If Marvel wants to dominate the next 25 action-adventure movie cycles, it is going to have to dial up to 11 and stay there, particularly with new characters and concepts. Formula is stifling any real character and plot innovation. Just giving characters a really good story so they can get their MCU membership passes is not enough. Awkwafina and Michelle Yeoh saved this almost-ambitious movie about Asian mythology from mediocrity, but not by much. Being better than Black Widow is not a great accomplishment.
The epitome of work-life balance family drama, but with flights and tights
The show’s first season begins with the death of a mother and ends with the burial of a father, with the middle filled in with what family members create. A very radical combo of Man of Steel, Smallville and Lois and Clark merges with the last 30 years of Superman comics into a meditation on the sustaining of the family unit from primarily two sources–the Kents and the Cushings (Lana Lang’s brood). The finale teaser for Season 2 shows the reconstitution of a third as a result of, appropriately, a rocket landing at the Kent farm. The CW-ish, almost-emerging-adult inside shows that the family dynamics have just begun to shift, with Lois being given one hell of a personal retcon of sorts and the boys gaining a sister (pun intended). Having Superman go to a mental-emotional space where he has to prioritize the world most important to him at the moment will continue to make him not only relevant, but even a more permanent part of American folklore.
Put The Guardians of the Galaxy in your head. Now, make a film star-ring them in your mind but make it as violent, as gory, as possible. But also make it as funny, if not funnier. There ya go.
John Lewis and Andrew Aydin. Art by L. Fury and Nate Powell.
New York: Abrams Comic Arts, in conjunction with Good Trouble Productions, 154 pp., $24.99.
The change of artist did nothing to hinder the entrance into John Lewis’ world: one of bloodshed, and courage and almost constant activity and sound. Kudos to co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist L. Fury, who took the baton well from Nate Powell. The award-winning March (examined by this reviewer here) is followed up with a new triology, completed in text just before the congressman’s death last year. In this first installment, Lewis slowly realizes that the attributes that propelled him to Movement leadership–Christian witness, closeness to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King (derisively called “Da Lawd” by some youth activists) and a belief in integrated work–has got him ousted from his beloved Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It’s a time of X marking new spots, of Watts and draft cards afire, of Black Power shouted, of Stokely Carmichael ascendant, of Black self-determination on Black terms, and Lewis is exhausted. To Be Continued in Book Two. After all these decades, it is sad to see Lewis still refer to Black nationalism as Black “separatism”–as if such nationalism was still some abberation–but at least he explained in detail here why some thought it justified. Wedded to American thoughts and ideals, the hero decides not to put on a new face but to find a new place and space.
“The only natural resource in the world that there is too much of: girls.” Because of the topic addressed, that line, uttered by the old-time Bond villain in this old-time-007-meets-Jason-Bourne flick, deserved a much more significant movie than this. At this point, the Marvel formula of drama-action-joke-repeat is irresistible to its shareholders, I’m sure, but it’s sad and a little frustrating to see such a good movie, led by a great star, subtly and not-so-subtly work against itself. When the accompanying (connected by Disney+) Simpsons shortis only slightly more light than a serious, well-meaning film, it might be time for Marvel/Disney to re-assess after making the bank deposit.
Verdict: Much better than Joss Whedon (and I’m not by a long shot Snyder’s biggest fan; he thinks every superhero film is his Watchmen in disguise), but you should watch the chaptered film as a six-part mini-series. (Steppenwolf was actually a great villain! Who would’vethunk?!?) What was fascinating to me was how much the Black characters–Cyborg and his father–were the center of the story; Ray Fisher and Joe Morton are probably celebrating, and should! Worth the wait, and I hope this very dark universe will continue in episodic TV form on HBO Max. Superfriends overload? Never!
UPDATE: So it was supposed to be episodic TV, a mini-series, from the beginning of the HBO Max deal, but…..
Why these Carr-Hunter discussions are growing in popularity. Look how Dr. Carr links Chadwick to: a) Black playwrights, b) Black bookstores, c) Black protest, d) to Black cultural development. And then e) THOTH!
Drums in the Global Village 