Avengers: Endgame - 2019, d. Joe and Anthony Russo - in theatre
Venom - 2018, d. Ruben Fleischer - on demand
Normally I would write a long (very, very long) screed dissecting almost any latest superhero movie (like, I had plenty to say about Shazam!) but for some reason I let both Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame slip past me. Maybe it's the Letterboxd effect (eg. the fact that last year I was tracking and commenting on movies there, rather than doing so more in depth here. I seem to be at more of a balance between both right now)? Or maybe it was the DIY bedroom renovation and new puppy that sucked all the time and energy out of me for doing said reviews (which is kind of BS since Captain Marvel came out before all that, and, yeah, I did that Shazam! review)? In the meantime I talked so much about both movies (you know, in person, in face-to-face conversations) that I kind of exhausted all I had to say about them multiple times over, that to sit down and write the same thoughts out seemed redundant.
We're now well past the point where these two films are dominating the cultural conversation (what is it currently? Toronto Raptors winning a championship, usual political bullshit, our environmental nightmare, the bland mediocrity of the new Godzilla and X-Men movies [haven't seen them myself, but will eventually]...) so it's time to reapproach the dialogue and throw in an outlier in the superhero genre, the ugly little film that could, Venom.
Upon second viewing it was evident that I clearly missed something the first time around, and that something was the resonant themes of female empowerment and embracing one's self. Our protagonist is told time again that she can't do something, that she should be doing something else, that she's not strong enough to do what the boys do. But she tries. She fails, but still, she tries. And she picks herself back up after failing. She's told she needs to control herself, to contain her emotion, think with her head, not her heart ,as if emotion is weakness. She's told she needs to prove herself, prove to men -- men who are fearful of her abilities -- that she needs to prove herself on their level, when they know their level is so far below her own actual potential. They want to keep this powerful woman down, out of fear and envy, and for their own manipulative gain.
This isn't a message that all men are bad, but a message to everyone to not let others hold you back.
I caught this message the first time around but I was too busy looking for what I wanted out of the film, what I expected. I was being Yon-Rogg. I didn't want to approach the film on anything but my own terms and it came up lacking against my own expectations. But reading and hearing what others got out of it (my own daughter included) and I decided I needed to give it another chance.
In just two viewings I already have favorite sequences, starting with the masterful memory exploration sequence in the first act, following through to Carol's escape from the Skrulls. Likewise, the quiet moments of just two people talking, Carol and Fury (is Samuel L Jackson the world's greatest scene partner or what?) or Carol and Maria or Carol and Monica, they're some of the best two-hander scenes in the MCU.
It's not a perfect film... it's still too dark and muddy at times and the action escalates too unbelievably and I feel like that one soundtrack queue is just not good. Likewise, it still feels more like a Marvel "Phase 1" origin movie, but with better effects. Yet, I'm still quite in and want more Carol (I worry about Goose overexposure though... there's, like, a Minions level fervor around that cat).
[Avengers Endgame spoilers follow if you're still worried about such things]
We got more Carol Danvers in Avengers: Endgame, but it was in a fairly limited capacity. She arrives to join the team in the opening act which picks up immediately following the end of Infinity War, but then disappears until late in the third act. It's one of a few disappointments in an otherwise satisfying "season finale" to the 10-year MCU 3-act arc that started with Iron Man.
Endgame makes some very bold moves for a massive, multi-billion dollar franchise/series-of-franchises, starting with that opening act in which the heroes, having failed to stop Thanos from wiping out half of the living beings in existence with a snap in the last movie, "avenge" those lost souls. Their avenging, though, serves little purpose and provides little satisfaction. As a result, in a tremendously ballsy move, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, plus directors Joe and Anthony Russo, jump five years into the future.
This time jump changes the view of the MCU rather dramatically. What is otherwise a bright, colorful, exciting, daring, adventurous reality is now a gray, sombre, joyless existence. Everyone has lost someone, (or if you're Hawkeye, everyone). For a glorious half hour, the MCU feels like it's the HBO series The Leftovers (reviews for Season 1, Season 2, Season 3). The inspiration is obvious.
The film makes a case that Thanos was right, that reality where populations are halved are much more capable of managing their resources, that traumatized environments can recover from the plague of civilized societies. And yet, actually living in such a reality, traumatized by tremendous loss, it's difficult to accept and move on.
This is the crux of the Avengers mission here. Rather than moving on and just protecting and bettering what's left of society, they exhaust all avenues in finding a way to return what was lost. The first sign is the sudden re-emergence of Scott Lang, the Ant-Man, who was lost in the quantum realm for 5 years...only, for him it was mere minutes. Time moves and flows differently in the quantum realm, and if the Avengers can harness it, they may just find the answer to stopping Thanos before he's able to complete his quest. Of course, playing with time may also result in spawning alternate realities and other disastrous effects to avoid, which of course are going to happen because comic books are like that.
Just like Captain America: Civil War wasn't really a sequel to Captain America: Winter Soldier and yet, it still was, so too is Endgame to Infinity War. The focus has shifted, and yet it still builds upon what came before. Where Infinity War had Thanos as its focal figure, this one returns the focus back to the Avengers, most specifically the original roster from the 2011 film - Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye and the Hulk.
Hawkeye, absent from the last film, returns in the opening moments of the film, teaching his daughter archery while his son plays and his wife sets the picnic table for lunch. Knowing how Infinity War ends makes the weight of this scene immediately obvious, and it's heartbreaking. Clint descends into darkness as a murderous vigilante, killing crime lords around the globe, deeming them unworthy of surviving Thanos' random selection. His best friend Nat now leads a global (perhaps even Galactic) Avengers, but Clint's health and well being have weighed heavily on her since the original film. If only she should find him. Bruce, meanwhile, has accepted the Hulk as a part of himself, and has found a happy medium between brains and brawn.
Having appeared in more movies than almost any other MCU character, yet without ever starring in her own feature, Black Widow's arc over the past decade has let her down. It's evident Natasha is a great fighter, an incredible warrior, and intelligent and caring leader (making her head of the 5-years-later Avengers makes perfect sense), but we don't know what makes her tick, what drives her beyond her training as a Russian spy. As such, when she exits the film, her loss is evident but it's not truly felt. The team has Cap, Tony and Thor all as capable alternate leaders should they need them (although by the end of the film that's all changed too).
The time-travel shenanigans are all about getting the Infinity Gems before Thanos does and destroying them before he can use them. This involves the team breaking up into pairings (like classic team comics would always do) and retread ground from previous movies (like 2011 Avengers, Thor: The Dark World and the first Guardians of the Galaxy), but from a different point of view. I love timey-wimey goofballs like this, and the movie has some definite fun with it, while also always aware of what the objective is and what's on the line.
Though perhaps not crystal clear, the rules of time travel are laid down for "Professor Hulk" in a surprise returning cameo, and, with a little help from the internet (or perhaps revisiting the film), do make sense. To be sure, branching realities are made (and in some cases the writers and directors disagree on which branching realities actually exist) and provide enough dangling threads for future fodder (including the upcoming Loki TV mini-series on Disney's new streaming service).
It's perhaps less of the dazzling high-wire act than they did with Infinity War, since the cast roster has shrunk considerably thanks to "the snap", and yet Marcus and McFeely with the Russos still make a dense and impeccably entertaining feature. It doesn't stand on its own, as it's got the structure of almost 2 dozen features from 10 years prior as foundation under its feet, yet, they have a satisfying experience overall that pays off the whole idea of the shared universe concept that only Marvel so far has been able to successfully create on screen. It's an epic 3 hours of cinema that would baffle any newbie (but who is going into the fourth Avengers movie [like, the 7th Captain America movie, the 9th Iron Man movie] as their first entry into the MCU) but this is truly a love letter for the fans who have joined the ride along the way, die hards and casuals alike.
It's hard to see a path forward from here, 11 years of epic slowly building towards one huge climax, and it would be a satiating close to stop here. Yet, there's no sign of it stopping and there's no reason to. The quality of the MCU features is really damn high, so high that they're taking up 10 of the top 15 best superhero movies of all-time in my ranking of all superhero movies, and every MCU but one is in the top 50. There's an attention to both craft and character in the making of an MCU. It's spectacle but with a mind to making what works on the page also work on the screen. Every MCU film has been good, if not great, watchable, if not infinitely rewatchable, and, most importantly, entertaining.
Sony, holders of the Spider-Man license for two decades now, have been less capable of creating a consistently entertaining product, less able to balance world building with character, and less able to keep their meddling fingers out of the pot. They managed two better-than-good Spider-Man movies with Sam Raimi before studio interference damned the third one. The relaunch from Marc Webb in 2011 saw the studio trying too hard to capture the same magic the MCU had created, with little awareness of the formula (and none of the patience) to copy. This led to Sony practically begging Marvel to pair up on relaunching Spidey again for a third iteration in less than 20 years... with much improved results.
So chuffed by their success, Sony decided to capitalize upon Spider-man: Homecoming with a Spidey-less Venom feature, bringing the villain-turned-antihero to the big screen for a second time (after the disastrous Spider-Man 3). Of course, in the comics the symbiotic alien that gives Eddie Brock his "venom" powers first possessed Peter Parker (in Spider-Man's classic black costume period of the 1980's), and it was Peter's realization that the symbiote was nefarious (and controlling) that caused Peter to abandon the creature. It's union with Peter's newspaper rival Eddie created almost a natural opposite for Spider-Man, and Venom is now perhaps his most infamous nemesis.
But Venom's popularity as a villain skyrocketed in the grimdark/bad girl era of comics, where a lot of pubescent boys were getting fanserviced with busty/leggy women in skimpy costumes and extremely, grotesquely muscled violent vigilantes. Once they introduced Carnage, another of Venom's alien symbiote species who paired with a human serial killer, suddenly Spider-Man was teaming up with his nemesis, making Venom look like a good guy by comparison. Since then it's been a steady road to making Venom a casual bad guy, like the Punisher, except with a penchant for biting off heads rather than shooting them off.
I seriously underestimated the mass audience appeal for a character like Venom. I certainly wasn't expecting the film to pull in almost 900 million worldwide. Superman could barely do those numbers, and he needed to fight Batman to do so. Something is seriously wrong with our planet.
Venom, as a film, is pretty nonsensical. Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a Vice Magazine-type edgy reporter, who is kept on a leash by the people who pay his salary. But his bag is extreme "gotcha" journalism, exposing corporate greed and elite corruption... except his latest story, trying to drag prominent technology magnate Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) down in the mud. Except Drake is teflon and Brock's story gets scuttled. He hacks his lawyer fiancee's computer to dig up some files on Drake for a case she's working on, his life collapses. He gets fired and his relationship ends.
We're supposed to believe Hardy as Brock gets down on his luck, but he never seems down, and he seems like a pretty resourceful guy. Eddie's drawn back into Drake's story when one of his key scientists tells Eddie about the experiments Drake is doing on homeless people (who, of course, Eddie is friends with) trying to pair them with alien symbiotes that reject and kill the hosts. Naturally Eddie get paired with Venom and hijinks ensue.
It's a tenuous partnership but eventually it balances out. Venom has its own personality and the two have conversations which are marginally amusing but don't really make a lick of sense. Eddie's motivations and Venom's motivations seem like two separate and distinct things and not all that complimentary. Of course, there are other symbiotes out there and Venom, dubbed the loser outcast of the prospective alien invasion of Earth, has decided to help stop them. Drake pairs up with Riot (yes all the symbiots have edgy "cool" Earth nicknames which they call each other for some bizarre reason...it's very comic-booky but I don't buy into it) and the big gloopy final act begins.
Director Ruben Fleischer is best known for his horror-comedy Zombieland, and with Venom he's really striving for a similar slapstick-action-horror vibe. It kind of works, except that it's utterly ridiculous. There are trope subverting things, like Eddie's ex-fiancee, Anne (Michelle Williams) finding a new relationship with a guy who is much better for her, a nice guy to her AND Eddie, and helps out when needed. It becomes clear by the third act that there's no reunion for Anne and Eddie in the offing, especially when it becomes somewhat insinuated that Eddie and Venom are kind of a thing (not really, but the queer coding is there) and there's no room for anything else (except that Anne becomes Venom for a short bit and that's really weird).
The story structure and pacing of Venom feels completely off, such that the progression of relationships doesn't flow properly, and the intent of characters from one moment to the next never seems certain. Why is anyone really doing what they're doing? The movie doesn't seem to care, why should we?
The action in the film ranges from utterly generic to unappealingly ugly. Venom as a creation looks somewhat like his comic book counterpart, but he's a shiny goopy mess most of the time, and can shoot more shiny goopy messes off himself when fighting. It looks pretty terrible, like unfinished VFX from the mid 2000's. Once the film comes to a head and Venom and Riot are gooping all around stuff, it's tedious and kind of gross. It's just an unpleasant effect...less because it's a CGI blob, and more because it's a terrible and unreal looking CGI blob.
I honestly don't understand how this movie made the pile of cash it did. It's not altogether unwatchable, but it's barely any better than the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies. It's Hardy, Williams, Ahmed, and Jenny Slate making this anything close to palatable viewing, but they're all far too good for this. Perhaps it's just conditioning now. A superhero movie is released, so people go see it. Hell, Aquaman made a billion dollars (sounds hyperbolic but it's true). Then again, X-Men: Dark Phoenix just came out and tanked, so....
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