Minisode 116: The Worthlessness of Boba Fett
13 Sep
26 Jul
12 Jul
Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man and the Wasp is a pleasant enough diversion, with some clever sequences, but never really adds up to anything more than a placeholder within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Perhaps that’s okay, though. With the weight of everything that has been going on in the MCU, maybe a light, effects-heavy romp is just what the doctor ordered. Certainly, one of the interesting elements of this franchise is that we can have different tones from one film to another, with the Captain America films feeling notably different than the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, for example. However, ten years in and we’ve been trained to understand that everything affects everything else and that no hero, regardless of how isolated he may seem, is ever truly alone. So while Ant-Man and the Wasp is often a very amusing film – sometimes downright funny – it’s hard to reconcile it with the current tone of the larger franchise. And so the feel of the film is somewhat diminished and I found myself adopting a fatalistic mindset, wondering what the point of all this is, knowing what we do about the larger universe.
25 Apr
Six years ago, at the end of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, the Marvel Cinematic Universe promised to become even bigger than it already was. By briefly teasing the eventual appearance of cosmic villain Thanos, they alluded to one of the biggest events in comic book history, The Infinity Gauntlet. Remembering the tragic events of that series, I found myself wondering just how far the MCU was willing to go. With Avengers: Infinity War, I finally have my answer. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, this film is every bit as enjoyable, daring, and vital as any superhero movie in history. It needed to take the genre to a new level of hopelessness, committing to genuine life and death stakes. And, while it may not feature the mass death of the comic book series, its fatalistic tone is everything that I was hoping for.