What If... Howard the Duck Got Hitched?

 "Captain Mohawk stole our baby!"

Just to be clear, I quite like a lot of KISS. But "I Was Made for Loving You" is a disco-tinged abomination. Just to be clear.

That said... otherwise, I like this episode. Yes, it's very silly having the concept. of Howard the Duck and Dacy (Mr and Mrs "the Duck"...) have a hybrid kid together, absolutely leaning into the interspecies sexz fun of 1986's Howard The Duck (nice touch, the reference to "Mrs Switzler"). And naturally this egg is the most important child ever, whose coming has been foretold and who is therefore fought over by all the cosmic entities of the MCU, from Zeus to the Grandmaster to Dormannu to Thanos to SHIELD.

Only for it to turn out that it's the parents who should raise the child after all, as that's how childrearing works. This child is special... but aren't they all? This episode, broadcast on a day which commemorates the birth of a child, is a rather nice and fun metaphor for all the things we parents go through, and it's lovely.

But also fun. And with a surprisingly high amount of star wattage.

I'm left wondering, though... yes, this works as just a metaphor. We don't need to take the metaphor literally and see what this little girl becomes... but will we?

What If... the Avengers Assembled in 1602?

 "We never get our happy ending..."

I read Neil Gaiman's limited series of 1602 a couple of decades ago, but I fear I remember little. I recall the throwback from the future being the same as here, but the 1602 of the limited series was much more rooted in real history, Old Queen Bess with her old rotting teeth and all that. This is a very different beast, but fun just the same.

We have rifts in time causing this universe to end. We have a very ungrateful King Thor- he's had Wanda Maximoff kidnap Peggy from her own reality (and her own Steve Rgers) to help save their universe... only to exile her when she initially fails, still exiled to a doomed world. Yet Peggy is truly a hero, refusing the Watcher's offer to take her "home."

Indeed, I love the metatextuality with Peggy being very much aware of the Watcher's presence and the two ofvthem interacting. But then, of course, this is an episode which opens with Tom Hiddleston playing Hamlet (a recent play by some lad from Warwickshire) and which is delightfully crammed with deliberately absurd olde worlde insults.

The character stuff is cool too, though. Once again, Happy Hogan becomes the Freak. Yet, at the core of things, behind all the fun, is the deep, tragic heartbreak of Peggy and Steve never getting to be together. Here's hoping that the finale puts a stop to that...

What If... Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?

 "Bummer. I thought you were the dude from Van Halen."

Yes, I know. I'm doing so much telly at the moment, and it's a struggle to keep up. I blame all the new telly. There's this, there's Fool Me Once, there's Echo after this. I fear that Twin Peaks and the Batman movie serial may have to take a very temporary back seat, but they're very much ongoing. Same with Robin of Sherwood.

Anyway, I enjoyed this. There's character stuff with PeterQuill as a kid with Ego as the main threat. There is, perhaps, an overly neat resolution. But it's fun seeing an Avengers team form in 1988. We get a young Hank Pym, Bill Foster, and the fortysomethings are represented by T'Chaka... and both Peggy and Howard must be nearing retirement age. Peggy isn't aging bad. The Winter Soldier is well handled, though, and Thor is fun. 

One complaint, though: the United States has many fine ales and a proud brewing traditiob. But its bottled "light beers" are unfit for human consumption. Thor and T'Chaka endorsing "light beer" is the most unrealistic thing in this episode.

What If... the Watcher Broke His Oath?

 "Blimey! Bloody bollocks!"

Still having Netflix issues which may delay the last episodes of Sandman for a few days, so I'll just carry on with the Disney Marvel shows untol that's sorted- with episodes of Rings of Power as they drop, of course. Once Netflix is back with me, the normal blogging schedule will resume. 

So we complete the season with the conclusion of the fourth wall-breaking two parter and it's entertaing enough, albeit rather heavily based on action. Inevitably we get a team assembled by the Watcher from throughout the season. Theseare apparently the perfect team to defeat Ultron. Yes, even a version of Thor who is nothing but a Hooray Henry. Hmm.

It's fun, though. The characters interact well. It's impressive that we manage to get cameos from the likes of Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jacksom and Tom Hiddleston. And, sadly, this is the Marvel swansong for Chadwick Boseman.

There are nice little heartwarming happy endings for both Peggy and Natasha too. Sentimental, yes, but just about earned. Overall, this is a decent enough conclusion, if a little crowded and by-the-book.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

 "If you don't shut up, you won't be invited to the orgy.

Right, let's just get Taika Waititi to do all the Thor films from now on, shall we? This is awesome: witty, fourth wall-breakingly funny but without crossing a certain line... and absolutely heartbreaking. Jane's death is devastating (but yay for the post-credits) as well as being the right way to end. There's a nice bit of misdirection in that we suspect Eternity's wish is going to cure her, but no. She and Thor, at last deciding to stop pushing people away, fall in love all over again... and she dies, both of cancer and in battle. At least she dies well.

There's so much coolness here. New Asgard as tourist trap. Jane Foster becoming Thor, which I understand is based on a comic story after my time. Thor's look echoing Eric Masterson, which isn't. All those narrations by Korg. Tessa Thompson as the highly relatable Valkyrie. The fact that it's self-evidently necessary to take loads and loads of beer on a heroic mission, which is unquestionably true. Even the soppy ending is both earned and cool.

But, yeah, Russel Crowe as Zeus. With a Greek accent and a thunderbolt. That is certainly something to behold.

Gorr as a villain is similarly, I suspect, from comics after my time. But Christian Bale is superb, and the character's origin is magnificently done. Gorr's visual impression is absolutely extraordinary. And the sheer, existential horror of being told by your gods that they don't care about you, your place is to suffer for them without meaning, and the afterlife is a lie... wow. That's dark.

This is, of course, like the last Thor film, a comedy. Yet it simultaneously manages to function asa superb action film while tugging most effectively at the heartstrings. Utterly splendid.

What If... Thor Were an Only Child?

 "We never get to fire the nukes...!"

I think it's fair to say this is a lighter episode in both senses. Yes, it's light-hearted and yes, it's funny... but it's not that funny. And, as it's fairly lightweight in every other respect, having little of substance to say, it nearly needs to be funnier than it is in order to be more than ok.

The premise is that Frigga and Odin never adopt Loki, and Thor therefore develops into a bit of a frat boy, spending the whole episode partying on Earth.

The episode plays everything for laught. Countries are emblazoned with their names, as we see Thor hurl Captain Marvel from land named "France" to land named "United Kingdom". The characterisation and dialogue are funny; Jane Foster and Darcy are a great comedy double act. Yes, people act out of character for the sake of having witty lines and visuals, but an episode like this can get away with that.

This isn't unfunny. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just... well, ok.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

“Go to sleep or I’ll sell all your toys!

I don’t care if I’m skipping a couple of recent films for this one; I’ve never been strictly chronological with the Marvel films in a pinch and I won’t start now. The months of spoiler-dodging stop now.

So... wow. A big, blockbuster geeky film that’s three hours long yet doesn’t feature a single Hobbit. And it had me in equal measures gripped, laughing and trying not to cry. This film is indeed as good as everyone says it is.

It also subverts expectations in an awfully clever way. In showing us the true horror of Thanos’ click via Hawkeye and his vanished family, it shows us a Thanos who has forever destroyed all the Infinity Stones and retired- so the Avengers visit him and Thor kills him in a massive anticlimax. Fast forward five years. That certainly wasn’t the obvious thing to do.

Cue the return of Ant-Man eventually prompting Tony Stark, now a husband and father, to invent time travel, and lots of highly entertaining dialogue about how the butterfly effect, and hence every time trace movie ever, doesn’t imply in the Marvel Universe. Time travel doesn’t work as in Back to the Future, says the now-smart Hulk, yet the solution to Thanos’ click is to travel back into the recent past and do a Back to the Future II, which is both clever and hilarious.

And so we get a coda where the Hulk’s click brings the dead back- but the Thanos of 2014 has found out the truth from the future Nebula and has time travelled back to kill them all. It’s good to see Karen Gillan with such a prominent role here, but her story is so very timey-wimey. And it seems to explain why Thanos originally had Nebula tied up, yet history is changed here and the 2014 Thanos has events play out differently. The dynamic between the two very different Nebulas, and Gamora, is wonderful, but this film doesn’t let its big, epic nature get in the way of character, pathos or humour. So Black Widow’s death has meaning. Tony Stark’s final, fatal click, saying “I am Iron Man”, May save the army if goodies from Thanos but gives him a meaningful death, dwelt on properly as it should be; if any character can be said to be the main star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s him.

Cap, too, gets a suitable exit, spending the rest of his days with Peggy in a beautiful coda.

There’s so much more, though. Fat Thor. Tony Stark meeting his dad in 1970, with a cameo from Jarvis whom we’ve only seen in Agent Carter- at least one of the MCU TV series is sort of recognised as canon. There’s “Scott, I get emails from a raccoon”. Thor getting a pep talk from his mother. It’s wonderful that the film has so much heart, and all its characters are properly used.

A wonderful film, and a fitting end to an age. Let’s hope the future is just as bright.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

“There’s an Ant-Man and a Spider-Man?”

At last I can stop dodging spoilers. I’ve seen it, at last. And it was bloody good. SPOILERS, mind.

Big, epic films are usually rubbish. Going epic tends to mean you can’t avoid being a bit po-faced and pretentious. This avoids that triumphantly by peppering the film with both humour and poignant character moments- so Thor gets to open up to, er, Rocket Raccoon about all the people he’s lost recently and, hilariously, Tony Stark and Doctor Strange spend the entire film in a willy waving contest while Bruce Banner spends the whole film dealing with what Mrs Llamastrangler described as “symbolic erectile dysfunction”. Peter Quill and Thor are also hilarious together.

The whole thing is structured, shot and acted superbly by the usual suspects, and it’s extraordinary how so many characters can be given meaty stuff to do in a little under two hours, although perhaps Captain America could have had some more screen time. I notice, of course, that Hawkeye and Ant-Man are described as inactive in dialogue. Of the few new faces, Joan Brolin is superb as a faithfully rendered Thanos while Peter Dinklage also turns in a good performance and, indeed, accent, as a dwarf who forged great weapons out of stars- I like how the film is very cosmic but how it all has a fantasy flavour, cut from the same cloth as Asgard. The film is superb, and the only reason some other Marvel films probably better is because they don’t have so many narrative jobs to do.

But the deaths, ah, the deaths! I somehow suspect that the half of the universe who died at the end won’t stay dead but, alas, I fear that may not be true for Loki, Gamora or the Vision...

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

"I'm asking for safe passage through the Anus..."

Time for another Marvel film, methinks. I'm determined to get through them all.

This is an MCU film, so you won’t be surprised to read that I enjoyed it hugely. It’s not the very best effort from the increasingly indomitable fiefdom of Kevin Fiege, but it may well be the most fun. The whole thing is pitched as a comedy, and good comedy at that. It’s a departure for Thor, yes, but it works. And there’s something about Thor and his world that lends itself to this sort of thing. I hope Taika Waititi does more.

It’s good to see the post-Avengers Hulk too, with another excellent performance from Mark Ruffalo. The Hulk, rightly in my opinion, hasn’t been considered sufficiently popular as to warrant his own film since 2008, but remains a strong supporting character. It’s good as well as inevitable to see Loki, too, although the relationship between the brothers is so predictable by now that fourth wall-breaking humour is the only possible approach.

It’s brave, but absolutely right, to not only do Ragnarok and do it properly (while evacuating the population), to do it with humour rather than be bleakly depressing, and to mix it up with post-Guardians of the Galaxy cosmic hi-jinks. And Marvel, for once, give us a first class baddie with Cate Blanchett’s Hela, appearing just after Odin dies and revealing that his and Asgard's past has all been a lie; Odin was not always a wise and benevolent ruler. A less serious but highly entertaining baddie, though, is Jeff Goldblum playing superbly against his maverick scientist typecasting as Grandmaster. We even get an Doctor Strange cameo.

I realise not all Marvel films can be like this. But... can we have some more please?

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

"I'd rather been a good man than a great king."

I've pretty much decided that I need to get a move on with watching all Marvel films, especially MCU ones, and probably DC ones too. Without being anal about it I'm going to try and make half of the films I watch Marvel or Disgruntled Competition ones until I'm caught up. After all, I've certainly already blogged a fair proportion of them.

Anyway, let's talk about Thor: The Dark World. I liked it. A lot. It's not one of the most talked-about Marvel films over the five years since its release, but the MCU films never step below a certain level of quality. This being the second film, we already know both all the Asgardians and the whole gang of Jane, Eric and the wonderful Darcy, whom we fall in love with all over again. It's great to enjoy characters we already know rather than having them introduced to us. Highlights are the perfect reunion between Thor and Jane and the scene with Eric in the mental home, complete with Stan cameo. The film has wit, heart and excitement, and lots of each. You can tell it's Marvel. It also has, unexpectedly, Chris O'Dowd of all people in a moderately large part.

The baddie is Malekith, back from  the Walt Simonson days, played by Christopher Eccleston who, despite the unpleasantly snooty things he's since said about the part, does a perfectly good job. We also get Kurse, although with a very different, Beyonder-free backstory. And CGI trolls. Lots of them. Tom Hiddleston playing Loki with an extraordinary range of emotion, Frigga dying, a touching father/son scene in which Thor refuses the throne from Odin on the grounds that the decisions of kingship would mean he can no longer be a good man. It's fun to see London, too, and amusing that the convergence of the Nine Worlds should happen at, of all places, Greenwich. And, as ever, the MCU version of Asgard is great; powerful alien beings with 5,000 year lifespans whose advanced tech is always described in gracefully magical language, the perfect expression of Arthur C. Clarke's adage about sufficiently advanced tech being indistinguishable from magic.

If that wasn't good enough, we get Thor coming back to Jane at the end, and an intriguing post-credits scene involving the Collector and more plot-heavy talk about Infinity Stones. A brilliant film, the perfect blockbuster- well, it's MCU.

Thor (2011)

"We don't have horses. Just dogs, cats, birds."

"Then give me one of those large enough to ride!"

So far I haven't seen a bad Marvel Cinematic Universe film and this, while not one of the very best, is no exception. It may be an odd film for Kenneth Branagh to direct but he does a fantastic job, giving us Asgard in all it's spectacular glory exactly as we dreamed of. Chris Hemsworth is a splendid Thor, Anthony Hopkins a brilliant Odin, and Idris Elba an implacably magnificent Heimdall. All this and we get Sif and the Warriors Three. Most of all, we get the extraordinary Tom Hiddleston as the villainous Loki. Natalie Portman also impresses as poor Jane Foster, with her doomed love for a god.

The film strikes exactly the right balance between the fantastical and the ordinary, giving us plenty of spectacle but grounding it in just enough reality to avoid alienation. It also subtly continues the ongoing plot thread with Clark Gregg's Phil Coulson and a post-credits sequence setting up what is to come. There's an obvious basic plot, yes, as the arrogant god learns humility and becomes better, but this is a hugely entertaining couple of hours. But then, Marvel films always are.

Only one thing, though... why didn't they incorporate the theme tune for the 1966 cartoon with the closing titles?

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

"They're breeding like Catholic rabbits."

Because Samuel L Jackson always gets the best lines. It's the law.

Obviously, I enjoyed this muchly, and I'm not just saying that because it was both a nice birthday treat and the first time I've been able to go out with Mrs Llamastrangler to spend some time alone together since we had our beautiful baby- thanks to my lovely mother-in-law for babysitting! We just about managed to survive a few hours away from our little girl, and enjoyed ourselves.

The film is superb. Joss Whedon writes and directs. Those are two different ways of writing the same thing. We should appreciate how narratively difficult it must be to come up with a script which both works and gives substantial parts to (deep breath) Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk, Hawkeye, Nick Fury, Scarlet Witch and the Vision, with substantial cameos from War Machine and (new Avenger!) the Falcon. Joss Whedon accomplishes that, along with giving us thrills, spectacle, emotion, and the best Stan Lee cameo yet. I can't stress how much of an achievement it is to serve all these characters well script-wise. Whoever follows on from Whedon has big boots to fill, and I can't wait to see what he does next.

There are a couple of downsides, however. The death of a certain character comes as a surprise, which I suppose is the point, but also comes across as a pointless waste. And, as most of the Internet correctly points out, this, like all Marvel films, serves female characters rather poorly. Black Widow, up till now the only kick-ass female character alongside all the boys, spends much of her time pining after Bruce Banner. This is not a film which comes close, I suspect, to passing the Bechdel test. I'm not going to give Whedon a hard time over this- his feminist credentials are as good as anyone with a Y chromosome's- but Marvel needs to find a better gender balance, at least. Still, Scarlet Witch now gives us a second female Avenger.

Oh, and I love the fact we get to see Scarlet Witch, and the Vision (budding romance ahead?). And Ulysses Klaw, no doubt to return in Black Panther. And am I reading too much into Tony Stark's guilt at creating Ultron, what with seeing signs of a future storyline based on Armour Wars? Be that as it may, I'm liking the conflict of values between Stark and Steve Rogets from film to film. 

Essentially, this is a bloody good film. Go and see it. Now.

The Avengers (2012)

"Dr. Banner, your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I’m a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

Yes, I know. I'm currently in the midst of reviewing two telly series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, both of which are the brainchild of Joss Whedon. Less than a fortnight ago I watched and reviewed The Cabin in the Woods, another brainchild of Joss Whedon. And now I'm reviewing The Avengers, which is so Joss Whedon that it's officially branded as "A Joss Whedon Film" in the credit. It would be easy for the casual bystander (and that would be you, my dear reader) to accuse me of overdoing the Whedon thing.

On the other hand, I've only reviewed one Marvel superhero film previously for this blog, and that was Howard the Duck. I reckon that trumps any accusation of over-Whedonning the pudding. Be warned, though: this review will probably be rubbish. The Avengers is brilliant, but its brilliance lies mainly in bang and spectacle and really cool dialogue. Let's not pretend there's reams of subtext to say clever things about, cos there ain't.

What there is, though, is a triumph of screenwriting. I can't think of a script that had so many boxes to tick as this one, frankly. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the Hulk all need to be given prominent roles, they need to interact, fight each other, fight alongside each other, and individually look cool. Oh, and Nick Fury needs to look really cool as well, because he's being played by Samuel L. Jackson, for whom coolness is compulsory. The film makes this look easy, which is no mean feat, although it doesn't quite manage to hide the awkward fact that Cap, Black Widow and Hawkeye (or just plain Clint Barton as he is here) are significantly less powerful than the others. Also, there's a subtle but noticeable pecking order, with Iron Man getting a slightly bigger role, as befitting the greater success of the character's film and the greater star wattage of Robert Downey Jr. But, such things being accepted, the balance is right. Also, Downey Jr. is brilliant, funny, and supremely charismatic as always. He's easily the best leading man in Hollywood today.

Mark Ruffalo, incidentally, is probably the best Bruce Banner ever, and it's so very cool that CGI (of which I'm generally lukewarm) also allows him to play the Hulk.

That's about all that can be said. Not that there are any problems with the plot, but it's all about the set-pieces here, and the set-pieces rock. The film is long, much longer than I can usually take without whingeing, but the whole thing is so much fun that you never want it to end. If you haven't done so already, go and see it. Now.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

"That's not fair! I had zombies too!"

"Yes, you had "Zombies." But this is "Zombie Redneck Torture Family." Entirely separate thing. It's like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal."

Oh dear, spoilers can be such an awkward issue, can't they? You see, usually I don't have to think about them too much. Most of the time I just review old telly or old films, or at least telly that's been officially broadcast, so the gloves are off, spoiler-wise. I mean, I'm usually kind enough to warn about spoilers if they're a particular issue, but that's rare. I suppose I've never really had to think about it much, and occasionally it's occurred to me that it's rather unclear whether I'm writing for people who haven't seen the thing in question, people who haven't, or both.

Thing is, this time it really does matter, and I'm going to have to come up with a spoiler policy for this review. This is a film on current release, it twists and turns like Lord Melchett's patented twisty-turny thing, and the whole point of it is to subvert all the tropes of the slasher movie. It's very, very Joss Whedon, and I'm not just saying that because Amy Acker is in it. So I think I'll have a go at a "no spoilers" policy just this one, at least up to a point, as it obviously depends on how strict a definition of spoilers you like to use. I do actually need something to talk about, after all. But I'll try and be no more spoilery that those film reviews in magazines and broadsheets. If you generally read those without fear of being spoiled, it's ok to read this. I mean, you might as well. You're three paragraphs in now.

Joss Whedon has said that this film is a "hate letter" to a genre which he loves but which has of late descended into the "torture porn" of Saw and its clones. Hence, this film has plenty of blood and gore, but it's old-fashioned, cheesy blood and gore, without the nasty sadism. It's also a bit of a deconstruction with the genre, playing with our expectations, which is particularly interesting. For one thing, as with all slasher movies, we, the audience, are forever trying to second guess who's going to get killed, which means we're deconstructing it as we watch. For another thing, the Scream saga already exists. But this is very different- much less self-consciously metatextual, deconstructing itself while leaving the fourth wall intact.

Without saying too much, let's say that this starts out as a typical slasher movie, with five potential victims staying at an isolated cabin being slowly picked off. We have the promiscuous and sexy Dana (male gaze alert, not that drew Goddard and Whedon are unaware of this), the sporty and muscular Curt (played by Chris "Thor" Hemsworth), "good girl" Jules, the bookish Holden, and the rather amusing stoner, Marty. There are certain expectations we have for these archetypes, and let's just say that these expectations do not go unaddressed.

I love this film. It's witty, it's playful, it plays with a much larger canvas than you expect, and when I say that it subverts your expectations I mean that in a far more wide-ranging way than you might expect. It is and isn't the kind of film you expect. It makes you think it's one thing, then pulls back to reveal it's something bigger, and then pulls back again to reveal it's even bigger, etc. And yet it remains firmly a slasher film throughout. Watch it. It's good.

A word of advice, though. I watched this at the splendid Phoenix Square Cinema in central Leicester, and had a couple of pints in the bar with a friend beforehand. I also took a pint of Boddingtons into the film with me for good measure, which you're allowed to do. Told you it was splendid. But the inevitable happened and my viewing of the film was interrupted by two embarrassed trips to the gents…