The Gathering Storm

 "He promised to cut down to three bottles of champagne in the evening."

It's good to see this again, twenty-three years after I saw it first being broadcast. This TV film is an exemplar of something that exists, yes, as a nice little historical drama, but primarily as the vehicle for an actor to show us a real, incredible tour de force in a truly seminal role. For here, Albert Finney simply is Winston Churchill, in all the nuances of that very complicated human being. We often speak, when actors play real historical figures of whom footage exists, of the distinction between acting and impression. But here... well, the distinction simply doesn't exist. It's a truly extraordinary performance from a first rate actor.

The script, of course, deserves credit too, for this is Churchill- blinkered, irascible, deeply emotional, loving, exasperating. His views are nicely shown- of course, history remembers him for being very, very right about the most important thing- the urgent necessity of utterly crushing Nazism without mercy. But the script doesn't shy away from other things, such as his strong support of British rule over India, often using problematic language. Nuance, again. Yet, despite his flaws... he can't help but inspire loyalty and affection, something shown very well here.

The narrative is nicely done, beginning with Winston's career in the doldrums and ending with him being First Lord again, although much of this is due to Ralph and his deep sacrifice. But there's more- how he was so problematic yet loving as a husband and father. As a salutary reminder that one can, and bloody well should, have absolutely no truck with any of this "fourteen units of alcohol a week" nonsense.

And with that... I'm posting this and uncorking the wine. Happy Friday.

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...

Loki: Glorious Purpose

 "The last thing I want is a throne."

SPOILERS, obviously. I mean, this is not only the season finale but surely ends the show for good, two seasons to tell one complete stiry and then stop.

Loki begins and ends with an episode called Glorious Purpose; the snake eats its own tail. But look how far Loki has come, a triumph of character development from the writers and from Tom Hiddleston. In the end, Loki is truly a god from a myth, sacrificing everything so that a whole multiverse of infinite timelines may live and countless people may live. Last episode he confessed to Sylvie that he was motivated not only by altruism but by fear of losing his friends, of loneliness. So we know that his sacrifice, meaning perpetual loneliness, is meaningful and a final redemption.

And this is all beatifully mythical- Loki, for all eternity, alone on his throne, sacrificing everything. There are obvious echoes of Christian mythology, of course, but far more of the old myths. It's a different pantheon, but this evokes such things as Apollo driving the Sun across the sky in his chariot every day. It's appropriate, then, that the new loom should reveal itself as Yggsdrasil, the World Tree. The ultimate Ragnarok has been averted.

So yes, much of the episode is timey-winey fun evoking such things as Back to the Future, and it's brilliant. But there's real depth here, and character. Not only Loki; Mobius accepts he needs to leave the TVA and discover who he really is. We even get to see He Who Remains being sincere with Loki and, while we can't accept what he stands for, we can understand his motives. He's not evil, but genuinely focused on what he sees as the greater good. Jonathan Majors is extraordinary as ever here, with HWR and Victor Timely being crucially different performances.

There's so much subtext here, too. I'm barely scratching the surface. There's a lot about free will vs. determinism which is at once timey-wimey and philosophical. There's lots of great comedy in the timey-wimey scenes ("I'm not questioning your surprisingly advanced engineering skills..."), beautifully performed. There's an ambiguous end for Renslayer. And, in the end, there's what appears to be a stable multiverse. This, I'm sure, is at the heart of this phase of the MCU. More than that, though- episode, season and series- this is utterly magnificent.

Loki: Science/Fiction

 “Reality isn’t what you think it is.”

So, last episode painted everything into a corner. It gave us the ultimate cliffhanger: everything is over. Where now? It reminds me in broad terms of the end of Steven Moffat’s first series of Doctor Who, but it is very much its own beast. This is an excellent piece of television. Also, I approve of the point made about the Velvet Underground being a literally earth-shaking band.

So Loki, already established as time slipping- with an effect that suddenly reminds me of the fate of poor Victor Timely- spaghettied. I suppose being a God helps. 

And so Loki goes on his journey to the main timeline lives of all his friends- Hunter B15 the community doctor; Mobius the single dad jetski salesman (what else?); Casey the bank robber escapee from Alcatraz (what?!); OB the physics professor and aspiring science fiction author. It’s all good fun, though hard to see where all this is going.

Then Sylvie. And that wonderful scene in the bar. The scene that starts by laying out the ideological oppositions of these two variants of the same person. Both believe they support free will, free agency, yet these concepts are not easy to apply to a slippery, timey-wimey multiverse which is somewhat unstable.

Sincere though both are, though… both are selfish. Sylvie wants her humble life in Oklahoma. It’s not much, but it’s human. It’s happiness. It’s what she’s always dreamed of. For Loki… for the first time in his life, he has purpose through friendship. The trickster god need not be alone. I’m not sure this quite works with the character’s history and nuance… but there’s enough sleight of hand.

So all hope lies in time-slipping Loki TL rewrite the timeline. There is hope.

Except… the first scene in the “previously on” very much seemed to me to suggest that He Who Remains is indeed manipulating all of these events.

Superb telly, in case it needs reiterating.

Loki: Heart of the TVA

 "I promise you this will make sense!"

Wow. This is some extraordinary, important, timey-wimey storytelling with revelation after revelation. Yet it's all about the characters, the performances, the humour.

So yes, Renslayer and Miss Minutes (does she die for good?) are the baddies. But they have their reasons. We learn at the very start that this version of Renslayer was the partner of He Who Remains, commander of his armies... yet he sent her back in time to run the TVA, and erased her and everyone's memories. Wow. How very Kang and Ravonna. No wonder she and Miss Minutes are now plotting on their own. Yet no one wants to join them, and- except Brad- endure a tortuous death rather than join them. But what's their plan? And are they being manipulated by You-Know-Who?

I love the ideological debate between Loki and Sylvie: the TVA may now mean well, but can they or anyone be trusted with that much power. Loki at this point has come so far from his "glorious purpose" beginning, yet his growth, and his friendship with Mobius, has been believable. And Sophie's bollocking of Mobius is a nice touch too. Is she implying that she may know who he is on the timeline?

But Victor's reaction to the TVA is a joy, as is the mutual fandom- and time paradox!- between him and OB. Yet it all ends in, well, darkness and doom, surely the ultimate cliffhanger. This is truly extraordinary stuff, far above any other Marvel TV show.

Loki: 1893

 "And why'd they include Balder? No one's heard of him."

Oh Boy. This isa bloody brilliant, hugely exciting bit of television, with tension and excitements all the way, and so many twists and turns.

Yes, there's far too much CGI in the Chicago of 1868 and then 1893, but the historical setting is perfectly realised- the sets, the costumes, the social attitudes (sadly having to include some degree of racism directed at Victor Timely without which, unfortunately, the setting would not have been plausible) all perfect, and it being wisely decided that there's no need to include H.H. Holmes, unless one of Timeley's bidders was subtly meant to be him.

So many ideas here, though. Victor Timely is a Kang variant born in the mid-Nineteenth Century, not the Thirty-First. He has the genius of Kang but exists in an age where the necessary technology does not exist, so he is forced to be a con man, set up by Renslayer and Miss Minutes, acting at the behest of the late He Who Remains, who obviously planned all this, and much else, before his surely expected demise at the hands of Sylvie.

Speaking of whom... I love the debate/fight between her and Loki in the Ferris Wheel, but all the more I love her unexpected decision to spare Timely and allow him to be returned to the TVA. After all, who is Sylvie, of all people, to punish a variant for the crimes of another version of themselves?

Also cool is the love triangle, with both Renslayer and Miss Minutes(!) vying for Timely's affections. Miss Minutes is a delight here. But so does the whole damn thing. I've no idea where this is going, but it's clearly pivotal for the MCU. I'm so very here for the ride.

Loki: Breaking Brad

 "We're all gonna die! Oh, hey, pleased to meet you."

This new season continues to be very good indeed. In fact, thus far it's the best Disney Plus Marvel show for some considerable time.

Ostensibly there's a lot of plot. Loki and Mobius need to find Sylvie, so they inyterrogate Brad, an agent working for Dox who may have found her, and said interrogation takes up much of the focus.

Except the interrogation is not the point: it's really aboiut the amazingly deep friendship and rapport that has built up between Loki, a god and a bureaucrat, who have really bonded to the point that Loki can relate... well, the plot of an episode of What If? (nice touch) while Mobius can express his fears aboiut finding out what his life would have been on the original timeline. I'm fairly sure jetskis would be involved.

Eventually we end with truly horrific scenes of Dox and her crew carrying outb their mission- not, as we'd thought, to find Sylvie, but to prune all the new timelinesband therreby slaughter untold quadrillions. We can sympathise with Sylvie- a goodess, albeit never having lived like one, who has found happiness in 1982 Oklahoma working a dead end job. A normal, humble life is heaven for her.

Last erpisode was about awesome concepts. This episode, while advancing the plot, reminds us that this show has such deep characters and such bloody good actors. Top telly.

Loki: Ouroboros

 "I need a Loki who remains!"

Yep, this is bloody brilliant, all right.

We ended last season on a big reveal and a big dilemma: to kill He Who Remains... let's justcall him Kang, ok? To kill Kang or not to kill Kang? Kill him, and his TVA will no longer prune the other timelines, meaning countless quadrillians will not be murdered. But does this mean inevitable multiversal way with multiple Kangs, and extinction? Yeak. Tough choice for Loki. So Sylvie makes it for him.

A lot happens here, not least with Loki slipping between what we learn is not different realities but the TVA in the past and present. It seems Kang has been changing things over the millennia and wiping everyone's minds, again and again. And the TVA, led by a general and a judge we haven't previously met, are having to face this new reality. It's going to tke a while to see how this all shakes down.

We end with an exciting action sequence which really shows us the genuine friendship and bond between a much-changed Loki and Mobius. Well, esxcept for the post-credits sequence with Sylvie in a 1982 Oklahoma McDonalds, which is a whole other thing, but the characterisation here is superb, as is the humour. This is a supremely well written, acted, directed and designed piece of television. I'm excited.

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.

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.

Loki: For All Time. Always

 "Only one person gets free will. The one in charge!"

Wow. This is huge. So suddenly there are branches everywhere, there's an array of Multiverses, and He Who Remains... no, that names a bit of a mouthful; let's give him a one syllable name such as, like, "Kang", because that's blatantly who he is, given his actions and backstory- is dead, but his variants will live on.

Kang is awesome, a deeply clever puppetmaster who is the man behind the curtain at a Citadel at the End of Time, so clever he can break the fourth wall and cheerfully show Loki and Sylvie the script of the scene they're in. He gets to say "We're all villains here". His Multiversal backstory is fascinating. He's eneormously charismatic. Yet his existence offers a horrible vision of free will. It cannot exist, or Multiversal War breaks out. Tyrannical, stutifying order vs. destructive anarchy. As Kang puts it, get rid of the dictator and... well, we all remember Iraq. Must it be either tyranny or Hobbesian chaos? Either way, the die is cast.

The debate, fight, kiss and betrayal between Loki and Sylvie is deeply moving in the end. So is the bitter parting between Mobius and Ravonna... and, indeed, the fact that Loki ends up back at the TVA, with no one knowing who he is.

Unsurprisingly, we get a second season. This is superb telly.

Loki: Journey into Mystery

 "Don't die isn't a plan. It's just a general demand of living."

Nice title. I love these subtle, or not so subtle, little nods.

Wow. This is a big, big episodes and I'm not even going to get started on all the hidden little artifacts around the void. We get loads of Lokis, one of which is Richard E. Grant in the original costime by King Kirby himself. The whole thing is enormous fun.

Then we get the simmering romance between Sylvie and Loki. More Miss Minutes, always a good thing. A frigging alligator Loki, one up on Walt Simonson's frog Thor. We get the revelation that the pruned aren't killed; they're sent to a bit of the far future beyond which we cannot see, and where a beast guards something beyond, something which may hold the secrets of the Time Keepers. Wow.

It's not just about the revelations, though, awesome though they are. The relationship between Loki and Sylvie is subtly and beautifully done, alongside the friendship between both of them and the relievingly not-dead Mobius, who will hopefully achieve what he sets out to do.

This is brilliant. So what lies behind the curtain...?

Loki: The Nexus Event

"What an incredible seismic narcissist..."

This isan incredible episode, full of twist, turns and big, big reveals along all the timey-wimey stuff, starting with the sad reveal that Sylvie was kidnapped by the TVA when she was just a little girl to... yeah, that ending.

It's still all about character, though. Neither we nor Mobius stop pondering what makes the so-called God of Mischief tick, of whether he trult has fallern in love with his alternate self. Mobius too, who seems to be permanently "pruned" by Ravonna, his best friend, also gets quite the journey here as he tenaciously notes the things that don't add up and realises that Loki, for once, was telling the truth: everyone who works for the TVA is a mind-wiped variant. His death is dignified, yes, but deeply sad.

And then there's the revelation at the end: the "Time Keepers" are just a front. What's really going on? Who really runs the TVA? Whatever, it#s clear that Ravonnais right at the centre. This is getting pretty bloody gripping.

Loki: Lamentis-1

 "What part of imminent death confuses you?"

This episode seems to take things in unexpected directions. Just as we seemed to be settling into a status quo of Loki working for the TVA and pursuing the alternate Loki... things take a different turn. And yes, it's just Loki and Sylvie (for that seems to be her name) getting to know each other while an adventure with an apocalypse happens around them, but it's fun, if not as good as its two predecessors.

It annoys me a bit when the episode proudly reveals that Loki is bisexual, and then expects to be congratulated for being so progressive. You know, people have sexual orientations, it's a mundane fact of life and should be shown as such. For a TV series in 2021 to reveal an ageless character is bisexual is routine. I mean, I'm straight, but I imagineif my lifespan was measured in thousands of years I'd at least be some degree of pansexual. So would you. This isn't bravery. It's not saying anything. I'd be impressed if they, I don't know, did an episode giving the finger to the rampant transphobia that seems to be coarsening our society these days.

That aside, though, this is a fun little two hander between Loki and Sylvie, and we get a little titbit about the TVA: all of their employees are variants. Wow. What other secrets do the Time Keepers have? And who is the mysterious Ramona?

Loki: The Variant

 "Luckily, he believes in himself enough for both of us..."

This second episode has me fascinated. The whole concept of this limited series is suoerb. We take a variant Loki from an already-established divergent timeline and plonk him into the TVA, a concept of Walt Simonson's where everyone (just Owen Wilson here) looks just like the late Mark Gruenwald, which is so well-established here, as a 1960s office environment rather less glamorous than Mad Men.

Thus we have philosophical, timey-wimey issues of coolness. We get fascinating, abstracxt conversations between Loki and Mobius about predestination and free will. We, like Loki, are left wondering what is the bacstory behind the Time Keepersa. Even more, we non-Amewricans are left wondering about, like, what the hell is this Rennaissance Fayre insanity?

But it's all about the variant, a veraion of Loki who seems badass. And Loki's own mor=tives. What are they? Everybody's playing thirty-seven dimensional chess, and I love it.

Also, Loki is pretty damn good at paperwork!

Loki: Glorious Purpose

 "What's a fish?"

"How do you not know what a fish is?"

This  is an extremely promising start: indeed the finest opening episode to any Marvel TV series yet. It's far from an obvious idea to pair Loki with the semi-obscure Time Variance Authority, a nice little semi-satirical creation of Walt Simonson, but it really, really works.

The interrogation scene by Mobius, while its point is as yet unclear, is an excellent opportinuty to stop, explore and indeed psychoanalyse the character of Loki, adding depth to him as a person. The moment when he gives up on escaping because he realises he's temprally homeless is deeply affecting.

Yet it's the concept of the TVA that fascinates. It raises all sorts of philosophical questions of predestination and free will. It also introduces us to the concept of the multiverse, and that an authority exists- its origins rather murky- to ensure there is only one "sacred" timeline. The '60s-'70s office style is delightful, as is the fun little exposition video. The concepts, the humour and the characterisation are all superb. And I'm full of questions about the background to the Multiverse and the TVA.

More please.

Coriolanus (National Theatre Live, 2014)

“I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying water in it. One that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning."

I'm a Shakespeare geek, I suppose, but of his thirty-nine plays I have certainly neither read nor seen them all. So, having neither seen nor read Coriolanus, I'm caught between a first experience of the play- one extraordinary both in itself and in what it has to say in our sadly populist times, where militaristic demagoguery continues to plague us.

I can see why the play is not so popular and well-known as the Warwickshire lad's other late tragedies. It is austere, has a proud and abrasive protagonist who is not inclined to self-aware soliloquys, and assumes a knowledge of semi-mythical early republican Rome, in the 490s BC, where the last king has barely been deposed and where, with the first secession of the plebs, issus of class and war intertwine as the young city state conquers its neighbours.

One must surely imagine this play, with its emphasis on the people, the tribunes, the conflict between arrogant privilege and the popular will, would be much less resonant in early Jacobean times than it is today, where Coriolanus as a proud warrior and would-be tyrant evokes not so much the sadly delusional Trump as the much younger, leaner and more sanely arrogant Cummings. Tom Hiddleston is superb, succeeding in seeming authoritative and believable as a proud and reactionary soldier undone by hubris, his performance full of nice little touches, at limes leavening the tragic gloom with bitter humour. Mark Gatis is similrly superb as Menenius, the humour of his performance concealing dark depths. The sparse production, too, is a triumph, allowing the play itself to succeed by its words and performances. It's just a shame Birgitte Hjort Sorensen of Borgen has such a relatively small part.

Magnificent, both as a play and a performance. Not all tragedies have to be Hamlet, and there's a real power in letting the interior thoughts of the protagonist remain opaque. From Hiddleston I've never seen a finer performance.

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.