Marvel Fifth Batch

Spoilers for the series and films discussed below.

Spider Man: Far From Home (2019)

The second Spider Man film in my opinion was released a year too soon.  Spider Man was blipped in Avengers: Infinity War and brought back in Avengers: Endgame, the latter of which was only released two months before Far From Home.  Therefore the first trailer was out long before Endgame, showing that Spider Man somehow has come back and notably did not feature Tony Stark, which hinted at his fate in  Endgame.  Marvel tried to cover this a little by having Tom Holland introduce a second trailer but insisting that audiences see Endgame first.  

The other issue is Far From Home is set several months after Endgame in which the characters (most of whom were blipped) have begun to process it but seeing it so soon afterwards feels awkward.  It would play a little better with some distance between it and Endgame.  None of this is the fault of the film, which is very well made, but unfortunately did hamper my experience of it slightly.

Far From Home, made with returning Homecoming director Jon Watts, sends Peter, Ned, Betty, Flash, MJ and a couple of teachers on a school field trip to Europe.  Peter plans to use the trip to take a break from his Spider Man activities and to get closer to MJ, who he now has a crush on, but when a disgruntled former Stark employee named Quentin Beck stirs up trouble with some illusory creatures called Elementals his plans get derailed.

As in Homecoming, some of the most effective parts of the film are Peter's teenage angst coming up against his superhero challenges.  In the first film Peter lost out on a romance but this film does one better.  When Peter misses a date with MJ because of a Spider Man duty MJ picks up on it and investigates herself.  Zendaya has a lot of fun playing MJ with as an independent young lady with dry wit and narrowed eyes, completely downplaying her looks.  I also really enjoyed DB Smoove and especially Martin Starr as Peter's teachers.  DB Smoove is so different from his obnoxious character on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Starr has a hilarious moment explaining how his wife pretended to be blipped.  The film also shows funny ways in which people came back from being blipped.  Ned gets a nice, if short lived romance with Betty, which begins on a flight due to Peter's failed maneuvering to sit close to MJ.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Beck in a nice irony since he was nearly cast as Peter in Spider Man 2 when there was a chance Maguire might not be able to play him due to a back injury.  Beck is appropriately smarmy and disillusioned and a well edited flashback from Captain America: Civil War shows how he fits into the picture.  The story makes good use of the European locations, especially the Czech Republic and London, and the final moments when Spider Man swings with MJ and she is realistically terrified instead of enjoying it as most Spider Man love interests are.

I do think the film spends a little too much focusing on Tony's death and I doubt Tony really would have left someone as young as Peter in charge of such a superweapon but there is no question that Far From Home is an entertaining if non-essential film.  The surprise cameo of J.K. Simmons reprising his role as J.Jonah Jameson but in a different context hints at some of the fun to come in the next Spider Man film. ***

Wandavision (2020)

The first MCU TV series truly embraces the bizarre concept that comic book stories can offer.  The show takes Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) and places them in a fictional TV town and tells several stories of them within the framework of classic sitcoms like I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, Family Ties, etc.  For the first three episodes as viewers we are confused, primarily because Vision died in Infinity War, but they are really entertaining, especially the dinner in the first episode.  The fourth episode reveals that Wanda has the townsfolk under a spell and has created this reality as a way of keeping Vision alive and having a family with him.  This is done using Kat Dennings' Darcy from the first two Thor movies and Randall Park's Jimmy Wu from Ant Man and the Wasp.  Both characters had been very funny in their appearances but here are given a little more material to work with and do not have to play second fiddle on screen to a superhero protagonist.

The series is both outlandish and tragic as it shows what can happen when a powerful characters feels a lot of grief without a way of processing it.  Interestingly, Vision who can only exist in this setting, turns out to be the conscience as he figures out what Wanda is up to and figures out his own fate.  Teyonah Parris takes over the role of Monica Rambeau from Captain Marvel, playing Maria Rambeau's daughter.  Her introduction in which she is blipped back in a hospital room establishes that Maria has died and gives a glimpse of the shocking readjustment people had to make after being gone for five years.  When a doctor yells out that he has to call his wife I hoped that if his wife was not blipped that he would not find that she was remarried.

Kathryn Hahn plays the colorful neighbor, Agnes, who turns out to be a witch after Wanda's magic.  Hahn is a lot of fun but the true villain is Wanda herself who has hurt people because she was unable to bury Vision.  The narrative gets a little convoluted near the end but the series is a nice showcase for the fantastic Elizabeth Olsen, who in the films never got to do as much with her powerful character as we would have liked to see.  Bettany is able to make this nonhuman character lovable with his own logic, not too similar from Data in Star Trek.  The final goodbye is touching.  While I probably would not revisit the series it was an enjoyable watch. ***

Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)

Of the first three Marvel series this was the one I was most intrigued by.  In the films these were two characters played by fantastic actors who were always overshadowed by Steve Rogers.  When Rogers handed his shield to Falcon this looked like a set up to a potentially new Captain America story.  The series subverts the expectations by having Sam Wilson turn in the Captain America shield to the government, not feeling worthy of it, which unfortunately leads to a less honorable person getting ahold of it, Captain John Walker played by Wyatt Russell.  While looking at Russell I thought he looked familiar until I learned he is the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, and he looks like a mix of both.  I then remembered that when Kurt Russell starred at Wyatt Earp in the film Tombstone it had come out that revered Earp so much he had a son named Wyatt.

The first episode was my favorite.  It recaptures a lot of the feel of one of the best MCU movies, Captain America: Winter Soldier, using a villain from it and the score is also by that film's composer, Henry Jackman.  The staging of the opening airplane sequence is similar to the boat sequence in Winter Soldier.  Sam and Bucky are readjusting to life after the blip, with Sam trying to help his sister save the family's business and dealing with the difficulties African American people have when trying to get loans.  Bucky comes to face the father of one of his victims.

The dynamic of the two men, who had a dear friend in common but do not completely trust each other, is intriguing.  The use of the antagonist of Civil War, Zemo, played by Daniel Bruhl, fleshes this out since neither of them trust Zemo but know he is very clever.  I did not like the use of Sharon Carter, whose turn to a more gray character connected to the underworld betrayed her essence.  The antagonists are a group called the Flag Smashers who are anarchists who preferred life under the Blip.  John Walker proves to be unworthy of the shield as he does not have the discipline to use it responsibly and ends up murdering one of the Flag Smashers. 

The middle episodes are more of a mixed bag with a lot of double crosses and unclear motivations but the last two in which Sam embraces his role as the first African American Captain America, after confronting past prejudice, are very strong.  I particularly liked the moment in which Bucky and Sam and the community fix Sam's family boat, connecting the superheroes to a real world problem and cementing their friendship and trust independent of Steve.  Interestingly they speak of Steve as if he is dead but Steve was clearly alive at the end of Endgame, but just old and retired.  Theoretically they could have called on him at any time but they show wanted to move on without him. 

Falcon and The Winter Soldier is an effective thriller series and I had fun with it.  ***

Loki (2021)

The MCU takes its first step into the Multiverse with this expansion on a quick moment in Avengers Endgame.  In the scene a captured Loki ends up with the Tesseract and quickly escapes after the Battle of New York during a botched moment from the time heist sequence of Avengers Endgame.  The series picks up showing where Loki went, which created an alternate timeline, transporting himself to the Gobi Desert where he is arrested by the Time Variance Authority, known in the series as the TVA.  Loki's powers are useless there and he is ultimately works with a character named Mobius to go after a variant of himself who is causing trouble in the timeline.

The TVA is an interesting idea and the retro set design goes against expectations, and shows they are trying to preserve time, but it turns out they have ulterior motives.  Tom Hiddleston has to portray the more villainous Loki from The Avengers than the slightly redeemed version from the later Thor films.  The moment in which Loki watches his own future and reacts to it is the highlight of the series.  The show also has some fun ideas such as Loki is revealed to have been D.B. Cooper or when he visits the very end of time.  Owen Wilson bring his own signature as Mobius and has an easy relationship with Hiddleston (the two costarred in Midnight in Paris).  I did not buy the affection that Loki develops for Sylvie but there is some fun between them.  Natalie Holt's theme incorporates an electronic theremin to give the series its memorable eerie and unsettling score.  Ultimately the series is why I tend to resist the idea of multiverse stories as they can get overly confusing but it is always fun to see Loki and the series is only six episodes long.  ***   

Black Widow (2021)

One of the first films to be delayed by the pandemic in 2020 was the only Black Widow solo film which was scheduled for release in May of that year.  Given Natasha Romanoff's prominence in the series and Scarlet Johansson's star power, this film was long overdue.  Although Natasha played a crucial role in the last two Captain America films her name is nowhere near the title.  

There were some limitation as to when the film could be set.  Natasha died in Avengers Endgame so the film would need to take place before those events.  The character has a rich back story but it would be asking a lot to set it before Natasha joined the Avengers as Johansson would have to play the character throughout the film more than ten years younger and without the deepened values and maturity that had become a cornerstone of her.  In the end a decision was made to set it after the events of Captain America Civil War when Natasha is on the run from the government in a story that forced her to connect to her roots.

We finally learn that Natasha was abducted from her mother and grew up in a makeshift family living in Ohio as Russian spies, a little like the premise of the show The Americans, except the marriage and the kids, which include another abducted girl named Yelena, are completely fake.  When they are forced to escape to Cuba the girls are taken to a Red Room  which is run by General Dreykov which turns them into Black Widows.  The bulk of the story takes place with Natasha gradually reconnecting with her "family", played by David Harbour as Alexei (who has powers similar to Captain America but is much more comic), Rachel Weiz as Melina, and Florence Pugh as Yelena as they go after Dreykov to stop his Black Widow program.  Ray Winstone plays Dreykov and Olga Kurylenko is his daughter Antonia who is also known as Taskmaster.  The now late William Hurt appears briefly as Thadeus Ross, who is after Romanoff.

The film has several memorable moments.  Natasha cleverly outwits Ross in an early sequence but we also see the toll that living on the run and being isolated is having on her.  The jailbreak sequence is entertaining with some innovative staging and the "sisters" really working together for the first time.  The family dinner is at times hilarious but also plays naturally as they all fall back into their old roles which include resentments.  The climactic showdown in the Red Room, which is hidden in the air, has a memorable face off between Natasha and Dreykov.

Pugh's Yelena is a nice counterpart to Natasha and the two work well together as they learn to trust each other.  I enjoyed her commitement to removing all the Black Widows from the Red Room controlling agent after she herself is freed.  Harbour is at times hilarious as Alexei, a terrific fighter but lacking personal skills.  Weiz is maternal and caring and also quite sharp and capable in a fight.  Winstone, an actor not known for doing voices, speaks with a gruff voice to hide a so-so Russian accent but has the presence of a ruthless general.  Kurylenko has little to do on camera as the Taskmaster but is clearly traumatized by a bombing that Natasha and Clint were responsible for.

There are a couple of  drawbacks.  I did not like that Natasha and Yelena fight each other when they are first reunited since they may not trust each but do not really want each other dead either.  Natasha's first fight with the Taskmaster on the bridge is a little over the top.  While I admired that Natasha lets her family escape at the end of the film it is unclear how she gets away from Ross.  

Cate Shortland keeps the pace moving and yet allows time for the relationships to be explored.  Lorne Balfe delivers a moving score with some Russian inspired motifs.  I enjoyed the nod to the Bond film Moonraker which also had a villain who kept a hideout above ground.  It is a shame there is only one Black Widow movie but the film leaves a thread for future adventures with Yelena.  ****