most of these movies, with wide shots and backlit environments making every moment clear and easily-accessible, but devoid of personality. Captain Marvel is sadly not an outlier, mostly retaining that same color palette and lighting technique. If anything, some moments are even worse, burying key story moments in a cloud of darkness. This is a problem Marvel needs to fix, but the question is how? Is the issue that Feige keeps too tight of a leash on his filmmakers. To paraphrase fellow film critic Sam Banigan of the Welcome Back podcast, will the next phase of Marvel films be a slog to sit through, or will Feige finally allow filmmakers like Edgar Wright (who was fired from Ant-Man) to make something weird in the universe?
Though the look and general narrative feels stale, the six credited writers still do a brilliant job and one of the toughest tasks — addressing the character’s importance in her universe, but also our own. Over these last 11 years, Marvel Entertainment has produced a whopping 20 movies, the longest continuous story in film history. Though it undoubtedly took Feige far, far too long, he’s finally taking steps forward, in just the last 16 months delivering Thor: Ragnarok (the first directed by a person of color), Black Panther (one of the first predominantly black casts in a blockbuster film, and a groundbreaking step forward for black representation in cinema), Ant-Man and the Wasp (the first to feature a woman as the co-lead). Captain Marvel understands its groundbreaking place in this line of films, and expertly uses the platform to tell a story about being a female-presenting person in modern society. Whether Carol is dealing with Kree, humans, or the sci-fi embodiment of cultural norms, people continue to find reasons to tell her she can’t do something. When we finally see her overcome that and become Captain Marvel, it’s a breathtaking, powerful moment, one that stands up to anything else in the Marvel Universe.
Throughout the MCU’s first 20 entries, six have been origin stories. Boss Kevin Feige kept a high focus on hero-creation narratives in the early days of The Marvel Cinematic Universe, but has pared down in recent years, instead focusing on sequels and fully formed heroes in their own right — to mixed success. Where Ryan Coogler found success with this formula by beginning Black Panther in a world where T’Challa is already a hero, Spider-Man: Homecoming faltered. John Watts briefly flashed past Uncle Ben’s death and turned Peter Parker into a generic, quippy child, devoid of the motivation and buried tragedy that defines the character. With Captain Marvel, Boden and Fleck wisely go back to the origin story, allowing us to meet Carol Danvers before she inevitably groups up with The Avengers. Through a masterful grasp on tone, a bevy of strong performances and a hell of a moving climax, it bypasses every origin since we first saw Tony Stark break out of a cave with the first Iron Man suit. And now, 11 years later, we only have to wait two months before Captain Marvel becomes the one to save him, and connect fists with with the Universe — and her fists with Thanos’ face.
After yesterday’s historic Oscar nominations for Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, many celebrities stepped up to congratulate the cast and crew. Today, Disney CEO Bob Iger joined the list of names celebrating the film’s success.
Since Black Panther is the first superhero film to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, the announcement made a huge splash. Iger, through a Tweet posted late last night, recognized the effort and courage required to make such a film.
“Congrats to our Studio for its 17 Oscar Noms,” Iger wrote. “It was especially gratifying to see Marvel Studios’ groundbreaking Black Panther honored with 7. Great creativity is never an accident; it’s the result of talent, vision, passion, and courage. Thank you Ryan Coogler & Kevin Feige.”
When it released last February, Black Panther was an immediate success. It quickly became the third-highest grossing film of all time in the United States and eventually the highest grossing non-Avengers film for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It had a near-perfect reputation with critics and joined Infinity War as one of the most Tweeted-about films of the year.
On top of the extraordinary nomination for Best Picture, Black Panther was also nominated in the categories of Best Original Score (Ludwig Göransson), Original Song (Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s All the Stars), Costume Design (Ruth E. Carter), Production Design (Hannah Beachler and Jay Hart), Sound Editing (Benjamin A. Burtt and Steve Boeddeker) and Sound Mixing (Steve Boeddeker, Brandon Proctor and Peter J. Devlin). Combined, these seven nominations are the fifth most of any film from last year.
The 2019 Oscar Awards will be held on February 24 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on ABC.
Director Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel The Witches has cast Anne Hathaway in a key role.
According to Variety, Hathaway will play the Grand High Witch, a role originally filled by Anjelica Huston in the 1990 film. Hawthaway reportedly delayed Warner Bros.’ offer, as it conflicted with her starring role in a Sesame Street film, but the scheduling issues were recently resolved. At the time of writing, Hathaway is the only actor announced for the film, though Zemeckis is backed by producers Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo Del Toro.
Published in 1983, Roald Dahl’s book takes place in a parallel version of Earth, where covens of witches that hate children reside across the world. The Grand High Witch comes to England with a dastardly plot, leaving a young boy and his grandmother to save the world.
The 1990 adaptation of The Witches pulled in critical acclaim but a poor box office return. Dahl himself did not like the film and spoke out against the drastic change to the story’s ending. According to the report, Zemeckis will put his own spin on the story, while hewing close to the source material.
Lately, Hathaway has appeared as a monster-controlling loser in Colossal and something of a self-parody in Ocean’s 8. Her past credits also include Les Miserables, The Dark Knight Rises, Ella Enchanted and more.
Written and directed by Robert Zemeckis, The Witches will star Anne Hathaway. It is produced by Zemeckis, his production partner Jack Rapke, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo Del Toro.
Between the adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, an expansion of the What We Do in the Shadows-verse and dozens of other projects in production, it’s a busy time for new shows at FX. Today the network announced another blockbuster miniseries on their plate: Mrs. America, the story of women who fought to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in the ’70s, starring Cate Blanchett.
Set to premiere next year, the series’ crew of executive producers is notably stacked with veteran female producers. Blanchett will produce alongside Stacey Sher, Coco Francini and writer and showrunner Dahvi Waller. The four have extensive experience in film and TV shows, including Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight and Mad Men.
Waller served as co-producer on Mad Men (where she won an Emmy) and Halt and Catch Fire,as well aswriting episodes of Desperate Housewives and Mad Men.
Blanchett will play Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative woman who resisted the second wave of feminism. The show will also portray major figures in the second-wave feminist movement, including Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and Jill Ruckelshaus, and the ways the movement left a lasting impact on American politics. In a statement to Deadline, Blanchett discussed how much the project means to her and what she hopes the show can accomplish.
“I feel privileged to have this opportunity to collaborate with Dahvi, Stacey and Coco under the robust and fearless FX umbrella,” said Blanchett. “I am extremely excited about delving into the material as there couldn’t be a more appropriate time to peel back the layers of this recent period of history, which couldn’t be more relevant today.”
Blanchett was most recently seen in The House with a Clock in its Walls and has a busy year set for 2019, lending her voice to the third How to Train Your Dragon film and the upcoming live-action CGI hybrid Mowgli, as well as appearing in films from Richard Linklater and Aaron Sorkin. This will be her first time headlining a TV series since 1995 miniseries Bordertown, which marked one of the first leading roles in her career. It’s an ambitious gambit from FX, but audiences will have to wait and see if it pays off.
Along with Blanchett, Mrs. America will be executive produced by Stacey Sher, Coco Francini, and Dahvi Waller. It will premiere on FX next year.
Justin Don Jones 