Superman (2025)

Truth, Justice ...and the Puerile Goofiness of the Funny Papers!
 or

"1-A!1-A!1-A!1-A! 1-A!" 

 

So, what does a Superman movie written and directed by James Gunn (The Guardians of the Galaxy, THE Suicide Squad) look like? 

 

Well, it's different. Uncomfortably so. But, that's not necessarily a bad thing. A roller-coaster ride from start to finish, Gunn manages to channel the 'Big Blue Boy Scout" aspects of the character that has always been a part of it—but, without the Hollywood temptations to mock them, contemplating "Bad Superman" or the brooding "misunderstood Christ-like alien" of the past films (complete with a lazily slavish devotion to the 1978 Christopher Reeve film—although this one does have a couple character call-backs from it...and the marchable John Williams theme)—while also dusting off some cliches, tossing others, and embracing some of the bizarre aspects that lie deep in the character-archives of the extended DC Comics Universe.

 

Gunn likes the bizarre. He cherishes it. What others might find childish and puerile, he uses with giddy delight. And Superman (2025) leaps into all that in a single bound. Well, actually, too many bounds to count. It's a dense movie that will leave many in the dust, but doesn't take itself so seriously...or iconically...that some of the details don't matter much. Not when you're dealing with sci-fi tech and concepts that verge into "woo-woo" territory almost constantly. Pocket Universes? Check. Manufactured black holes? Okay. Unexplained and unexplainable kaiju? Sure. Getting insurance for anything in the city of Metropolis? Okay, that one's a bit much, with all the mayhem that's tossed at the beleaguered city every few minutes in this film.

Gunn tosses out the destruction of Krypton—how many times have we seen it?—but keeps the red trunks because...the red trunks embarrassed other film-makers...but embraces the tendency of creating mass-destruction set-pieces. There is a scene deep in the film where Supes and Lois Lane are having a heart to heart, while in the far background, members of the "Justice Gang" are battling a "dimensional imp" with clubs and green-energy baseball bats. It's a risk that the serious conversation will be overwhelmed by the goofy action in the background. But, it's also a salve about things getting too grim 'n gritty...this time.

Who are this "Justice Gang"(not to be confused with the "Justice League")? Well, it's a little "inside baseball", but, here goes—they're Earth Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion)—in the comics, this sector of space has 3—Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), a scientific genius who actually has ethics, and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), whose origin story has had so many complications even DC comics hasn't decided what it is. Anyway, they're a weird choice for a super-team—but, director Gunn likes weird and even preposterous. But, they're in marked contrast to Superman: these guys want action. In an earlier kaiju fight, "The Gang" want to just kill it; Superman wants to put in an Intergalactic Zoo. He's in marked contrast to the "grim n' gritty" and adrenaline-junkies that mark most superhero movies. It's a stark contrast from the Zack Snyder/Christopher Nolan films. But, then, Supes' himself is a stark contrast.

Gunn starts the movie in media res...no back-story, no explosive origin...with Superman suffering "his first defeat", falling into an Antarctic snowscape after being uppercut by "The Hammer of Moravia", a mecha-Hulk villain out of an autocratic country with a history of invading countries. Evidently, it's pay-back for Supes interfering with one of those invasions. He thought it the proverbial "right thing to do," but when interviewed by Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan—she's great!), he is flummoxed when he is accused of an illegal act, not sanctioned by the U.S. government. Politics doesn't play into the Kryptonian's thinking, nor does race, color, or creed...like it has since the character's first publishing in 1938. He has human values, raised by as rural a couple (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell) as you can imagine, but who have the moral fiber and strength to raise a kid who could fry their entire farm with an angry look, But doesn't. More importantly, wouldn't.

Who's behind the daily slings and arrows Superman has to deflect when he could be doing something else? Why, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult, at full arrogance-mode), of course—maybe the movie people haven't read enough Superman comics...he has other enemies, but they seem to be stuck on Luthor the same way the Batman movies are stuck on The Joker—but, he's back to being a scientific genius (albeit a sloppy one) and tech-bro...not a crooked real estate developer this time...who hates the Kryptonian with a passion ("Super...'man'. He's not a man. He's an 'it'. A thing with a cocky grin and a stupid outfit, that's somehow become the focal point of the entire world's conversation."). 

Lex wants the Kryptonian's reputation...and he wants his power. If he can't have them, no one will, so he either wants to tarnish Supes' image...or kill him. Because that's how you climb that ol' megalomaniacal ladder, not by winning hearts and minds, but by making people lose theirs.

So, though it may still a very fantastical comic-book world in this one, it sure echoes our times...the way the comics version of Superman periodically does since his debut in 1938. Its a different world, where anybody could use their phones to film you changing clothes in a phone booth (if there WERE phone booths, and isn't that ironic?), where information, good, bad or indifferent, is faster than a speeding bullet. Where anybody with a grudge or a cause can, at the very least, bloviate like they're doing a TED talk. And lie through their teeth like they were telling Truth. More people have more access to the power of technology, but use it in the worst ways. 

What differentiates Gunn's Superman from all the iterations that have come before is that he's a good guy despite the "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." He knows he's an alien, but when given the old Nature versus Nurture question, he lands with a thud on the latter. He assimilates, and tries to be 110% human to compensate. He doesn't mope, he doesn't question his fate, he's not tempted to abuse his power or even be snarky about it. It's the old comic-book Superman, but without Warner Brothers messing with it to make the character "more hip" for "modern" audiences. Gunn keeps the character pure, but surrounds him with the goofy, the childish, the arrogant, and the just plain bad. To mark the contrast.

Gunn leans into the humanity, but an outsider's view of it, seeing the good, the hope, the striving, and the yearning to be free and wanting to be that. I see an awful lot of internet blather about moments of "cringe" in this Superman, particularly this speech: 

That is where you've always been wrong about me, Lex. I am as human as anyone. I love, I-I get scared. I wake up every morning, and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I try to make the best choices that I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human, and that's my greatest strength. And someday, I hope, for the sake of the world, you understand that it's yours too.

Good Lord. Maybe it's "cringe" because he admits he makes mistakes, but we could use a lot more of that these days, but that would take character, humility, honesty, and a whole lot of other things missing in this PR-saturated spin-zone we call a world.

For a time now, I've been grousing (and boring friends) about certain notable politicians and corporate Masters of the Universe, by describing each one as an "Anti-Superman." Why? Superman (so the old TV show announced) "fights a never-ending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way." But, now its an every-day, non-prosecuted occurrence 180° in the other direction with these guys. There's no relationship with Truth (which has never been so degraded and discarded), Justice, which is consistently delayed and dismissed...and as for The American Way? It's the way of the thug-gangster, that icon of American pop-culture (until it affects us personally). 

And common decency is becoming more and more uncommon.

 

No wonder the last Superman movies were so grim, gritty and stewed in their own existential juices so much. We don't need that kind of inspiration. 

We need this Superman. A Superman who can push against a falling skyscraper, but also push against the inexorable fall of civilized behavior or civilization itself, and not break a sweat or crack with angst. And leads...by example...for the good. The common good.

We need this Superman now.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

"The (10th) Greatest Marvel Film Since Avengers: Endgame!"

or

"The Ballad of Rocket Raccoon"

 

I notice an up-tick in the number of people who looked at my review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I've long since stopped trying to figure out the patterns of what people are looking at, but I suppose it had something to do withe the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3—the movie that James Gunn was working on when he got hired as the High Evolutionary of the DC Movie Universe.

But, there was no incentive to see it. I haven't watched the last couple of Marvel movies, as they've been sputtering as far as quality, depending on call-backs, cameos, or with no clear sense of where things are going—other than contracts need to be fulfilled, promises made must be delivered on, and a general running-in-place while Kevin Feige tries to come up with a follow-up to the colossal success that was the first batch of Marvel movies. It seemed like, at those times, they were taking chances, swinging for the fences, and hitting home-tuns. Now, it seems they're just counting the receipts, waiting for the Next Big Thing to happen.

 

Trouble is the fan-base is lying in wait. Disappointments among the "TrueFans" may collapse the enterprise like a stack of back-issues no one's bothered to box.

 

Still, folks DID look at the review. I made a point to see it. 

How is it? A pretty good send-off, actually, while being something different. It's an origin story of sorts—of how Rocket the Raccoon (voiced again by Bradley Cooper) came to be a wise-cracking, take-no-prisoners, but still fuzzy-funny animal came to be, mostly told in flash-back, after he is left near-death after an attack on Guardians of the Galaxy HQ (Planet Knowhere) by Adam Warlock (Will Poulter). The super-powered Warlock is on a mission to steal the mercurial mammal for his mother, Queen Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) of the Sovereigns at the behest of The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), a sort of gene-split Dr. Mengele/Dr. Moreau of Space, who's on a mission to create the perfect utopia based on his manipulating evolutionary traits.

Yeah, that trick NEVER works, but His Highness (Evolutionarily) wants Rocket—or as he designates him, Test Subject "89P13"—back, as the little varmint was the only test subject of his that displayed original thought, and may be the key to achieving his perfect utopia. Too bad that the way to get him back puts him in a coma.

The Guardians band together to try to save Rocket's life, but discover that he has an implanted kill-switch on his heart that will explode him if they trying any extraordinary efforts to save him. But, Peter "The Star-Lord" Quill (Chris Pratt), still nursing a broken heart after losing his lost love Gamora (Zoe Saldana) during the events of "The Blip"—then getting back an earlier version of her that can't stand him—determines that he's going to find the code to disable the kill-switch and save his little bandit-buddy, even if he has to travel the Galaxy, kill a bunch of multi-legged creatures and even *gulp* face his ex-girl-friend to do it.

And so, they do, over 2½ hours (which feels it, probably due to some rocky transitions that director Gunn has trouble with), meeting new friends and old friends of Gunn's in new roles (Nathan Fillion, anyone?), squeezing in Sylvester Stallone (the guy cannot handle tech-talk), Liz Debicki, and even an appearance by Howard the Duck (voiced by Seth Green, nice), and actually providing "I'm worth-being-here" arcs to Mantis (Pom Klementief) and Kraglin (Sean Gunn). Plus, we get another example of why Karen Gillan may be the most unsung-acting hero in the MCU and a "giving it 100%" performance by Pratt. Throw in a talking space-dog (voiced by Maria Bakalova—"He just called me 'a BAD DOG!'") and you have a vast cornucopia of cutesiness mixed in with Gunn's "ick" factor. Call it "Anthropro-Marvel"—the place where the studio can really get silly (even by comic-book standards).*

Take, for example, the look of the High Evolutionary's Orgosphere—an organic planet made out of meat—which is pure 20th Century Fox sci-fi tacky, ala Fantastic Voyage or Barbarella. It has the look of spareness, but the detail of something well-considered, rather than what the budget could spare. And one just knows, going along that one is missing a gazillion references stuffed into the thing with minor characters and such, but, frankly, there's enough for the non-Marvel Zombie to appreciate.

At the same time, there's a nice little message about universality and worth, where one's lab-rat could just be worth saving if only they were noticed. It's an extension of the original GotG movie, where everyone was, basically, a cast-off, but were worth more than the sum of their parts put together. Here, no one's a loser, except for the one's who never would have suspected they were in the first place. And, once again, it shows that although Gunn will always make films that feel tough-as-nails-cynical, they still have a core of sentimentality to them that puts them a notch above the usual super-hero fare.

 

It's a good movie for the series to go out on (if, indeed, it ends).

* Although judging by the Marvels trailer, they're not going to stop there.

The Suicide Squad

Task Force "Ecch!"

or

"Here's Hoping I See You in 3 Hours"

 

David Ayer's Suicide Squad was a sad affair. The trailers looked great, and the fan response was so positive to them that the Warner Brothers team took the movie away from Ayer and tapped the trailer team to re-cut it. There may have been two cuts and some "genius" mixed and matched, but the sum total was not as lively as it should have been, and a lot less anarchic as it was called out to be. It was glum with the sole high point being the introduction to Margot Robbie's version of Harley Quinn.

 

So, now, here's the 2.0 version, with a "The" adjective inserted to tell them apart (the next "Batman" film is "The" Batman), and the Warner Bro's do what they usually do when they think one of their tent-poles is in trouble—hire a director with ties to Marvel to re-do it (because that's worked so well in the past!). In this case, it's Troma director James Gunn, who directed the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films for Marvel, and got fired by Disney for some "bad tweets" he'd made in the past. While Disney got their mouse-knickers in a bunch, Warner grabbed him for the next "Suicide Squad" before Disney/Marvel turned tail and asked him to come back.

It was Warner's gain. Gunn's "take" on "Task Force X" "works".

There isn't a lot of set-up. We're are introduced to the super-villain Savant (Gunn crony Michael Rooker), sent to Belle Reve prison for blackmail. He has been made a deal by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, national treasure and who is put to good use here) to become part of "Task Force X"—The Suicide Squad. An explosive charge is put in his neck (amusingly, played by the comics' creator James Ostrander) and is told that if he deviates from his mission that the device will be detonated, killing him instantly, but if the mission is accomplished and he survives, ten years will be taken off his sentence.

 

He is put on a plane to the South American Island of Corto Maltese, which has just had it's American-friendly government toppled by a new regime of cut-throats. The team consists of Savant, Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman from the original film), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie, ditto), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney, ditto-ditto) as well as new members Blackguard (Peter Davidson), Javelin (Flula Borg), an alien warlord called Mongal (Mayling Ng), TDK ("don't ask" and played by Nathan Fillion) and Weasel (Sean Gunn). Things do not go well once they make land-fall as their landing has been leaked to military on the island. As some of the posters say "Don't get too attached." More on this section later.

That assault was just a diversion; another team, comprising of Bloodsport (Idris Elba—he's great in this!), Peacemaker (Jon Cena), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), King Shark (Steve Agee and voiced by Sylvester Stallone), and The Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchion) land elsewhere and have a considerably easier time of it. How these guys got mixed up in this is done with a flashback as their mission is to infiltrate the capital and destroy all vestiges of what is called "Operation: Starfish," a super-secret project that has been under wraps for years and is in danger of being misused by the current junta. Oh, and their mission gets revised to also rescue Flag and Harley, who have gone missing.

Sounds simple enough, but there's still quite a few characters to juggle, and unlike Ayer, who gave back-stories to Quinn and Deadshot—and that's about it—Gunn manages to weave back-story in without having to build a whole new sequence around it, interrupting the story-flow. Oh, he jumps around in time a bit, but in the service of planning a surprise with a well-timed "gotcha" at moments of extreme duress for the team. "How will they get out of this one?" Well, just wait, we've got some 'splainin' to do.

Now, those who've seen the Marvel "Guardians" movies will be surprised at the difference between a "PG-13" James Gunn movie and a Hard-"R" James Gunn movie. Those who remember his unrated comics spoof, Super, will be more prepared. In the battle sequences, faces get blown off, people are ripped to shreds, blood spurts copiously, bodies set aflame, and limbs come off—intentionally and unintentionally—in a way that feels more like a visit to a triage unit than it does a comic-book fight. At one point (when Harley Quinn is single-handedly making an escape from the island El Presidente's stronghold) the blood-splatter is replaced by flower-petals and chirping birds, which can be explained away that she's crazy, but more probably it's to avoid an "X"-rating. 

And it's persistent. Parents should be warned: "It's a super-hero movie" is not an excuse and taking your kids to this is like taking them to Taxi Driver.

That being said, the movie also goes out of its way to be goofy. Gunn has picked comic-book characters whose power ratings are very low in the D&D deck—"Polka-Dot Man?" "The Disconnected Kid?" "Ratcatcher 2?" "Weasel?"—but very high in the disposability category. That also includes two characters we meet later: "The Thinker" (played by an emaciated—but no less sharp—Peter Capaldi), and the movie's "Big Bad," one of the original villains of DC's "silver age"—appearing in the first appearance of The Justice League—"Starro, the Conqueror."

Yes, folks, he's a giant starfish. But, an intergalactic giant starfish. (Okay, that's still not impressive...) An intergalactic giant star-fish, who can squirt little starfish that will latch onto your face and take over your mind (except in the movie, they kill people dead and re-animate them as zombies). Well, yeah, it's still silly as all Hell, but...ya know...canon, copyrighted, merchandisable DC property...all of that.

A starfish throws a shark into a building. Yeah, tell me you've seen that before...

 
Okay, it's still silly as all Hell—especially when Gunn has stuck a google-eye rolling around in the middle of it—but, for me, it's a little bit of the charm. I liked the Pacific Rim movies, even though my rational brain told me that giant killer robots are a really ungainly system of defense (like the AT-AT's in the "Star Wars" movies, "just go for the legs and let gravity sort it out"), but it's still something of a hoot to see. And look, you can go as grim and gritty as you want to in the quest to make your movie "bad-ass," but in the end it's still a comic book movie. Real junta's flood countries with cocaine or hack computer clouds, they don't launch giant starfish (although I bet they would if they could).

What I'm saying is the goofiness off-sets the carnage, crossing that bridge between tension and comedy, which, although I say it's a bridge it is actually more of a tightrope. The greater the tension, the greater the release, whether it be shock or laughter. Gunn has always had that sensibility, but the allowance to go "R" just gives him permission to push the boundaries, not unlike the original Deadpool (but without the fourth-wall breaking "meta" quality that quickly wears out its welcome). It's fast, it's funny, and it's more than competent. Recently, I've been decrying the loose/lame action scenes these movies have been sporting, but Gunn lets you know where people are, how they got there, and what the big picture perspective of those sequences are. With so many characters that takes some doing.

Casting helps that process a lot. Fortunately, the film is chock-full of good actors who can do the drama and the comedy. Davis, Robbie and, surprisingly, Kinnaman pull this off amazingly well. But, Idris Elba comes off with one of the best star-turns he's ever done, Cena shows a flair for straight-faced comedy, Melchior becomes the heart and soul of the movie, and Dastmalchion takes a lame part and turns it to an advantage. You care if these guys make it through the movie, and, as it lives up to the title and original concept, that is never a sure-thing.

 

It's a savage/silly romp, not afraid of making fun of and celebrating the silliness of the four-color world.

Serenity

Written at the time of the film's release...

Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005) Enjoyable, if violent, genre-bendin' space-farin' Western spinning off from the one season wonder "Firefly." But Serenity (that's the name of the ship) passes the crucial test of movies that make the leap from small to big screen—you don't need to have seen the series to "get" the concept and enjoy the film (probably because the concepts are so familiar). Sharply written and directed by series creator Whedon, and played by the regular cast, it boasts an intensely underplaying Chiwetel Ejiofor as a government operative who ritualistically silences outliers.

And outliers are exactly what the crew of the "Firefly"-class "Serenity" is comprised of; pirates, soldiers of fortune, outlaws, the scrappy veterans of the Galaxy's last civil war, who bounce from system to system dodging government entanglements and making a living by lying, cheating and stealing. Plus, they do good while doing bad.

The conceit of staging a Western in the infinitely wide-open spaces isn't new. "Star Trek" was sold to NBC as being "Wagon Train to the Stars"--not exactly true, but the suits got the point, "Star Wars" used Han Solo as a space cowboy ala Hondo (which Chewbacca as his faithful dog...or horse), and the "Wars" rip-off Battle Beyond the Stars was "The Magnificent 7 in Space." There isn't that much of a light-speed leap from horse-opera to space-opera. After all, the umbrella-genres of westerns and sci-fi can encompass all sorts of story-themes from Shakespeare to cleverly disguised issues of the day.

The plot for Serenity back-tracks a bit* to catch movie-goers up with the story of fugitives River Tam (Summer Glau) and her doctor-brother Simon (Sean Maher) and then resolves the conflicts their paid passage aboard Captain Mal Reynolds' (Nathan Fillion) ship of fools has created, and turns River from loose cannon on deck to a reliable asset. Along the way the crew stumbles on a gone-wrong planet-wide government experiment being kept under wraps. And since they're being pursued by "the op," anyway, they "aim to misbehave."

The characters are broadly drawn, easily discerned, and everyone is given significant plot-time (with the exception of Morena Baccarin's space-zen-hooker Inara, whose role was edited for time). Though not a success at the box office, it did spur interest in the series and kicked its box-set collection into hyper-drive. Though Whedon constantly discounts it, the crew of "Serenity" may fly again.

2020 aside: I'd still like to see it, as the film inspired a deep-dive into the TV series for me, although getting Fillion back would be a task—not to mention writer-director Whedon. And, given how everybody's aged a bit, it's going to have to surmount the "Star Trek movie-issue" of providing a sufficient reason for everybody getting back together, assuming that characters have gone separate ways and forged bonds elsewhere. Still, it was Whedon working on something he WANTED to work on and that usually entails his best work. I think a lot of it has to do with that I became a fan after it died...All that there was had already been done. And it was finite.

Maybe it's best to move on. 

* In a film-starting series of illusions that nest together like Matryoshka dolls.

Monsters University

Dan Scanlon did a great job directing Onward. This was his his previous Pixar release. 

Written at the time of the film's matriculation.

Crossing the Line
or
Big Monsters on Campus

They're ba-ack. The monsters who regularly hide in your childhood closets to go bump in the night have returned. And the whole premise of Monsters University is to show how Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James Sullivan (John Goodman) first bumped into each other in the first place. It was a given in the first film (and one of its unstated charms) that a one-eyed puke-green bi-ped and a shaggy polka-dotted blue-green beast became friends in the first place. M.U. feels the need to explain this monstrously odd couple in the first place. You just know that at some story-meeting, the Pixar geeks leaned back and said "they probably met in college."

Which leads to the question, what sort of college would that be? Knowing that we, as an audience, had already suffered through the entire course-load at Hogwarts, M.U. was a good bet for movie-goers. There are all sorts of easy ironies for a place of learning that specializes in scaring the tar out of you (just as there was in the "Potter" series), and the ways that faculty and staff can exert their own forms of terror can make for a fairly seamless story-line (Helen Mirren is brought in—seemingly the only Britisher not to appear in the "Potter" movies—as the dragony dean of studies). 

The writers have a good time expanding on the differences between Mike and Sully. Mike has all the scary potential of a rubber ball, and his struggles through the "scare" curriculum makes him more of an over-achiever than he already is (one can easily see him pulling one-nighter's until his one eye is blood-shot, but they don't go there). Sully has it easy—he's a legacy student and doesn't put much effort into it, until his own back is against the wall.  Both are campus mis-fits of a sort; they can't get into the fraternity lorded over by Johnny Worthington (Nathan Fillion) and can only get into the scary "animal house" of losers that are the nerds on campus. Once all this is established, the story writes itself, as if by rote...or by script-mill.

Ever taught at a University? It looks kinda like this.

And that's the problem with Monsters University. The basic concept does some stretching, but then it's "pixilate by the numbers." Everything looks great-nobody makes a movie look as good as Pixar, whether it's a natural setting as in their Brave, or the unnatural one here, and the nuances of character draw from classic animation as well as a few wrinkles that Pixar tosses in. But the studio's sequels (excepting the "Toy Story" series) have a sameness that feels like coasting, as opposed to the daring ideas like Ratatouille and Up. The best of the Pixar films expand the horizons and stretch the form. One like this one are more insular and shrink the potential and the possibilities. At least it's better than Cars 2, which, basically, ran around in circles, as race-cars are wont to do.

The preview for the next Disney factory movie shows it's about airplanes. *Sigh* It does not bode well.

One of the little details that makes me love Pixar:
A "traditional" styled map of Monsters U.