Tag: Marvel

Spider-Man, and other films, non-MCU

ANOTHER iteration?

The_Amazing_Spider-Man_theatrical_posterI started watching the movies in what was eventually labeled the Marvel Cinematic Universe back when it started in in 2008. Now for those of you NOT seeped in these things, not every Marvel character that appeared in a movie this century is an MCU film.

For convoluted aesthetic and licensing reasons, the films with the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Blade, and Deadpool films, among others, are not part of the canon. The Spider-Man films in 2002/2004/2007 and 2012/2014 are not MCU. But the recent ones with Tom Holland, including Captain America: Civil War and the last two Avengers films, ARE MCU. Got that? There will be a test.

Despite having had collected comic books for over a quarter-century, primarily Marvel products – and I still own some Marvel Masterworks books – I hadn’t watched all that many of the films. Before I tackle the MCU, I thought I’d check to see which ones of the other Marvel films I’ve seen.

Howard the Duck (1986) – the movie was previewed in Albany in a movie theater, sponsored by FantaCo, the comic book store where I worked. I related to the “trapped in a world that he never made” description in the comic book, which also transferred to the film. It was roundly panned, and perhaps deservedly so. Yet I had an odd fondness for it.

Fantastic Four (1994 – unreleased) – at some point in the 2010s I saw this, possibly on YouTube. It was not very good. In fact, it was so awful, it was mildly enjoyable.

Friendly, neighborhood…

Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man 2 (2004) . These are the ones starring Tobey Maguire. I saw the first one in a cinema, the second at a resort in the Berkshires. Never saw the third one. I liked the first two enough to get them on DVD.

X2 (2003) – I watched in a hotel in Oneonta on New Year’s Eve many years back. Maybe because I didn’t see the first X-Men film, it didn’t make as much sense as I thought it should.

Fantastic Four (2005) – I thought Michael Chiklis was actually quite good in this. That is high praise since he was all but unrecognizable as The Thing. The rest of the story, as I recall, was pretty pedestrian. That’s necessary, I suppose for an introductory piece, but still… Never saw the follow-up.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) – for reasons I’ll explain soon, I have been watching a LOT of MCU movies this summer. So in early July 2020, I needed a palate cleanser before starting on Avengers: Infinity War.

Why did we need ANOTHER iteration of the web-slinger? I say that as someone whose favorite Marvel character is Peter Parker, the awkward young man with a secret.

Maybe we didn’t. But I felt Andrew Garfield was a credible Peter. And since the earlier Sam Raimi stories focused on his relationship with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), it seemed natural that the series deal with his first love, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone). Her internship with Osgood Corp may have been a bit too coincidental for my taste.

Still, I appreciated their relationship. Her father, the cop (Denis Leary) felt like a real dad, as did Peter’s uncle Ben (Martin Sheen). Aunt May (Sally Field) fretted a lot. If the villain was more tortured soul than actually evil (Rhys Ifans as Curt Connor/the Lizard), that would be in keeping with the comic book narrative.

Ultimately, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the films I had seen a decade and a half earlier. Still, it was time well-spent. I’m still warming up to the new Spider-Man. But that’s a story for another time.

Stan Lee: Marvel’s misunderstood showman

Fred Hembeck on Stan Lee (2009): “The man is Fantastic, Amazing, and Incredible, with the Uncanny ability to keep us in Suspense, all the while Astonishing us–even if he is a bit Strange at times!”

Stan LeeBy the time I started reading comic books in the early 1970s, Stan Lee had just recently stopped scripting the bulk of the Marvel titles. He had ceded the title of editor-in-chief in 1972 to Roy Thomas, and other writers were joining the fold.

But Lee, born Stanley Martin Lieber, was listed as publisher and his name was still prominent in every issue: “Stan Lee Presents” and his chatty Stan’s Soapbox. Then I started reading the back issues of the Amazing Spider-Man, via the reprint title Marvel Tales, drawn by Steve Ditko. This inevitably brought me to reading other 1960s works, mostly Lee/Jack Kirby material.

The Hollywood Reporter noted: “Beginning in the 1960s, the irrepressible and feisty Lee punched up his Marvel superheroes with personality, not just power. Until then, comic book headliners like those of DC Comics were square and well-adjusted, but his heroes had human foibles and hang-ups… The evildoers were a mess of psychological complexity.”

As I was learning about the Marvel Universe, I picked up The Origins of Marvel Comics, a book by Stan Lee which Alan David Doane lovingly wrote about. And I got Son of Origins and several other books.

Larry Wilson, who owned a comic book store rival of FantaCo in Albany, noted that “he taught me history, irony, bravery, how to be heroic, fairness, and humility. He gave hope to the downtrodden and told us that good defeats evil, racism is vile, and we all have a role to play in the cause of justice.”

Christopher Allen wrote: “I can’t begin to calculate his impact on me as not just a lover of comics but of reading, of words, and how he affected how I saw the world and the people in it, how even heroes have problems, how everyone deserves respect, and how we are responsible for using our abilities to try to make the world a little better for others.”

Chuck Rozanski, President of Mile High Comics wrote about being “a scared 10 year-old kid hiding in his room from an abusive father in 1965 who found hope and strength through Stan’s awesome early Spider-Man stories…. I took great solace from [Peter Parker’s] struggles to find his place in a hostile world, while still maintaining his decency and never losing his moral compass.

“In many regards, Stan Lee became my surrogate father through the power of his remarkable prose, which still resonates with children (and adults) today. He instilled positive values in me that continue to guide my life, and for that I will be eternally grateful to him.”

Back when my friend Fred Hembeck used to have a daily blog, he always wrote about Stan on December 28, Lee’s birthday. In 2009, wrote: “The man is Fantastic, Amazing, and Incredible, with the Uncanny ability to keep us in Suspense, all the while Astonishing us–even if he is a bit Strange at times!” For an earlier birthday note, see HERE.

John Trumbull collated recollections by people Lee worked with, including Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and many others. Even in his nineties, Stan was the face of Marvel, as his IMDB page makes clear, with dozens of movie appearances, game voiceovers and the like.

Comic book writer Mark Evanier has an interesting perspective. “The trouble with having mixed feelings about someone is that there are those who just want to dwell on the negative ones.”

Also: “Those of you who feel like I do that our friend Jack Kirby was wronged by credits in the past, please remember that Marvel now credits Jack where for decades they did not.” Stan, for his part, was almost always generous in describing Kirby and Ditko’s role in the Marvel method.

I was sadly aware that his last year or so was difficult. “Lee’s wife and partner in nearly everything, Joan Lee, died on July 6, 2017, leaving a void that made her husband… vulnerable to hangers-on who began to surround him.”

The Vanity Fair article, and title, are correct: Stan Lee’s True Legacy Is a Complicated Cosmic Mystery. Ditto the subtitle: “Marvel’s greatest showman was always misunderstood—by those who inflated his importance, and those who dismissed him as a boastful egomaniac.”

Finally, this public service message from Stan. RIP, true believer.
***
Now I Know: When a Court Ruled Whether the X-Men Are Human

Movie review: Ant-Man and the Wasp

As is often the case, a bunch of people left as the first set of credits hit the screen.

ant_man_and_the_waspSo it’s come to this: I’m taking movie advice from the Daughter, because she’s viewing more of the mainstream films a lot sooner than I am. At her suggestion, I went to see Ant-Man and the Wasp at the Regal Theater in Colonie Center, getting there via a combination of bus and bike.

I guess it’s where I see Marvel Universe movies, having experienced Black Panther there three months earlier. But something new; when I buy a ticket, I’m told that I get to pick out my assigned seat. As the guy at the next window said, “Great, I guess.” I suspect it’s a way to try to keep folks from sneaking into another film.

As for Ant-Man and the Wasp, I liked it. It was funny and full of action and misdirection and full of big dollops of humor. The one thing I’d been wondering about, though, came true. There are references to Captain America calling the Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to fight with him, something that took place in a movie I’ve not seen. (No, you don’t need to explain the Sokovia Accords to me, but I shan’t try to lay it out for any of you.) It undoubtedly explains Lang’s soon-to-be-over house arrest.

This lack of information didn’t particularly diminish my enjoyment, but it did remind me how difficult it was back in my comic book selling days for comic book fans to get into a story line because knowledge of a different book was preferable.

Bottom line, near the end of the movie, you have several parties chasing each other: Lang/Wasp- Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly)/Scott’s business partner Luis (Michael Pena) versus Ava the quantumly unstable “ghost” (Hannah John-Kamen) looking for a cure vs. black market dealer Sonny Burch (Walton Groggins) and his associates versus James Woo (Randall Park) and the FBI. It was quite a hoot.

As is often the case, a bunch of people left as the first set of credits hit the screen, missing an important piece of foreshadowing for another MCU flick. The final post-credits scene wasn’t really worth the wait.

The movie also stars Judy Greer as Scott’s ex-wife Maggie, Bobby Cannavale as Maggie’s second husband Jim Paxton and the wonderful Abby Ryder Fortson as Scott and Maggie’s daughter Cassie. Tip ‘T.I.’ Harris and David Dastmalchian are Luis’ colleagues. Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Laurence Fishburne, and Michael Douglas as Dr. Hank Pym.

Is Ant-Man and the Wasp pleasant but non-essential, or is it what one Rotten Tomatoes audience critic a palate cleanser after Avengers: Infinity War, which naturally I have not seen? I enjoyed it for what it was, not what it did or did not represent.

Stan Lee turns 95, true believers

At the 2016 Comic-Con International, Lee introduced his digital graphic novel Stan Lee’s ‘God Woke’.

When I started reading Marvel Comics in the early 1970s, Stan Lee wasn’t writing them anymore. He became the publisher right around that time. When I started looking back at what came out before I started collecting, Stan the Man was in the center of it all.

As most even casual comic readers know, the man born Stanley Lieber co-created the Avengers, Black Panther, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Iron Man, the Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Thor, and the X-Men, among many others in a shared superhero universe.

Moreover, it’s was Stan’s Soapbox which really established the Marvel brand throughout several comic books by various creative teams. He also “addressed issues of discrimination, intolerance, or prejudice.”

Lee took a lot of grief, not entirely of his making, because Marvel, in the main, created him, if not entirely fairly financially, then certainly less badly than Lee’s co-creators, people such as Steve Ditko, and especially the late Jack “King” Kirby. This was particularly egregious because of what was dubbed the Marvel method, as described in the Wikipedia:

“Typically, Lee would brainstorm a story with the artist and then prepare a brief synopsis rather than a full script. Based on the synopsis, the artist would fill the allotted number of pages by determining and drawing the panel-to-panel storytelling. After the artist turned in penciled pages, Lee would write the word balloons and captions, and then oversee the lettering and coloring. In effect, the artists were co-plotters, whose collaborative first drafts Lee built upon.”

This tension has largely dissipated to a great degree when Kirby’s heirs settled with Marvel in 2014, which has meant the artists behind the characters are getting on-screen notice as well as compensation when those films show up in the movies.

And speaking of cinema, Stan Lee has cameo appearances in every single feature film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This means that he has appeared in the movies that have grossed more money than any other actor. More than Harrison Ford or Tom Hanks or Frank Welker or even Marvel movies actor Samuel L. Jackson.

“At the 2016 Comic-Con International, Lee introduced his digital graphic novel Stan Lee’s ‘God Woke’, with text originally written as a poem he presented at Carnegie Hall in 1972. The print-book version won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Outstanding Books of the Year Independent Voice Award.”

Sadly, Joan, Stan’s wife of nearly 70 years died on July 6, 2017 at the age of 95.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ant-Man

ant-manOddly, it was The Wife who said, “We need to see a movie,” before the school year went on for too long, and we were buried in homework hell. Of the three movies playing at the nearby Madison Theatre, we’d seen one film, and I actively didn’t want to see the second (Pixels). The obvious choice was to see Ant-Man.

I had read comic books for a number of years, so I knew that the original Ant-Man was Hank Pym. Of all the early Marvel characters, this one was arguably the most boring. So it was interesting that this version of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) has hidden away for three decades the technology that allowed him to shrink down to the size of an industrious insect.

But now he needs to find someone to put on the suit with the ability to shrink, yet increase in strength. He engages cat burglar-for-a-good-cause Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to pull off a heist that will stop the evil plans of Pym’s former protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). And what side is Pym’s daughter, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), angry about her mother’s mysterious death, really on?

My spouse, who knows next to nothing about the Marvel universe, really liked the film and appreciated the way the various ants behaved. The Daughter was likewise pleased. Neither had ever seen a Marvel movie.

I too was pleased. I found the Lang character interesting and compelling character who loves his young daughter, and is resistant to the lure of another heist until, being unemployable because of his record, his buddies (Michael Peña as Luis, and others) push him into a “sure thing”.

There’s been a lot of analysis in the 80% positive reviews about where this film falls into the Marvel universe, and whether the movie was “big” enough. Not having seen any Marvel movie in three years – STILL haven’t seen the first Avengers film yet – I find the question superfluous. I’m watching THIS movie, and I’m less concerned about where it fits in the big picture.

Others complained that the setup – the initial heist and figuring out the suit – took too long. I SO disagree. It was the struggle that gave the character of Lang some depth. There was plenty of action in the third act.

Both The Wife and I have become fascinated how Bobby Cannavale has evolved from bad guy roles to the dad, or, in this case, the surrogate dad, to Lang’s daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) as well as beau to Scott’s ex, Maggie (Judy Greer).

Early in the credits – so happy to see comic artist Jack Kirby’s name up there, as well as writers Stan Lee and his brother, Larry Lieber. Then there was a tease. But one must wait until the VERY end for a future plot twist.

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