Incredibles 2: A "Parr for the Course" Superhero Movie

This review’s a little late, I know. But at least it didn’t take fourteen years.

Alright, now that we’ve got that obligatory joke out of the way, how does Incredibles 2 fare?

The first thing I’ll praise about this film over the first one is how much better the animation has come. There’s definitely a lot more detail with the hair and the clothing, and the action scenes look very fluid and impressive. But even with all this detail, it still manages to maintain the stylized Iron Giant-esque character designs from the first movie, which I appreciated.

I will say that even though the animation is much better, the first movie had a better mastery of light and color. The first movie had some really cool shots with really effective mood lighting and colors given the situation, and in this movie, it felt like a lot of it had ever-present bright colors and everything was washed in this soft golden light. While it makes for a bright and colorful movie, it also makes for a less visually interesting movie than the first one.

The Jack-Jack stuff is funny and cute with how they show all of his powers, especially that battle with the raccoon. And I appreciated the dynamic shift that happens in the movie between Bob and Helen, where she’s the new hero in action and Bob has to stay home with the kids. It’s a side of both of these characters we didn’t really see in the first movie.

By and large, I’m glad that the sequel doesn’t feel like a rehash of the first movie, which was a big fear I had after watching some of the trailers. There’s some stuff that feels like repeats of the first movie (a superhero doing missions for a corporation, a tech-based villain who hates supers, etc.) but it’s all pretty superficial. It definitely feels like its own movie.

That being said, the movie’s pretty predictable, especially when it comes to the villain. As I predicted in my Ant-Man and the Wasp article, they opt for another Disney surprise villain reveal. Admittedly, the villain has some pretty good speeches and understandable motivations (I mean, for a superhero movie), but I am getting so sick of this recent cliché with Disney films, especially now that it’s bleeding into Pixar. With Incredibles 2, the past two Pixar movies have had a twist where a supposed ally was the villain all along, and I’ve just grown so bored with this twist. It’s becoming so predictable when every Disney movie is doing it now. Why can’t villains just be out-and-out villains anymore?

On the whole, Incredibles 2 is nowhere near as good as the first movie, which is to be expected. The Incredibles is a classic, one of my favorite Pixar movies, and one of my favorite superhero movies. It would be hard to beat, or even match the same quality. But that doesn’t mean this movie is bad. It’s good, just not as good as the first. I just hold Pixar to such high standards with animated movies that when they deliver one that’s just okay, it feels like a bit of a disappointment. But if this movie were made by a lesser animation studio (like, say, Illumination) it would probably be seen as really great.

The feeling I got from leaving this movie reminded me of the feeling I had after leaving Finding Dory: it’s a fine movie, but it doesn’t have the emotional weight or impact that the first movie had. Thus, the sequel doesn’t feel as important as the first installment and, in some regards, a little unnecessary.

That feeling could also come from the fact that Incredibles 2 was released in 2018, when there are already a butt-ton of superhero movies on the market. The first movie was back in 2004, before the superhero movie boom, at a time when superhero movie releases were more sporadic and not always of the best quality. It had it’s own identity to set it apart from not only other superhero movies, but superhero entertainment aimed at children and families. Incredibles 2, while a fine film, feels like just another superhero movie in an already overflowing sea of tights and masks. It doesn’t have what the first movie had that made it stand out, be that the subject matter or the time of release. Maybe Syndrome's plan actually came true: "When everyone's super, no one will be."

Also, it needed more Frozone and Edna in it. Come on, Disney, you love to give every character and their mother a spin-off movie, why not give one to these two?

An Ant-Man Theory: Janet van Dyne is a Villain

I know, I know. After the universe-shattering finale of Infinity War, it’s hard to care about the MCU’s next film, Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Regardless, I have a highly likely theory about the movie that may or may not drum up some more interest in it.

Recall the first Ant-Man movie, and how a large part of Hank Pym’s backstory was that his wife Janet van Dyne – the original Wasp – was lost in a mission when she shrunk down into the inescapable Quantum Realm. Janet will apparently return from the Quantum Realm in the sequel, however, and will be played by Michelle Pfeiffer.

Now here’s the theory: What if Janet will turn out to be a villain?

If you’re familiar with the character, it sounds a bit outlandish, I know, but here’s my evidence:

1.  The Yellowjacket Syndrome

Within the laws of the Ant-Man movies, prolonged usage of the size-shrinking Pym Particles without proper protection can result in a damaged mental state. This happened in the first Ant-Man movie with Darren Cross, a.k.a. Yellowjacket, which helped make him a more unhinged villain by the finale. It seems that something similar is happening with Scott Lang, as every time we’ve seen him use the Pym Particles to grow into Giant-Man, it’s accompanied by an evil laugh. This could just be more some sort of dramatic effect on Scott’s part, but it seems like too much of a coincidence.

With this being said, is it really out of the question for Janet to become corrupted in a similar way?

Unless they really want to mess with the character, Janet probably didn’t start out evil. However, the Quantum Realm probably shares a lot of similar health hazards that the Pym Particle does. And given that Janet has been stranded in this realm for decades, it’s easy to see how she could snap and become a villain.

In addition, her decades of isolation could also lead her to have a resentment for her husband. If her mental state really is that fractured, it would be very easy for her to blame Hank for leaving her stranded there and never coming to rescue her.

2.  Lack of Advertisement

As stated before, Janet’s return from the Quantum Realm will play some sort of part in the movie. Given the history she has with Hank and the impact her disappearance had on him, this will no doubt be an important part in the emotional timetable of the movie.

So why haven’t we seen or heard a whole lot about it?

The obvious answer here is that something about Janet’s character or her return is a big spoiler for the movie, and they don’t want to reveal too much of it in the advertisement. Other than her character poster, we haven’t seen anything of Janet in the movie. There’s a bit in the second trailer about Hank “opening up the Quantum Realm”, presumably to search for her, but we don’t see much of it. The advertisement for the movie seems to focus on Ant-Man and the new Wasp taking down the Ghost after she steals Hank’s tech. To me, it seems intentionally misleading.

In my experience with movie advertisements, a lack of marketing for a certain character – even if they are allegedly in the main cast – means there’s some sort of big spoiler about the character, usually a death (see Suicide Squad, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Solo: A Star Wars Story). Now I highly doubt they’ll kill off Janet right after they bring her back, especially with a talented actress like Michelle Pfeiffer cast, so the villain angle seems the most likely choice for a character spoiler.

3.  Disney Sure Loves its Surprise Villains

Since Wreck-It Ralph came out, Disney has had this weird obsession with making a seemingly benign character a secret villain. A twist villain can add some good twists and emotional weight to the movie, but Disney does it so much now that it’s almost predictable and kind of boring. Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and Coco have all had a reveal involving an ally being the main villain (Moana had a similar reveal, but in the reverse). Even before 2012, Disney had done the villain twist before with movies like Monsters, Inc and Up.

(Side note: I also feel like Incredibles 2 is gonna pull the same twist with its villain.)

And of course, Marvel has started to get in on the act, with surprise antagonists in both Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. So it stands to reason that Ant-Man and the Wasp could very likely follow in those footsteps with the surprise villain, given how all the advertisements seem to focus on Ghost, who doesn’t really seem to have a lot of recognizable goals as an antagonist.

Plus, what would be a bigger twist than Hank Pym’s wife, the beloved Wasp, turning out to be a bad guy?

But here’s the thing about this theory: I don’t want to be right.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has already derailed the character of the Wasp enough. Aside from the fact that they took out Ant-Man and the Wasp’s roles as founding Avengers (Wasp is the one who comes up with the name in the comics, for god’s sake), the two incarnations of the Wasp we have bare little resemblance to the character from the comics.

The Wasp is supposed to be this bubbly, energetic character, but the two versions we have in the movies are a surly businesswoman with daddy issues, and her disappeared mom who may or may not be a villain. And once they bring her back from the Quantum Realm, I doubt they’re going to keep her bubbly comic personality with her sporting the same weary dimensional traveler look that Ford Pines had in Gravity Falls.

So yeah, I really hope they don’t pull this twist and make Janet a villain, thus further bastardizing the character and her role in the Marvel Universe. But from my point of view, it just seems entirely too likely.

Or I could be entirely wrong. But if I am right, I just wanted my prediction documented.

Thank you for reading. Tune in next week when I discuss my theory of how Piglet will be the secret main villain of Christopher Robin.

Arrested Development, Season 5: Part 1 of 2, I Guess?

Now the story of a cancelled cult classic sitcom, and the online streaming service who had no choice but to bring it back for the second time.

It’s Arrested Development: Season 5.

Arrested Development never really had mainstream notoriety, and that’s a real shame. It’s one of those shows that can somehow create a cast of awful people that never change for the better, and yet make them endearing. It’s got a masterful use of running gags and bizarre, fast-paced comedy that probably isn’t for everyone, but it’s certainly an overlooked relic of the mid 2000’s.

With all that praise, Season 4 was less than spectacular. While I only watched the first two episodes of the original cut of Season 4 before I gave up, the recut of the season still wasn’t living up to the expectations of the rest of the show. Between keeping the family separated, not-so-compelling subplots, and the confusing timeline of the season cutting back and forth between present day and flashbacks, it didn’t really feel like the Arrested Development I knew and loved.

Season 5 is slightly better, but seeing as how we only have the first eight episodes of the season right now, I feel like it’s sort of unfair to review and judge the season at the moment.

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to.

The first thing I’ll praise is that it does get the Bluth family back together so we can see them interacting off of each other, which was the backbone of the show during its original run. This being the fifth season in the show’s run, it also pokes fun at some of the recurring tropes of the Bluth family, such as Michael’s repeated “I’m leaving this family for good” attitude – which at this point is such a casual thing he says that even Michael doesn’t believe it most times.

However, even this familiar aspect of the show can get shaky at times. Lindsay is gone for a good chunk of the season after she pulls a Michael and leaves the family, despite the fact that her running for Congress is one of the big recurring bits in the season. I’m assuming she’ll be in more of the season once the final eight episodes drop and we’ll return to the election plotline, but the fact that she’s not there for a portion of this half means that there’s a hole left in the family dynamic.

Because of Lindsay’s absence, it also feels like Tobias has very little connection to the family anymore. They try to keep his presence useful to the season by introducing his bastard son Murphy-Brown (who just kind of stumbles into the show without any real explanation), but he doesn’t feel as connected as everyone else. Of course, that’s often the point of Tobias’s character, but considering he’s my favorite member of the Bluth family, the fact that he’s been so far underutilized in Season 5 greatly disappoints me.

Contrasted to Season 4, Season 5 has a lot more intriguing plot threads that feel more “Bluth-y.” Despite Tobias’s lack of focus, I thought the parts with him trying to impersonate missing members of the Bluth family in order to prove his place among them was fun. Lindsay running for office was an interesting way to go with the character, despite the fact that that plotline has so far been stumbling with the absence of Lindsay. Gob coming to terms with his possibly homosexuality and Maeby hiding out in disguise at a retirement village were both in tune with their characters, and seeing as how these plotlines seemed to be resolved by the end of part one of the season, I’m curious to see what roles they’ll play in part two. Buster being the one in prison now is also a fun way to go with the character and one of the show’s most prevalent themes: a family member in jail.

I still don’t think it’s as laugh-out-loud funny as the first three seasons, which was a similar problem I had with Season 4. But while Season 4 had a lot of moments were it was just uncomfortable to see how unlikeable these characters could be, Season 5 starts off with a lot of familial drama that kind of bogs it down. And not the funny family drama that the show it known for, either. Fortunately, the second half (of the first half of the season) gets much better with that, trying to steer the show back to what it was in its original run. It’s not the same laugh-a-minute comedy of the first three seasons, but it feels like it’s at least trying to be at times.

When I initially completed this run of episodes, I was much more critical with my review of it since it didn’t feel complete. So many plot threads were left dangling and it felt like Arrested Development had lost its steam. But right before typing this review up, I found out that this was merely part one of Season 5, and so I decided to rework my thoughts so I didn’t make a huge mistake and completely lambast one of my favorite sitcoms.

So yes, the first part of Season 5 feels incomplete, but that’s because it is. It’s a somewhat shaky start, but certainly better than Season 4 in many spots. It still doesn’t feel exactly like the original run of the show, but it does feel a few steps closer than the previous season. It leaves you with questions to be answered in the second part, like what Oscar’s stake in all this is, and what’s going to happen with the murder of Lucille 2 (if she even is dead).

In addition to the outcome of those questions, I am curious to see the outcome of the season overall, and if it lives up to the previous seasons I so loved. Because I would hate to pull a Michael and leave the Bluth family for good.

On the next Matt Reviews: Arrested Development:

Matt contemplates whether recreating the running gags and style of an Arrested Development episode would have been better translated in a video review like he used to do, maybe with a cheeky narrator with a successful directing career.

And Ron Howard decides to compete with Netflix’s Marvel shows by trying to tie Arrested Development to his Han Solo origin movie, only to get into hot water with Disney and the police for trying to steal a Chewbacca costume and kidnap Donald Glover.

Solo: Another Star Wars Prequel

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Oh man, you guys, are you ready for another Matt Ferra Star Wars review? I know it’s only been like five months since the last one, but that’s okay! Because as everyone knows, I freaking love Star Wars!

You know, sometimes it gets really exhausting being the “I Freaking Love Star Wars” Guy. Let’s just get this over with.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is the second of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars anthology series, following Rogue One. Unlike Rogue One, which focused on putting new characters in a familiar-yet-unseen situation, Solo focuses on the backstories of already established, beloved characters. Fortunately, it doesn’t mess this up like the prequels did.

My biggest concern going into this movie, as well as many others’, was Alden Ehrenreich as Han. But after seeing the movie, I can confidently say that he’s not too bad as the character. He’s not Harrison Ford by any means, but I don’t think that’s what they were going for. Had they tried to make him Harrison Ford, it would have been too distracting. It’s kind of like what the prequels did with Obi-Wan Kenobi: it’s not an impersonation of the performance we had before, but more like an earlier version of the same character before they evolved. They get the spirit of the character of Han right, and that’s all that matters.

The rest of the cast is pretty solid too. Paul Bettany especially surprised me as scar-faced crime lord (oh that’s a clever subtle joke) Dryden Vos. I kind of figured with Bettany being brought in so late in production to replace a different actor, he might have phoned it in with the rushed production. But he did really well portraying Vos in a properly sinister light.

And of course, there’s Donald Glover as a young Lando Calrissian. As predicted, he perfectly emulates Billy Dee Williams’ charm as the character. Nothing else needs to be said except that he dons the cape like he was born to wear it.

The only character I really didn’t like was L3-37, the new droid. They do a new spin on the Star Wars universe by making her a fighter for droid rights, but they make her so aggressive and preachy about her ideals that it kind of makes her annoying at times. I understand what they were trying to do with the parallels with droid rights and I hope that some people could find L3 to be a positive role model for people wanting to fight oppression and injustice, but I felt that they could have done better with representing this cause than to make her too similar to the “social justice warriors” you see on the Internet all the time.

Solo has a pacing problem at times. Sometimes the movie rushes through scenes, sometimes it takes its time, once in a while it uses a time skip. It can get a little confusing when you’re trying to gauge by the pacing where you’re at in the runtime of the movie. It’s a similar problem I had with The Last Jedi and its five different climaxes.

Overall, I liked Solo better than Rogue One. Rogue One’s characters fell flat at times, it had themes that weren’t properly explored, and it’s overall tone was too dark and dull to be fun like other Star Wars movies. Solo is more fun and has more likeable characters, which is probably due to the fact that we already know some of them from the previous movies. The new characters, like Qi’ra and Beckett, aren’t nearly as engaging as Han, Lando, or Chewbacca, but they serve their purpose.

I liked the fact that the movie took place in the criminal underbelly of the galaxy, which certainly felt different than the “Jedi/Rebels vs. Evil Empire” dynamic the other films had. Even Rogue One, which was certainly different than other Star Wars movies, was still about the Rebels fighting the Empire, just from a different point of view. In this movie, the Empire isn’t even a major force, and it’s set before the Rebellion is even official set up. I felt this was a fresh change of pace amidst the complaints that Disney only cares about recreating A New Hope over and over again.

And it’s a minor thing, but I really appreciated all the little nods this movie gave to the Star Wars expanded universe; from name-dropping planets like Felucia, to showing members of the Pyke Syndicate, capped off with Darth Maul’s entire appearance raising confusion in those who haven’t watched the Clone Wars cartoon. It appears that Star Wars is more interested in making their movies and TV shows feel more interconnected than Marvel is.

Solo isn’t a deep story, and it certainly doesn’t have the same stakes as the main “saga” Star Wars movies. But for what it is, it’s a good popcorn flick filled with mindless entertainment.

But most importantly, it didn’t suck.

Deadpool 2 or: How Fox Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the R Rating

SPOILER ALERT

I think Deadpool is kind of overrated.

(I know: great way to start a Deadpool 2 review, right?)

If I can get on my hipster soapbox for a moment, Deadpool used to be this thing that not many people knew about, this irreverent, self-aware anti-hero that wasn’t like any other comic book character. Then he started appearing in more video games and some of the cartoons and the magic of being a Deadpool fan melted away; it wasn’t special anymore to say that Deadpool was cool now that everyone was saying it. And not everyone can write Deadpool well, either. Eventually, the concept of a fourth wall breaking sociopath who spits off pop culture references like bullets from a semi-automatic stopped being funny.

And then along came Ryan Reynolds.

This man – along with the writers and director of the first Deadpool movie – managed to pull Deadpool out of the wreckage that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine and make the character interesting to me again. The movie had jokes aplenty, but it was mixed in with a lot of violence, drama, and a surprisingly compelling love story. Capped off with Reynolds’ usual charisma and quick wit portraying the Merc Who Got His Mouth Back, and the Deadpool movie became one of the only incarnations of Deadpool that I could tolerate.

The sequel follows in those same footsteps, mostly for the better.

It’s still not a million jokes a minute like the comics are. There are legitimate scenes of drama with stuff like Vanessa’s death and some of the interactions between Deadpool and Russell. But when the jokes do hit, they hit hard, especially in regards to the superhero movie industry (and all of the gut punches towards DC and their movies).

However, sometimes the movie does suffer from what I call “Sequel Remembrance Syndrome”, wherein a movie sequel – usually a comedy – re-uses iconic jokes from the previous installment, usually with minor adjustments made to them. Examples from Deadpool 2 include Deadpool having to re-grow his legs as baby legs (instead of his arm like the previous movie) and the jokes directed at X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Green Lantern. While these jokes are still funny and are elevated from the previous movie – the jokes about Reynolds’ prior movie career is extra harsh in this one thanks to the insanely meta post-credit scene – I’d be lying if I said I wish they’d try more original jokes.

That being said, one of this movie’s instances of SRS (Sequel Remembrance Syndrome) wound up being what I thought was the funniest joke in the whole movie. It’s where Deadpool goes to visit the X-Mansion like in the first movie, and one again complains that he never sees any other X-Men at the mansion except for Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (due to the studio being too cheap to afford anyone else). Only this time we see, just out of Deadpool’s peripherals, Professor X (as in James McAvoy) and his X-Men team from Apocalypse quietly close a classroom door so that they don’t have to deal with Deadpool’s antics. Brilliant, while also further raising the question of how McAvoy hasn’t turned into Patrick Stewart by this point.

I feel like the first act of this movie is a bit of a slog to get through, but once Deadpool assembles the X-Force (and that spectacularly fails), the movie really picked up for me.

(Also, I know some people were upset that the X-Force characters were built up so heavily in the trailers and then immediately killed off, but I don’t really know anything about these characters so I thought it was a funny subversion. I’m just glad the post-credit scene saved Peter above all else.)

Ryan Reynolds is on record saying that Deadpool 2 is a “family movie.” Now this isn’t to say that you should take your six-year-old to see a foul-mouthed superhero movie where the protagonist falls onto a steel table and folds like an accordion, but the theme of creating an unconventional family is prevalent in this movie. The interactions between Deadpool, Cable, and Domino are some of the best in the movie, and you really get a good sense of comradery between them. And as stated before, Deadpool and Russell’s father-son dynamic can get pretty sweet at times. At the end of the movie, when Deadpool is walking off with Cable, Domino, Russell, Colossus, and Dopinder and narrating about family, I did get the sense that yes, this is the kind of weird, effed-up family I would like to see in a movie like this.

Some people are saying Deadpool 2 is better than the first. Some say it’s worse. I say that it’s just as good. They both have a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses, but it’s still an incredibly enjoyable film. Sometimes the pacing gets weird and the supposedly comedic superhero movie is bogged down with long scenes of drama, but the first movie had that too. It’s got a lot more in it than the first one, and it integrates itself farther into the greater X-Men universe with inclusions like the Juggernaut (who is much better here than he was in X-Men: The Last Stand), hints at future elements like Mister Sinister, and actual cameos from the big league X-Men stars.

(Also, as a side note, I thought it was really clever how they basically turned Vanessa into the movie’s version of Lady Death – Deadpool’s star-crossed love who awaits him in the afterlife every time he dies – without making it blatantly obvious. You know, until the post-credit scene reverses it.)

If you liked the first Deadpool movie, you’ll like this one fine. Stick through the uneven first act and you’ll have yourself a nice night at the movies filled with meta humor and heartwarming friendships between violent sociopaths.

The ironic part is, when comparing this to other superhero movies out right now, Deadpool 2 is probably a lot less emotionally scarring for little kids than Infinity War.

Matt Reviews - Avengers: Infinity War

WARNING: GIANT-SIZED MARVEL SPOILERS Follow

Viewer Discretion is Advised

Avengers: Infinity War is a movie ten years in the making. It’s not just a sequel to the last Avengers movie, but a sequel to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s the culmination of the 18 different movies that came before.

With such an ambitious premise and a decade of hype built around it, does Marvel deliver once again?

Oh my, yes.

To briefly summarize the plot: The alien warlord Thanos (Josh Brolin) – whom you might remember from the post-credit scene from The Avengers and his “pivotal” role in Guardians of the Galaxy – is on the hunt for the Infinity Stones so that he can bring balance to the universe by wiping out half of all life. The Avengers join forces with Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and the Guardians of the Galaxy in a battle that takes them to the ends of the earth and beyond the cosmos as they fight to stop the Mad Titan from rewriting reality.

So both surprisingly and not, this is a brutal movie. People die. A lot of people. The film starts out on a heart wrenching note with the deaths of Loki and Heimdall, and from there other prominent characters like Gamora and Vision meet their tragic demises. Eventually, this culminates in Thanos’s iconic finger snap erasing half of the cast from existence, meaning we have to watch fan-favorite characters like Spider-Man, Star-Lord, and Bucky Barnes tearfully fade into cosmic dust. Every action scene had me actually nervous for once as to if these characters were going to survive. Had the scene where Gamora tells Star-Lord to kill her played in any other Marvel movie, I wouldn’t have worried. But since this movie had shown that it’s pulling no punches by killing off Loki, it’s most recurring bad guy/anti-hero, I was nervous that whole scene.

Of course, the comic this movie is primarily based on (The Infinity Gauntlet) is equally as brutal. That one begins with Thanos wiping out half of the Marvel Universe with a thought, and then proceeding to murder the remaining heroes that stand up to him. Marvel surprised me by how faithfully they translated this brutality to the screen because, well, it’s Disney. Killing off these many marketable characters seemed like something they wouldn’t really be into, especially given how Marvel tends to try to be more “family friendly” in their movies than DC. But then again, I’m forgetting Rogue One, another Disney properly that basically obliterates the entire main cast by the end.

They call it "Infinity War" because it goes on forever.
They keep introducing new characters every two hours.

That being said, these deaths won’t stick, like in the original Infinity Gauntlet story. The heroes are obviously going to find a way to reverse these deaths since most of the heroes they killed off have future movies coming up (Spider-Man, Black Panther, the Guardians). So immediately, some of these deaths lose their emotional weight, but that doesn’t mean they’re still not heartbreaking to watch, especially Spider-Man’s. Man, is Tom Holland a good actor when he needs to act like a scared kid.

Personally, I hope they don’t reverse all the deaths. Just the ones caused by Thanos’s finger snap. Leave Loki, Heimdall, and Vision dead. Gamora can come back because she’ll probably be in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Besides, given the events of the movie, her soul is probably just trapped in the Soul Stone, so that’s a semi-plausible excuse to bring her back (by comic book logic standards).

So let’s talk about the cause of all this brutality and death, and the star of this show: Thanos. This is a villain who has done basically nothing but sit around for 6 years and lose the Infinity Stones he’s been trying to collect, yet Marvel has been hyping him up as the biggest big bad in the universe. My biggest fear, which I’m sure was shared by others, is that he would be a disappointment after all that build-up, but Marvel actually knocked it out of the park. They establish off the bat that Thanos is the colossal threat he should be, effortlessly kicking the crap out of the Hulk and Thor and killing Loki after sensing his betrayal. And that’s all before he gets most of the Infinity Stones.

Aside from how much of a threat he is, they also make Thanos a compelling character. He’s not just the pure evil genocidal dictator that we were promised in Guardians of the Galaxy. He sees the universe is dwindling in resources and overabundant in people, so he genuinely believes that wiping out half of all life will fix that. He has actual emotions other than “evil”, love being the strongest one. His scenes with his adopted daughter Gamora are some of his best in the movie, all coming to a head when he sheds actual tears at the thought of sacrificing his favorite daughter to obtain the Soul Stone. Much like characters like Killmonger and the Vulture before him, Marvel has really been putting in all the effort when it comes to their villains in Phase 3. Also, that is some GREAT CGI on him.

Who would win: The entire Marvel Universe, or one pissed-off California Raisin?

I mentioned before that despite being the antagonist, I consider Thanos the main character of this movie. He has the most complete and compelling arc in the movie, and the whole movie is basically about Thanos collecting the Infinity Stones. On the hero side of things, the other candidates for main characters could be Iron Man, Thor, the Guardians (particularly Gamora),a and maybe Doctor Strange, only because these characters also have bigger and more complete arcs like Thanos.

Speaking of the heroes, another highlight of the film is getting to see all of these different characters interact with one another, in combinations we haven’t seen before. Tony Stark’s ego clashes with that of Doctor Strange. Star-Lord competes for masculinity with Thor, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Rocket Raccoon. Captain America responds to Groot’s “I am Groot” with “I am Steve Rogers.” It’s a lot of fun.

The problems that I have with this movie are mainly nitpicks, some more major than others. One of my biggest is that the beginning overrides the hopeful ending of Thor: Ragnarok, with Thanos’s massacre of the Asgardian refuge ship basically making the final events of Ragnarok pointless. However, if half of the ship’s population survived like Thor says, it’s likely that characters like Valkyrie, Korg, and Miek (who are sadly missing from this movie) could have survived. While all of the characters and plot threads have their time to shine, I feel like Captain America is the one that gets the shaft in some way. This is mostly due to the placement of his storyline in relation to the rest of the movie. It doesn’t cut back to the stuff on Earth with him and his Avengers nearly as much as the stuff with Iron Man or the Guardians, meaning that there’s like an hour wait from when Cap says they need to go to Wakanda and when they actually arrive there, and by that point it’s time for the final battle.

Also, not really a criticism, but I feel that Rocket should have been the one to disappear at the end instead of Groot. We’ve already seen Groot die before in these movies, and if Rocket dies, that allows Groot to interact more with the remaining heroes in Avengers 4 and allows him to grow up into the hero that he’s meant to be. And I kind of wish Cap got wiped out instead of Bucky for similar reasons.

Spoilers: This scene isn't even in the movie.

I don’t know if people who aren’t caught up with MCU movies will be lost during this one, considering there’s not a whole lot of introductions for previously-established characters or plot points. But considering how integrated into pop culture these superhero movies are, I feel like everyone will get some enjoyment out of this. I still worry about some parts of the movie, like Red Skull’s reappearance after 7 years, effectively confirming a fan theory about his fake death (which to me, was the biggest surprise of the movie). If you’re not familiar with the MCU, go in with the buddy system and bring a nerd friend to explain things.

Infinity War has a ton of characters and plot points, but it never feels overcrowded. Everyone gets their time to shine. It is an emotionally exhausting movie, though. There’s a lot of emotions, a lot of deaths, and it has a dark, depressing tone through most of the movie, with a few jokes peppered here and there for levity’s sake. Unlike DC, Marvel has earned this tone because of how the rest of their movies have been. This movie feels rightfully big, important, and devastating, with a ton of characters we’ve grown to know and love. It’s 20 minutes short of being a three-hour movie, but it doesn’t really feel like it. There’s constantly action and stuff happening to keep you entertained.

It ends on such a dour note that while you’re sitting there in shock over what just happened, you’re also anticipating how the heroes are going to get out of this one.

Or, you know, what cop-out the writers are gonna pull to fix this.

Final verdict: 5 out of 6 Infinity Stones

So is there a reason Peter Dinklage’s dwarf character was like 20 feet tall? Is that like a Norse thing that dwarves are actually huge?

Also is there a reason his British accent is still terrible after 7 seasons of Game of Thrones?

Matt Reviews: The Shape of Water

WARNING: SPOILERS

The Oscars have come and gone, and my man Gary Oldman finally went home with a little golden man! The Shape of Water also went home with the Best Picture award, and seeing as how (of this writing) it’s the only movie on that ballot that I’ve seen, I decided to finally put my thoughts out there on it.

In 1962, a mute woman named Elisa (Sally Hawkins) works as a cleaning lady at a government laboratory. There, she discovers a mysterious fish-man (Doug Jones) with whom she develops a bond. While Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon) plans to exploit the creature for the benefit of the U.S. government, Elisa enacts a plan to free the creature, helped by her gay neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer), and a Soviet spy with a heart of gold (Michael Stuhlbarg).

The movie is basically Beauty and the Beast meets E.T., and it relishes in the fact that its setting is the Cold War of the 1960’s. It has all of the trimmings of a sci-fi B-movie from that era: a creepy monster, shady government experiments, Russian spies, etc. However, with this setting, it allows the movie to create characters that are dynamic and sympathetic because of how their differences make them outcasts in society.

Aside from being mute, Elisa is also Hispanic. Giles is gay. Zelda is a working-class black woman. The fish-man is, of course, not even human. Dimitri, the Russian spy, is an outcast on two fronts. He’s a Soviet masquerading as an American to gain our secrets, but he has such a strong moral center that he ends up disobeying the orders of his handlers in order to help Elisa free the creature, thus making him an outcast from his own motherland as well. Dimitri wound up being a particularly interesting character because of this. Much like how the fish-man wound up not being a dangerous monster (a trope that, admittedly, had been done many, many times before), the Soviet spy turning into one of the good guys was another twist on the Cold War B-movie environment of the movie.

Peekaboo.

Contrasting the outcast nature of the main cast is Michael Shannon as the bad guy Colonel Strickland. Strickland very much fits into the “norm” of 1960’s culture: a straight white man with a wife and two kids working for the betterment of his country. However, his sexism and bigotry are on full display here, showing just the kind of toxic behavior that this time period idolized. And as it is in movies like this, the human bad guy winds up being a thousand times more monstrous than the actual “monster” in the film.

When I saw Baby Driver, I thought one of the best things about the movie was how Baby and his deaf foster dad communicated entirely in sign language. It’s a form of communication you don’t see too often in movies, and I wished that film had more of that in there. This movie takes that concept and ups it by having the main character be the one using sign language this time. And with the creature’s inability to speak English, that means that our two leads communicate exclusively in sign language. Not only does this allow Sally Hawkins to show off the range of her physical acting by taking away her ability to speak, but it also creates a unique type of romance for the movie – one where the two of them never speak out loud to one another.

There are not a lot of issues I have with this movie, and what I do have problems with are not major enough to affect my enjoyment of the overall film. One such issue is the aforementioned Michael Shannon as Colonel Strickland. While the rest of the cast is quite three-dimensional characters that take the roles normally portrayed in sci-fi B-movies to new, interesting heights, Strickland felt more one-note. In a movie with characters with believable and sympathetic backstories, Strickland was more of a cartoon character. He was the big bad government man with sexist remarks that sometimes strayed a little too far into the “over the top” territory, and that was about it for his character. He felt like he would fit more at home in the B-movies this film was paying homage to, and maybe that’s the point of his characterization. Regardless, his performance and character in this movie was a bit distracting compared to how much effort went into the rest of the cast.

The other point of contrition I’ll mention is the pretty-much-out-of-nowhere musical number sung by Elisa. That’s right, our MUTE main character has a musical number. Granted, it’s a dream sequence meant to showcase Elisa’s love for the creature, and like the musical number in season 2 of Agent Carter, the time period kind of justifies the presence of a big band show stopping number. What I thought was happening in the movie is that somehow her having sex with the creature resulting in his healing powers fixing her voice, and then she’d spend the rest of the movie speaking normally. Fortunately, that was not the case, but the musical number still came quite out of the blue and is never brought up again. Maybe they just needed an excuse to show off Sally Hawkins’ singing abilities?

Tale as old as slime...

Also, while I’m on this subject, how exactly does the creature have these healing abilities? I’m not expecting a full explanation in this movie, since the creature is interesting because we don’t know that much about him, but what kind of scientific explanation is there for how an amphibious fish-man can somehow heal peoples’ wounds just by touching them? And I really hope that the ending – in which the creature turns Elisa’s neck scars into gills to save her life – was some sort of weird dream fantasy or Giles’ own interpretation of what happened after the creature disappeared with Elisa’s body. Because if that really happened, that makes the creatures abilities make even less sense.

Overall, I think the success and appeal of The Shape of Water can be attributed to its simplicity. I’ve watched other “Oscar Bait” movies in the past, and they were either so slow that they bored me to tears, or so complex that I had a hard time following them. The Shape of Water has neither of these problems. Like I said before, it’s a Beauty and the Beast love story mixed with the “hiding a fantastical creature from the government” plot of E.T. Both of these are incredibly familiar plot devices to people, so it makes it easier to connect with a wide range of audiences.

It’s got a little something for everyone. Fans of sci-fi, romance, spy thrillers, B-movies, and period pieces will all get something out of The Shape of Water. It’s got well-defined and likeable characters, with fantastic performances being put out by all of them. Special mention once again goes to Sally Hawkins – acting the entire movie mute save for the musical number – and Doug Jones, who shows a wide range of emotions while not even resembling a human. And who would have thought that a romance between an inhuman fish-man and a human woman could work so well?

The fact that the movie is now the winner of a Best Picture award – as well as Best Director – just shows the importance of passion in movies. Director Guillermo del Toro is always someone whose passion I always feel in every single movie he makes. He liked the Hellboy comics, so he made two Hellboy movies. He liked kaiju movies and anime, so he made Pacific Rim. He wanted the Creature from the Black Lagoon to wind up with the girl at the end, so he made The Shape of Water to make his fanfiction come true. I don’t think he ever sets out to specific make movies to win Oscars like some directors do. He makes movies because he loves making movies, and it’s this passion for what he does that winds up making them wonderful flicks every time.

This movie’s success is a testament that with the right passion, any fanboy that makes his way into Hollywood can achieve greatness.

Final verdict: 9/10