Matt Reviews: McDonald's Szechuan Sauce

Even if you’re not a fan of Rick & Morty, you’ve probably heard about what’s been going down with McDonald’s and their Szechuan Sauce.

Really, it’s kind of amazing. Because a cartoon character had nostalgia over a discontinued dipping sauce made as a tie-in to the movie Mulan, a massive fan outcry resulted in McDonald’s bringing back the sauce for a limited time. Less amazing is how the Golden Arches’ lack of planning resulted in them running out of sauce very quickly and rabid Rick & Morty fans nearly burning every McDonald's to the ground in an extreme childish backlash that doesn't even surprise me anymore from today's internet fanboy culture.

But McDonald’s apparently listened to whatever death threats they were receiving, because they just re-released the sauce again in larger quantities and for a longer stretch of time. As a fan of Rick & Morty, Chicken McNuggets, and re-releasing discontinued movie tie-in foods (Ecto-Cooler’s return was the best thing to come out of the new Ghostbusters), I figured I’d try the sauce out this time since I, like most people, missed out in October.

So, does the fabled Szechuan Sauce live up to the hype?

Unfortunately, it does not.

When I first took a bite of a nugget dipped in the sauce, I didn’t taste much flavor, so I figured I just didn’t put enough on the nugget. After covering the chicken in more sauce and then sticking my actual finger in the stuff, I came to the realization that the Szechuan Sauce just doesn’t have much of a flavor to it.

It’s a very thick and sweet sauce, with a near microscopic hint of Asian spices and tang. It tastes less like a teriyaki dipping sauce and more like someone added a tiny bit of teriyaki to some corn syrup.

It doesn’t compliment the chicken well, either. Chicken McNuggets are fine on their own, but the dipping sauces usually enhance the rather basic flavor. Honey mustard is my go-to choice. With the Szechuan Sauce, there was barely a difference between that and a naked McNugget. I only used one of my Szechuan packets for my 10-piece McNuggets, resulting in me eating the last two or three nuggets with no sauce. I enjoyed them exactly the same as I would have without the sauce.

The real disappointing part is that I attempted to make Szechuan Sauce myself before they re-released it, and my homebrewed concoction was much better. Thanks to a few different internet tutorials, I found that by mixing two parts of the Sweet & Sour dipping sauce with one part of the Tangy Barbeque sauce, you get a strange sweet and tangy sauce that you could almost see being served at a lesser-tier Chinese restaurant. It was full of flavor, and I was expecting something similar to that with the official Szechuan Sauce re-release. But what I got was a watered down version of these terrible teriyaki chicken wings I had once at a local pizza place.

I’m not sure if this is the same formula McDonald’s used when they initially created the sauce in 1992 (or even the same formula used to re-create it in October), but I certainly hope the Golden Arches changed up their recipe at some point, and that the 1998 sauce was much better.

I hate to say that Rick Sanchez has terrible taste, but if this sauce tastes anything like the original release, I can’t see it as anything somebody would obsess about in a dream world. And I certainly don’t think this was worth almost taking Ronald McDonald to the guillotine in a Szechuan-based French Revolution.

Final verdict: 2/5

Now if Rick & Morty wanted to help bring back something worthwhile, bring back Taco Bell’s Triple Steak Stack. That is still, to this day, my absolute favorite way to get terrible indigestion.

Matt's Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains (Not Including Netflix)

WARNING: This post contains SPOILERS

And even worse: OPINIONS

If you’ve been paying attention to my recent reviews of Marvel movies, it appears that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been making a conscious effort in making their villains better.

Marvel  - and superhero movies in general – have had a problem when it comes to making their villains actual characters and not just a plot device for our heroes to beat up. While the focus should definitely always be on the hero and their journey, some superhero movies just can’t make villains as compelling as The Dark Knight’s Joker or X-Men’s Magneto.

With Black Panther’s recent release and the buzz surrounding its compelling antagonist, I decided to make a list detailing my personal favorite villains from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now this is just for the movies, so any villains from the TV shows – such as Kingpin, Kilgrave, and Cottonmouth from the Netflix universe – will be left out of this lineup (though they’d probably score pretty high if they were on it).

10. Ultron (The Avengers: Age of Ultron)

For most of these villains, they’re memorable mostly because of their performances. Any great actor can take even the most minimalist villain and make him interesting. That’s the case with Ultron here.

Ultron’s concept is that he’s an artificial intelligence that grew beyond his programming and decided to rebel and turn evil. That concept has been done to death before, but my hope was that the movie would do something interesting with it. The trailers made him seem like he viewed the Avengers as a threat more than saviors, after all. And then the movie came out and Ultron’s ultimate plan was to drop a city out of the sky and case an extinction level event. Okay then.

But the saving grace here is James Spader. My god, what a difference the right actor makes. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I like Ultron as much as I do, given that the performance is similar to Spader’s Raymond Reddington (another one of my favorite villains) from The Blacklist.

Spader gives Ultron a snarky sense of humor that he obvious inherited from his creator, Tony Stark, which makes him a subtle mirror to Iron Man in a sense. Not only that, but Ultron is surprisingly immature, lashing out and throwing temper tantrums and such. Almost as if he was literally a newborn and hasn’t reached emotional maturity yet – oh wait, he was.

In a universe full of cool, calm, collected bad guys, it’s nice to see one that’s basically a child who has a breakdown every time someone compares him to his dad.

9. Hela (Thor: Ragnarok)

Hela was the MCU’s first primary female antagonist, and she doesn’t disappoint.

Thor: Ragnarok was heavy metal action movie from beginning to end, so it’s fitting that such an awesomely insane movie should have an awesomely insane villain. Hela is menacing. Hela is funny. Hela can create knives and throw them around in super cool fight scenes that remind you why she’s the Goddess of Death.

Not only that, but they give Hela a personal connection to Thor by making her his long-list sister, and a personal vendetta against Odin for locking her up for her ambition. The best villains are the ones who have a personal connection to the hero in some way, and Marvel really knows how to make compelling villains out of estranged family members.

Cate Blanchett really knocks it out of the park in this movie. She’s clearly having the time of her life being the super cool mistress of evil, and she totally rocks the badass, comics-accurate costume they gave her.

The only downside with Hela is that, even with her personal connection to Thor, she spends much of the movie separated from him, so we don’t really get a lot of their interactions until the end. Fortunately, that time wasted is given to the real star villain of Ragnarok…

8. The Grandmaster (Thor: Ragnarok)

I love Jeff Goldblum.

The Grandmaster is just Jeff Goldblum in space.

He’s just playing himself but in tacky makeup.

That’s why he’s on this list.

Next.

7. Obadiah Stane (Iron Man)

Another actor named Jeff that I really love? Jeff Bridges.

Obadiah Stane works as a villain because Jeff Bridges doesn’t normally play villains. If you’re familiar with the comics, you know that Obadiah Stane is a bad guy. So when it’s revealed that he’s been allied with the terrorists that kidnapped Tony all along, it’s not a huge surprise to some.

But Jeff Bridges plays the character with such a casual, friendly demeanor that you don’t want to admit to yourself that he could be the bad guy. This is the guy who bought Tony pizza from New York and just randomly plays the piano in his house. Even though he’s dressed like a businessman, he still acts like the Dude from The Big Lebowski, so you feel like you can trust him. Even when he’s doing villainous things, he’s still casual and charming about the whole deal. He’s a guy you could easily have a beer with while he tells you about his plan to kill half the world’s population. And then when he acts all threatening when he’s taking out Tony’s arc reactor, it’s all the more disturbing because friendly old Jeff Bridges is making us terrified.

The downside with Obadiah Stane comes in the third act, once he dons the Iron Monger suit. That’s when the movie turns into a generic action climax, and Bridges spends the whole time hollering and overacting while inside a giant CGI turtle shell. But I think his performance in the first two acts is strong enough to where I can overlook the weak third act. (In fact, that’s kind of my stance on the first Iron Man movie as a whole.)

6. Ego (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2)

Guardians of the Galaxy was a fun romp, but antagonist Ronan the Accuser was criticized as being the weakest part of the movie for not being as memorable or entertaining as the rest of the cast. Volume 2, on the other hand, more than makes up for it with the inclusion of Ego the Living Planet.

Admittedly, this was a weird concept for a villain of the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel. Even weirder was making a living planet the father of Star-Lord, and even weirder is casting Kurt Russell as said living planet. But the thing is, it all works. Ego’s character deals with a lot of themes of the loneliness of immortality and being the last of your kind in the vast universe. His status as Star-Lord’s dad adds some real emotional weight as he conflicts Peter over what is right. He teaches us that blood doesn’t always mean family.

And of course, Kurt Russell nails it in this role, as he always does. Much like Jeff Bridges as Stane, Russell is friendly, charming, and nonchalant throughout the film, even when it’s revealed that he’s the villain. The twist actually does work in this movie despite Ego’s status as a villain in the comics. The movie changes Ego’s character so much that you could honestly believe that he’s not the bad guy, and that’s only helped by Kurt Russell’s humble performance.

Much like Stane, Ego starts to get a little generic in the third act once the big battle kicks in and he’s mostly delegated to a big CGI cluster of rocks fighting the Guardians. But even during that, Russell still gets in some good lines to remind us of the type of character Ego is.

And I can’t explain quite why, but Kurt Russell being the father of Chris Pratt is some spot on, brilliant casting genius right there.

5. The Winter Soldier (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

I don’t know if this is cheating or not, considering Bucky eventually switches sides back over to the good guys after his stint as an antagonist. But I guess he was an antagonist at one point – in fact his name is the subtitle of the movie where he’s the villain. Plus, this is my list, and I can do whatever I want with it.

Part of the interesting thing about the Winter Soldier is how we actually saw his fall from grace in a previous movie before he became the antagonist in the sequel. Very few superhero movies actually do this, opting to show us the villain after they’ve already become, well, villainous. This allows us to have an entire movie focused on his humanity and good side before we’re reintroduced to him now acting the polar opposite.

The Winter Soldier is a deadly professional. He doesn’t mess around, and every time he’s on screen, you instantly feel just how serious the situation has gotten. On top of that, he has a very personal connection with Captain America being his best friend turned evil by HYDRA. That provides an interesting dynamic between the two once the twist is revealed. Cap doesn’t want to fight or hurt someone he cares so much about, and his heart grieves every time he sees what his buddy Bucky has become. Conversely, Bucky doesn’t even remember who Cap is until the very end, so that makes their interactions all the more heartbreaking.

This all of course leads up to Bucky’s well-received redemption arc, and he currently stands alongside Captain America as a hero once again. But for that time in his life where he was a bad guy, he earns a spot on the list.

4. Zemo (Captain America: Civil War)

Okay, so I’m still a little salty that they didn’t include Zemo’s purple ski mask from the comics in some way, cuz his design in this movie is very plain and boring by comparison. However, what they do with the character more than makes up for it.

Zemo in the movie is almost unrecognizable from the character from the comics. Baron Zemo was a Nazi scientist who fought against Captain America during World War II, and then eventually his son took up the grape-colored mantle to carry on the family legacy. Zemo in the movie – not a baron here – is a soldier, not from Nazi Germany, but from Sokovia, the place where the final battle in Age of Ultron took place. His family wasn’t evil and bred him to be evil. His family were good people who were killed because of something the Avengers caused. He’s human, as expertly shown when he constantly listens to his dead wife’s last voicemail to him.

Zemo represents the consequences of superheroes like the Avengers. He represents the common man’s struggles living in a world where superhero battles, while looking cool on the big screen, are big, disastrous war zones where countless lives are lost. He’s not a big galactic conqueror or a god of death or the leader of a powerful army. He’s pretty much a nobody who had everything taken from him and wants revenge on those he deems responsible.

My only gripe with Zemo is that, while he’s a skilled planner and manipulator, his plan to pit the Avengers against each other was a little convoluted and smelled a little similar of Jessie Eisenluthor’s plan from Batman V Superman (though no where near as obnoxious). Nonetheless, Zemo did manage something that no other threat had done before: tear the Avengers apart. Not by being a physical threat, but by attacking their emotions. That alone deserves some respect from me.

3. Killmonger (Black Panther)

The Marvel comeback story to end all Marvel comeback stories: Michael B. Jordan goes from the disastrous Fant4stic to being lauded as one of the best villains in the MCU.

And those praises are well deserved. Erik “Killmonger” Stevens is an incredibly sympathetic antagonist with a tragic backstory caused by the supposed heroes. Jordan portrays a complex antagonist who completely sells all the parts of Killmonger’s character. Aside from his likeable demeanor and deadly prowess, Killmonger also shows powerful scenes of vulnerability, such as when he visits his dad in the spirit realm, and his very poignant death scene.

Killmonger’s plan is also surprisingly sympathetic. He criticizes the Wakandans for keeping all of their technological marvels a secret for themselves, while across the world, their fellow black people are being oppressed and stuck in poverty. It’s an incredibly topical and political ideology without getting overly preachy.

And although Killmonger’s end goal was to arm the impoverished with Wakandan weapons in a bloody revolution against those on top, he does have a point about the Wakandans turning their backs on their fellow man to hide their achievements. He’s got so much of a point in fact that the heroes actually change some of their viewpoints to match his, with T’Challa vowing to reach Wakanda’s influence to the outside world more. How often do you see a villain’s plan in these movies actually influence the heroes to change the world like this?

Despite his over-the-top villainous name, Killmonger is such a well-defined and sympathetic antagonist that he’s got people asking: Is Killmonger really the villain here?

2. Loki (The Thor movies/The Avengers)

Of course Loki is on this list. He’s the original Marvel bad guy golden boy.

By this point, everyone knows what makes Loki work as a villain. He’s sympathetic, with a lot of daddy issues caused by a lot of terrible father figures in his life. He’s charming and has a razor sharp sarcastic wit. Tom Hiddleston loses himself completely in the role as he portrays both the brutal villain and the broken orphan with pinpoint precision, flip-flopping between the two with the ease of a highly skilled thespian.

But I think what really makes Loki stand out is how we’ve seen him change. As of this writing, Loki has appeared in four separate movies, five once Infinity War comes out. We’ve seen him go from a treacherous brother to a primary antagonist to an untrustworthy ally, and then back to being Thor’s trusted brother again.

The length of the MCU is a true testament to how a character like Loki can work. You usually see the whole “villain turns to the good guys’ side” in longer works like TV shows or comic books. Rarely is this done in movies, unless they’re in a longer series. But Loki’s popularity and Tom Hiddleston’s performance has meant that Loki keeps coming back again and again, and each reappearance gives us another installment in a compelling redemption character arc on par with something like Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But wait, if Loki’s only at number 2, then who’s such a good villain that he’s stolen the number one spot away from Marvel’s golden boy?

1. The Vulture (Spider-Man: Homecoming)

That’s right. I’m gonna be the guy that puts the Vulture above Loki in a best villains countdown.

There’s a lot of factors that make the Vulture my favorite MCU villain. For starters, he’s Michael Keaton, and Michael Keaton is one of my favorite actors. Bias aside, I legitimately love his performance in this movie because it showed how effectively threatening he can be as a villain. That scene in the car where he figures out Peter is Spider-Man is the best scene in the movie by far, and neither the hero nor the villain are even in their respective superhero outfits.

He’s also a dad that’s a villain, which is always effective, but differently so in this case. We’ve seen instances of fathers being villains in the MCU before, with characters like the aforementioned Ego and Lauffey from the first Thor movie. But those characters wound up being bastards who sometimes played into the drama of the hero not knowing what was right and often having to fight their own dad. With the Vulture, it’s the exact opposite; he’s a good father, and everything he does is for his family. The twist that the Vulture is the father of Peter’s love interest worked so well because not only was it so unexpected, not only did it fit so well with the high school movie theme, but it added and revealed so much about the Vulture’s character that put him so much above other villains before him.

But the moment that really solidified the Vulture as my favorite MCU villain was the post-credit scene. In prison, the Scorpion makes reference that the Vulture knows who Spider-Man really is, but the Vulture doesn’t reveal anything. There’s a level of respect between the Vulture and Spider-Man that was created when Spidey saved the Vulture from a clichéd superhero movie villain death (another of my favorite moments from Homecoming). It’s a similar admirable quality that was put into Loki: a change in character. Because the Vulture didn’t die by his own hubris like many superhero movie villains, there’s an opportunity for him to change and evolve. He’s already shown that even though he’s a criminal, he’s got a strong moral core that stems from the love for his family. I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring him back in Homecoming 2 as more of a supporting character to Spider-Man rather than a flat out antagonist.

The Vulture is a villain that combines a lot of good things from previous entries on this list. He’s an everyman villain whose life was affected by the Avengers, like Zemo. He’s a father, like Ego. He changes as a character, like Loki. And he’s got one of my favorite actors portraying him, like the Grandmaster, who in hindsight probably should have been my number 1.

So that’s my Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Did I leave any of your favorites out? Let me know in the comments or wherever you see this post what you thought, and what some of your favorite superhero movie villains are.

I don’t know if I’ll ever update this list when new movies come out, but I’m really excited and nervous to see where Thanos is going to rank on this list. Marvel’s been building him up for six years, so he better not be another Alien Elf Guy from Thor 2…

Matt Reviews: Black Panther

WARNING: SPOILERS

Gotta say, I didn’t really expect to see a reference to the “What are Those” Vine in a 2018 Black Panther movie.

A week after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) – a.k.a. the Black Panther – is still reeling over the death of his father as he ascends as king of Wakanda, and not without the stresses that come with it. As he reconnects with his old flame Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), he must find the people he can trust – like his genius sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and CIA agent Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) – as Wakanda and the world are threatened by the machinations of arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) and soldier-turned-terrorist Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), who has ties to Wakanda and T’Challa’s past.

Black Panther’s aesthetic and cultural influences are what make it unique. Marvel’s films have often been criticized for relying too much on white male protagonists, with minorities and women being delegated to supporting roles. With this movie, the whites are the minorities here. The film is absolutely seeping in African culture, from the music to the art style to the costume design, and I’m in love with it. It’s something you don’t normally see in a superhero movie, let alone a big blockbuster one from Marvel.

The major strength of this movie is its characters. T’Challa remains awesome due to the performance by Chadwick Boseman, but I feel that special mention has to go to two specific characters introduced in this movie: Shuri and Killmonger. The film has a lot of awesome female role models that kick a lot of ass and fortunately make up much of the main cast, but I feel Shuri stands out because of how funny and intelligent they made her. She’s constantly cracking quips and flipping off her brother, and has electrifying chemistry with Chadwick Boseman. And her character trait of being the one to make Black Panther’s tech makes her the Oracle or Lucius Fox to T’Challa’s Batman.

Over to Killmonger, he continues Marvel’s trend of making their new villains actually interesting. Killmonger (despite his over-the-top evil name) is a very humanized villain. He has daddy issues caused by T’Challa’s daddy, and we actually see him get emotional and cry about them. But he doesn’t act broken and haunted all the time; he has a quirky, casual way of talking and acting that makes him incredibly likeable, despite his antagonistic stance. His plan and viewpoints are also sympathetic, in that he wants Wakanda to actually use its resources to help black people around the world instead of hoarding their secrets to themselves. Not only is his plan sympathetic, but it’s uncomfortably topical.

"I'm here for revenge against Fant4stic."

The best villains are the ones who think they’re the real hero, and Killmonger’s plan can definitely ring true to the audience. He plays into the theory that villains always want to change the world, while heroes try to keep it in the status quo. And by the end, even after Killmonger is…well, killed, his viewpoints still ring true with T’Challa as he applies some of what Killmonger believed in to spread Wakanda’s influence to the outside world. As it stands right now, Killmonger is in my top 3 MCU bad guys, right up there with Loki and the Vulture. (Of course, this doesn’t include Netflix villains like Kingpin and Kilgrave).

Andy Serkis reprises his role as Klaue from Age of Ultron, this time with more screentime. While he definitely portrays the character as more humorous this time around, sometimes it gets a little grating, like when he started singing “What is Love” in an obnoxious voice. But he comes in and out of the movie real quick and doesn’t really overstay his welcome, so that’s a plus. Though I gotta say, I’m a little disappointed that they killed him off instead of having him occasionally pop up in future Marvel movies as a bit villain, kind of like the Scarecrow in the Dark Knight movies.

Also, the movie turned the character of Man-Ape – a villain with a rather unfortunate, racially insensitive gimmick – into a surprisingly complex figure, which I feel is an impressive feat in itself given that the character has literally been called “Man-Ape” since the 1960’s.

The humor of the other Marvel movies is still here, but it’s greatly toned down. One of the biggest offenders of recent Marvel movies, in my opinion, is how their reliance on humor tends to severely undercut a lot of their more dramatic moments (I’m looking at you, Thor: Ragnarok). Here, there are jokes, but the dramatic scenes are allowed to be dramatic, character deaths have weight to them, and there’s more heavy themes than your traditional Marvel fare. After the kind of movies where Doctor Strange’s cape gains the sentience of Aladdin’s flying carpet, a more serious and dramatic superhero movie was certainly welcome.

I don’t really have a lot of complaints with the movie, but just so this review seems fair and balanced, I’ll list the few nitpicks I had. The fight scenes, for example, are not great. Some of them are shot in a darkened way with an almost jittery camera direction that it makes them kind of indecipherable, which is a problem when your protagonist fights in an all-black suit. When you can see the action, however, it’s kind of generic, which is a real disappointment considering how heavy our heroes and villains rely on hand-to-hand combat for their fights. I know I can’t expect all superhero movie fight scenes to be as good as the ones in movies like Winter Soldier, but it feels like they could have done so much more with what they were working with.

T'Challa go nyoom.

And while I praised the costume design before, I’m not a super big fan of the new Black Panther suit. T’Challa starts of the movie with the costume from Civil War, but then changes to one that forms over his body using nanobots or something. The new suit just looks kind of flat, less like armor and more like someone just casted Chadwick Boseman’s body in rubber. The armored look of the previous costume I felt fit better with the other costumes seen in the MCU. It’s a similar problem I have with the new Spider-Man costume. On the subject of controversial costumes, there are nipples on the armor for Okoye and the other Dora Milaje. And once you notice them, you can’t unsee them.

Also, those CGI war-rhinos looked fake as hell. Probably the only special effect in this movie that doesn’t work.

I feel like Marvel has been trying new experiments with their movies in Phase 3 of the MCU, and it’s all for the better. While still usually entertaining, I felt that most of Phase 2 got rather formulaic with the kind of superhero movies they were cranking out – Guardians of the Galaxy aside – and that trend continued a bit into Phase 3 with Civil War and Doctor Strange. But then Spider-Man: Homecoming became a John Hughes high school film with superheroes and Thor: Ragnarok became a heavy metal action-comedy, and it felt like Marvel was more willing to test the different genres of movies they could explore with their superheroes.

Black Panther continues this trend. While it still has a lot of the same trimmings as its previous superhero movies (big special effects, a climax where the hero fights someone with similar powers as them, etc.), it doesn’t feel like a traditional superhero story. It feels more like a big, dramatic version of The Lion King, or a Shakespearean epic. It’s all about African culture and claims to the throne and what it means to be a good king. It’s about family and tradition and sins of the father. While at its core, it's got a similar narrative structure and cliches as many other superhero movies like it, but it's wrapped in beautiful afrofuturism-printed paper that you don’t even notice until you get down to the nitty-gritty.

While Black Panther isn’t Marvel’s first foray into black-centric superhero entertainment (Luke Cage was probably the closest thing to this they had made previously), its place in the uber-successful and mainstream MCU means that it is on its way to being a very important movie. The silver screen has a new black superhero for kids everywhere to look up to as he represents a people that have sort of gotten the short end of the stick in superhero movies. Not only that, but strong women have a lot of representation in this movie too, giving girls more well deserved role models. And for ignorant white people like myself who have had it easy with white superhero movies for years, Black Panther was a well deserved sprinkle of culture, and a journey I’m glad I made.

Wakanda Forever.

Remind me why Disney still has to remake The Lion King again?

Final verdict: 9/10.

So did anyone else think that Bucky coming out of the hut in the post credit scene looked like Jesus with his long hair and beard? Or has DC’s cinematic universe caused me to expect Jesus imagery in superhero movies too much?