thor movies megareview

thor (2011)

“your ancestors called it magic and you call it science. well, i come from a place where they’re one and the same thing.”

thor and guardians of the galaxy are the two marvel franchises i still mostly (mostly) uncomplicatedly like, which probably isn’t the most surprising, right? that i would continue liking the space bullshit ones? i really hope that isn’t surprising, otherwise i’ve done a very poor job of establishing my brand.

what i’ve always liked about thor specifically is the way it combines high fantasy and science fiction tropes. i’ve written previously about how that doesn’t make it immune to reinforcing the sort of hegemonic narratives that the rest of the mcu reinforces, but it’s still different. it’s tolkien-style ruling class apologia rather than just literally u.s. army: be all you can be or the few, the proud, the marines with the branding removed. i’m not saying that makes it okay, but it does at least make it less grating.

morbius megareview

my thirst for morebius led to us marathoning all the animated episodes with him in them prior to seeing the movie, and i also picked up the two morbius: epic collection graphic novels, which are super long and full of great content, so it took me until quite a while after seeing the movie to finish them.

yeah, i was unironically excited for the morbius movie. no, i’m not sorry. bite me! (especially if you’re a vampire.)

the spider-man cinematic universe

spider-man (2002)

you simply do not get the unstoppable juggernaut of the modern superhero movie scene if it isn’t for sam raimi’s first two spider-man movies, but despite any surface-level similarities and causal relationships these movies could scarcely have less in common with the relentless marvel/disney engine spewing out three to four largely interchangeable movies a year.

these movies defined the way a generation saw peter parker and mary jane watson and all the other characters in their orbit, but if somebody tried to bring their own weirdness into the proceedings to this degree today they’d get edgar wrighted.

admittedly, i think edgar wright is severely overrated and that not enough people are talking about the fact that the man CANNOT WRITE WOMEN, but somehow i don’t think the studio that propped up joss whedon and took almost three phases to get to a female-led flick and fridged black widow gives a damn about that? pretty sure it was the whole wanting to make a movie that was recognizably his thing that was the sticking point. and, you know, in spite of the extremely famous studio interference in the third and final act, wow, these movies are so recognizably raimi’s.

these movies made me care about superhero movies. that passion couldn’t survive my increasing political education opening my eyes to the fact that the mcu-led modern superhero movie landscape is an evaporating layer of paint over the most blatant u.s. imperialist propaganda this side of radio free asia, but watching these really does take me back to a more innocent time.

it’s also impossible to really go back, though. and while that observation is often made wistfully or mournfully, that’s... very much not the place i’m coming from. because gods, i do not want to go back to not noticing that it’s pretty fucking weird that this movie wants you to sympathize with peter when after watching m.j. chased out of her front door by her drunk father’s shouted abuse, he trails after her and bemoans his inability to approach her and try to chat her up??? not to ask, you know, whoa, hey, are you okay??? but to ask her if she fucking wants to go on a date??? yeah. YEAH. do not want to be blind to that shit anymore, sorry.

look, much like edgar wright, sam raimi’s movies having their own personality doesn’t mean i always like the personality they have. his spider-man movies are the movies of his i mostly like, though. i never cared for the evil dead movies, and i didn’t like the few smaller horror movies of his i’ve seen either. i just... don’t really go in for gross-out horror? it’s never been my taste. but seeing the weirdness and quirkiness and blunt showiness of his style applied to something as clean and broadly entertaining as fucking spider-man??? yeah. YEAH. that’ll WORK!