A couple of thoughts and questions I had about Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Spoilers, obviously)

•There's been a lot of talk about superhero fatigue, and that Marvel Cinematic Universe having become less and less of a selling point in and of itself (and I agree the cross-movie mega-story has been completely unmoored and ponderous compared to the early days; the producers never bothered to replace the original hook of building The Avengers team and then building towards the Thanos conflict with the Infinity gems/stones, so there hasn't really been any narrative momentum since Endgame). Regardless, I think this particular film did a rather remarkable job of being a Spider-Man story while also being so firmly set within the/a Marvel Universe that it could pull characters and concepts from all over the publisher's works without too much strain.

I mean, in addition to all the expected Spider-Man supporting characters and some Spider-Man villains (whose roles vary from considerable, like that of The Scorpion, to barely-there, like Tombstone, Boomerang and The Tarantula), the film also makes substantial use of The Punisher (although, given his origins, maybe we could consider him a Spider-Man character too...?), The Hulk, The Avengers via Black Widow, Daredevil's The Hand, Damage Control (in a very different incarnation than that of the comics) and even a character from The X-Men. 

It's impossible to imagine a Spider-Man film with that much...Marvel Comics on the screen even a few years ago, you know...?

•I liked that I had no idea who the villain was and what their goal was through so much of the film. That's so unusual for a big superhero film like this, where the casting and marketing inevitably spoil that aspect and, even if it somehow doesn't, a passing familiarity with the comics or the franchise's previous iterations usually means you can guess such things pretty quickly while sitting in the theater. Instead, I found myself wondering if Spider-Man had any villains capable of mind-control or bodily possession as the character began to contend with an unusual threat that could hop from one person to the next and coming up empty.

•I probably should have guessed who the main antagonist was a bit earlier, of course, knowing that Sadie Sink was cast in the film, the role she was playing was being kept secret and there are only so many redheads in Marvel Comics she could be playing (And it wasn't likely she would be playing Spider-Man's Amazing Friend Firestar).

•So, um, what do we think Peter Parker did for a living here...? Like, how did he make rent...let alone afford all of those computers and gadgets...? Where did he get his flower money...?

•Did anyone call Frank "The Punisher" at any point in the movie...?

•I wish they would have given Scorpion a mask or cowl or headgear of some kind; he looked a little naked to me without it.

•Based on the trailer, I thought MJ's boyfriend, who is in one scene and has about as many lines as Tombstone, was meant to be a grown up, more dreamy Flash Thompson. I'm glad I was wrong about that (Tony Revolori's Flash appears only briefly, via a goofy photo on Ned's Spider-Man board, as a suspect for who Ned thinks it might be under the mask).

•I was kind of surprised to find that, given the involvement of a powerful telepath in the plot, the filmmakers didn't just use that character to "fix" Ned and MJ, restoring the memories of Peter Parker in their pasts that Doctor Strange's spell had erased in the previous film. (Although the ending was fairly cryptic and seemed to suggest that their memories of Peter still existed on some subconscious level...at least in the case of Ned, who had a sort of automatic, physical response to a memory related to Peter when he was prompted, even though MJ didn't seem to have a similar reaction at any point.)

•I suppose Marvel doesn't quite have all their shit together in terms of introducing the next generation of X-Men, but I was also a little surprised the end credit scene didn't involve even the suggestion of this universe's Charles Xavier or one of his agents reaching out to Jean, which would both give a future X-Men franchise a pretty big film for a launching point and tease a happy resolution to the character's lack of friends and family.  

•The end credits scene we got was actually quite lame and I regretted sitting so long in the theater waiting for it. I'm not clear if it was meant to refer to Avengers: Doomsday (Is Spidey even in that? He wasn't in the trailer at all), or to something in a fifth Spider-Man movie. Hell, maybe the next one will involve astronaut John Jameson/Man-Wolf/Stargod. Go on Marvel Studios; give us a space-set Spider-Man movie involving an alien symbiote and Jameson/Man-Wolf/Stargod...I dare you...

Not really a review of Supergirl

•It is certainly a choice for James Gunn and other DC Studios decision-makers to follow last year's joyful, inspirational, all-around fun Superman with this movie, in which the traumatized star attempts to self-medicate by badly abusing alcohol in a dark, grimy part of the galaxy, fighting a band of little girl-hunting sex slavers in order to save the life of her dog, the lovable scamp Krypto from the previous movie, who spends the majority of this movie on his deathbed, dying from a painful paralytic poison. Much of the comic relief comes in the form of a violent mercenary who distinguishes himself from the villain by boasting that he kills for money, not sport. 

•Call me crazy, but I think it might have been better if they had made a Supergirl movie that was appropriate for all-ages, rather than targeted towards the same grown-ups who read DC Comics and still go to theaters to see the latest Marvel movie. That is, a Supergirl movie that actual girls could enjoy and maybe, just maybe, a heroine they could relate to and seek to emulate. 

•Yellow sun, red sun, green sun, everywhere is equally poorly lit.

•And yes, there's a green sun, something that I, a comics blogger and semi-professional comics critic who has been reading DC Comics for 35 years now, have never heard of. After the movie, I looked it up, and apparently there was a single appearance of a green sun in a single Superman comic, 1962's Superman #155 by Bill Finger and Wayne Boring (Actually, the planet their Silver Age story is set on orbits a blue sun, but the villain apparently uses a satellite to turn its light green, rendering Superman powerless in the same way a red sun would). The only other usage of a green sun in a DC comic, according to the Grand Comics Database, is Tom King and Bilquis Evely's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which this film is apparently a rather direct adaptation of (I never read it, and you can't make me). It is an innovation of King's that a green sun wouldn't simply strip a Kryptonian of their powers, but actively poison and kill them like exposure to green kryptonite might. 

And so, like the hypno-glasses mentioned (jokingly?) in Superman, this is a bit of trivia that was a) new to me and b) technically from the comics, but not exactly common. Unlike the hypno-glasses, this is an important plot point in this film. 

•The beams that Kryptonians empowered by the light of a yellow sun shoot out of their eyes are heat beams and therefore would not work anything at all like that. I guess Cyclops' mutant ability, to emit force beams might, but that's another superhero, franchise and universe.

•I counted two uses of the word "bastich", zero usages of the word "frag" or expression "Feetal's Gizz!"

•While Lobo was one of the brighter spots in the film, I think the filmmakers played him a little too straight, and took him too seriously, so that he came off as the sort of character he has more often than not been a parody of. More on this below. 

•I didn't like that his flying motorcycle/space hog also had wheels like a regular motorcycle and was more often than not depicting as driving around on the ground, rather than flying above it. I can't explain exactly why, but if felt a little weird and cheap to me, like something we might have seen in a 1970s or 1980s TV show featuring Lobo...not that Lobo was around that long ago, of course.  

•I thought Milly Alcock was pretty great as Supergirl in the film. Oddly, although perhaps refreshingly in some respects, I don't think this Supergirl is much like any Supergirl we have seen previously anywhere else...not even in last summer's Superman, where she seemed to be more of an intergalactic party girl in the mold of Alan Moore's Tesla Strong (at least as Tesla appeared in Tom Strong's Terrific Tales #1, in that memorable short story drawn by Jaime Hernandez). Here she seems less Tesla Strong and more of a Greg Rucka-written hard-drinking anti-hero...or maybe an early Vertigo John Constantine (She's even got the coat!).

I'm hardly the first to observe the subversive nature of giving the role of the aging, world-weary warrior who has seen some things to a little slip of a girl who we are explicitly told has just turned 23, but it's neat, and Allock sells it. Hell, she sells everything, from drunk, happy Kara, to sad, traumatized Kara to confident, powerful Kara. 

I like that they cast someone who wasn't already a household name—I know she's got some roles under her belt, but this is the first time I've seen her—which makes it easier to believe in her as Supergirl than, say, Jason Momoa as Lobo or Will Smith as Deadshot or Ben Affleck as Batman or Insert Your Own Example Of A Quite Famous Actor Playing a Comic Book Hero.

In addition to carrying the movie, I also like that Alcock has such a distinct face, so that she looks like a real person rather than a generic blonde baddie, and that the movie doesn't do a damn thing to glamorize her. I've never seen a Supergirl, for example, who looks like she not only didn't brush her hair that morning but might never have brushed her hair in her life. 

•Jason Momoa was fine, I thought, and he clearly seemed to be having fun. That said, he didn't seem to quite fit into the movie, and, days after seeing it, I'm actually kind of wondering why he was in it at all (Maybe to sell tickets? I know I was more interested in seeing what a live-action Lobo might look like than I was seeing, like, the fourth or fifth or sixth live-action Supergirl). 

I think part of the problem was that he was relatively tame, presented as an anti-hero rather than a parody of an anti-hero. Most Lobo comics portray him as completely over-the-top, more cartoon character than comic book character, and even when he's interacting in a more serious fashion with other characters in a crossover or team-up, there seems to be an inherent tension between his character and the others (I mean, just stand Lobo next to Superman and it's clear they don't belong together). 

A greater problem might be that because the movie is so goddam dark—in content as well as lighting, costuming and set design—that he doesn't stand out at all. Plop Lobo into Metropolis or the midst of the Justice League, and the sharp contrast makes him pop in the world of colorful superheroes. But in dark, smokey bars, nighttime brawls and shadowy prisons, up against a bunch of other guys who dress in black and wear big boots and chains? There's little to distinguish him from the Brigands he fights.

It will be fun to see if Gunn and company make use of him elsewhere, maybe duking it out with Superman at some point, or perhaps even starring in his own movie.

The one aspect of the character I thoroughly enjoyed here was the intense, almost perverse interest he had in watching Supergirl or Ruthye (Eve Ridley) when they were either committing an act of violence or were about too. He had a real "Sicko"-at-the-window meme vibe, or perhaps that of the Jack-Nicholson-nodding-expectantly meme, and I wonder if, had the director leaned into it a little more, Momoa looking approvingly toward Kara near the climax might have become an enduring meme, regardless of how the movie gets remembered. 

•I guess it's nice that they named a planet after Woman of Tomorrow artist Bilquis Evely. If the movie is as closely based on that miniseries as everyone says it is (again, I didn't read it), well then, they could have gone ahead and put a "Based on the graphic novel Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely" in the opening credits, rather than the "Based on characters by DC" or whatever the exact verbiage was. Heidi MacDonald seems to have sat through the credits, as she reports how those credits referred to the various comics creators whose work served to inspire the film at the end of her review, if you're curious).

•One of the major throughlines of the film involved whether or not Ruthye, the girl who watched her whole family get murdered by the film's villain Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) near the beginning, should kill him. Supergirl says no, that taking a life for revenge will change and haunt Ruthye for the rest of her life, only adding to her trauma rather than healing her.

They argue about the point off and on throughout—the only reason Supergirl and Ruthye spend the whole movie in pursuit of Krem together is because Krem also poisoned Krypto and carries the antidote on his person; that, and because Ruthye keeps following her—and the climax of the film involves what Ruthye decides to do when Krem is at her mercy, lying helpless on his back with her sword literally on his throat.

The argument, and that moment (and the moment that follows), lack much weight because, throughout the movie, it isn't entirely clear what Supergirl thinks about killing people. 

Now, Krem looks human, albeit with a face covered in metal studs, and the guys he hangs out with, The Brigands, are all similarly humanoid, although some have horns (They actually all look kinda like background characters from Mad Max: Fury Road). We are told at one point that Krem has the strength of a thousand men, and, at another, we see him catch a very heavy object that falls on him and toss it aside, implying that he has super-strength.

He also seems to have some degree of invulnerability, as he survives a whole bunch of super-punches, kicks and various flying body slams and piledrivers from a fully-powered Supergirl near the end—in fact, the reason he seems to be at Ruthye's mercy at the climax is because Supergirl has pummelled him so badly. (Despite his ability to absorb Kryptonian blows without being pulped, he is apparently still quite stab-able; an unfortunate aspect of the movie is the inconsistencies of the characters' power levels. For example, while the fact that Kara's fluctuate depending on what planet she is on is part of the backstory, the colors of the suns don't always explain her strength and weakness. So, alcohol has no effect on her under a yellow sun, which is why she goes off into space to drink on red sun planets, right?. But apparently poison can affect her under a yellow sun. At least on one planet. On a different planet with a yellow sun, it doesn't.)

Are the rest of the Brigands similarly super-powered? No one ever says. (They are apparently all part of the same species though, as the reason they take female slaves is that their species is all-male.) This matters because, if all the Brigands aren't super-strong and invulnerable-ish like Krem, then Supergirl must massacre dozens of them in a couple of fight scenes, as she punches and kicks them, throws them from great heights and blasts them, blasts them her heat-vision and flies through their vehicles, causing them to explode. The fact that she doesn't pulp them with her punches suggests that they are invulnerable, but I don't know, maybe she pulls her punches...?

Again, this only really matters because so much is made about the question of killing but, because the film is so unclear on the matter, by the time Supergirl and Ruthye have to decide how to deal with the defeated Krem, Supergirl may or may not have killed all of his fellows. 

•Supergirl's super-senses, like her strength and invulnerability, similarly come and go...even under a yellow sun. We see her use her X-ray vision at least twice; doesn't she also have telescopic vision, and super-hearing...? It doesn't seem so. There's one pivotal scene where she and Ruthye are in a room for a long time, and she leaves the room to approach a couple speaking to one another in hushed voices in the kitchen; comic book Supergirl would have been able to hear them just fine from the room upstairs, though.

A short time later, she's searching for Krem as he stalks a girl, tauntingly talking to his prey the whole time, yet Supergirl seems unable to hear him, or spot him with her vision powers. 

•So, as I mentioned before, when I first saw the trailer, it didn't excite me about the prospect of seeing the film...or even really pique my interest. Full of glimpses of Supergirl in a dark, junky, lived-in looking version of a sub-Star Wars vision of outer space, dramatically set to an old pop song ("What Becomes of the Brokenhearted"), it looked for all the world like someone doing a pastiche of Gunn's own Guardians of the Galaxy movies...only with all of the wit and color of those trailers drained out of it. 

I'm happy to report that it is far better than that trailer made it look. It's not Supergirl in a GOTG movie with all of the wit and color drained out (Although God knows it could use more wit and, especially, more color). Rather, it's True Grit and/or John Wick starring a troubled young dog mom in a Joss Whedony, James Gunnish version of outer space, fighting space-orcs that could have come from Serenity or Thor: The Dark World or GOTG or Masters of the Universe to save her CGI pet.

Is it a Supergirl movie...? Not one I would have expected, but it's an interesting take. 

I've read a handful of reviews from professional movie critics, and all but one were bad (Heidi liked it too, and the friend I used to watch the Supergirl TV show with for the first two seasons or so liked it). Many of the gripes seemed to be about the script not seemingly quite right, despite Gunn's promise that no DC film would go into production unless and until the script was perfected, and the fact that it seems stapled together from other movies.

It's not as bad as you might have heard and, aside from the murkiness regarding whether or not Supergirl kills throughout and my various nitpicks, for the movie they were trying to make, I think they did a fair job. The main problem with the result, I think, comes down to aesthetics: Our first look at the DC Universe beyond Metropolis in a movie just looks dark, generic, boring and uninspired. 

Maybe this was due to a lack of imagination among the various designers involved, maybe they just didn't have the budget, but, if they were going to adapt Woman of Tomorrow, I wish they would have made it look like it took place in a universe Evely had drawn. 

Fourth time's a charm...? (A few comments and questions about the Fantastic Four: First Steps movie)

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the fourth live-action Fantastic Four film to make it into theaters, following 2005's Fantastic Four, 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and 2015's Fantastic Four. It's also the third time re-casting the characters and attempting to start a new film franchise featuring them. 

I was, honestly, a little underwhelmed, perhaps owing to having my hopes raised by all the positive reactions I had seen on Bluesky between the day it was released and the afternoon I got around to seeing it, and perhaps owing to my own expectations based on the cool 1960s, Space Age aesthetic that the trailers and other marketing showed off. That is, it just looked like it was going to be pretty neat, and a sharp departure from the look, feel and tone of the previous FF movies, and the rest of the expansive Marvel Studios filmography.

Instead, I left the theater feeling pretty much like I do after most Marvel movies: That what I had just seen was a perfectly fine superhero movie, a competently made, perfectly adequate adaptation of the comics for a mass, mainstream audience. (Honestly, I liked Thunderbolts* quite a bit more, even though that was much more of a "regular" Marvel movie, in terms of aesthetics and tone.)

Here are some of the thoughts that occurred to me while watching, which, taken altogether, probably make it seem as if I had a negative reaction to the film, but they are really more just questions than complaints. Again, overall, I thought it was fine.

Spoilers, obviously, follow.

•I thought the four principals were all pretty good, and, overall, well-cast. 

I think it helped that, Pedro Pascal aside, I had no idea who any of them were from whatever films they might have been in before, so that when I looked at, say, Johnny Storm or Susan Storm, I saw Johnny Storm or Susan Storm, and not famous Hollywood actors Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, for example.  (This was, of course, helped along by the fact that I see so many fewer movies these days then I used to.)

That said, whatever weaknesses the first two films might have had, I think I might have preferred the casting in them. Evans felt more like comic book Johnny to me than the guy who plays him here did, for example, and Ioan Gruffudd definitely looked the part of Reed Richards more so than Pascal did. 

Pascal didn't look much like Richards (Sorry, I could maybe take Reed with a beard by this point, not just a moustache, and damn, did you see Reed's arms in that opening scene where he's wearing an undershirt in the bathroom...?). But I think he played him well, and I kinda like this slightly darker, much more conflicted view of Reed as a guy whose own genius can make him unhappy and even hurt his loved ones and who, for all his smarts, isn't always smart enough.

Vanessa Kirby was quite excellent, I thought, and the filmmakers did a fine job of giving her a lot to do and a lot of emotional content to work with. 

While I'm hardly a terribly experienced reader of Fantastic Four comics, I always felt that, traditionally, it was too easy for her character to be reduced to that of "The Girl" in them (and, perhaps, in some of the other adaptations), so it was nice to see her being something of a leader and, perhaps, the most prominent of the four characters (I don't think we can put her traditional portrayal down to pure sexism, though, nor to the nature of her powers—that is, literally disappearing from view. Rather, I think some of it has to do with the fact that Johnny and Ben are just so damn colorful and appealing as characters in the comics and cartoons and suchlike that the FF seems to have a "fun" half and a boring, "grown up" half).

•They sure were stingy with the stretching, weren't they? Based solely on what I saw in the film, I would guess that Reed's powers are that he can stretch his arms and legs like five times longer than the average person and, um, that's it, really? 

The filmmakers seem to allow him to stretch just enough to let us know that he does indeed have stretchy powers, but not so much as to overtax the special effects budget...or let us get a look at an elongated arm or leg (let alone a neck!) that lasts more than a split second. 

Given that Marvel Studios had previously changed Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan's stretchy powers for her appearances on her show and in The Marvels movie, it makes me wonder if they just aren't confident about what stretchy powers look like on the big screen, at least in live action? (Elastigirl's powers looked fine in The Incredibles, although that was animation.)

It makes me wonder if the Distinguished Competition will eventually give us a Plastic Man or Elongated Man in one of their future films...

•Was it just me, or did Ben Grimm—who I don't remember being referred to as "The Thing" at all in this film—seem a little too small in this film...? 

Like, he seemed to be the same size as the other three, rather than hulking over them. I just clicked on IMDb to check on the release date of those previous FF films, and I noticed there was an ad for the new film there in which Ben's size is magnified, so that he dwarfs his teammates, even though he's standing behind them in the ad...

•I have no idea what on Earth they were thinking giving Ben a beard midway through the film, but it distracted me the rest of the film's runtime. 

Ben needs to shave? (The first thing I did when I got back to my car in the theater parking lot was to do a Google image search for Ben Grimm + beard + comics.)

So he grows, what, rock hair out of his rock face, I guess...? 

Does it also grow out of his scalp, and he just sandblasts that away daily too? What about his body hair? Does he sandblast his whole body every day too, or...? 

Look, the only context in which I want to see Ben Grimm with a beard in a movie is if he is in the process of being the historical Blackbeard the pirate.

•Speaking of The Thing, I was somewhat surprised that he spent the entire film dressed head-to-toe, never appearing in his original, blue briefs-only look, with his rocky chest and limbs exposed. 

Heck, even in the cartoon show that exists within the world of the film, which we only get a brief glimpse of, he's wearing a shirt.

I guess four years into his career is long enough for him to develop a whole wardrobe of appropriately big and tall clothes, but it struck me as notable.

•I hate to even say this publicly, as I know it is an opinion that was shared very loudly by many assholes and some of the worst people on the Internet, but I wasn't really sold on using the Shalla-Bal version of The Silver Surfer instead of the Norrin Radd version, which was previously featured in the second FF film (And which ended up being maybe the best part of that movie, which sure had a disappointing version of Galactus, imagining him as some kind of cloud instead of a giant with an awesome funny hat). 

I understand that this is a different universe than the "real" universe featured in all the other Marvel Studios movies, and so perhaps they wanted to use a female Surfer to distinguish it, but if there isn't a Norrin Radd version in the other universe, then what's the point, exactly? And it's not like they did anything else to the involved characters to suggest that they were alternate-universe versions of the "real" characters (Reed's moustache aside, of course).

While I suppose they might do something dumb with the multiverse and therefore include the first filmic FF and their Surfer in an upcoming movie, I don't think, otherwise, we're likely to see the standard issue, male Surfer in future Marvel Studios movies, and so the rationale of distinguishing this universe by the gender of its Surfer would seem moot. 

As someone who would like nothing more than to see a Defenders trilogy of live-action movies starring Doctor Stange, The Hulk, Namor and The Silver Surfer, this is important to me. 

At any rate, Julia Garner did a fine job with a role that actually didn't ask much at all of her.

•Okay, I give up: What was Natasha Lyonne doing in this movie, exactly? 

•I did like all the name-dropping of FF villains in the movie, particularly in that passage near the beginning, although I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get to see any of them, save for Mole Man and a singular Super-Ape. 

And I thought that Mole Man, though funny, felt very Marvel Studios in his portrayal, as they basically just gave an otherwise totally normal-looking guy a pair of stylized sunglasses to sort of suggest the character, rather than going the whole nine yards, with the green costume, the cape and the staff. Hell, they didn't even give him Moleoids; just some folks in mining helmets milling around in the background. 

Given how comics-accurate Galactus looked, and the fact that they even spent a second on the monster that breaks through the street on the cover of Fantastic Four #1, I woulda thought the Mole Man's look might have followed suit...

•Again, I'm no expert, but was Galactus a little...too big here...? 

•I can't imagine how these characters will fit into Avengers: Doomsday, which the movie announced via a sentence of text on the screen they will appear in, nor can I imagine how they will fit into the Mavel Cinematic Universe going forward, at least if they are meant to be joining that universe proper rather than staying on their own retro-looking Earth (A scene in Thunderbolts* sure seemed to imply they had entered the main Marvel universe). 

I suppose that's a problem for Marvel Studios to work out, but it does worry me... 

•I am now completely, 100% ready for Namor to meet the Fantastic Four. Bring him on...

On the new Superman movie: Politics, performances and nitpicks

This post will obviously have spoilers for Superman. And, less obviously, for the 2006-2012 comic series The Boys...and maybe the 2003-2007 volume of The Outsiders too...

•Overall? I thought it was quite good. It's definitely the best Superman movie I've ever seen in a theater, and maybe the best Superman movie ever (I should note that I didn't actually sit down and watch the Christopher Reeve movies start to finish until I was an adult, and thus have no real nostalgia for those films, although, yeah, Reeve is a fantastic Superman and Clark Kent). 

I thought this was the first of all the Superman films that felt like it starred the comic book version of the character, rather than some new or different or original movie version of the character, and it is the first movie I've seen that seemed to be set in some recognizable version of a DC Universe. 

I think that bodes well for the future, given that this is the launch of a new (and hopefully improved) DC answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

•The change in approach. I think the most immediately telling difference between James Gunn's Superman and the previous iteration from Zack Snyder's 2013 The Man of Steel and the handful of "DC Extended Universe" films he appeared in is that the Snyder version seemed somewhat insecure and defensive in its very conception. 

That is, when Snyder and his studio bosses set out to make a new film version of Superman, a character universally known by his iconic costume, they seemed somewhat embarrassed by that costume's bright colors and the red trunks being worn over blue tights...or, if not embarrassed, than at least worried that such a character might not be taken seriously enough.

Gunn's Superman, on the other hand, not only has a costume featuring his traditionally bright primary colors, and that not only features the trunks, but he's also accompanied by his flying, super-strong dog with a matching cape.

It reminded me of something from a social media post that's stayed with me over the years. I wish I could remember who said it so I could properly credit them [Update: Kevin Hines informs me that it was Brett White, and he shares a screenshot of the original tweet.] It was in reaction to the fact that DC and/or Warner Bros or whoever were once again publicly hemming and hawing about the difficulty in making a Wonder Woman movie, while Marvel Studios was in the midst of advertising the then-upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy (so this would have been circa 2013 or 2014, I guess). 

The statement was along the lines of, "DC's like 'We're not sure people will get Wonder Woman', while Marvel's like, 'Here's a raccoon with a machine gun.'"

The raccoon with a machine gun film was, of course, directed by James Gunn. 

•The politics I've seen a fair amount of discussion about the politics of the new Superman film reflected on my Bluesky feed, probably a result of the fact that everything I tend to pay attention to online has to do with either comic books or politics. (And I'm not just referring to the silly statement from a particular actor who used to play a TV Superman saying, before he had even seen the movie, that it was somehow wrong or bad that Superman was being depicted as an immigrant...you know, just as he has been for 87 years now.)

Honestly, I think this headline from the Vulture review of the film by Alison Willmore, which I saw here, best captures the political agenda of the film: "Superman Isn't Trying to Be Political. We Just Have Real-Life Supervillains Now."

A relative of mine liked the new Superman film a lot, and, in texting me afterwards, she mentioned two points related to the real world.

First, she said that she got something of an Elon Musk vibe from Lex Luthor. Now, if Luthor reminds you of Musk, or Donald Trump, or any other rich, powerful person making your life worse, well, that's somewhat intentional....at least on the part of DC Comics, if not necessarily James Gunn.

That's because when John Byrne reconceived the entire Superman franchise for DC's emergent post-Crisis continuity in 1986, he purposefully turned Superman's perennial archenemy from a typical supervillain into a rich, powerful businessman/corporate CEO type—a then more relevant, visceral vision of evil than that of a mad scientist or crook in tights. Byrne's new Luthor was the sort of bad guy that hides in plain sight, being more-or-less accepted by society at large while engaged in nefarious acts in secret.

That's just who Luthor is, and has been for some 40 years now.

In the film he is, as expected, also duplicitous and manipulative, driven not only by greed, but also by his envy of Superman and, perhaps, a personal animus against aliens to commit his various bad actions. Again, that's just Lex Luthor being Lex Luthor. 

This particular version is also a pretty bad boss (I liked the bit where he yelled at his employees to clean up a mess he made, and then purposefully knocked over a mug holding pencils like a cat as they did so). And a rather shitty boyfriend. 

Oh, and he also engages the comic book supervillain equivalent version of using bots to help shape public opinion on social media. 

And, as we will learn near the climax, he wants to be a literal king.

If any of that reminds you of the current president, or Elon Musk, or any other real world figure, well, that probably reflects more on that figure's behavior than on any creative decisions Gunn made in his depiction of the Lex Luthor character (I will note a distinction that the above-cited critic, Alison Willmore made between Luthor and our real-world supervillains: Lex Luthor is really smart, while Trump and Musk are famously...not. I would also add that Luthor is, at least in this particular portrayal, also fairly young and rather handsome, and thus makes a poor filmic stand in for the likes of Trump or Musk).

Now, there are two specific points of the film that seem to more directly address real-world events. One I think was probably intentional on Gunn's part, the other is almost certainly a coincidence, and the fact that it's in the film at all is more a matter of unhappy circumstance in the real world than some attempt by Gunn to comment on it. That is, it is, again, more about the us having real supervillains than Gunn trying to make any particular political points.

One major plot point in the film is the invasion of one fictional country by its neighbor, another fictional country. The former, the victim nation, is Jarhanpur, while the latter, the aggressor, is Boravia.

While they both sounded vaguely familiar, I didn't recognize either when I first heard them mentioned, nor did I connect them to any particular DC comics past while I was sitting there in the theater. Looking them up when I got home, I saw that Jarhanpur appeared during Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke's JLA run, being introduced in the "The Golden Perfect" story arc (fom 2002's #62-#64). 

There it was presented as an exotic, fantastical country, but it was, visually, coded to resemble a Middle Eastern, maybe Muslim majority coded country. The people all had brown skin, the buildings had minarets and Plastic Man made joking reference to belly dancers and Ramadan.

As for Boravia, it apparently appeared in a couple of stories in 1939's Superman #2 and 1958's Blackhawk #126. I don't think I've ever read either—I might have read and forgotten the Superman story, while I know I've neve read any Blackhawk comics—but it seems to be, as it sounds, a European country. 

Unlikely neighbors, then. 

Sometime before the film begins, Superman apparently intervened in Boravia's invasion of Jarhanpur, destroying some of Boravia's military hardware and then flying that country's leader into the dessert to essentially threaten him not to try it again.

I immediately took this to be an intentional parallel to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, thanks, I think, to the geography in play (In the movie, Boravia is immediately east of Jarhanpur, with which it shares a border). That and the rationale the president of the aggressor nation gave for the invasion in a press conference, something about liberating its people from their own fascist government.

A few days after I had seen the film, that relative I mentioned above asked if I thought this aspect might have been a nod to the Israel's war on the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip, launched in 2023 in retaliation to the October 7 terror attack by Hamas. She was not the only one to note this possible reading; I've seen social media posts reading the movie that way, with one noting that the film made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu one of its villains.

Honestly, this reading didn't occur to me at all as I was in the theater, but, after hearing it, I could certainly see it: The apparent desert climate of the two countries, the fact that Jarhanpur's people seemed to be composed mainly of poor brown-skinned people, the fact that Boravia had a professional military with uniforms and tanks and jets and, at the climax, they line up to attack what looks essentially like a bunch of civilians. 

And now that I've picked up some old copies of JLA and see what Jarhanpur looked like in the comics, it certainly seems more like the Middle East than Eastern Europe. (Also, there's the fact that Luthor apparently did a deal with Boravia in which he would get a portion of the conquered land as his own, not unlike Trump expressing his desire for the United States to "own" the Gaza strip once Israel and/or the U.S. managed to quite illegally displace all of the people who live there.)

Was Gunn referencing either—or both—of these conflicts? 

Maybe. 

Given when these particular crises started, he would have certainly had the lead time to work them into his screenplay. 

On the other hand, it could be as simple a matter as Gunn making the rather broad, anodyne and hard to argue with statement that the unprovoked military invasion of a neighboring country is wrong, or, even more broadly, that the strong should not victimize the weak. 

I think, a few years ago, all Americans could agree on that, but, when presented with real world examples like the conflicts mentioned above, Americans have various opinions. One imagines that just like so many Republicans in congress and right-wing influencers are either pro-Russia or, at least, ambivalent to the fate of Ukraine, they would similarly be unmoved by the plight of Jarhanpur if they were serving in the DCU's congress or doing their podcasts there.

The other plot point that is echoing real life? Well, it's not exactly subtle. 

The alien Superman, who illegally "immigrated" to Earth and lived his whole life as an upstanding American citizen and productive member of society, is, at one point, roughed up by a man in a mask working on the behalf of the U.S. government and then whisked from American soil to a "foreign" forever prison without the benefit of any due process, literally being told that, as an "alien", he has no rights. 

That's some evil supervillain shit, obviously, but, given the lead time needed to make a movie of this size and expense, Gunn and his fellow filmmakers had almost certainly written, filmed and had maybe even produced the special effects for those scenes well before masked goons kidnapping immigrants from our streets and putting them in detention facilities or shipping them to foreign countries without any due process was yet a common occurrence in America. (Trump didn't invoke the Alien Enemies Act until March 14 of this year, for example.)

Personally, I think Gunn was just using his imagination to come up with something wicked and un-American to show just how evil Lex Luthor is. He probably wasn't imagining that the Trump administration would be regularly doing that very thing by the time his big, summer film started playing in theaters. 

Finally, one of the two most evil things Luthor does, or threatens to do in this film, includes threatening to "euthanize" the perfectly healthy (if often misbehaving) dog Krypto, making a point of telling a helpless Superman that doing so will probably be quite painful for the dog. Meanwhile, here in the real world, the current secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and thus a person quite high up on the organizational chart when it comes to implementing the policy of snatching up immigrants to send to prisons abroad, is Kristi Noem, a woman who rather famously shot her perfectly healthy dog Cricket to death due to its behavior problems. 

Again, Gunn likely wasn't calling Noem out. He was probably just demonstrating that Luthor is evil. So is Noem.

•David Corenswet I thought David Corenswet did a phenomenal job with what turned out to be a fairly complex job. Rather than a simple dual role, in which he had to play Clark Kent and Superman as two entirely different characters, his Superman was conceived in such a way that there were various layers to the character, and to what degree he was being himself in any particular scene.

I found it interesting that, in this particular outing, both Clark Kent and Superman are sorts of public performances that the real character playing them both, who I guess we can call Kal-El for clarity's sake (even though I don't remember that name being used in the film at all), takes on at different points. 

We only see that real character behind them both, Kal-El, in a few instances. When starting dinner in Lois' apartment, for example, or when he's recovering from his pocket universe ordeal at his parents' farmhouse in Kansas...and, I suppose, occasionally bleeding into his Superman persona, when he's alone with Lois in front of the "interdimensional imp" battle, or gets angry or frustrated while wearing the suit.

I think this is probably most evident during the interview scene, when he says "Miss Lane," and essentially turns his Superman persona on as if he was flipping a switch. Throughout, as he gets frustrated at some of her questioning, we can see his real, Kal-El self keeps intruding on his Superman performance, too.

It's a rather nuanced performance, far more than the just looking handsome and strong and inspirational and nice that one might expect of a Superman actor.

I do sort of regret that we didn't get to see more of Corenswet's Clark Kent performance in the film, but, I suppose, that needed to be sacrificed in order to give us a version of Superman that has already revealed his secret identity to Lois. Still, with such a big and interesting cast in the Daily Planet scenes, it would have been nice to see more of Clark; maybe in a sequel...?

Corenswet, Gunn and company did a good enough job of making Clak and Superman seem like two entiely different people that it was easy to believe that no one made the connection between the two (I know Guy Gardner references the hypno-glasses, a bit of forgotten Superman lore that I've never actually encountered in a comic book, but then do you want to take Guy Gardner's word for anything...?

•Nicholas Hoult Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor was similarly great. It was certainly the best live-action performance of the character that I've ever seen, although I've never seen any of the TV Luthors that weren't animated (I know a lot of folks really like Michael Rosenbaum's Smallville Luthor).

Hoult's Luthor is handsome, quick-witted and charming, and it's easy to see how this Luthor could prove to be charismatic enough to be the leader of a company or sell the U.S. government on his metahuman Planet Watch force (or whatever it was called) or be a popular media figure.

Part of this Luthor's enmity towards Superman seems to be that the hero pulls the world's focus away from Luthor himself, who thinks he should be the center of the world's attention, and Hoult's Luthor is one that we could imagine being that center of attention.

He also, more than any of the previous actors, looks and acts like the Luthor I recognize from the comic books of the last 25 years or so. 

•Luthor is so bald And speaking of Luthor, I don't know exactly how they did it, but man, this Luthor is so bald. Like, there is no hair anywhere on his head at all. There are close-up scenes where, on the big screen, you can see Hoult's head filling that gigantic space, and you can see the little roots of hairs left on his clean-shaven face, but his scalp...? Nothing. I don't know if they used a bald cap or, like, digitally removed any and all hairs on his shaven head in post, but Superman's Lex Luthor is, like, the baldest anyone has ever been in a movie. 

•It needed more purple and greenThere's a brief shot of a flag at the decommissioned army base by "the river" where Luthor keeps one of his pocket universe portals, the place with all the tents (I am 99% sure that those scenes were filmed at a beach in Mentor, Ohio, where I used to live and still work, and that the river in the back ground is actually Lake Erie). That flag is yellow and green, rather than purple and green. For the life of me, I can't imagine why they didn't go with purple and green in that shot.

Similarly, I wish that Luthor's "Raptors" wore purple and green armor, rather than the kind of generic black/metallic coloring they have. Given the deepness of the cuts in the film—the hypno-glasses, Boravia—I have to imagine the filmmakers at last had a conversation about coloring the Raptors purple and green and must have had some reason not to do so. 

•Rachel Brosnahan Rachel Brosnahan is also a particularly strong Lois Lane. She definitely looks the part, and I think she captured the character pretty well. I think because of the fact that we're already past the learning of the secret identity point of the relationship, it frees her up to do more, and be a more active partner in Superman's life, while, at the same time, their relationship is new enough that there is still some drama in it; that is, they haven't yet reached some sort of happily ever after point with one another, where they tend to be in the comics these days, just yet.

I like that we got to see her doing some journalism and we got to see her doing some mild adventuring and we got to see her doing some journalism while doing some adventuring, in that scene at the climax where she's dictating a story while piloting a UFO. That's some quality DCU journalism right there. 

•The origins of Krpto I heard an interview with Gunn on NPR last week where he talked about how this particular portrayal of Krypto was inspired by his own experience with a terribly behaved dog. 

Still, after seeing the film, I wondered if Gunn had ever read Mark Russell's The Superman Stories. Russell, who admitted that he hadn't really paid any attention to actual Superman comics before writing his prose stories, presents a very different vision of a Superdog, but the gag with Russell's is just how terrifying and what a public menace a dog with all of the powers of Superman would actually be. I thought of Russell's Superdog in the scene where we see that Krypto has broken through the glass storefront of a pet store and helped himself to some dog food, which reminded me of Russell's dog's depredations. 

•Mister Terrific I thought the film made great use of the Mister Terrific character, a really rather minor character in DC Comics history, being a legacy version of an even more minor, footnote of a Golden Age character. He's not a character one might expect to see turn up in a Superman movie, or even a movie dealing with any iteration of a Justice League as opposed to a Justice Society (His appearance in Justice League Unlimited cartoon notwithstanding).

I especially appreciate that they used him instead of Blue Beetle Ted Kord who, given the presence of Guy Gardner and Maxwell Lord, would have been the most obvious candidate for "the smart one" in a "Justice Gang"...especially since Ted came with his own flying vehicle, something so necessary for the film that they had to invent one for Mister Terrific (On the other hand, the old, bad DC Extended Universe produced a Blue Beetle film just two years ago, and, having never seen it, I'm not sure whether or not it had a Ted Kord character in it at all. Anyway, maybe it would have been weird to use another Blue Beetle in this film).

Edi Gathegi's performance as Mister Terrific was, well, terrific. I liked his deadpan delivery, and his ongoing frustrations with his colleague Guy Gardner, Lois and even Superman. His coolness and confidence seemed to be borne of the original conception of the character, as he appeared in that one issue of The Spectre that introduced him, more so than in his later, more popular appearances in various JSA titles. 

Gathegi looked a little smaller and less imposing than I would have imagined Michael Holt to be in real life (same with Hawkgirl, actually), but his costume couldn't have looked any better, seemingly pulled directly out of the comics with only the little Max Lord/"Justice Gang" symbol thingee on the chest added. Even that weird mask seemed to work in live-action.

•Most importantly So the line "I'm goddam Mister Terrific"...inspired by All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder, or nah...? 

•Metamorpho In contrast, I didn't really care for the visual depiction of Metamorpho in the film and, the longer I think about it, I can't help but wonder if he's just a character that doesn't really work in live-action...or, at least, not as well as he does in comics, or the more comic-like medium of animation.

I think actor Anthony Carrigan did a decent enough job in the role, particularly as far as expressing the "freak" nature of the character and Rex Mason's resignation to that nature. He also did a fine job of expressing the rather tough ethical/moral dilemma the film put Rex in, forcing him to decide to inflict violence on a stranger or strangers so that no violence is inflicted upon his own son.

Still, Carrigan is a lot smaller than any of the Metamorphos I've read about, be it Ramona Fradon's original version from the '60s, or Bart Sears' version in Justice League Europe or  and those that followed in various Justice League books or crossovers or anthologies. 

Additionally, the film's version seems to have elaborate scoring or scarring on his face, suggesting the Metamorpho of the 2003-launched The Outsiders (who actually turned out to only be an aspect of Metamorpho, and took the name "Shift", I guess; retroactive spoiler alert!).

Finally, he looked weird wearing what looked like baggy shorts to, I suppose, protect his modesty. If they didn't want to go with the form-fitting briefs with an "M" on the belt buckle, they could have at least got him some better fitting trunks, akin to those Corenswet's Superman rocked.

Some of the demonstrations of his powers looked kind of cool (growing Kryptonite out of his hand, forming that big hammer in the climax), but others just looked...weird and indecipherable as when he was flying in a half-gaseous state, or when he had tentacles. Again, I think he mainly just isn't a comic book character that translates all that well to live action. 

•Green Lantern Speaking of, do Green Lanterns just not work in live action? Nathan Fillion is pretty great as Guy, and as glad as I was that they chose to use that particular Lantern (certainly the best one to choose when it comes to contrasting against Superman's personality or brand of heroics) his powers looked a bit weird and fake to me whenever he used them. His constructs looked more like cheap plastic than hard light. (I thought his powers looked far better when seen from a great distance, as when he and the J.G. are fighting the "imp" in the background, and all we see of Green Lantern are some green flashes, beams and giant baseball bat).

Also, Guy seemed to be able to fly without any sort of aura around him, which isn't how I thought their rings worked, but whatever, I suppose that varies from artists to artist. 

Anyway, after this and 2011's Green Lantern, which I don't recall really selling Green Lantern constructs terribly effectively either, I'm left wondering if, like Metamorpho, those characters' powers are ill-suited to being depicted in live action.

•Maybe Neil DeGrasse Tyson will weigh in You know the bit where Superman, Krypto, Joey and Metamorpho are all being dragged toward the black hole in the pocket universe, and Superman uses his super-breath to push them away from it? Would that really work?

I'm asking, as I have no idea. 

It felt a little dubious, though, and I woulda preferred if Metamorpho turning into a rocket would have been all that was necessary to free them, as that seems a bit more cut and dry and, well, um "believable" (You know, in a scene involving a flying dog in a cape and a guy who can turn himself into a rocket).

•Another deep cut? I like that they included a scene involving what was essentially the old Daily Planet flying newsroom, when Perry orders the staff onto Mister Terrific's ship, where they can finish up the Luthor expose while flying through the air, as the city is imperiled by the dimensional breach.

•But enough about DC Comics I wonder if the Ultraman reveal has any impact on The Boys, either the show, which has yet to wrap up, or the comic book which, while years old at this point, is probably going to still keep being new for some readers...many of whom, in the future, will likely have seen Superman before reading. 

I thought the reveal of what Ultraman looked like under his mask was spectacularly obvious, based on his costume alone (so I've been expecting it for months now) and, wow, they sure telegraphed it by the scene relatively early in the film where the Fortress opened up to allow Luthor, Ultraman and The Engineer entrance. 

Anyway, that Ultraman costume looked a fair bit like Black Noir's comic book costume and, if you've already read The Boys, then you know the way in which Ultraman's relationship to Superman is similar to Black Noir's relationship to Homelander, The Boys' version of Superman. 

I've never watched the TV show, but, from what I've heard, the showrunners were planning on going in a different direction at the end than Garth Ennis and company did in the comic (it sounds awfully different in general, really), and thus I imagine that one particular reveal will play out different. 

For the folks making the show and the audience enjoying it, I hope that's the case at this point; it would be too bad if the new Superman movie inadvertently spoiled the ends of The Boys TV show.

•The fates of the non-Luthor villains Finally, while I'm not entirely sure how it could have been done differently, I was a bit disappointed that both Ultraman and the Boravian leader seemingly died at the end of the film.

This is, of course, in large part because of how sour the ending of the Man of Steel was, in which Superman took the life of his opponent, perhaps the most un-Supermanly thing he could have done in a film. 

Gunn certainly seemed to telegraph early and often that that's not his Superman, as he not only spent a lot of time saving people and even checking on them to make sure they were alright, but he also took pains to save a random barking dog and a squirrel, and expressed frustration with the Justice Gang for killing a giant monster threatening the city, rather than finding a non-lethal solution to the problem. And, of course, the motivation for some of Superman's actions in the movie are his concerns for a dog, Krypto.

The point was hard to miss: Superman not only cares about human life, he cares about all life. 

So while the killing off of Ultraman is somewhat ambiguous, with Superman kinda sorta knocking him into a black hole and not saving him, it still seemed somewhat out-of-character for this Superman. I kind of wish either Superman managed to save him and turn him into a friend off-screen, and we got a shot of a happy Ultraman in the Fortress at the end, or, even more simply, they had given Lex a line or two in which he states that Ultraman technically isn't even alive, but is some sort of biological automaton or something. 

That said, if a future movie has Ultraman come out of a blackhole with chalk-white skin, wearing a homemade Superman costume and talking backwards, well then, I'm totally fine with it.

As for the Boravian leader, Hawkgirl seemingly drops him to his death, a moment meant to draw another sharp contrast between Superman and the Justice Gang's brand of justice. It seems awfully harsh—especially if we're meant to see him as a stand-in for Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu—and given what a big deal Superman's intervention in Boravia's invasion plan was in the world of the movie, well, the assassination of its leader seems like a much, much bigger deal, no? 

Given that Gunn thinks it's important to explain why Krypto is such a poorly behaved dog during that surprise cameo at the end—surely Superman could properly train a dog—his lack of explanation regarding the deaths of Ultraman and, maybe, that of the Boravian leader felt a bit jarring. 

I don't really have to use the asterisk, do I...? (Eleven random-ish thoughts on the movie Thunderbolts*)

1.) Once again, I failed to see this movie on opening weekend, which is when the studios would prefer we go see their movies. Hopefully the fact that I am about to talk about it so many weeks after its original release means that any of you who were interested in seeing it have already done so, and I can therefore talk freely about its content and its couple of big surprises. If not, well, consider this a spoiler warning for the movie (and for a 28-year-old comic book!) for the rest of the post.

2.) As I feel like I have noted many times before (including just a few months ago), Marvel Studios has long since perfected their formula for producing quite decent, wholly unobjectionable superhero movies. They generally all share a very similar aesthetic, the actors are all usually pleasant ones a viewer enjoys spending some time with, the action choreography is competent if never thrilling and they tend to have a healthy sense of humor, with quippy dialogue and a degree of self-deprecation about their content. For the most part, they've become perfectly mediocre...which means they usually don't offer much in the way of surprise anymore, but that little "Marvel Studios" logo is a sort of stamp of "good enough" quality. 

Thunderbolts* is different. Much of what I said above holds true, of course, but I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that this film is actually about something in a way that many of their previous films I've seen haven't been (and not just IP management or advancing the now rather confused Marvel Cinematic Universe mega-plot). 

Rather, the film tackles mental illness and trauma by presenting us with about a half-dozen thoroughly broken people, and it does so in a way that makes it feel universal. Early in the film, new Black Widow Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) mentions "the void" (lowercase "v", one assumes) and a bit later, discusses it with the mysterious Bob (Lewis Pullman). The way they talk about the void, it sounds like it can be something serious from the DSM-V, or it can be the low-level anxiety or depression that so many of us live with, or it could simply be the feeling of a lack of purpose, or a sense of emptiness or loneliness.

In other words, "the void" is something everyone can relate to, and amid all the superhero business, the film both explores this, and offers the solution to it: Human connection.

In this sense, it's the best kind of superhero narrative, especially of the classic Marvel superhero sort, in which basic elements of universal human nature are exploded into big, broad metaphors that take the shape of monsters and villains for our heroes to struggle against (Here, of course, it is The Void, with a capital "V"...I suspect his/its presence in the film was meant to be a surprise of sorts, but I feel like I knew The Sentry was going to be in this movie ever since it was first announced; it's hard to be too surprised by such big, well-covered movies in the age of the Internet). 

The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with what Thunderbolts* does. I guess director Jake Schreier and writers Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo know what they're doing.  

3.) Has anyone said the name "USAgent" out loud yet...? I didn't hear it during the course of this movie at all (just "dime-store Captain America" once), but then, I didn't watch The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

4.) I thought Wyatt Russell was pretty perfectly cast as John Walker. He's very handsome, but, at the same time, there's something...punchable about his face? Like, not just in the film. Looking at the credits on IMDb and seeing his headshot, I have two simultaneous visceral reactions: "Say, that's a handsome guy" and "That guy looks like such an asshole."  (Sorry Mr. Russell! Nothing personal!). 

With USAgent in Thunderbolts* and Guy Gardner in the upcoming Superman, it's a great summer for fans of a-hole legacy characters from the '80s...!

5.) Giving The Sentry telekinesis seemed a bit much. I mean, he's already Superman with some vague extra energy powers, does he really need another superpower?  I suspect it was included just so they could have a scene of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) training him and the pair of them realizing that he has great powers he can control, but, in the fight scene where he takes on the Thunderbolts in Avengers Tower, it felt a bit like overkill, as the filmmakers seemed to hurry through a checklist of The Sentry's various powers (And why block bullets in mid-air with telekinesis if they just bounce off your body anyway? Why use it to throw someone across the wall when a slap would do the same?)

6.) I thought they did a great job of making The Void version of The Sentry and Bob scary as hell; I think it was the tiny little white dots of eyes staring blankly out of the all-black figures that did it. 

7.) I thought the use of Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) in the film was an incredible waste. It was a little surprising that she was killed off so quickly, given her prominent placement in the marketing (see the poster above, for example), to the extent that I thought she might not really be dead at first. 

I guess, if I'm being charitable, the reason they included her at all was as an example of something Yelena articulates about the grim arc of such characters' lives, that they lead lonely existences in which they kill people over and over until someday someone kills them. 

But given how cool the character's powers and look are, it was sort of a shame to put her in the movie just to kill her off; more than most of the others, she could have used a redemptive arc, and her character some spotlight and a found family echoing the one that it was suggested she had found at the end of Black Widow. (There wasn't really room in the movie for another character, I understand—The Ghost Hannah John-Kamen gets hardly anything to do relative to the other characters as is—but I think it would have been better not to include Taskmaster at all than to use her as they did.)

8.) I thought the joke about where the name "Thunderbolts" came from in the film was effective, especially given the several callbacks to it throughout, like those involving the argument over which local business had sponsored Yelena's childhood soccer team.

That said, I thought it somewhat emblematic of the lingering embarrassment of the source material still evident in Marvel Studios movies. That is, someone somewhere along the line thought that a superhero team named "The Thunderbolts" was kinda silly and thus needed a more realistic in-story explanation, and if it could also turn on a joke, well, all the better. (You can sense this embarrassment in how time the characters spend out of their masks and costumes—although part of that is likely also due to wanting to get the stars' good-looking faces on the screen as often as possible—and the toned-down designs of the costumes. For example, while I think movie Taskmaster looks cool and scary, the design certainly leans into realism, and away from a billowing cape, pirate boots and a face that looks exactly like a human skull, for instance. Oh, and also in their reluctance to use codenames, with Walker always being referred to as "Walker" and Yelena as "Yelena", for example).

I think the filmmakers could have just as easily come to the name another way, with Red Guardian (David Harbour) excitingly, spontaneously declaring the team assembled before him "The mighty Thunderbolts, delivering justice like lightning...!" or suchlike. 

Sure, they would have lost a running gang, but I'm sure they could have found a half-dozen or so other little jokes to take the place of those about the soccer team.

(And yes, I understand that they're not really the Thunderbolts anyway, hence the asterisk, and that they ultimately get a completely different—and more marketable!—team name, which is reserved for a late in the film surprise.)

9.) It's kind of too bad that Marvel Studios couldn't have attempted something along the lines of a filmic equivalent to the big twist at the end of Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley and company's original Thunderbolts, wherein the reader has already bought and read most of an issue before they realize that what at first seemed to be a team of brand-new heroes are actually a bunch of familiar villains attempting an ambitious new scheme). 

There are, of course, plenty of reasons why they couldn't. Of the original Thunderbolts line-up, I think only Zemo actually already exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Therefore, they would have needed to round up a team worth of other villains to use in the line-up (and, with Ghost, Taskmaster and Walker, they kind of did a bit of that here, although they don't seem to have actually been villain-villains) but, of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is awfully light on actual supervillains, given how they are generally killed off at the end of the movies in which they appear and are never really heard from again (Tom Hiddleston's Loki being the example that proves the rule). 

And even if they did assemble a handful of pre-existent supervillains from throughout the MCU to take on new superhero roles in a Thunderbolts movie, keeping them under wraps in a big Hollywood film like this is a lot harder than, say, Screaming Mimi reinventing herself as Songbird in a comic book; surely if word got out that, say, Michael Keaton was cast in a new Thunderbolts movie, one would suspect he would be reprising his role as The Vulture, wouldn't they...?

Finally, I don't think Marvel Studios could currently sell a team of five or six brand-new heroes with no immediately apparent ties to the previous films at this time. Maybe they could have years back, when the Marvel brand was enough to get a Guardians of the Galaxy film off the ground (surely no one who didn't already read Marvel comics knew who the hell they were) or sell an Ant-Man movie. But if they tried to pitch seemingly brand-new characters now? I don't think it would work, as some of the popularity has rubbed off the MCU (I have an idea why this might be the case, besides, of course, simple exhaustion, but there's no sense in getting into all that here).

10.) I don't like Walker's little beret.

11.) I hope all of the comics writers and artists responsible for creating (and/or, in Winter Soldier's case, recreating) the various characters used in the movie were well compensated. Looking at a list I made of the 23 writers and artists involved in producing these characters (which I'll post tomorrow), it looks like 17 of them are still alive; I feel like that isn't always the case with the characters in the earlier Marvel movies, given that so many of the primary Marvel characters were created by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and the men of their generation. 

And by "compensated" I mean not just that they have their names listed under "Special Thanks" or whatever near the end of the credits, but that they got some movie money. Being comics creators, I assume some of them can really use it.