2024, Jeff Chan (Code 8) -- Netflix
I kind of do think we are in the post-superhero phase. Oh, we will continue to have them come out over the next ten years or more, but as long as Marvel churns them out, and DC continues to reboot its cinematic universe to bank on something we have likely gotten bored with, then there will be superhero movies. But the days of a studio / board room full of purple suits asks, "We need a superhero movie in this year's roster; what do we have available?" are done.
I don't really really know how the movie industry works after years of peripherally watching it get made, but I have ideas, mostly built from fiction. Also, I think the current era, if we have one right now, is movies adapted from stage plays / broadway shows that were adapted from movies.
Five years after the events of the last movie, which I didn't even really cover in my previous write-up (Connor the poverty-stuck electric needs money to help his dying mom, who has a tumor that causes her cold powers to go wild, joins in with Garrett, a low-level telekinetic thug who works for a higher-level thug who exploits powered people for crime. It doesn't go well; Connor's mom still dies and he ends up in jail) Connor (Robbie Amell, Upload) is getting out of jail. Still stuck in poverty, and now an ex-con, he does janitor work at a dying rec centre.
Meanwhile Garrett (Stephen Amell, Calamity Jane) has found a new game, working with a corrupt police officer to safely corner an illicit drug trade, one made from the spinal fluid of powered people. The police officer has set himself up as the "friend to the community" Good Guy because he has added a robot K9 to the mostly feared robot police-support force. The dogs have a "if you raise your hands, they stand down" protocol that... well, it works as well as we knew it would. At the direction of a human operator, one such K9 kills a powered kid who tries to rip off Garrett / the cops. The killing is witnessed by his little sister. And soon after, Connor gets dragged into it. Because, of course he does.
If the first movie was an exploration of a seedy, powered world with lots of allegories for immigrants & other disenfranchised people, mixed up with robot police men, then this movie just wants to tell a story in that world. I was mid-level OK with the first movie, somewhat disappointed it didn't do more with the world, then I am more disappointed with this one. No exploration of the world is really required, so it just needs a thin story to provide a framework for the special effects people of Toronto and Vancouver. Oh, I know I am being facetious and dismissive, as it is (again) a decently done, mid-level flick for the genre and the Amell brothers are always fun to visit with, and I know I will probably end up rewatching at some point (thusly, it fills a need) but I guess I want them to be ... smaller, tighter, more evocative?
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