Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time 5

Stark Expo, 13 June, 1942

Clara strolled into the Modern Marvels Pavilion, arm-in-arm with the handsome young man she thought would one day become Captain America. She took in the sights, gasping appreciatively as the dark-haired man in uniform pointed at the displays. The Doctor was doing his best to ignore the scrawny young man that Barnes had brought along with him, surreptitiously scanning with his sonic screwdriver when no one was looking. Clara wasn't sure why they needed the disguises, let alone why the Doctor was holographically disguised as a young woman, but she was playing along for now.

They had passed a display that claimed to be a robot of some kind, but looked like a man in a red suit, when the Doctor's face lit up and he pulled Clara and Barnes towards a stage where a red car was parked.


via Gfycat

"Ladies and gentlemen, Mister Howard Stark!" came a disembodied voice as a dapper man with a moustache and top hat joined several showgirls in front of the car. He gave one a kiss before trading his top hat for a microphone and addressed the crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen: What if I told you that in just a few short years, your automobile won't even have to touch the ground at all?" The showgirls removed the tires, and then the man flipped a switch.

The car began to hum and lift slowly off the ground. Clara gasped a little, and then giggled when she heard the Doctor scoff slightly, the sound of which was amusingly strange coming out of his now-feminine mouth.

He tilted his hand towards the stage as the sonic screwdriver pitched up and whined in sync with the hum of the car. Suddenly, sparks flew from the gadgets in the wheel well and the car dropped gracelessly.

"I did say it'd be a few years, didn't I?" The dapper man said, still smiling, and the crowd applauded.


The Time Vortex

After she'd had her fill of dancing with her new friend Bucky, Clara and the Doctor returned to the TARDIS. "Do you plan on staying that way?" she asked.

"Hm? Stay what way?" he answered distractedly, already working the control console.

Clara gave him an arch look and gestured at the Doctor's red dress and platinum curls.

"Oh, right, that." He cleared his throat and flicked a switch, the hologram vanishing and his vulture-like features returning.

Clara breathed a sigh of relief. "So what was all that back there? I don't recall flying cars in my own time, let alone the 1940s."

"Exactly right." He adjusteda few controls to bring up a diagram of lines extrapolated from the scalpel. "The man you just saw on stage was Howard Stark. In your universe, he was killed by a corporate rival of his family as a teenager. In this universe, he lived to adulthood and was a prolific inventor. What we saw was the tipping point of this timeline. In one version, the car levitates successfully, he gets a government contract, flying cars in World War II, Nazis copy them, chaos ensues. In another timeline, the car failed catastrophically, killing Stark." The Doctor turned the dial again, revealing another timeline. "According to the TARDIS databanks, this was the best possible outcome. Stark lives, Captain America is born, and a golden age of super heroes is ushered in decades later."

"But, Doctor, that's three."

"Ehm?"

Clara's brow furrowed, "That's three. You said earlier there were two timelines, but you just listed off three."

"Well, there was a war on, Clara," the Doctor grumbled, "It's possible I miscounted."

Clara giggled at his irritation, and as the Doctor noticed he decided to change the subject, "What say we go give the good news to our friend in Lagos?"


Lagos, Nigeria 2018

It had been several years since he had last seen them, but Isaiah still remembered the excitable old man and his pretty young companion when they returned. He was grateful to hear that he'd no longer be seeing things that weren't there, even if he didn't quite understand what the old man was saying. (Isaiah's grasp of English was quite strong, but he wasn't so sure of the Doctor's.) He waved to them as they left, smiling and laughing and enjoying a job well done.

snap

But… something wasn't quite right. Isaiah looked down at his hand. Flecks of dust were coming off of it. The more he shook it, the more dust fell. As the Doctor and Clara stepped into their box, Isaiah tried calling out to them, tried to let them know something was wrong, but by the time he could, he'd already blown away in the hot, dry air of Lagos.

Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time 4

Stark Expo, 13 June, 1942

Strains of Glenn Miller's In The Mood wafted over the warm summer evening air punctuated by fireworks, masking the groaning sound of the TARDIS landing behind a cotton candy stand. The door opened, and Clara stepped out wearing a cushy beige cardigan and matching dress. She stopped and admired the fireworks bursting in the sky behind the giant globe that sat in the center square of the Expo. The Doctor stepped out behind her and noticed Clara glaring at him.

"What?" he said innocently.

"You insisted that I dress period-appropriate, reasoning that we were guests in this timeline, but here you are in a hoodie and jumper that look like they were attacked by a ravenous pack of moths."

"Oh, that's fine. Here, problem solved," Clara's eyes widened as the wizened visage of the Doctor melted away into that of a woman no older than her, blonde hair in a style fashionable for the 1940s and wearing a red floral-print dress.

"What... wait, what exactly did you just..." Clara was having trouble finding the words to describe what she'd just seen. The Doctor smiled through the young woman's face, and his voice came in a soft American accent as he held up a small device that looked like a pager.

"Image inducer. The TARDIS databanks found it in the aborted timeline and replicated the technology. Because it keeps trying to reassert itself, little parts of the other timeline bleed through. This little gadget is amazing, it's like a cross between the holographic clothes we wore to see the Papal Mainframe and the TARDIS's own perception filter. You probably haven't noticed, but you're speaking in American accent now, too."

Clara clutched at her throat momentarily, but the Doctor strode off in his patent leather pumps, continuing to talk, "Now then, the information I was able to pull out of our rodent friend's temporal dissection says that Captain America himself is witness to the focal point in time that caused the straw to go all bendy. We just have to follow him there and make sure it's fixed."

"And how do we do that? Wouldn't he be off punching Nazis? We are in the thick of World War II," Clara asked, following towards a pair of large statues.

"Easy. I had the TARDIS send him a psychic message. He thinks he's set up a double date with a friend of his and a couple of pretty young girls. Now, the image inducer has me covered, but do you think you can manage to pretend to be a pretty young girl for a few minutes at least?"

Clara bristled for a moment, "Doctor, I am a..." she started, before trailing off as her eye caught a handsome young dark-haired man in a dress uniform. "That must be him, yeah? He's cute. I can't just call him Captain America, though, can I? I mean that's not him yet."

"I think he goes by Bucky now," The Doctor said, fiddling with his screwdriver while Clara flagged down the soldier. He smiled, and approached with his short, slight blonde friend in tow. As they met, the soldier draped his arm around Clara and the Doctor ignored his friend. They all strolled together into the Modern Marvels Pavilion.


To be Concluded

Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time 3

Back on board the TARDIS (now thankfully free of whatever potentially toxic fumes had exploded from the console), Clara changed into a less dusty and soot-covered outfit. She'd spent a surprisingly small amount of time crawling through burned-out buildings, but a hot shower to get the dust out of her hair felt good. Nigeria's weather was very different to the cool, damp shores of England.

Having teased the last of the water from her hair, she joined the Doctor on the TARDIS's upper level where he was standing with his hands on his hips and a look of consternation on his face. Surrounding him were a pair of chalkboards with what looked like crude drawings of professional wrestlers; what looked like a film projector with the silver scalpel where the film should be; and an old-fashioned boxy console screen on a long mechanical arm dropping from an indeterminate point in the ceiling.

She studied the crude chalk drawings. "I knew a girl growing up whose whole family was in wrestling. She was quite a bit younger than me, but I bet she went into it."

"What does any of this have to do with wrestling?" The Doctor frowned. "Oh, you mean these?" He pointed at the chalk sketches. "I've been pulling information from the tracking knife and correlating it with what the TARDIS has been soaking up from local media and historical records. It's really quite fascinating."

Clara braced herself for a storm of nonsensical words and long-winded explanations when the Doctor rounded on her with what appeared to be a little plastic man. "Meet Captain America!" Clara stared at the little plastic man, dressed in blues and whites with touches of reds and carrying a tiny disc of red and white.

"Captain what now?"

"America! He was a sickly, underfed boy whose parents were Irish immigrants. He signed up for the Army during World War 2 and fought a secret division of the Nazis called Hydra!" The Doctor's eyes were sparkling with the child-like gleam that Clara adored.

"I think I remember hearing about him, but Doctor, he was a comic book. He wasn't real." Clara immediately regretted saying that, as if she were telling a child that Father Christmas wasn't real.

"Then explain this," he said, pulling the console screen down by the knob. It held what looked like news footage of a man in a more modern and sleek version of the toy's uniform leaping over a car and flinging his metal disc. It ricocheted off three aliens that looked halfway related to Silurians before returning to the man's hand. As he fought through a larger group of the aliens, Clara caught a glimpse of what looked like a gold and red Cyberman, a woman in all black with startlingly red hair, and an absolute giant of a man with green skin.

The projector hissed and sparked and the picture suddenly changed, throwing the image of a large purple man with ceremonial robes being surrounded by people throwing lightning, shooting lasers from their eyes, and other fantastical things. Another hiss, another spark, and the projector now showed the building in Lagos, but complete and surrounded by a small army who were failing to hold off a man with what looked like knives protruding from his knuckles.

"They're all real, Clara!" She looked back to the Doctor, who had the most excited look on his face. A spark flew from the projector and a bell on the console clanged loudly, silencing any further questions she might have. The Doctor nearly flew over the railing, dashing down to the console in a blur and shouting "We have a destination! The still point we're looking for. The point where the straw goes all bendy!"

He looked at her, grinning like a madman. "The Stark Expo. June 13, 1942."

Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time 2

Clara followed as the Doctor stalked the wreckage of the building. For the most part, the TARDIS's telepathic field was doing its job and no one was giving them any funny looks as they clambered over charred walls and ducked under caution tape, but Clara could swear she'd periodically see people staring at them out of the corner of her eye only for them to be gone when she turned to look at them. Sure it wasn't her imagination, she decided to interrupt the Doctor's grumbling search.

"So... I'm sure it's just my imagination, but I keep seeing people... I don't know, noticing us? And then when I look again they're gone. What's up with that?" she asked, only half-expecting a reply from him.

"You're right, it's your imagination. But they really are there. Well, only they aren't." His explanation was only leaving her more confused, which must have been apparent on her face, so with a great sigh, he stopped, dropping the piece of rubble he'd surely not been about to lick, and gave her his full attention.

"You remember when I said this was the wrong Lagos?" he asked, pulling a straw from his pocket, "Well, imagine this straw is your Earth. Your 2016, with your Lagos and your Nigeria. Now this," he pulled another straw from his pocket, "is where we are now. A parallel universe. Now, see the bendy part in this straw? At some point, the history of this world went all bendy. Right now, we're bent off to one side, but for some reason our new friend back there, Isaiah, can still see the other bendy bit. So can we, to a certain extent, because we're not even from this straw. We're so far not from this straw that the bendy bit is actually confusing the TARDIS computers to the point where she can't find the hole she came in through."

Clara pondered this for a moment. "Okay. I think I get it. I'm not asking where you're pulling all these straws from, but we jumped from one to the other, and you're trying to figure out where the straw went all bendy and straighten it, right? That way we can get back to the right straw?" When he nodded, she pressed him, "So what are you looking for?"

"Organic matter," he said, pulling the box out of his pocket again, "so I can use this."

"You're gonna make me ask what's in the box, aren't you? It's not a head, is it? Awful small head if it is."

The Doctor knelt, apparently finding what he was looking for. He shoved his arm into a hole near the bottom of a burnt-out wall and pulled it back holding a half-crushed, lightly singed, and certainly very dead rat. Clara cleared her throat uncomfortably as the Doctor knelt, opening the box and placing the rat on the ground next to it. From the box he pulled a large silver scalpel that seemed to have some arcane, indecipherable writing on it.

"It's called a tracking knife. I nicked it from some particularly nasty characters living in a pocket of looped time. They'd use it to dissect living things, garner secrets from their timelines. It harvests biodata. I need an organic connection to this universe so I can track its timeline back to see where the divergence happened. We're looking for a still point in time, something that can be easily manipulated."

"And once we find that, we can go back and fix it? The knife is going to tell you all that by cutting up a dead rat?" Clara was still clearly uncomfortable with the dissection, but understood the reasoning behind it and looked on in interest as little lines of blue light began to appear in the air over the rat's now bisected body.

"I don't particularly feel like walking up to one of these nice people here and asking for a volunteer for a live temporal vivisection. It would be more effective, but it's more Missy's style than mine." The Doctor plucked at several of the strands, and they vibrated curiously. He manipulated the knife with suspicious skill, and several more intersecting strands appeared. "The knife should be able to get enough information for me to compare to the TARDIS databanks. I left the computer collating information from local sources, so we should be able to more accurately track down the bendy bits."

The strands began to coalesce into a single line, small symbols appearing at various points along it. The Doctor made a further cut and a fork appeared in them. "Gotcha," he said, standing and placing the knife gingerly back in the small box, "June 1943. Western Hemisphere, likely East Coast of the United States."

"Well, what are we waiting for then?" Clara asked, turning on her heel. "Let's go save a universe!"

Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time

In the spirit of Infinity War's crossovers...

The man shifted uneasily in his chair, scratching at his grayed temples. Across from him sat, to his eyes, a walking scarecrow and a very pretty (if out of place) girl. She looked annoyed, but the scarecrow man looked impatient, perhaps expectant.

The man's hand shook as he reached for the small tumbler of whiskey. He sipped, choked back a grimace, and took a deep breath.

"I know you are going to think I am crazy, but I believe very much so that I am not. Everybody in Lagos remembers the day the heroes came crashing through and 'accidentally' blew up the Wakandans," his voice catching on the word 'accidentally' like it held a bitter taste to it, "but no one remembers when the mutants came to Lagos. No one but me."

The scarecrow man's eyebrows furrowed together, and for a moment the man was afraid they would leap off of his forehead and assault him. There was a moment of quiet, then he continued.

"And that's not all. I remember both of these events, and I remember the great Apocalypse. I read in the news about the robots in Europe, but no one else remembers entire cities disintegrating. What's wrong with me, Mister Doctor?"


One Hour Earlier...

Clara stumbled out of the TARDIS, choking on the smoke that followed her through the doors. Whatever was burning in there, she decided, could not be anything but hazardous to her health, and she sometimes worried she'd breathed in far too much of it over the years she'd traveled with the Doctor. She took in a lungful of dusty air and looked around. Hot, dry sun beat down on her, and she was surrounded by the noises and smells of a bustling marketplace of a dusty, dry city. The Doctor came charging out of the doors, dispelling the cloud of smoke that had followed her, his coat covered in soot and his face crossed with more lines than she'd remembered before the explosion. He was muttering something to himself about time tracks, dimensional boundaries, and crossed realities until she interrupted him.

"Doctor? Doctor! Where are we?"

He stopped and looked around for a long second before sticking his finger in his mouth and holding it up in the air and pronouncing, "Lagos. Nigeria. Earth. 2016. But the wrong one." He glanced up at the side of a building that looked like it had seen better days. Several of the upper floors of the North side of it had suffered structural damage and had clearly been on fire recently. He frowned, digging in his pocket until he found a small wooden box, tilted the lid open, then shut it firmly and shoved it back in his pocket.

"How can it be the wrong one?" Clara asked, "Isn't there only the one Lagos?"

The Doctor looked supremely annoyed, "Clara, do you remember that awful bingy-bingy noise before the cloister bells started ringing? That was the TARDIS jumping off course. And then when the walls started closing in? Something went wrong with the dimensional stabilizer, and we got pushed through a weak point between universes. Wherever we are, it's not the right Lagos. For one thing, that building," he said, pointing up at the burned out husk, "isn't supposed to be all exploded. I should know, I had tea there just next week and it was still in one piece."

Clara, trying to keep up with the shifting tenses in his explanation, suddenly noticed an elderly Nigerian man staring at them in disbelief. She tugged at his coat and whispered under her breath at the Doctor.

"Doctor, I think that man there just noticed us."

"Well of course he noticed us. We just stepped out of a smoking blue box that probably made an awful racket landing and... hold on, that man just noticed us. The TARDIS telepathic fields must have malfunctioned and -"

Clara cut him off, "Then why hasn't anyone else noticed us?"

"Ah," The Doctor patted the pocket he'd stowed the box in, before starting off towards the man. Clara shook her head and followed.


...Now

His name was Isaiah, and the Doctor was drinking in every detail of his story. Every fantastical detail. In this world, it seemed, there'd been a swell of enhanced individuals -- soldiers and inventors, robots and aliens -- appearing through history and operating quite publicly. But Isaiah's story fell apart in several places as he tried to reconcile two very different versions of history that were living in his head. This was very distressing to him, especially as it seemed no one else remembered one set of events. The Doctor and Clara sat with him for a very long time, listening to all he had to share.

When Isaiah had finished his stories, one accounting of bizarre events from two perspectives throughout his remembered history, the Doctor leaned back in his chair, his eyebrows finally leaving attack position. He pulled a slender tool from his coat pocket, shoved it rudely in Isaiah's face, and pressed the button. Isaiah flinched at the green light on the tip and the whine it let loose. The Doctor snatched it away from him, popped open the tip, and stared intently at the shifting metal on the inside.

"Well then. It's little wonder you're so perturbed. Your consciousness is split between two versions of reality, one that doesn't exist anymore and the one that exists around you, and you can't reconcile the two. Part of that little human pea-brain is quite literally stuck in the wrong universe. But why? What makes you of all people special?"

Clara sunk her elbow into the Doctor's ribs, handing him a notecard that he studied intensely for a moment before grudginly bringing his gaze back to Isaiah.

"By which I mean 'I am terribly sorry to hear about your distress. I can only imagine how I would feel in your place, and I will do everything I can to resolve this situation for you. Shake hands and smile politely.' "

Clara rolled her eyes and looked apologetically at Isaiah as the Doctor took off towards the ruined building.


To be continued...

Salem (Finally) Watches A Movie: Black Panther

Well, I finally saw it. After all the hype, the backlash, and the culture wars going on around Black Panther, I finally got to see it and make up my mind for myself.

That's all I really wanted, world. I wanted to make up my mind for myself. I didn't want to be told that Black Panther was a cultural milestone or that it was racist against me (somehow. I'm not quite white enough for the ethnostate, sorry guys). I wanted it to be a good movie.

Our story starts on Sunday, the day I'd originally planned to see the movie. I woke up reasonably early for me, just in time to catch the last matinee at 12:30. I made it with time enough to spare, taking into account missing most of the pre-show commercials and preview trailers. I pulled into the parking lot of the Winrock Theaters, and... just kept driving. And driving.

There were no parking spots. I'm not sure if the movie was sold out or not; I never even got a chance to ask. Every single spot in the Regal Winrock theaters of Albuquerque was filled. I'm not even talking about "It was too full to park my unreasonably large van because I haven't figured out how to fit in a space without two empty ones on either side" full; I'm talking "Every single spot was full and I'd have had to park at Toys R Us a mile away just to see if there were still seats open" full.

So instead, I took the day off Wednesday, slept in late, and caught the 3:45 IMAX showing, which was damn near empty. And here's where my thoughts begin:

You're all wrong.

• Black Panther is not "alt-right." Yes, Wakanda is xenophobic. Yes, it does have barriers and walls and hides from the world. It's an ethnostate, if not on purpose. It's a bit violent, especially its ritual combat for the throne. Wakanda could have been considered "alt-right" about two generations back, but T'Chaka, late of Civil War's catalyst event, had begun outreach programs, notably in Lagos. Sure, no one had been invited to Wakanda, but it was progress. Progress that was carried forward under T'Challa. 
• Neither is the movie about you. It's an excellent portrayal of a deeply traditional society that had a massive technological advantage, but as the villain of the piece shows, it's a society with no real connection to American culture. As a movie based around a culture, though, it works very well. To the hidden disappointment of many, it is neither documentary nor fantasy.

With that out of the way, was it good? Did it stand on its own merits? In a word, yes. It's a very good movie, and a very worthy induction into the MCU canon. Visually, it was very striking, and my only complaint was that the movie shifts very, very quickly between dark and bright scenes, and these tired old eyes don't adjust quite as quickly as they used to. Set design and art direction deserve all the applause they get in this film. The movie's story is not overly complicated or simplistic, and flows well.

The cast is mostly excellent.

• I make no secret that I was disappointed at Chadwick Boseman's casting, as I was rooting for Chiwetel Ejiofor to be cast as T'Challa. My consolation prize of him appearing as Mordo in Doctor Strange was satisfying, at least, and Boseman has won me over. He seemed almost too confident in Civil War, but in his solo debut, he has a lot more range on display, showing youthful vigor and moments of self-doubt that perhaps Ejiofor wouldn't have delivered on as well. 
• Of special note is his chemistry with Letitia Wright's Shuri, his little sister and Wakanda's science whiz. Their playful bickering lent for the most authentic brother/sister combo I think I've seen in this genre of movie. 
• Andy Sirkis was hamming it up, almost like a villainous Drax (see Guardians of the Galaxy) and was having waaay more fun than anyone else on-screen... it's a shame what happened to his character. 
• Danai Gurira is excellent as always, and has a scene-stealing moment during a fever-pitched battle near the end of the movie. 
• And finally, the memes are right about Michael B Jordan: this is the second Human Torch that Marvel has redeemed, as his Killmonger chews the scenery maniacally, almost out-hamming Sirkis at times. I wouldn't go so far as to call him a good villain, but he's certainly on the higher end of MCU villains; better than Ronan or Stane, but not quite to the level of a Loki or Hela.
• While Martin Freeman turned in a standard Martin Freeman-level performance, I couldn't help but wonder why he was there. Aside from the obvious ties to Civil War, there really seemed to be no purpose for his character. Even the one time he actually did take action near the end, it's something that Shuri easily could have (and basically did) done earlier. 
• As for Forrest Whittaker, he was... well, he was Forrest Whittaker. I suppose Morgan Freeman wasn't available.

Was it perfect, though? No, it wasn't. It deserves the good reviews it's getting, but it's certainly not flawless:

• The opening is very weak, with literal narration providing the backstory of Wakanda with some tech that you don't even realize until later in the movie is Wakandan showing a sort of sand-sculpture representation of the warring tribes that formed Wakanda and the events of the world around it. Fortunately, the movie rights itself and spends the rest of its runtime showing and not telling, even if that runtime does seem to stretch on longer than it needs to. 
• The pace is good, but it easily could have been 20 minutes shorter or so and been even tighter.
• Some of the effects missed the mark, and Panther does not look nearly as fluidly realistic as he did in Civil War, and the battle between he and Killmonger, both wearing panther suits, had little impact as neither of them looked very real. The CGI at times felt very unpolished and reminded me of Blade II or the Matrix movies.

The movie could be criticized for having an inconsistent message to it, but I like to chalk that up to different characters actually having different motivations. I respected greatly how, on the whole, it takes a rather moderate view. The traditionalist characters strongly believe that Wakanda should not become involved at all in the outside world, and when Killmonger comes on the scene, he's very clearly parroting activist talking points in a cartoonish manner, wanting to use the resources of Wakanda not to uplift others but to destroy the world and rebuild it to his will. Neither of these views ultimately win out, as at the end of the movie Wakanda seems to have a new goal: benevolent outreach programs, to share its tech and resources with those in need.

All in all, this was a satisfying movie. It earns its place amongst Marvel's top films. It's not going to change the world, and it doesn't really need to... unless you're one of those people with an irrational need to see yourself represented physically on-screen (a viewpoint which I don't understand how anyone who enjoys sci-fi or fantasy can hold), you'll like it. If you were a fan of Avengers-related comics, you'll like it. It respects the source material and translates it very well.

Black Panther: An Addendum

This is inevitably going to be a three-part series, as the review will be up once I've seen it. 

One has to be very careful when picking one's words when talking about something like Black Panther. What was just another high concept super-hero movie in a universe already extraordinarily well-established has, thanks in large part to the cultural critics that have been chapping my ass for the past few years, quickly become an exceedingly commercialized rally point for a puzzling social movement.

Marvel, to its credit, has very little blame in this aside from introducing an already-beloved character in a giant movie and translating him very well to the screen, putting out the requisite toy line, and picking a strategic song for the trailer.

One must be very careful, for example, these days not to imply that "collectivist identitarian" is a flattering term for someone that someone else would rather prefer to call an "asshole Nazi," regardless if both terms apply.

Inside joke, dear readers. I apologize.

But can we talk about Black Panther for a moment?

You're right, we can't. We can't, for example, bring up the fact that Wakanda is a stupendously rich nation in the middle of some very poor nations. We can't bring up the fact that Wakanda is an xenophobic ethnostate with possibly the strictest immigration laws outside of Dr. Doom's Latveria or that, in the MCU, it had no outreach to poor countries despite its wealth until Civil War. We can't talk about how Wakanda zealously defends its borders, notoriously slaughtering intruders, or how T'Challa himself is the ruler of a Patriarchal society, having literally inherited his powers, tech, and position from his own father.

But I suppose if one side can twist things in its favour, the other can do so just as well.

Did they, though? Have we asked actual
Africans how they feel on this?

That'd just be awkward, though. Not that that first side isn't finally getting around to not-good-enough-isms.

In that spirit, I'd like to make it very clear that when I review Black Panther, I intend to hold it to its own merits: Did it tell a good story? Did it fit well in the greater MCU? Did it work well on its own as a movie as well as setting up story threads for future movies, as I expect to see it represented heavily in Infinity War? Does it tie up loose ends from previous movies?

What I'm not going to do is blame any shortcomings on "Trump's America." Seriously, it makes me ashamed that 3/4 of me comes from the same place as you, Ed Power.

When I go see Black Panther, I'm going to see what I hope to be another highly-entertaining entry in the MCU saga, one that I can appreciate as a fan and as someone who has been reading books  starring that character since I was a teenager. The last thing I want is for the movie to fail, because that's going to basically be Ghostbusters 2016: Round 2, and I've had just about enough of that.

I want it to succeed. I want it to be good.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Guardian Harder

[Author's note: I offered Erin to opt out of editing this, as to avoid spoilers. She accepted. Any and all errors and/or typos are on me]

Otherwise knows as "Drax Has An Astoundingly Awesome Day." 

I've just left the theater about 30 minutes ago now. It's still fresh in my mind.

If Marvel rolled the dice and went big on Guardians of the Galaxy, they went hard and went bigger for Volume 2. Seemingly able to have solved the problem of 'the origin movie' always being the boring one, Guardians 2 brings together the established cast and thrusts them straight into an even bigger story than before, with a galactic (possible universal) level extinction event, and a story that puts an enormous emphasis on the theme of what it means to be family, on whether blood is thicker than water, and mending broken bridges, and manages to tie those two themes together astoundingly well.

Having accomplished seemingly the impossible first by taking the B-Team of The Avengers and turning it into a monster franchise, then taking the D-listers of the Guardians and making them just as beloved, they've thrown all caution to the wind here. Guardians 2 has some of the most breathtaking visuals I've ever seen in science fiction. Yes, it's a big mass market appeal, but there are some amazing risks being taken here that simply wouldn't have worked without the world-building that the MCU has dedicated itself to.

Spoilers from here on in...

The story starts with a seemingly unrelated cold-open, much like a Bond film, with a great action sequence that reminded me heavily of Deadpool's opening: a pitched, high-speed battle with a focus on a humorous character set to the soundtrack of a very retro song. Sometime between the first movie and this one, Nebula is captured and in return for the opening sequence's actions, she is handed over to the Guardians to be returned to the Nova Corp for imprisonment, but due to Rocket's incredibly short-sighted (and later fortuitous actions) things go terribly wrong, and Peter Quill is reunited with his father, who turns out to be a living planet with less than benevolent intentions for the galaxy. A new character is introduced, some of the previous film's side characters have much more expanded roles, and there's even a surprise cameo (or two) that I somehow managed to avoid hearing anything about. How they got him is no surprise, but how they got *him*? I swear Marvel has a time machine. Even the Stan Lee cameo (which if it's his last, is fitting) manages to explain how he keeps showing up in every movie.

This is possibly the most colourful Marvel film to date, which is relevant considering how often Marvel Studios has been criticized for its limited colour palette. Ego's World alone rivals Dr Strange's trippy visuals, and his little pods showing Peter his history have a fascinating artistic flair of their own, very evocative of someone who can perfectly replicate life, but has no real understanding of what it means to be human (or any of the other species). There are even moments of absurdity that stretch your suspension of disbelief to the point where they'd be at home in Spaceballs, but still stay within the boundaries set by the film.

No one in the entire cast was a slouch, either. The main cast delivered two-fold on the first movie's performances, and Yondu and Nebula's expanded presences were very strong as well, fleshing them both out and breathing much more life into their otherwise limited characters. The Sovereign managed to make the Nova Corps look downright humble and friendly. Kurt Russel's Ego was seductively charming and totally believable as space-rogue Star Lord's father, and disturbingly menacing once the big plot twist was revealed. The change in dynamic from Groot being a heavy to being a comedic and lovable character worked well. The stand-out performance, though, goes surprisingly to Dave Bautista's Drax, who was having a blast throughout the entire film. His unrelenting optimism coupled with a tempered naivete gave some of the most memorable moments throughout the film.

You great big goof. Don't ever change. 

The one thing that sealed the love letter to the old series, though, was Yondu's fin. Once it appears, Yondu has the most badass moment of the entire film, walking calmly through the carnage he's causing, with the ridiculous red head-fin of the comics proudly on display.

Spoilers ending here: You should definitely see this. Guardians, as a franchise, is less connected to the MCU as a whole, and it has a lot more humour than the rest of the MCU, Ant-Man aside, and is much more easily relatable on its own, but it is hands down the best space opera I've seen in years, surpassing The Force Awakens, Rogue One, Star Trek Beyond, and even its predecessor.

One thing I'd like to point out, unrelated to the movie itself, was that during the trailers, Thor: Ragnarok got a bigger audience pop than Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Maybe it was a better trailer. Maybe it was audience bias for premiere night of the newest Marvel Studios film. All I know is that a few people cheered for Jedi, but there was widespread applause for Ragnarok.

Captain Political Sledgehammer

Female characters in comics are, despite popular rhetoric, really quite common. You can't go five pages without tripping over an enhanced, highly-trained, or mutant superheroine, and in recent years they've become much more prominent with starring turns in blockbuster movies, television shows, and solo titles.

In the case of DC, it's easy to point out: they have a flagship female character in Wonder Woman, and most recently Harley Quinn. With Marvel, it's not as easy - not because they have fewer, but because they have so many female characters that stand alongside their male brethren in the Avengers, X-Men, or Fantastic Four. The easiest, most visible amongst them, the ones where you'd list when told to "Name 5", would probably be Storm, Jean Grey, Sue Storm-Richards, Black Widow, and the subject of my writings today: Captain Marvel.

Captain, Ms. 

There's been rumblings and confirmations that Captain Marvel, formerly Ms. Marvel, formerly Warbird, formerly Binary, and aka Col. Carol Danvers of the USAF, would be getting a solo movie. Carol's been an interesting and integral part of the Marvel universe for years now, and one of a few characters I've tried to keep up with. Unfortunately,  I've fallen behind on my reading due to my backlog and not liking the art on the current and recent runs, but my personal recommendations are her solo series, leading up to and encompassing Avengers: Disassembled, House of M, and Civil War.

What's compelling me to write this today, is this article, ostensibly satire, written from the point of view of a terribly constructed strawman in the wake of self-perpetuating backlash to objections surrounding the Ghostbusters reboot. What the author doesn't seem to understand is that there is no co-opting of a male role to even build a strawman around here. Carol was, despite the inspiration she took, her own woman. Those of us who have read her stories appreciate her on her own merits, and not merits that she adopted from a previously male character.

Comparing Carol Danvers to the Ghostbusters reboot is a terrible false equivalency. The Ghostbusters reboot disregarded previous history (naturally, as reboots tend to do) and based its entire marketing campaign around insulting fans and potential audiences. Marvel, so far, has done nothing but show their fans love, and in return their fans have made them billions in box office revenue and merchandise sales (myself included - show me an MCU-related action figure and I'll show you my wallet). But beyond that, I have a terrible feeling about the Captain Marvel movie.

I want Captain Marvel to be a good movie. I want it to happen. What I don't want is for it to be used as political leverage by hipster bloggers and people who don't care about the stories that have come before.
So much of what makes Carol interesting is her struggle. Her origin story is based around an admiration for and inspiration drawn from a male superhero, Mar-Vell, a Kree warrior who was the original Captain Marvel*. She's had episodes where her powers were unreliable. She was an alcoholic. She has self-esteem issues. I hate to use SJW rhetoric, but all of these are "problematic" qualities for a movie heroine.

But the biggest reason I do not want her used a political sledgehammer is that I admire Carol Danvers because she is hard-working (colonels in the USAF don't just happen) and determined (she's overcome every one of her struggles, and adapts and continues to overcome them). There may have been times where she lay down and gave up and wallowed in self-pity, but she's human and that happens; but she also got right back up and started swinging again.

Best of all, in the wake of the House of M storyline, where she was the most beloved human superhero in a world where humans are the minority, she saw what she could be and worked that much harder to achieve that when reality re-asserted itself around her. In her long history in comics, she's been the hero that former movements of feminism would have aspired to, but using that word in reference to her now is something that I personally find... well, problematic.

I worry though because, if Captain Marvel is faithful to Carol and her history, it's going to catch hell. A women with self-doubt and insecurity? That got Joss Whedon chased off of Twitter when Black Widow had a moment of it. And if Marvel isn't faithful to Carol and her history, it's not going to be a good Captain Marvel movie. It might still be a good movie, but it won't be Carol.

As for the casting, I suppose Brie Larson's alright. She's not Katee Sackhoff, and that's who I was really rooting for. Larson seems a bit young for an Air Force colonel, or even captain**.

This is the movie I wanted. 

In short, I want a movie, not a statement.

* Sort of - that name's been thrown around a lot, and even been used for a character from a completely different company.

**Erin Says: I checked with my father, a 20-year Army officer, and he says that it's just possible for a 26 year old (Brie Larson's age) to be a newly minted Captain. After that comes Major (usually mid-30s), Lt. Colonel (late 30s to early 40s), and then Colonel (mid-40s). Sackhoff, at 36, can easily portray a Major and could, with the right makeup, pass as a Lt. Col. 

Salem Watches A Movie: Captain America: Civil War

Minor spoilers ahead.

Marvel is treading some really interesting ground lately. While the comics are simultaneously being bashed for not being diverse enough and celebrated for changing genders, identities, and races of prominent characters, the movies are quietly slipping in some rather Libertarian-esque ideals, especially in the Captain America films. While the first one was predictably a super-hero war film, the second one was an insightful exploration of governmental surveillance, with SHIELD's Insight helicarriers capable of surveilling and potentially "removing" targets that could question the agenda of the people running them. Similarly, Captain America: Civil War deals with the subject of governmental oversight and Captain Rogers is now two for two in resisting government overreach (violently when necessary), and doing so in a way that presents the topic in a much more effective way than the comics that inspired it did.

Interestingly, there's been an argument that Cap is a soldier, and is clearly in the wrong for disobeying orders. Now I'm no soldier, but I grew up in a military family, but all the same I'll let a soldier debunk that one.

In the comics, there was a tragedy in Stamford, CT that involved a showboating young superhero team, a dangerous villain, and the loss of over six hundred lives which led to a superhuman registration act. In the movie, trainee superhero Wanda Maximoff, recruited at the end of the last Avengers film, is responsible for the accident when she saves Captain America's life by diverting an explosion (that could have killed dozens of people at ground level) not quite far enough into the air to keep it from killing the dozens of people in the building above the market. These events lead to the Sokovia Accords, an attempt to reign in the Avengers under governmental oversight, and both Cap and Tony Stark's team make good arguments for and against it, even having moments where they question their respective decisions. The difference here being that the Superhuman Registration Act of the comics is a clear human rights violation, applying equally to people who operation with self-created enhancements and people born with said enhancements, such as mutants. The Sokovia Accords is much more of a grey area politically, lending Team Stark a much stronger stance.

Marvel films have a formula at this point. They're 12 movies in since Iron Man kicked it off, and they all have similar characteristics: slick character designs that are realistic but pay heavy tribute to their sources, snappy dialogue, and character development that takes place both on and off the battlefield. It's a tribute to the people making the decisions here that, twelve movies in, it doesn't yet feel stale, and there are scenes in this movie that still register a strong emotional response: the fear at Rhodey's "dead stick" moment, Ant-Man's "something big", RDJ's stunning line delivery of "so was I" or meeting Spider-man and Black Panther.

Civil War is both everything we could have hoped for in a super-hero movie, and a fitting chapter in the MCU's story. The only real criticism I have is that this is yet another Marvel film with a weak villain, as has been the norm. (Loki still remains the only well-fleshed out villain in the MCU.) That said, the villain has a good motivation and a brilliant scheme, but we spend so little time with him that he may as well not even be there.

Always #TeamCap

The most surprising thing is that this movie has over a dozen significant characters, and doesn't leave any of them short on screen time, development, or spotlight. Obviously, we're introduced to Spidey and Black Panther in this movie. The former is a big deal because there's been no fewer than five Spider-Man movies in recent history, with only the first two gaining universal acclaim. (For the record, I quite enjoyed the last two, even though they're more or less the least popular.) The general consensus is that Tom Holland's MCU Spidey got everything right that the last 5 movies couldn't, and he did it in maybe 20 minutes of screen time. With the latter, I feel it could be argued that Black Panther is a little overpowered, but then he is one of the most intelligent and capable heroes in the comics as well, so it fits.
All in all, Civil War is an excellent movie. Well worth the price of admission, even if you want to see it in IMAX or 3D. It's fun, it's compelling, and it sets up the next chapters in the MCU well.

The Finest Redemption Story in Superhero Movies

My first attempt at watching Deadpool did not go so well. It had nothing to do with the movie; that, without going into too much detail too early, was really quite good. No, it was the case of grinding stomach cramps that started about halfway through the film, followed by my car not starting after the movie, capped off with nearly a week of gastroenteritis that put a damper on the evening. So I did all of you, my faithful readers, a favour and went to see it again. In IMAX. I swear, the things I do for you lot...

I've been aware of Deadpool for a very long time. I've seen his start as just another terrible Rob Liefeld creation, be-pouched and violent with a name made of two gritty words, generic as all hell in his fight against gritty, be-pouched and hyperviolent sort-of anti-hero Cable, another terrible Rob Liefeld creation. But I've seen him grow in the hands of more creative writers and artists into something different, something almost beautiful, one of those tragedies that just can't stop laughing because if he does, it'll hurt too much to go on. His finest redemption came with that of Cable, his brother-in-90s-badness, in the simply-titled Cable & Deadpool, and it's one of the best series I've ever read. Since then, he's been on a meteoric rise to pop culture fame, and now he's every-goddamn-where. Like it or not, Wade Wilson has struck gold.

But how was the movie? The FOX X-Films have been varying in quality, with the two decent-to-good and one poor X-Men, one terrible and one much better Wolverine, and the First Class trilogy, 2/3 complete with the excellent First Class and quite good Days of Future Past, and the concluding X-Men: Apocalypse on the way. Deadpool is, quite frankly, the best of all of them, possibly even the one with Apocalypse. It's on par with the better Marvel Studios films, with a faithfulness and wit that no one saw coming.

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Let's get a few things out of the way (as well as a spoiler warning): this is a film that more than earns its R rating. The language is crass. There's nudity, female as well as... well, Deadpool wang. Floppy, scarred Deadpool wang. The violence is visceral, detailed, and astoundingly gratuitous. And all of it grabs you and does not let go and shouts in your face “THIS IS NECESSARY.”

To release a family-friendly cut of this film would more than likely render it perhaps half an hour long. But every decapitated body part, every glimpse of flesh, every foul word serves a purpose to paint a picture of the world Deadpool inhabits and the circles he moves in,  places which were heretofore unexplored in the X-Men films.And speaking of the X-Men, there's another character with a true redemption here: Colossus, last seen as the hunky member of a boy-band covered in chrome paint, has been fixed. 

He's now ENORMOUS, not just above average tall and muscular; the chrome has been toned down; and his attitude matches what it should have always been: a farmboy raised under Communism who is now living in America with a supportive family unit. He's simultaneously the ultimate cuddly big brother (no pun intended), human wrecking ball, and source of some of the movie's best laughs -- not at his own expense, but at his optimistic reactions to the situations he finds himself in as well as the faith he shows in Deadpool.

I dare you not to love this guy.

Deadpool himself is a gem. He's portrayed with just the right amount of weird (not the lol-so-random that some writers saddle him with) and he moves perfectly. Agile, fast, accurate, he's a real menace on the field, elevated from minor threat to nigh-on unstoppable force by his regenerative powers, taking only a moment to stick his finger through a bullet hole in his arm and swear at the guy that shot him. Ryan Reynolds really gets the character, and I feel happy for him about it. He deserves this. He's been working a hell of a long time to make this happen, and he's redeemed both himself and the character from its dreadful portrayal in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which is alluded to several times in the film (including showing the action figure, for which I've supplied a visual aid). This is nearly everything we wanted from Deadpool on-screen, and certainly far more than we ever expected to get considering a) the last time he was on-screen and b) it's not a Marvel Studios film.

Yep. That's the one in the movie, and I have one.

And speaking of that, it's really a shame that it's not, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some form of crossover being set up. The final battle does appear to take place on a decommissioned helicarrier that looks like it's straight out of SHIELD's fleet. Reynolds's Deadpool is now added to the Downey Jr. Stark/Jackman Wolverine teamup I dearly want to see.

The film wasn't perfect, though; some pretty hefty details from Deadpool's origin were missing. The organization that performed the experiments on him didn't seem to be Weapon X, but they didn't explicitly name it anything else, so it still could be; Vanessa wasn't a mutant or a mercenary, and she was a much more morally sound character than she was in the comics; Colossus's trainee X-student, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, looks nothing like she does in the comics and seems to have Cannonball's power; and most damning of all, Deadpool's inner monologue does not speak in little yellow boxes.

But all in all, this is a mark in the win category, not only for how good it was, but how much money it's made. As I write this, I think it's past the 500 million mark, and it's cleared the record for highest-grossing R rated film ever. The viral marketing campaign for it was genius, allowing Reynolds to ham it up in-character in all manner of situations not in any way related to the film, just for us to get a taste of his performance and assure us that the movie did, indeed, know what it were doing.

The trailer cuts were smart, too. The “pity the guy that pressures her into prom sex”line is there, but it makes perfect sense in context, but Vanessa's line about not being a damsel in distress is gone from the final cut.

If you haven't seen it, and you've survived the cascade of spoilers, please go see it. It's great fun, as long as you're not easily offended. And Ryan Reynolds, of all people, deserves this. This was the man's last chance; he'd already screwed up twice in comic films before the great Marvel Studios flood that started with Iron Man. If he messed up again, he was done. But he didn't.

He deserves this film, and so do you.

Willfully Misinterpreting Jessica Jones

Due to the possibility of spoilers, our dear editor is sitting this one out. Be warned. 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the comic series Alias, and it's upcoming adaptation to visual Jessica Jones. Jessica Jones is a risky proposition for Marvel Studios, not because of its female lead, but because of its subject matter. There's some seriously mature ideas being explored, both on the show and in the original books, and it's down to the finesse of the showrunners to handle those ideas appropriately. So, did they?

Did they ever not!

Jessica Jones is a highly, deeply problematic adaptation of a comic book that featured an almost non-existent female character in a male-dominated medium. Before Jessica Jones, there was no female comic book characters that didn't exist solely to serve as eye candy for a presumed white male audience. Problematic depictions of female characters were on every page of comics, with unrealistic breast sizes and vapid dialogue, constantly put in peril for the male protagonists to rescue. Then along came enlightened male author Brian Michael Bendis and gave us Alias, in which a working woman and survivor of trauma co-opted a traditionally male role as private investigator and did the job while dressing halal-protecting herself from the male gaze by dressing sensibly.

Manspreading! And this isn't even the worst! 

The series, however, is a trainwreck of harmful tropes, stereotypes, and dangerous ideas. Jessica herself, to start with, is nothing more than a Ms Male Character, with an abusive backstory and lack of agency being the driving force of the series. Jessica is defined by her trauma, unable to perform basic tasks like riding the subway without being visited by the mental ghost of her abuser, while at the same time using violence to solve her problems. Anything from a client getting physical with her to her alarm going off too early can be solved simply by smashing something. Jessica reeks of toxic masculinity, from her childhood scenes of being a tomboy 'not like other girls' to her modern habit of manspreading. The cinematography doesn't do her any favours, either, with the camera replicating the male gaze by lingering on her otherwise-sensibly dressed rear end longingly and thus invalidating her conservative wardrobe choices, and showing us lots of flashes of her in intimate positions in her scenes with Luke Cage.

MALE GAZE!

The series takes a dim view of minority characters as well. The protagonist and antagonist are, of course, white, but one of the main characters is a black man who is a junkie. There's only one Hispanic person in all of Hell's Kitchen, apparently, and she's a drug dealer. There are a whopping three lesbian characters, but one of them is an unfaithful spouse, the other the mistress of said spouse, and the last is cruel and vindictive in return. With so few LGBT characters, it's harmful to show a negative depiction like this, leading only to the stereotype of the promiscuous gay character. And when a support group is set up to help victims of the white male villain, Jessica steadfastly refuses to participate, painting her as someone who would rather keep her victimhood instead of seek help.

And finally, there's a heavy theme of domestic abuse in this show, which is reinforced by the relationship between Trish “Patsy” Walker and Officer Simpson. While 'allegedly' under Killgrave's control, he attacks her and tries to murder her, and mere days later he returns to apologize, irresponsibly providing her with a dangerous firearm, and she rewards him with sex. In fact, the series seems to simply revel in physically abusing its female characters. I have never seen such a misog

-sounds of a struggle-

Ok, I'm done with that part. Jessica Jones was really quite good, wasn't it? For anyone that's ever been in a miserably bad relationship, it'll be really hard but sort of cathartic to watch. The casting of Luke Cage was spot-on brilliant. I was a bit on the fence about Krysten Ritter having only ever seen her in Breaking Bad and a sort of terrible sitcom, but she really delivered here. David Tennant was wonderfully sinister. Much like other MCU properties, I feel it did a really great job capturing the spirit of the source material while telling a new story, and I sincerely hope there's a series 2, providing everyone's not so entirely exhausted from making the show to do it. It was certainly tiring, in a good way, to watch it.

I would also like to say that yes, I have read Anita Sarkeesian's take on the show. I tried not to replicate any of her ideas here, as I've had this one brewing for a while but scheduling conflicts and a social media flood of alternating anti-Muslim and anti-gun propaganda sent me into such a tizzy that I had to focus my efforts elsewhere for a short time. Next week I'll be analyzing a Huffington Post piece, tentatively, and outlining the idea of “not even wrong.”  

Jessica Jones: Who We Are and Who We Want to Be

We're a little over a week from Netflix's next Marvel Cinematic Universe outing as of today, and I'm more than a little excited. After how well Daredevil was done, I'm really looking forward to this. The reasons, though, are more than superficial this time.

I love the MCU. It's very flashy and exciting and fun, and while Daredevil was a departure from that, it still retained the overall quality and love of the source material that previous adaptations simply lacked

Jessica Jones looks to take the grim-dark of Daredevil and completely redefine it.



But there's a more personal slant to this, too. I've mentioned in the past how Barbara Gordon, aka Oracle and Batgirl, is a personal hero of mine: someone I look up to and semi-jokingly refer to as “waifu.”

Barbara Gordon is a character that refuses to stay down. She's intelligent, athletic, and driven. Seeing the Batman in action first-hand, she took that inspiration and made her own hero out of it, becoming a valuable member of the Bat-family. Life then proceeded to hit her, very very hard, when Joker shot her through the spine and paralyzed her, but she did not stay down. She refocused her skills from the physical to the mental, using her brains and wit and technical prowess to become Oracle, who ended up being an even bigger and more powerful asset of the DC Universe than Batgirl was. And when the DCU was rebooted years later and she was back on her feet as Batgirl, she refused to back down, even when terrified, when having to face off against the Joker again. In short, Barbara Gordon is everyone I wish I was.



Jessica Jones... is not. Jones was one of the first super-heroes of the modern age, but she was an unknown. A jobber. When you think of heroes, you think of Captain America, Ms Marvel, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch maybe, but not Jewel. And during one of her adventures, she faced a very evil man who could be very, very persuasive. He did horrible things to her and in front of her, and when she was finally free of him, she was very damaged. Life hit her, very very hard, and she did not get back up so readily. In fact, she stayed down for a very, very long time. 

I can't help but identify. Certainly not to the same extent -- I was never a superhero -- but that's how these stories work. They're exaggerations of real life, exaggerated people. I met a woman who was very persuasive and did horrible things to and around me. I was hit by life, very very hard, and I did not get up for a very long time. Even now I feel like I've maybe reached a sitting position, but am not entirely sure I'd trust my own two feet to stand on. Like Jones, my life revolved around what I could do to keep going long enough to reach my next drink. That part of my life is, more or less, behind me now, but I'm glad to see that a character that can't quite handle tragedy as well as the A-list of Marvel will be part of that world. It makes me feel a little more like I'm part of my own world still. In short, Jessica Jones is everything that I am, or at least was.

Much like Daredevil, I'll be providing my thoughts on Jessica Jones after I've seen all of the episodes. Until then, I recommend everyone at least give the show a chance. It's got a lot of positive hype behind it, but it's certainly not going to be quite as upbeat as an Iron Man film might be.  This will be a much more personal and painful story, and may provide a bit of catharsis to anyone who has been through something similar, if not on a smaller scale.

Salem Watches a Movie: The Indelible Ant-Man

Warning: what is this, a spoiler for ants?

Ant-Man, the latest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is not a big, flashy event movie like an Avengers or Iron Man title would be. The events don’t, at least at first glance, hold earth-shaking implications for the greater narrative of the MCU. Startling revelations are not made about previously beloved characters.

And you know what? That's OK. It's exactly what it needs to be. After the last few films it's nice to get a fun little flick that works on a few levels and doesn't amp up the adrenaline level of the MCU.

Like most Marvel films, Ant-Man is primarily a genre film first, with added superhero panache. Like Winter Soldier was a spy film with superheroes, Thor was a fantasy film with superheroes, and Guardians of the Galaxy was a space opera with superheroes, Ant-Man is a tight, competent heist movie with superheroes (and shades of the old 50s giant insect movies). It's certainly not on the level of The Italian Job or Ocean's Eleven (or even Ocean's Twelve), it does its job well and retains the trademark Marvel sense of fun while displaying a level of technical storytelling that wouldn't be present in one of the event films like Age of Ultron. While Age of Ultron brought us “Bad guy uses space metal to lift a city and drop it in an extinction-level event,” Ant-Man instead gives us “Reluctant criminal uses liquid nitrogen to expand the door and locking mechanism of a safe and blow it open.”

The character work in this film in interesting as well, as it brings us a new take on a hero. Paul Rudd's Scott Lang is a bit of a fuckup. Like Chris Pratt's Star-Lord, he's very good at what he does, but unlike Star Lord is nowhere near the master criminal he'd like to think he is, as evidenced by the opening scenes showing him being released from San Quentin, and then later being arrested twice, once even in the Ant-Man suit. There's something really humanizing about the protagonist being someone who really just wants to do the right thing but constantly goes about it the wrong way.

Michael Douglas (finally!) brings us the Marvel Universe's most maligned super-genius, Hank Pym, and adds a really interesting human touch as a much older character (even having an altercation with Howard Stark and an aged (but lovely) Peggy Carter in the opening) who is a driven scientist and neglectful father filled with regret over a tragedy in his life. His daughter, Hope Van Dyne (portrayed by Evangeline Lily, who I don't think I've ever seen in anything before), is bitter and angry, and as we learn by the end of the film, has every right to be. 

Aside from the continuity nod to Howard Stark and Peggy Carter, there's an appearance by The Falcon, making up for the disappointment of not seeing him in action on Age of Ultron, with a proper throw-down between he and Lang. This is probably the best and most blatant bit of fan-service in the film: a throwback to the superhero crossovers of comics, where two heroes meet, fight, and team up... only this one is without the team-up. The fight is fantastic, utilizing both Falcon's and Ant-Man's power sets well, especially with Lang ending it by straight-up cheating.

Ant-Man is not a driving narrative piece of the MCU, but I feel it's what we need right now. A smaller story, with a few ties to the other, larger pieces and a chance to catch our breath after Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Age of Ultron one right after the other, and Civil War in May of next year. And speaking of Civil War – stay after the credits. You'll see some familiar faces. 

Pictured: Team Ant. Seriously, how does this keep happening? 

Seriously. Go see Ant-Man. It's fun, it's down-to-earth and fantastical at the same time, and it's really good. 

And keep an eye on Hank Pym's key-chain.  

The Devil of Broadcast's Kitchen (spoilers)

No really, there are spoilers here. Turn back if you haven't finished the show.

And so, while men of Iron and Magic Hammers fly in the urban canyons of NYC, we have a war brewing, simmering on a smaller scale in the charmingly-named Hells Kitchen. A place where the colours are washed out, and you wonder why anyone bothers wearing a coat in this heat. A place where the shadows themselves will sneak up and knife you in the ribs for your pocket change, and the little old ladies that have lived there their whole lives are harder men than the street toughs themselves.

Cough

Now that I've got that out of my system. Daredevil, won't you? Netflix's first toe dipped into the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to be quite the success. If you haven't seen it, please stop reading now. I mean it. I won't be held responsible for butt-mad over Spoilers. Stop reading this, go watch 13 hours of Netflix, and come back. I'll wait.

In the meantime, how about that costume?! SPOILERS!!

Ok, all caught up? Phwoar. Wasn't that a ride? When I said simmering and boiling earlier, that wasn't just (corny) noir metaphor. What Netflix has delivered us is essentially a 13-hour origin story movie, not just for DD, but for Kingpin and the rest of the supporting cast. The episodic format really allows Daredevil room to expand on the usual flash and noise of the MCU films, drawing much more detail and nuance out of the characters and the world they inhabit in a way that was really only previously attempted with Winter Soldier, where they started the film assuming you already knew Cap, Widow, and Fury. Most origin stories give you maybe 20 minutes of build-up before we see the hero in the suit, but by saving it until the very last episode it has some real impact. We've really invested in Murdock by this point, seen him built up and torn down, and almost can't help but cheer when we finally see the suit.

There were a few, but very few, things I didn't like. I don't like Foggy, at least not yet. He's grown a little on me, but as I've heard it recently said something growing on you means that you're noticing less the things you hate about it. I didn't like Karen Page at first, either, but that may be less her fault and more Frank Miller's (still can't stop thinking “Daredevil's junkie ex-girlfriend” and worrying about her future, especially given her mentioning moving onto something harder than alcohol). I didn't like the surprise deaths of two of the supporting cast either, as I was really fond of their characters, but then Hell's Kitchen is dark and full of terrors. I should be used to this by now.

I adore Vanessa. Especially her acceptance of Fisk and his reality. I appreciate how this wasn't just Murdock's origin story, how it gave so much time to Fisk as well, showing us his childhood, his daily routine, how he fell apart after one of the aforementioned deaths. Vincent D'Pnofrio deserves some kind of award for his portrayal of Fisk, both for the physicality he brought to the role (how much weight did he put on, anyway?) and the mental portrayal as well. I see very clearly the childhood trauma, as well as a possibility of Fisk residing somewhere on the autism spectrum from D'Onofrio's performance. I dearly hope we see Madame Gao again, as well as seeing where her “true home” is,  it being much further away than China she said mysteriously. I enjoy Rosario Dawson in just about everything she's done (even Josie & The Pussycats), and didn't even peg her as Night Nurse until I'd looked her up later. I hope she shows up again. Stick is gloriously un-PC, perhaps the grouchiest old mentor that ever did mentor.

I mentioned, in hyperbole, that Daredevil has ruined Arrow for me. There is a little truth behind that. Netflix is taking a really dirty, realistic approach to the vigilante hero genre, one that is obviously far at odds with the slick, clean presentation of a CW show. There's a layer of grime on Daredevil that makes it so much more grounded, possibly the most grounded of all the MCU offerings yet, and it shows in everything from the establishing shots to the fight scenes. Shots of the streets of Hells Kitchen are teeming with people. There's garbage stacked against walls. Camera shots are much wider. Fight scenes have people rocked with fatigue and are not the clean, graceful ballets shown in Avengers or Agents of SHIELD. People get seriously hurt, and it wears you out just watching Matt Murdock take a beating just to get back up and take out a room full of thugs.

Ok, for real this time. How badass does he look. 

Ending where we began, the fact that this came out all 13 episodes at once on Netflix, and has pretty much set the internet on fire, shows an interesting development. This is a tight and focused story, and avoids having filler episodes or really even filler scenes, unlike other shows that have abbreviated runs.  This is my first experience with the launch of an internet-only show. I understand House of Cards and Orange is the New Black have come before it, but the idea that a show can drop an entire series at once and cause such an impact is fascinating, and it's got me eagerly anticipating the next MCU show.

...even if it is Jessica Jones.