Hawkeye: So This Is Christmas

 "Is this what heroes do? Arrest their mothers on Christmas?"

It's interesting watching this season finale the day after an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Doctor Who finale. But Hawkeye was in no way overshadowed.

Much of the episode was a big, fun, set piece Christmas party battle, with trick arrows, owls, LARPers, falling Christmas trees and... the actual bloody Kingpin. Wow. Vincent D'Onofrio is exacrly as superb, in the same way, as we've seen, but in another context. No way does he die. No bodies are seen.

Yet there are so many character moments. Kate is such a hero. Her whole privileged life is based on immoral acts... so she abandons it, in a heartbeat, hard though it is. Because kit's the right thing. Her mother is an unrepentant gamgster and criminal who isn't very good at gaslighting... so she gets her arrested. Hard, so very hard, but the right thing. Also, she's awesome in a fight. And this time more tactical. And Clint is, by now, impressed. So much so that I suspect he sees a successor in her, accepting her as a partner and inviting her to spend Christmas with his family. And she's made very welcome, bless her. 

Kate's confession to Hawkeye about her childhood glimpse of him is cute. And the scene between Clint and Yelenba turns out to be far more heartwarming and less murderous than we might expect. The rapport between Kate and Yelena is awesome too.

And we even get a musical number at the end.

This is really rather good. Not top tier telly, perhaps, but well characterised and acted. I enjoyed the episode and I enjoyed the series.

Hawkeye: Ronin

"Kate, this is not cutlery."

This is a bloody brilliant episode. Yes, there are revelations upon revelations, but after last episode we see Kate deflated at Clint's rejection of her, until she's ultimately determined to, er, reject his rejection, and he ends up saving Clint, as Ronin, from Maya, genuinely saving him. She even has her escape route planned. Nice one.

And Clint seems to accept her. He's very much worried, though, hinting that the Tracksuit Mafia is much bigger than Maya, that there is a "Big Man" behind the scenes, gunning not only for him but also for his family. Yet he has revelations for Maya, too, about who killed her father...

Families are very uncertain here. We learn that Yelena died when Thanos snapped his fingers, only to instantaneously return after five years, her sister dead and very much blaming Clint... why? Her conversation with Kate is delightful. Florence Pugh and of course Hailee Steinfeld both excel. Yet we also have a final bombshell... Kate's mother seems to be the one who hired Yelena. Well then. And it seems her boss is... Kingpin.

Yes: Kingpin. As in Daredevil. As in the Netflix shows now appear to be canon...

Hawkeye: Partners, Am I Right?

 "If I ever met Huey Lewis, I'd be a wreck."

Hawkeye is not, perhaps, the best Disney Marvel series yet, but it's pretty solid. This is, of course, the episode where Clint and Kate really, really click- the movie marathon, reminiscencing and planning scene are wonderful- and so it's inevitable that he should angrily drive her away at the start. There's a harbinger of this in thev awkward scenes at the Bishop residence, as Kate's mum warns Clint not to make her lose her daughter.

And then we have Clint admitting to Kate how much he misses Natasha, So, when it turns out that not only are the Tracksuit Mafia taking notes on his family but suddenly a Black Widow assassin turns up... and it's Yelena. Ouch. No wonder Clint reacts like he did.

Kate is awesome though, charismatic yet vulnerable, and clever enough to work out who Ronin really was. And it's confirmed, as if there was any doubt, that Jack is a baddie.

This is very good. Not great, but very good.

Hawkeye: Echoes

 "I mean, look on the bright side. You don't have to go and see Imagine Dragons."

Kate is right. Imagine Dragons are exactly the sort of depressingly and cynically mainstream landfill fodder that I imagined middle aged people would listen to when I was young. I'm forty-five now, and I hate that sort of AOR bollocks even more. I've heard it all; I want music to be DIFFICULT. 

Anyway, Hawkeye... I've been impressed with the build-up, but this is where the series really starts to shine. We're introcuded, via her childhood, to Maya, a deaf martial artist. We see, in flashback, that her father dotres on her... and you know what a sucker I am for daddy/daughter relationships, becausewe daddies of little girls are softies about this. He learns ASL, bless him. He's a good dad. 

But he's also an organised crime type person. And dies in his daughter's arms, killed by... Ronin? Oh dear. Revenge looms should Maya learn whom Ronin is. And Maya ends up as the immediate leader of the tracksuit mafia, and chief baddie for now...

And yeah, as a hearing aid wearer, I felt the portrayal and humour of hearing loss was on point and enjoyable. I mean, Clint's hearing aid is clearly private, well posh, and no doubt much better than my NHS hearing aids. But at least mine are free at the point of use.

The car chasw, with the arroes and trick arrows, is awesome, andwe're getting a real bond between Clint- no spring chicken- and the young, athletic, idealistic and very likeable Kate, who is slipping nicely into Padawan territory. He's blatantly a father figure to this rich orphan, as she sees him potentially sacrificing his family Christmas to save the life of this stranger.

This is getting VERY good with this episode. And I love the wink to the traditional costume.

Hawkeye: Hide and Seek

 "A twenty-two year old vigilante. Shouldn't you be in school?"

Ok, first of all, the Hawkeye LARPing montage was obviously awesome. But we hearing aid wearers find it easier to follow what's going on with tabletop RPGs. Maybe Clint would enjoy that more...

Yet there's so much elseto admire in a series that is settling down quite nively. Clint's frustration at not being with his family at Christmas brings us closer to him. Yet Kate is awesome, too, just like us in a way: wanting to learn from Clint to achieve her dream and make it as a superhero. Anything to escape from the life with the family business that's been planned out for her.

Then there's her new stepfather, Jack... the Swordsman. Charming, evasive... and seemingly at the scene of Armand's murder. Kate has problems, and complications. Not only are she and Clint captured and at the mercy of the, er, Tracksuit Mafia, but the cops want to question her in the morning.

Best of all, though, is the chemistry between the hero worshipping, naive yet resourceful Kate and the gruff and annoyed Clint. The script, and both actors, are superb.

Hawkeye: Never Meet Your Heroes

 "I need a bow and arrow!"

This is all very new to me. I know Hawkeye, obviously, but Kate Bishop is from well after my comics-reading years. I know Jack must be the Swordsman, which is exciting, but I've never heard of Hawkeye as the Ronin, which I think of as a massive great big robot kaijin that went up against the Avengers.

We get a big revelation about Clint's unexpected past, we see him with his kids, and we get an actual mentioj of his hearing aid- although, trust me as one who knows: if you switch your hearing off you bloody well take it out and let your ear breathe a bit. Hearing aids help you hear more like other people do so you can fit in, but they're bloody uncomfortable to wear for hours on end.

I like Kate. The odds are stacked against her as a spoiled little rich girl, but I like her, a credit to both Halle Steinfeld and the writing. She's cool, resourceful and has just the right amount of sadness in her past. Plus she worships superheroes, especially the esteemed Mr Barton.

This is mostly set-up, but there's much to intrigue. The Swordsman. Simon Callow, as the late Armand, playing American. What the hell is going on with all this Ronin stuff. This isn't quite up there, so far, with WandaVision and Loki, but I'm enjoying it.

What If... Ultron Won?

 "All those worlds. All that suffering. And you just watched?"

And that's more like it. Wow.

(Bear with me on Sandman: more Netflix issues!)

It's the penultimate episode, so of course they do something different with the format and end in a cliffhanger. It's nice how they very quickly show Ultron destroying all life on Earth, a nice touch being how quickly he dispatches Thanos... and takes all the Infinity Stones. Thus he destroys all sentient life in the universe... via montage. Then he's finished. and has no purpose.

Throughout all this he's opposed by Black Widow and an increasingly despondent Hawkeye, his wife and children certainly dead. Clint's death is brutally and emotionally bleak, followed shortly by Natasha, but Ultron has long since discovered theb Multiverse... and broken the fourth wall by challenging the Watcher. In a nice touch, he calls him "creepy"!

And so the Watcher must break his oath, in a way which nicely deconstructs the entire premise of the series in ways that, of course, the eponymous comic book did many times, but still packs a punch here. It's magnificently done.

What If... the World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?

 "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to exit the donut."

Another intriguing, if very short, eposode here as Nick Fury has to deal with the original avengers (sans the still-frozen Captain America) being killed by a mystery baddie before the Avengers Initiative can take off.

It's clever- I like the use of Loki, and the twist at the end as he almost casually takes over Earth. I'm not sure about the Coulson jokes- its all a bit "ha ha, he's gay", but the reveal as to what the POD was is clever- it's Hope Van Dyne being killed in action for SHIELD, causing Hank Pym to go all unhinged and- nice touch- to don the mantle of Yellowjacket in a nod to the comics, this time thankfully without the domestic violence.

It's a shame not all the voice actors are the real actors, but these are big stars, not always available, and it's easier to use understudies for animation- although I hope the non-appearance of Scarlett Johansen isn't because of that massive mardy Disney threw at her last year.

A little rushed, then, but this is engaging enough.

What if... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?

 "Who needs a plan? I have shield!"

So Loki has unleashed the Multiverse. Branches now proliferate. So here's the first.

In alternate history (Google the fourm; it's an interest of mine) we have a phrase, the "POD" or point of divergence. Here, it's Peggy choosing to stay, and so becoming the Super Soldier instead of Steve... hence the Captain Carter in Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness.

This is huge fun. Captain America: The First Avenger plays out with Peggy as the hero- allowed to display the Union Flag, for some reason, by Americans of 1943, who would have been somewhat more ambiguous about us.

And it's wonderful. The romance between strong Peggy and War Machine weaking Steve, with a character that wins her heart. The Lovecraftian horror. I love this.

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: 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.

Angel: Somnambulist

"Great news, sports fans. There's been another killing!"

This is a fascinating mid-season episode. It's almost about the very fact that the show is in the process of changing its format from semi-police procedural with the supernatural as metaphors for aspects of city life to something a bit more directly supernatural. All this seems to be reflected in the central focus of this episode: Kate, a character associated with the earlier format, having to come to terms with Angel's supernatural nature and, by extension, the fact that she's now going to have to find a place to exist as a character in a genre she wasn't made for and, perhaps, may not fit.

Kate's shocked, understandably. But she's focused, together and efficient. She''' be fine. After all, in this episode she says the word "recidivist" out loud, with out fear of tripping over the vowels. That takes real courage.

Kate is the focus of some superb directorial choices, incidentally. Her talk about the profile of the killer, with traits matching Angel, is matched to footage of our hero, brooding. There's a nice little research montage towards the end. And the opening is a nice bit of misdirection. At first we don't see the face of the vampire that's just killed someone, but then we do see: it's Angel. Although, admittedly, it's all a dream.

We don't spend too much time on the idea that Angel may be committing murders in his sleep; it's revealed pretty quickly that it's Penn, a young man sired by Angelus in eighteenth century Ireland, as communicated in those flashbacks that won't really become a fixture of the show until Darla comes back. Interestingly, Penn is a "Puritan". If he knew Liam socially when they were both alive, this might indicate that they were both Protestants, which would explain their apparent wealth in the context of the time, when the Catholic majority in Ireland led less than ideal lives and the Protestant Ascendancy owned most things. Although, come to think of it, Penn as a "Puritan" wouldn't have been part of it, so ignore what I just said.

Still, that was then.  Geeky historical footnote over. This is now, and Penn (Hawkeye himself, Jeremy Renner!) looks curiously like a 19^th century David Bowie. He's a serial killer, yes, but I don't think there's anything metaphorical going on here; the future of the show does not lie in such things.

There are other interesting things in this episode, mind. Wesley is not yet an official member of Angel Investigations, although I notice that Alexis Denisof has now been promoted to the credits. His rapport with the other two regulars is already a pleasure to behold. And it seems that a vampire can enter the lair of another vampire without permission. I wonder if this is entirely consistent with what we've seen before?

Mostly, though, this episode has me curious about how this show is going to be developed. It's fairly clear that the format is changing, but into what? It's very possible, interestingly, to read the final exchange between Cordelia and Angel as a possible harbinger for Angelus' return. After all, it's bound to happen at some point, right?

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.