Well, hey. I’ve added one more movie to the promised mix, as I went to see X-Men Apocalypse over the weekend. Before we get started, we had a bit of a conversation over at Unreliable Narrators about recent events in comics, especially the (yet again!) DC reboot and Captain America’s recent controversy. Right here, folks.
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So, in chronological order, 3 Marvel films. Under this cut, just in case you wish to avoid SPOILERS.
Deadpool: Just in case Deadpool was a total flop, Bryon and I waited to see it until it was at the cheap theater. Remarks among the people we knew were mixed. I knew it was crude and adolescent in humor. Cultural scion that I am, could I handle that?
The opening credits were both rewarding and awful. There was so much crude stuff going on in the pictures, but the credits read cleverly. Things like “Written by The Real Heroes Here” and “Directed by A Hollywood Tool” really were delightful. Then we plunged into a really violent, not so clever beginning.
BUT there was this flashback, and yes, the movie was still crude, but it generated sympathy for the main character and his girlfriend when it took a turn for the serious with a cancer diagnosis. Our hero goes off to find the cure for “el cancer” and receives the cure for “el everything” although he undergoes a hideous transformation and feels this bars him from returning to the one he loves.
There are some genuinely clever and heartfelt moments in the film. It’s just mixed in there with some questionable stuff. Hey, what ex-high school teacher can ever resist jokes about the stereotypes of adolescents in movies? Just saying. So, I was uncertain, but the scales tipped more in favor of the self-denigrating, 4th-wall breaking endeavor. Your mileage may vary.
Captain America Civil War: Largely an ensemble piece, this movie examines both government regulation of superheroes and how far someone would go to support a friend. Hey, I liked it. Many people say the film was too busy. Fair crit, but I am a comic book reader. I’ve seen comics like this. The legitimate complaint for me along these lines is this: the film is entitled Captain America, right? Cap’s personal story line takes up something like 1/3 of the film. That might be somewhat problematic.
Good performances by topnotch actors. Some silly things. Like why is Zemo, an ordinary guy, put in the same pod used to hold the Winter Soldier, NOT an ordinary guy? But some delightful things. The introduction of the Black Panther was my favorite part of the film. Good Ant Man and Spider-man stuff. Loads of angst. It’s not the best Marvel film, but it’s a long way from the worst Marvel film. So, there you go.
X-Men Apocalypse: The X-Men movies’ continuity problems rival those of James Bond. While I hate, Hate, HATE the constant revisionism of a Bond film, I can stomach it more easily in X-Men, but honestly I shouldn’t. We’ve rebooted twice, nullified loads of things that have happened in other films and pretty much do whatever we want whenever we want. What keeps me going right now are two things: the fact that as a fan I delight in seeing who’s going to show up in these things and where they are the same and not the same as their comic book incarnations (which makes me part of the continuity problem, actually) and
Michael Fassbender, who is much too good an actor for these films, like Alec Guiness was much too good an actor for Star Wars Episode 4 (really one, right?) I could watch that guy all day.
So, I could recommend all of these films. And now, I’m not sure what else is coming out for the rest of the summer, so I might not know when I will next get sorta stale popcorn.
