Review – Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: Civil War is fun, and if that’s all you expect from it, you’ll probably have a good time. The plot is reasonably coherent and well-paced – certainly in comparison to Age of Ultron, and even The Winter Soldier.

That said, in a film with twelve superheroes, there are only two women heroes (Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff and Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff), with Sharon Carter playing a minor role that cannot really be described as superheroic. Both Ant-Man and Spider-Man, neither of whom appear on the poster, get more screen time and action than her. Sharon, although she does have some agency, is largely relegated to Steve’s love interest and an uncomfortable substitute for Peggy.

If the film passed the Bechdel Test, I must have blinked and missed it.

Black men have a reasonable showing, with both Falcon/Sam Wilson and War Machine/Rhodey playing roles that matter to the plot, and with the addition of Black Panther/T’Challa taking a central role. T’challa is everything I could have hoped for. Thoughtful and regal in a way that believably marks him as royalty, Chadwick Boseman cuts an elegant and powerful figure that effectively evokes the panther without ever being animalistic or overly literal.

Falcon and War Machine both remain ever-loyal side-kicks to their white male counterparts, and I wish more could be given over to them to differentiate their characters. Whilst Clint/Hawkeye remains the least central of the Avengers, he has a family and complex relationships with the other characters. I really wanted the film to make Sam into more than Captain America’s black friend, Rhodey into more than Iron Man’s black friend, but the two stick to following what their designated white counterpart does, despite the fact that Rhodey and Tony have differed ideologically in the past. Rhodey gets a little more development with what happens at the end… but the form of that developement is (not to spoil anything) not exactly ideal.

Of course one is limited in what one can do with such a large cast of characters, but then… this is part of why I’m not really a fan of these big team movies. They tend to be a sprawling mess where no one gets enough development and what little there is is largely monopolised by the white men. From this point of view, Black Panther’s character arc is the stand out exception. I also enjoyed the development of Scarlet Witch’s character, and especially her relationship with Vision. And we get far more of the Steve and Bucky relationsip (Stucky fans will be pleased! So much more screentime for the angst than in Winter Soldier!). As films of this type go, Civil War is a resounding success, but I’m still left feeling like I wanted more from Bucky and more of Scalret Witch and Vision. These are characters and actors with much more to give than they are being allowed.

Which brings us to the other characters who are roped in to make it feel like a ‘war’, taking up further screentime: Ant-Man and Spider-Man. Again: two more white men. Two more white men whose own films have been talked about exhaustively as taking film slots that could have gone to female superheroes. Paul Rudd is great as Ant-Man, but I would still rather have had the Wasp. And Tom Holland is a fantastic Spider-Man, but, as most aptly put by notabadday (referencing the Spiders Georg meme):

“average superhero gets 3 films a day” factoid actualy just statistical error. average superhero gets 0 films per year. Spiderman Georg, who lives in a cave & gets over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

What is Spider-Man doing in this movie when you could have given a bigger role to Sharon Carter, or put Pepper Pots back in a suit (the fact that her absence is frequetly lampshaded helps little), or called on Maria Hill, Sif, or built up any number of the women from Agents of SHIELD? It’s exhausting how Marvel go to the same white male superhero pool over and over again when there’s really no need. Enough with Spider-Man. I like Spider-Man, but I’d like a woman of colour to break up the white male monotony more.

Plot

The plot, as I have said, is fine, although the initial disagreement between Steve and Tony could have been more convincingly motivated. The inciting incident of the film is a bomb going off in the wrong place because Wanda/Scarlet Witch is not able to move it far enough away to prevent civilian casualties. The UN proposes an Accord to institute international oversight for the Avengers. So far, so reasonable. Steve has been all for public oversight in previous films – he was totally against Nick Fury’s secretly building a fleet of airships and totally in favour of airing all of SHIELD’s dirty laundry. So when Steve comes out against this, it’s a bit… out of character.

Later in the film he is given ample reason to feel ‘right after the fact’ – the Accords are manipulated incredibly easily into imprisoning Wanda without trial and ordering a shoot-to-kill on Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier based off a low-resolution photograph that is leaked to the press. It would have been so easy to engineer the split after Bucky becomes a target, when Steve has real, character dirven reasons to resist an oversight that is clearly flawed and endangering his friend. I don’t really understand the thought process that went into this ordering of events.

This was never going to be a particularly deep film, but it would have been much more interesting if the audience’s sole reason for sympathising with Steve at the beginning wasn’t just that… he’s a nicer guy than Tony? Going off the rails to protect his friend, or free Wanda, are much more compelling reasons. The film did feel a bit like it was floundering to establish exactly what Steve’s motivations were.

However, if you’re just in this for some cool fights and witty one-liners with a side-order of feels, this film delivers. The fight choreography is good and the big team vs team battle is particularly satisfying and dynamic. I would have appreciated slightly fewer fights, more character driven story, and more women (especially women of colour), but as this style of film goes, Civil War was above par and certainly an entertaining way to spend an afternoon.

Review: Jessica Jones

Jessica Jones is dark and thorny and sometimes difficult to watch, but it is also the best superhero fiction I have viewed in a long time.

I want to recommend it, but not without caution. Jessica Jones should come with trigger warnings for rape, abuse, stalking, and harassment. If you have ever experienced any of these, Jessica Jones, and the first episode in particular, is likely to make difficult viewing. I do think it’s worth it if you are up to that, but it is also worth knowing it will have this content going in.

Plot

Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is a private investigator. She’s also superhuman. The exact extent of her powers is never clearly defined, but she definitely has super strength, can jump high enough that her power is frequently compared to flight, and can take a serious beating and keep going. She also appears to be an alcoholic, and considering the amount and nature of the booze she drinks, I can only assume she has a super constitution, too.

Like Daredevil, Jessica lives and works in Hell’s Kitchen, a fictionalised version of an area of New York beset by poverty and crime. As Daredevil is another Netflix Original Series, there are some brief cameos to look forward to, but by and large the two series are pretty separate. Daredevil comes from the perspective of a middle-class lawyer taking on organised crime. Jessica Jones is up close and personal with the mean streets. She is poor and her antagonists are individual with personal evils. She isn’t trying to clean up Hell’s Kitchen, she’s just trying to live in it.

Trouble finds Jessica when the parents of a young woman, Hope Shlottman (Erin Moriarty) – a student and star athlete – come to her concerned that her daughter has left college and cannot be found. As she investigates, Jessica realises that Hope has been kidnapped by a dark figure from her own past: Kilgrave (David Tennant), a mind controller who once held Jessica herself captive, using her for his own amusement (including rape).

The first episode concerns Jessica’s race to find and save Hope, whilst battling her own PTSD and guilt over the actions she performed under Kilgrave’s control. Along the way we are introduced to Patricia ‘Trish’ Walker (Rachael Taylor), a former child-star turned Radio Host whose mother adopted Jessica as a publicity stunt, and Luke Cage (Mike Colter) the attractive and heavily muscled man that Jessica is, for some reason, stalking.

My Thoughts

I have to start by discussing my biggest beef with Jessica Jones.

Let’s be absolutely clear about this: this would not be the way you would introduce a male superhero. It’s said that in Hollywood the way that you make a man a hero is to hurt a woman, and the way that you make a woman a hero is also to hurt a woman. This is a subject that was brought to prominence in 2013 when Tomb Raider was heavily criticised for introducing a backstory for Lara Croft that included rape. It’s an uncomfortable and distasteful mix of the hackneyed trope that being a hero is about saving a girl who can’t save herself so you ‘get’ her, and the ingrained sexist notion that women only become strong if something is wrong with them, if they are broken. As well as a toxic dose of misogynist yearning to just see strong women get hurt. Not to mention the grotesque comic book staple of ‘fridging‘ – the brutalisation and murder of women solely for the purpose of motivating a male hero to action.

So, the thought goes, if you need to hurt a woman to make a man act, you should hurt a woman also if you want to make her act.

And, more often than not, you hurt that woman sexually too.

I have massive problems with the fact that the first hardass female superhero to head her own show in decades is not only a victim of rape*, stalking, and harassment, but this is a part of her origin story, and that her main antagonist for the first season is her rapist, from whom she and other women are constantly under the threat of being raped again. It’s a real punch to the gut. It’s hard not to feel like Marvel (whose misogyny in repeatedly delaying their single female led film in a list that is currently scheduled to include more than twenty) are saying, OK, FINE, you can have your female superhero lead, but we’re going to rape her first.

I found that really hard to get past, to be honest. After the sexism and racism of Daredevil and Marvel’s general continuing sexism in its films, I was really hoping for – needing – something different. I was furious.

But.

But, Jessica Jones is very well written and very well acted. Divorced of the toxic masculinity and misogyny of comics history, it’s excellent television, really first rate. Moreover, Jessica’s PTSD is very well explored, and the show works on many levels to highlight and challenge the misogyny and abuse that is a part of modern life. Kilgrave is not the only abusive arsehole. We see also the dangers of the putative ‘Nice Guy’ in the form of Will Simpson (Wil Travel) – a victim of Kilgrave who is mind-controlled to attempt murder of Trish, who feels immense guilt and ultimately forms a bond with her. Whilst Will can be said to mean well and to often seem ‘nice’ he demonstrates a clear need to be in control, even when he is clearly not the most skilled person for the job, and ultimately descends into a pattern of abuse and contrition that has nothing to do with Kilgrave’s control.

Moreover, we see that abuse is not limited to men. Trish’s mother and former manager is shown to have abused her both emotionally and physically, and it is in protecting each other from her that Trish and Jessica find sisterhood.

These are important themes, well-explored.

Moreover, these roles are contrasted with a range of male characters who are not abusive – it is not that ‘all men are bad’. Both men and women are shown in great variety, including some interesting roles for people of colour. Luke Cage, in particular, stands out as a good man who does not abuse his great strength and power. It’s important to have the black guy be the good guy and not a thug. Moreover, as has been pointed out, Luke Cage has an important status in comic history. Created in 1972, not long after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Luke Cage is a black man with bullet-poof skin. A good black man who cannot be assassinated. A product of the civil rights movement that, sadly, is as relevant now as he was then.

Somewhat more problematic is the presentation of Jessica’s drug-addict-with-a-heart-of-gold neighbour, Malcolm (Eka Darville). The association of black people with drugs is a racist trope too often iterated on screen. Until Jessica Jones, Mike Colter, who plays Luke Cage, was best known for his recurring role in The Good Wife as Chicago’s top drug lord, Lemond Bishop. Most black actors have a CV that includes the roles of drug addicts, dealers, and thugs, perpetuating an unpleasant stereotype. Even Idris Elba first gained international recognition and fame from his role as drug dealer Stringer Bell in The Wire, before moving on to become the A list star he is today. Malcolm is a sweet and complex character, but still a perpetuation of a harmful trope.

It helps that he is not the only black character. And in addition to Luke Cage, we also see Oscar Clemons (Clarke Peters) as the insightful and upstanding police officer that Jessica eventually turns to for aid. As well as multiple smaller parts for people of colour. Multiple characters of varying types are what make for diversity, in contrast to tokenism.

Similarly, we see a range of female characters. Jessica Jones as an emotionally damaged hardass is well-paired against her feminine, but also strong, adoptive sister. Those in search of a more light-hearted female led superhero series have praised the new Supergirl for being sisterly, but sisterhood is not absent from Jessica Jones, and it is just as important. The elegant, but mentally steely, Jeri Hogarth is a wonderful role for Carrie-Anne Moss, best known for her portrayal of the high-kicking love interest, Trinity, in The Matrix. The complex relationships she has with her mistress and her estranged wife are also good in terms of representation of gay women in television. And it is delightful to see producers willing to change a character who was male in the comics to a female character in a modern context that tries to reflect accurately the number and diversity of women who exist in the world.

Women with masculine traits. Women with feminine traits. Women with some of both. Women who are strong in diverse ways. Women who are weak in diverse ways. Men who are weak in some ways and strong in others, too. Characters not simply defined by whether they are strong or weak. Deep, loving relationships that differ from those we usually see. Like the codependent brother/sister relationship of Jessica’s neighbours, Ruben and Robyn – clearly unhealthy and dysfunctional, but no less deep, allowing for Robyn as the domineering but protective sister to protray yet another role we rarely see for women.

Overall, watching this show, I was left with a startling impression of there just being way more women than I was used to seeing on TV. And that’s not the show having more women than men, it’s just the having of believable numbers of women, all of them being fully-rounded characters.

There’s a lot to be valued and much that is super important. I am still mad that rape and stalking and sexual abuse are such prominent themes in one of our few, precious shows that are led by women and feature women as superheroes. But I can’t fault them for how they handle those themes – seriously, with nuance, and with an understanding of the deep sexism that persists in ordinary society, and not merely in super villains like Kilgrave.

I strongly recommend Jessica Jones, with the proviso that it is likely to be difficult viewing for some.

*And let’s not forget that even Buffy was a victim of attempted rape in season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Agent Carter: Pilot Episode

Poster for Agent Carter

Agent Carter is the long anticipated TV spin-off  from Captain America: The First Avenger. Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers’s love interest in the movie, takes the helm as the first female lead in a Marvel franchise since the ill-fated Elektra. Peggy was a sensation in the first movie and swiftly became a firm fan favourite – a strong female character who took no shit and represented the many unsung women who did work as agents in World War Two. Fans clamoured for the spin-off and were overjoyed when it went into production.

An unfortunate side effect is that many see this as a test case for women in superhero media. I’m always angry and frustrated when I see this come up again and again. Any female-led enterprise that doesn’t fall squarely in the traditionally female realm of romance is asked to stand in stead for all women everywhere, and any failure is taken to be a sign that women ‘just can’t carry’ whatever sort of genre is flavour of the month.

Nevermind that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is arguably the most successful* superhero television show of all time. Only Smallville compares for longevity, and if one includes Angel (the five season spin-off), Buffy as a franchise easily outstrips it. And for awards, Buffy leaves Smallville a mere memory in the rearview mirror. The list of awards received by the Buffy franchise has its own Wikipedia page.

Nevermind, too, that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay had the biggest opening weekend of any film last year, cementing the status of the already highly successful female-led action-sci-fi franchise. The three Hunger Games movies mark spots six, seven, and fifteen on the list of biggest opening weekends of all time.

With nine movies released in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since Iron Man in 2008 and not a single female-led movie or even a team with more than one woman in it, Marvel has a lady problem. Seven more movies are planned before the single female-led film, Captain Marvel, in 2018. Two-thousand Eighteen – ten years and sixteen movies after the first MCU film! Despite the fact that clamouring for a Black Widow movie has been at fever pitch since the release of The Avengers.

And yet the pressure is being put upon Agent Carter, rather than on Marvel. I’m livid about that. Agent Carter has bugger all to prove. It’s been proved. People will watch action films with women at the helm. They will watch science fiction films with women at the helm. We have known this since Alien and The Terminator, but still every female-led enterpirse comes under this scrutiny.

Let me be absolutely clear about this: it is not women who need to prove ourselves, it is Marvel.

Women can and do lead TV shows and films to success in all genres. Asking each and every new female-led enterprise to stand for all women is a dirty, underhand trick. It isn’t women who fail when an individual film or TV show isn’t good enough. Women are sick of individually being asked to stand up for our whole gender – it’s a familiar ask from our every day lives and it’s as much a swindle in fiction as it is there. But even if it weren’t, we have already passed enough of your bloody tests.

Perhaps it will be true that if Agent Carter does not do well-enough, Marvel will not give us a Black Widow film, but let me be brutally honest: we’re talking about asking for one more movie out of a line up that is currently nineteen to one**. Marvel’s record would still be despicable even if we got a Black Widow movie. And it is Marvel who should be held accountable for that, and not women.

All of which is to say that the reputation of women in superhero films and TV shows doesn’t live or die based on this one show, and if Marvel can’t hack it, we’ll simply look elsewhere.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at Agent Carter itself.

My thoughts

Agent Carter is a fun comdey-noir. Hayley Atwell is as charming and kickass as she ever was. We see her after the war, somewhat at sea in a world that has forgotten her achievements. As with many women of the time, she finds that men are eager to replace her now that they are back from the war. Most of her colleagues at the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) treat her with disdain, and her relationship with Steve Rogers is used to dismiss her contributions and relegate her to being a hanger-on. So, in secret, she sets about solving the missions she is excluded from.

The only man who treats her as she deserves at SSR is Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokaj), a disabled veteran who was injured in the war. Life seems pretty crummy until Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) shows up, asking for Peggy’s help in clearing his name – having had some of his secret projects stolen, Howard has been accused of treason. As Howard flees on a speed boat, he leaves Peggy his butler, Edwin Jarvis (James D’Arcy), as a kind of sidekick.

The result is an adventurous spy-show that plays with a taste of noir whilst never quite taking itself sufficiently seriously to truly sit within that genre. I find the comedy aspects a little strained. A lot of lines feel like they’re delivered just off the beat, and the artificial formality of Jarvis just doesn’t ring true. The script makes the common mistake of supposing that posh English people are inherently over-wordy, which leaves James D’Arcy struggling around some frankly awkward lines.

That said, whilst the script could do with a little smoothing, Agent Carter stands out against other televisual forays into the superhero genre from recent years. I’ve been unable to make any headway in Agents of SHIELD, despite urgings from friends that ‘it gets better’, and despite trying to love Arrow, it was certainly harder work to get into than Agent Carter.

There’s a lot of talent on screen. Hayley Atwell is sparkling, and James D’Arcy works well with the lines he is given, but the real diamond in the rough is Enver Gjokaj. Anyone who saw his work on Dollhouse will know that he is an astonishingly seamless impressionist. There’s great potential for a character with real mercurial flare in disguises and if he remains deskbound because of his injury it will be a loss to us all.

Speaking of which, I’m very pleased to see someone with a disability form one of the main cast members. I’d hoped for greater diversity all round, to be honest. There were remarkably few female characters, although Peggy does move into an all-women accommodation block at the end of the premiere, giving hope that more female characters may develop into substantial roles in the future.

I’d also hoped that there would be more people of colour. Enver Gjokaj has Eastern European origins, although this is less significant in a US TV show. I had some hope that the crime boss portrayed by Andre Royo would mark a recurring character (and a nice change from Royo’s usual comic relief!), but it was not to be.

There’s been some buzz about the fact that Steve Rogers is Peggy’s motivational lost love – a mirror to all the fridged women in all the comic books, films, and TV shows across the last century. However, although there is a nod to this, I would hesitate to overstate that parallel. Steve is not denied agency the way those women are. Nor is Peggy really motivated by his apparent death. She’s sad about it. It seems to have deflated her. She doesn’t really brood about it and use it as a motivation to deliver hell unto bad guys. In some ways that’s good. I don’t want Steve to dominate Agent Carter – this show is about her. But the low, deflated place we find her in rings a little false. I’m not convinced that she would have allowed herself to be pushed to the side in this way. And whilst I understand that they want to leave room for character progression, male characters like Oliver Queen in Arrow, are allowed – even expected – to come out the door punching and full of hubris, and it’s annoying to see my kickass lady hero brought to heel in this way.

Overall, I feel like the show has potential, and that more of that potential is realised than in the pilots of equivalent male-led TV shows that have aired in the past few years – Arrow, The Flash, Gotham. I will be tuning in next week, and I’d recommend that you do so, too.

*Live action. I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t some equally successful animes, but I don’t know enough about the genre to comment.

**More, if one includes the 2008 The Incredible Hulk.

Serene Slumber Party 3: X-Men: Season One, by K V Taylor

Please put your hands together to warmly welcome the most awesomesauce K V Taylor. Particularly so as I have been a bad Womble and utterly failed to upload the review she kindly sent to me weeks ago. The reasons are illness, both physical and mental, but given Katey provided this for me as a favour because I knew I wouldn’t be able to post myself, it’s not much of an excuse.

K V Taylor wants to be introduced merely as a fantasy/horror writer and comic book junky, but I’ll go one further and say that she’s a pretty neato person whose opinions and tastes I have come to respect. You can find her at her website, Tumblr, and Twitter, all of which I recommend.

X-Men: Season One
Written by Dennis Hopeless
Art by Jamie McKelvie
Review by KV Taylor

Last year, Marvel Comics began releasing a series of graphic novels that gave some of their most popular heroes a little backstory update. As a comic book pusher, I actually think it’s a spectacular idea. Jumping into comics can be daunting – all that backstory, all that continuity, all those know-it-all fans. Enter the Season One books and hey! All the background you need in one easy dose, right?

Cover art by Julian Totino Tedesco.

There’s not a whole lot new with these stories, but what makes them special and worthwhile to longtime readers is seeing them come together as a coherent whole between one artist and one writer, and how they change little things up to present the story in new and interesting ways.

The best example so far of that has been the X-Men book, so I’m going to stick to that for my review. Hopeless adheres closely to Marvel canon: the original five X-Men (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, and Angel), are recruited by Charles Xavier to come to his school to learn to control their powers. Adventure ensues, including their first run-in with Xavier’s old friend Magneto-as-mutant-supremacy-terrorist and his equally classic if slightly more ridiculously named line up, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (Toad, Blob, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch).

CAPTION: Hank meets the Bad Guys.

There is a dearth of lady stories with the Season One books so far, which is what makes it extra great that Jean (Marvel Girl) is the voice of Hopeless and McKelvie’s X-Men. Hopeless’s Jean is not only the only one who seems to see the flaws in Xavier’s program from the beginning, but her relationships with each of the others have been changed up and intensified to become both the main plot engine and a symbol of their growing coherence as a team.

I’m just gonna leave this here…

Her relationship with Xavier has often been called creepy, and not without reason. Hopeless and McKelvie acknowledge and update that with her constant questioning of how and why Xavier has brought them there, and why this ‘private boarding school’ he’s convinced their parents to send them to is more training against random baddies in the ‘danger room’ than calculus homework. She likes it, but she isn’t sure why or how – or that she should.

In the original 60s version, both Warren (Angel) and Scott (aka “Slim” back in the day, Cyclops) crushed on Jean hard – hence the tension (and her reputation with some fans as a ‘Mary Sue’, but the problems inherent in that are waaaaay off topic, so I’ll just let that be for now). This time around, as Jean gets to know Warren better and faster than any of the others, she’s the one with the crush – and Warren figures it out just late enough to screw up.

And let’s not deny the power of a rich pretty-boy best friend… with wings. I don’t blame her.

Yeah, strapping your wings down to your back to hide them from your own parents is pretty messed up. Good call, Jeannie. Takes one to know one.

Meanwhile, the canon relationship everyone knows (whether they love it or not is a question of personal taste) is developing in the background – Scott (Cyclops) is being hyper-pressured by Xavier to turn into some kind of mutant leader-man… and simultaneously developing the most awkward interest ever in an oblivious Jean. This change-up in one of the oldest love triangles in comic history is a pretty loud example of how refreshing these titles can be for longtime readers. Much more rewarding for new ones, in some ways, since (good) modern romantic subplots tend to focus more on why the couple are good for each other, how they bring out the hero in each other, rather than ‘woman as prize in a pissing match’.

Her mutual-respect friendship with Hank (Beast) is beautifully done as well – when she needs an escape from the madness, she leans on Hank, and he leans right back in his hour of doubt. Her older sister deal with Bobby (Iceman) is less well fleshed out, but it does provide more than a few hilarious moments. It’s Jean’s voice we read in the exposition boxes, and it’s Jean’s changing relationships with her team and the mutant-hostile world around her that tie the story together.

With the occasional giggle involved, obviously. Nice cheek chillers, Iceman.

But they aren’t the only ones that count. Hank and Bobby’s trademark friendship, one of the greatest things about the original comics, is well-celebrated, and the driving force behind the discovery of Magneto’s ‘evil lair’ – and Xavier’s involvement with Magneto, which leads to a disillusioned Hank in the long run. Scott and Warren have relatively few scenes together, same with Scott/Bobby and Warren/Bobby, which is a shame, but what they do get is so perfectly characterized and balanced that it still feels mostly satisfying. Xavier and Scott… well…

This is what I mean about hyper-pressured.

Easy to see why he ended up the Cyclops people love to hate these days. (The Avengers vs. X-Men debacle… Long story. Don’t read it, trust me.) But also easy to see how he needs Jean to balance him out, and how he could inspire her to let loose her fierceness. Because oh, is Jean fierce.

The writing is just the right touch with these kinds of largely unspoken dynamics, but what pushes it over the top is McKelvie’s trademark clean lines and way with body language. His concept for each of them is at once perfectly in line with classic X-Men designs, but with that deft touch of the modern that few other artists manage–and he makes it look easy, as usual. I could basically go on about Jamie McKelvie all day, though, so I’ll spare you. Just. He’s my favorite currently working artist in comics, so I might’ve had a minor fangirl freakout when I saw he was on the X-Men title.*

Best panel ever? Quite possibly.

The book has its flaws, of course. The story tends to meander, without one coherent plotline, but several smallish encounters with the outside world and Magneto’s Brotherhood that build on each other. One of the pitfalls of trying to showcase an ensemble cast in a single GN rather than in serial with multiple storylines, ala monthly comics. Backstory wise, we’re mainly focused on Jean, of course, Hank, and Warren. A little more of Scott and Bobby would’ve balanced things out. And this is just a personal thing, since I have deep love for the original Brotherhood, but the only recruit we see happen is Blob. I get it, it would’ve been a digression, otherwise, but I like my villains fleshed out, and Magneto is one of the best ever. S’okay, I don’t hold that one against them.

Who could say no to a man this sassy?

This is more a story of these characters realizing that their place in the world right now is together, taking care of business, rather than the direct civil rights movement parallel that it was back in the 60s, which I think wise. Of course that element will always be there, especially for the X-Men, but let’s face it: telling a story that belongs to PoC with white characters is a dick move on multiple levels. Yes, Stan Lee was way ahead of his time–and still is in many ways. Marvel does a lot of things wrong, but a lot of things right, when it comes to that.

Are there other ways to get into comics? Definitely. X-Men: First Class (not the movie, which has nothing to do with comic canon) was a great title for that, and reads well. Or you could just start with the current Marvel!NOW titles, in which the Avengers and X-Men are all scrambled, but the combinations are all still new. (Possibility: the upcoming X-Men #1 by Wood and Copiel, with its all-lady cast.) But Season One is more bang for your buck, and it’s one of the best-looking comics I own thanks to Jamie McKelvie. Longtime fans, it’s worth it for the change-ups and the pretty. Hop on board, I say.

*McKelvie and longtime collaborator Kieron Gillen are on the new Young Avengers title. I’m pretty sure it will be amazing, if you’re looking for a monthly to jump on. #1 drops January 23.

Super-Ro!

So, I haven’t watched and reviewed The Hollow Crown, Part II, yet. This is basically because I woke up at 12 noon and went ‘Oh, yeah, I guess I really was tired, just like I told my doctor before he gave me iron tablets for anaemia’. In stead, I focused my efforts on trying to become a superhero. You can find out more about my journey to become Super-Ro on a new tumblr I have made to chart my progress, here.

Review: The Amazing Spider-man

Title: The Amazing Spider-man
Cinematic Release: 2012
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, and Irrfan Khan
Written by: James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent, and Steve Kloves
Directed by: Marc Webb

There are two things that immediately struck me that were most important to communicate as the credits roled. These things are as follows:

1) There is nothing wrong with this movie.

And:

2) You need to see this film in 3D.

These might seem like ‘damning with faint praise’ in certain portions of the net, but if you’re been following me for a while, I hope you’ll take them as they are meant. Which is to say: I thought this movie was excellent. There was not a single thing wrong with it. Moreover, every other movie that I have seen in 3D, even where I thought the 3D added something in places (pretty much, in Thor and Avatar), at multiple points made me feel a bit queasy, was unnecessarily blurry throughout, was confusing in the fight scenes, and I repeatedly had to remove my glasses for my eyes to recover. None of these things is true of The Amazing Sprider-man. Furthermore, the 3D was not only not gratuitous, it was completely and utterly breathtaking. You need to see it. It is worth your time.

Now, if you have seen the trailer whilst watching some film you did not see in 3D you may be looking at this review somewhat sceptically right now. Let me put your mind at rest. I shared your concerns. I now understand. This movie is meant to be shown in 3D. The CGI looked shit in 2D because it was meant to be seen in 3D. In 3D it is stunning. You really feel it as an awe-inspiring experience every time he leaps from a building. For the first time 3D has made me feel closer to the action, more engrossed, as opposed to distancing me from it. For nothing else but that, you should experience this movie.

And that’s just the set dressing.

OK, it wouldn’t be hard for to beat the previous Spider-man movies in my eyes. I found the first one to be almost without redeeming feature (although quite funny in an unintentional way). I enjoyed Spider-man 2, sometimes in the way it meant me to (there were a few genuinely funny, rousing, exciting moments), but often because the scripting was so bad I had to laugh or I’d cry. I actually have time for Spiderman 3, in a way that I know few people do. I think it had a better, tighter plot, and made few appalling scripting errors, at the same time as taking a more realistic and welcome attitude towards romantic relationships. None of this is to say I thought it was a great movie.

The Amazing Spider-man is just a different creature in every sense. There were one or two moments that might have been called corny, but these were entirely due to the nature of the source material – I want this to be spoiler free, but there are certain Spider-man events that you know are inevitable, and they need to happen in one way or another. Given that they had to go down, they were given the most plausible interpretation possible – one which was both respectful to the source material whilst bringing it up to date with what a modern audience would expect.

The acting was flawless. Just look at the cast list and you know that there was a lot of talent. I mean, Martin Sheen, well. He was everything you’d expect. Rhys Ifans was also excellent, and touching, even though he had a somewhat less realistic story arc (again, within the confines of comic book lore, very well-handled). Sally Fields was nuanced in a way the previous Aunt May did not even approach (although, she did what she could with the lines she was handed). But the real prizes go to Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield. They both epitomise the nervousness and enthusiasm of young love without ever becoming clichéd or obvious. Their on-screen chemistry is undeniable and wonderful. Before I even saw the film I was charmed by this photo of them together at a cocktail party, captioned by Megan O’Keefe (she of My Mom Watches Game of Thrones fame): ‘I’m at the point where I honestly don’t think Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are promoting The Amazing Spiderman. They are promoting the fact that they share a perfect, flawless love that I will never understand’… And, well, that’s pretty much how it looks on-screen.

And I can’t stress enough what an excellent actor Andrew Garfield is. He not only fills out the tights (or whatever it is they make Spider-man costumes out of these days that I’m pretty sure teenagers can’t afford, but anyway), but the boy makes a believable character out of the two-dimensional shell Toby Maguire left behind. I have an affection for Toby Maguire, but Spiderman is not his best work. In illustration: Peter Parker is a character with a lot of reasons to cry. I imagine it’s hard for an actor not to turn Peter into a blubbing mess. I imagine it’s also easy for a director to say ‘don’t worry, son, we’ll just pull out the air-sprays and may your eyes water on cue’ – I’ve seen far too much of this these days and I really don’t believe in single, beautiful tears from pristine white eyes anymore. Andrew Garfield cries from the red eyes of someone who doesn’t want to cry,who isn’t weak or wet, but who nevertheless has landed in a life that is seriously fucked up even before he gets bitten by a mutant spider. He’s angry as well as conflicted and despairing, and justifiably so. But he doesn’t wallow in his pain. It’s masterful. Andrew Garfield is one to watch.

Neither of these photos is what I was after. My Google-fu failed me. But I guess you can see what I meant by the hair style?

Frequent fliers of the Happiness Max will know that I have issues with the treatment of women in most superhero films. Not so, here. Even Aunt May gets to say ‘For goodness’ sake, I can walk 12 blocks by myself!’. And though the confines of existing story structure and comic book lore mean that there is an inevitable power imbalance between Peter and Gwen (Emma Stone), it does not really impose upon their relationship. Moreover, Gwen gets to be believably strong, saving the day in her own right in a really, really beautiful moment that makes an awesome visual reference to Jurassic Park in a way that I can’t say too much about without spoiling things, but is just thoroughly awesome – right down to her bangs*.

I suppose a nitpicker might want to complain that the science doesn’t make sense, but to them I would say ‘Really? In Spider-man? You don’t say.’ You really can’t have Spider-man where the science makes sense. He gets bitten by a spider and gets superpowers. As the whole sciency bit turns on the assumption that this makes sense, anyone who has a problem with this was never going to like a Spider-man movie anyway.

Besides that… OK, I tell a lie. Representation of people of colour was not super awesome. There was a prominent character with asian features, Dr. Rajit Ratha, but he was a baddie, so that’s not 100% win. That said, I didn’t feel he was stereotypical at all, and nothing about his evilness seemed connected to his race. Equally, there was a disabled character – awesome – but he went evil too – less awesome. But it didn’t seem like the character was really evil, rather that the serum he took made him act not much like himself. He was a really cool and well-rounded character before that. I suppose, again, there was the constraint of the format. The character’s disability and character development are a matter of comic book lore. It does at least raise interesting questions about the treatment of disability – what is ethical and what is not; how much people with disabilities should feel like they have to be like able-bodied people… He seems like a perfectly capable (and lovely) scientist before the plot-hammer hits him, and his basic desire to find a way of healing himself is not actually what is presented as questionable by the film. Rather, certain pressures are applied in a business capacity to make him do something he would have found ethically unsound otherwise. In this sense, both Dr Ratha and Dr Connors are pressured into their unethical behaviours by an unseen (hinted white) rich man. Which suggests to me that the big bad in this movie is really the big bad of our age: the 1%, the over-privileged, forever seeking to carve out an extra sliver of advantage for themselves at the expense of anyone else who might get in their way.

I don’t know. I’m not gonna press that point too hard. Perhaps I should say that it’s a film ‘with much less wrong with it than all the other superhero films’. Even Captain America and Batman Begins (which I adore) have their issues. Nonetheless, I’ve been so let down lately by films that I expected more from that I don’t feel bad about giving credit where it’s due. This is a fine, fine film. The cinematography is simply stunning, and the use of 3D is unsurpassed, creating a seamlessly enjoyable visual experience. On top of that it is witty and the fight scenes are fantastic. Spiderman is satisfyingly wise cracking whilst never being too cool for a dorky kid. The characters are well-rounded and universally well-performed. It’s also the least thematically problematic superhero film I’ve seen.

You need to see this movie. Honest to kittens, I was jiggling in my seat with joy.

Captain America: The First Avenger

I know I owe you guys another Read Along with Rhube, but I can’t keep it inside any longer: this film was so good. All the squee I had for X-Men: First Class, plus some more, with none of the race and gender issues. If you haven’t already seen this film in the cinema, do it now.

Plot:

Somewhere in the present day Arctic circle a mysterious and oddly shaped plane is uncovered.

Somewhere in Norway, in 1942, Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) and his team of Nazis invade what looks like a monastery to steal a mysterious artifact.

In lots of places around New York at the same time Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a short, skinny man with asthma, is getting rejected from the military again and again. Steve is a nice guy who never backs away from a fight, wants to do his duty, and is mysteriously unable to get women. He’s ‘Hollywood Homely’, in other words – i.e. he’s actually not a dickhead and he’s still really good-looking, but because he’s going to become an enormous stud-muffin we have to pretend for a bit that he can’t get women.

Anyway. On a double-date with his successful military friend, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Steve is effectively ignored by the friend of Bucky’s date he’s supposed to be with. So he goes off to try and enlist again, as you do. Bucky realises he’s missing and catches up to go ‘WTF, man, we’re on a date!’ and whilst Steve is going on about how much he wants to help the war effort, Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) overhears, and decides to help Rogers enlist by getting him into his special program.

Rogers doesn’t know what Erskine has planned, but when in training test after test reveals that Steve is both smart and a nice guy, Erskine decides that this is his man. During the testing period, Steve also meets Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) and the awesome Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Despite his supposed dweebiness, Peggy seems to quite like Steve – probably because she’s neither blind nor an idiot, and he’s blatantly a really nice guy.

So, Steve is chosen for Erskine’s experiment and gets turned into the massive stud-muffin we all expected from the trailers. Unfortunately, a spy for Schmidt somehow got into the room, kills Erskine, and manages to destroy all the serum in the process. It seems that Schmidt was an early experiment of Erskine’s, but because Schmidt was a Bad Man, the serum only made him worse (apparently working on the same theory as ‘only bad witches are ugly’). Rather than an army of supermen, the US now has only Steve, and the program is cancelled. Steve becomes little more than a mascot, ‘Captain America’, shipped around the country with dancing-girls to promote the war effort.

Unsurprisingly, when he’s sent abroad to entertain the troops he’s rather less well received by men who have been fighting and dying in the field whilst he’s been prancing around on stage. As this was never what Steve wanted to do when he was trying to join the army, he’s pretty depressed by this. When he learns that a large number of men, including his friend Bucky, have been captured by Schmidt, Steve decides he can’t sit back and do nothing anymore. With Peggy’s help, he sets off on a one man mission to save the day… and succeeds.

After this success the army sits up and takes notice of him again, and agrees that he can head a team to launch an attack on Schmidt and his organisaton, Hydra, which has broken off from the main Nazi party. Because everyone now agrees that Captain America is properly awesome, Steve is allowed to choose his own men. Of course, he chooses Bucky, as well as a pleasingly mixed race crew of men he freed from Schmidt’s base.

The rest, I’ll leave to your imagination.

How good was it?

This film was so good it was practically erotic. I never really fancied Chris Evans before, but, umm, yeah. Forget whatever rom-com you were thinking of – if you want a date night movie, take your lady/man to see this. Adrenaline + hardbodies = win.

And let’s just give a shout-out to the special effects crew. Watching the trailers I was genuinely curious about whether they used one man or two for their weedy-dude to stud-muffin transformation. It was Chris Evans throughout. The only draw-back was that the voice was slightly off throughout the weedy-Steve scenes. I wouldn’t have thought it mattered, but you could tell it was the voice of a man with a much bigger chest, and it was distracting – not least because I was trying to figure out whether this was a dubbing or effects issue, because I didn’t know if it was the same actor or not. Hopefully I have freed some of you from this by letting you know what I did not.

Apart from the effects and the phaw, though, this was a thoroughly excellent movie throughout. If you’d told me two years ago that Captain America would be up there with my favourite superhero movies of all time I would have been extremely sceptical. This was probably the movie I was looking forward to least of all the Avengers movies. I always thought Captain America was the most ridiculous and least appealing of all superheroes. Sounds like a big, butch, ‘isn’t America wonderful and patriarchal’ vehicle. He also had the dorkiest of all superhero costumes – running around with a freakin’ flag on his chest. Of course, Captain America was originally designed as a propaganda device, so it’s really unsurprising that that’s how he was, but updating him into something plausible and entertaining for the twenty-first century was going to be a real challenge.

And they achieved it. They really did. I gather from my more comics-informed cinema-going companion, Lee Harris, that the weedy-dude underdog aspect wasn’t a part of the original story, which makes it a really smart trick for the movie. This is what saves the picture and transforms it. Instead of taking a jock and just making him more jock-like and launching him on the world to enforce American values, they gave us an everyman figure who’s just a fundamentally nice guy who wants to do his bit in any way he can. He can still go forth as an ideological symbol, but it’s a subtle shift that makes him much more palatable. I also liked the fact that he’s chosen because Erskine, who is not American, identifies with the values that Steve holds dear – not as American values, but as a universal marker of decency. He likes Steve not because he’s ‘All American’ but because he doesn’t like bullies, and because he’s prepared to fight bullies even if he knows he doesn’t have a hope in Hell. It opens the figure out for the rest of the world to make him their own, which is a really difficult thing to do for a character called Captain America.

I also adore Peggy Carter. There’s not a lot of room, in the setting, for believable strong female characters, but they pull it off in a way that X-men: First Class, which had much more room for maneuver, did not entirely succeed. Peggy doesn’t need to be super-powered to kick-ass. She just shows herself to be calm, determined, and a phenomenal shot. When Steve knocks her out of the way of the car Schmidt’s spy is driving at her it’s pretty clear that she actually would have had the bugger if Steve hadn’t got in her way. No martial arts or super-strength required for this lady to kick-ass. What’s more, there were female agents working in the war. There weren’t as many as the men, not by a long shot, but it’s entirely plausible that a character such as Peggy would exist.

I also liked the racial diversity of Captain America’s team. Up until that point in the film my one big reservation was how white it was. I still think the general crowd scenes and the recruitment offices could have been a bit more mixed, but it was awesome to see that Steve selected an African-American and an Asian-American amongst those for his elite team. I gather that this actually reflects the comics, too, which is rockin’, but I also enjoy the treatment of them in the film. Granted, it probably glosses over the racial tensions such a decision probably would have aroused, but this is a long film with a lot going on – it wouldn’t have been possible to cover this in any depth anyway. Plus, there’s an extent to which it’s nice to have non-white people join a group of heroes and have it not be made a fuss of. They’re just the dudes Steve recognised as being awesome. They’re not exceptional for being black or asian, they’re exceptional as people. After what happened to the black and latina characters in X-men: First Class, it was something of a relief.

Overall, this is a truly well-constructed, fast-paced, and engaging action movie that not only treats its source material with respect, but updates it for the tastes of the modern audience. The love story is nice, but under-stated. Steve Rogers is a thoroughly likeable character. I like what it does for race and gender. I’m slightly annoyed with the ‘being bad makes you ugly’ angle (and the implication that only beautiful people are good), but I’m not sure there was a great deal they could do about that without ditching the Red Skull/Schmidt character completely. This film has an absolutely fantastic cast, and they are all bringing it to the table with both wit and poignancy. The special effects are great, and so is the cinematography.

I can’t wait for the Avengers movie – I want more Captain America now.

(P.S. you definitely need to stay after the credits. It’s AWESOME.)

Green Lantern

I really, really like superhero films. I like space. I like people with powers. I like skin-tight jumpsuits. I like secret identity angst. Although I do not think all superhero movies are good, they rarely bore me. X-men 3 was bad, but it didn’t bore me. There are three exceptions to this, two of which I saw in the last week. The first of these was The Death of the Incredible Hulk, which I’d been saving up as a special treat. If you know me well enough to know how much I love The Incredible Hulk, you’ll know what it means when I say that this movie was so bad I can’t even bring myself to review it. The second is Green Lantern, which was probably only enjoyable because I saw it with the wonderful Lee Harris, and the bottle of wine we smuggled in. (The other film is Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Nuff said.)

I’d heard that this film wasn’t 100% made of win, but that had been in the context of speculation about superhero fatigue created by the recent glut. As I’m pretty much never going to get tired of superhero films, I didn’t pay this too much mind. However, although I think the assessment is wrong, the message that this is a dull film that’s just going through the motions is worth heeding. The danger lies in blaming a genre for the faults of a film. The last three films I saw in the cinema were all superhero films. Thor was massive fun, despite my prejudice against Kenneth Branagh as a director. X-men: First Class was one of my favourite superhero films of all time. This film isn’t dull because there are too many superhero films, and superhero films aren’t dull because there are too many of them. This film is just dull.

Green Lantern has all the elements of a superhero film. It has space (not necessary, but often a joy). It has superpowers. It has secret identity angst. It has skin-tight costumes. But it’s just thrown them all together with no sense of style, pacing, or originality. I’ve seen worse scripts. The Spiderman films had god-awful scripts and actors that did little to bend their terrible lines into something less painful. But the script in Green Lantern, if not as actively painful as Spiderman, was boring and obvious.

I wondered if it was just that the Green Lantern story was not for me. I’m not a fan of the comics, and what little I’ve gleaned about them didn’t inspire me. However, Lee is a fan, and if anything I think he was even more disappointed than I was.

The one credit to this movie is that the actors are really working hard with what they’ve been given. Ryan Reynolds (Hal Jordan/Green Lantern) and Blake Lively (Carol Ferris) are to be commended for forcing believability and interest out of an unconvincing romance. Tim Robins is wasted as Senator Hammond. Not in that he was inappropriate for a role – I loved seeing him be a little bit bad, it’s just that he was given absolutely nothing to play with.

The 3D was wasted on this film, also. If you have a choice, do not spend the extra couple of quid, all you will get is a movie that’s blurrier than it needs to be in the action scenes. There are a couple of nice moments, but not enough to warrant the whole film. It doesn’t have to be this way. Thor worked its 3D seamlessly in a way that only enriched its beautiful CGI landscape. I never once had to remove my 3D glasses due to eyestrain when watching Thor, but with Green Lantern they were almost more off than on.

Admittedly, Carol Ferris puts the representation of other female love-interests to shame. She kicks legitimate butt with both her brains and with missiles without crossing any lines of believability. Moreover, this film does pretty well for race (for a Hollywood movie). Not only do we have a black woman as the chief scientist in what is clearly a high-level secret scientific institution, but I have never seen so racially diverse a crowd scene in a Hollywood movie. It is a sad thing for other Hollywood movies that I noticed this. On the other hand, in the green lantern crowd scenes, I only spotted one female green lantern. For some reason, she was the only one whose costume left a large portion of her chest uncovered by green suit, revealing most of her ample alien bosoms. Similarly, Dr Amanda Waller (Angela Bassett) may be intellectually at the top of the game, but for some bizarre reason she tends to wander round the lab in four-inch heels and a tiny lab-coat dress. Nothing wrong with sexy female scientists, I actually know several, but they manage to look much sexier than this without dressing so impractically at work.

The real thing that drags this film down, though, is the pacing. We spend far, far too long on the back story of the Green Lanterns, and then on Hal’s training. The basic story is actually OK, and Hal’s initially repulsive character really turns around by the end of the film. But we take far too long to get there. I imagine I’m meant to be rooting for Hal as he stabs his friend in the back and selfishly ruins his company’s chances by showing off. But I’m not. He deserves to be fired. You can pull off the reckless rogue, but you have to really work it, and Hal Jordan is no Han Solo – not in this film, anyway. Once the character actually starts to arc, he does grow on you, but by that point you’ve already spent 40 minutes thinking he’s a dick. If there were something else in the film to provide a hook, it would be OK, but it’s formulaic is as formulaic does.

I don’t especially like writing negative reviews. It isn’t so much that I loathed this film with a fiery passion. I have seen worse films. I do not hate this movie. I was simply bored by it. I rarely feel like I wish I could have the time back I spent watching a movie, and in this case I had a fun night out with a mate, so I don’t regret that. I’m just saying that if you want to have a fun night out with a mate, there are better films on at the moment you could go and see.

X-Men: First Class

Except for the exceptions, this movie is exceptional. If there’s one superhero movie you should make the time to see this year, it’s this one. I haven’t decided yet whether to regard it as my favourite superhero movie of all time (there’s some stiff competition, and I do have some reservations), but it’s pretty damn good. I know in some parts of the internet it’s considered sacrilege to say this, but it’s better than Iron Man.

So, that’s some heavy praise. What was so good? Well, for starters, it is expertly cast. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are spot on for the younger versions of Charles Xavier (Professor X) and Erik Lensherr (Magneto). Jennifer Lawrence as the young Raven (Mystique) was also charmingly appropriate, both as an actor, and as a match for a younger version of Rebecca Romijn. Not to mention that January Jones was a true pleasure as Emma Frost – nice to see her in a more forceful role, as a contrast to her interesting, yet fragile beauty in Mad Men. But the real show stealer for impeccable casting was Kevin Bacon, as the ageless Sebastian Shaw. Given the old ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game inspired by his ubiquitous presence in films of the 90s, Bacon has been oddly absent from our screens in recent years. This was a wonderful role for him as a come back, especially as he still looks like he might have walked in right off the set of Tremors.

In addition to the casting, the script was simply excellent. Funny, understatedly sad with foreshadowing, and thrummingly charged in all the right places. Truly, the trailers do not do this film justice (and I thought the trailers were 100% squee-worthy). In particular, the quiet, not-meant-to-be relationship between Raven and Hank McCoy (Beast) was beautifully played.

This film was swinging with all the style and opulence of a 60s spy film, but also managed to capture the youthful exuberance and folly of a group of young people thrust together and discovering community in their difference.

So, what are the exceptions? [Spoiler alert] Most striking is the scene where Shaw’s Evil Mutants have invaded the compound where Our Heroes are getting to know each other, slaying dozens of men in front of the shocked eyes of the young mutants, and then asking the teenagers to join them. Who goes over to the dark side? The latino female sex worker. Which of the mutants dies senselessly in a completely unnecessary manner? The black one. In an otherwise brilliant piece of cinema, there’s really no excuse for such an outdated message that black men are expendable and women who have sex are evil. Overall, there’s an unusually high balance of men to women in this film, but as Aliette de Bodard pointed out on her Twitter feed (with one notable exception) they’re all evil. And even the otherwise commendable character of Moira McTaggart (played by Rose Byrne) gratuitously gets her kit off. Not to mention the ridiculous moment when Emma Frost’s otherwise impermeable diamond skin is apparently vulnerable to brass when she’s being tied up against a bed. These are not awesome messages, yo.

Of course, all of this is par for the course for a Hollywood movie, it’s just a shame when a fun, but otherwise lesser, movie like Thor recently did so much better so easily for female representation and discussion of race issues (even if the plot mostly centred about the woes of gods who presented as white males for most of the movie).

But I don’t want to dwell on that. Despite these objections, I still think this movie is 95% awesome, and one of the top superhero films ever made. Never have powers been used so well or effects been so good. Rarely have scripts been so finely crafted.

See this film. You will enjoy it.

P.S. There’s nothing after the credits – just FYI.