Marvel Movie Review: The Punisher - One Last Kill [2026]

The Punisher: One Last Kill

This one is a 'Marvel presents' feature that is meant to bridge the gap between Daredevil: Born Again's first season and Spider-Man: Brand New Day*, because the Punisher appears in one, and then in the next, completely skipping out on all the crisis happening in Daredevil's second season. 

*I actually have Brand New Day reviewed maybe a month or so after its release, but the file actually got corrupted and I haven't had the energy to redo it.  both it and VisionQuest reviews should start hopefully in late November / early December.

And... well, you're not getting much in terms of answers beyond a vague handwave of what he is doing. Which is a bit annoying for people who want more internationality between Marvel projects, but especially since Jon Bernthal's Punisher is easily one of the best things about Daredevil: Born Again and the Netflix-originated side of the MCU in general. 

Running just shy of an hour, The Punisher: One Last Kill does take its time to build up to the gratuitous gore and violence that you'd expect from an R-rated Punisher feature. And don't get me wrong, I am here for all the violence and action and gore in a Punisher flick. I'm happy about that, and for the fifteen to twenty minutes or so when Frank Castle finally stops moping, gets into full Punisher mode and start blasting, it was fun. 

The buildup to it is... a bit odd, and suspect. Jon Bernthal is a great actor, of course, but it is really strange. The movie shows Frank breaking down, but seem quite intent on pushing and making certain scenes feel like non-sequiturs if you haven't watched the Netflix shows. Moments with Frank's daughter could be handwaved as being 'universally' understandable, but the 'one penny, two penny' references, the sudden cameo of the ghosts of Curtis Hoyle and the hallucination of Karen Page, are all brought up... while nothing is mentioned about the AVTF and of Frank's escape from the AVTF compound. It feels just odd, coming straight to Frank being morose, suicidal, and ready to end everything from his crusade to his life. 

The plot is simple, of course. Frank almost gives up, doesn't, and one survivor of his old massacres from The Punisher's first season, Ma Gnucci, puts up a massive contract that sends a lot of the assholes living in the shithole part of town that Frank has found himself in. Frank initially doesn't care, but when his neighbours and the local shopkeepers -- particularly those with children -- get threatened, Frank finds the Punisher within himself. He goes around shooting and killing everyone, ultimately chooses to save people than to end Ma Gnucci, and ends the movie in the skull suit again. I just described the 45 minutes of the movie. The Gnucci plot is paper-thin, and honestly isn't quite resolved so much as they ran out of extras for Frank Castle to murder. 

It's just that... it's really not that much substance. The acting is great when Jon gets to act, and the action is pretty cool for what it is, but ultimately the movie is just a bit of a slog to get through. Now I appreciate that this is one of the few times that the MCU has experimented with pathos towards how horrible the world is and there is no optimism beyond, well, punishing the criminals. It's just not the most interesting in terms of either characterization or plot. For as well-done that Frank's breakdown was acted out, the buildup was lacking and if we're being honest it's not nothing we haven't seen before in the Netflix show or even the Born Again follow-up. 

With almost 20 minutes to build up to the non-stop action that caps off the second half of the movie, it is frankly quite surprising how little content we get. There are some attempts at trying to poke at some themes, at how Ma Gnucci's loss might parallel Frank's, or something about the mistreatment of veterans, but the plot threads are more or less introduced and not really brought up beyond that. 

I appreciate the effort, and I did enjoy the action, but this honestly isn't something I'm likely to revisit or really even recommend since other than the action scene there isn't much to it. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Gnucci crime family actually appeared among Frank's victims in episode 1 of The Punisher, season 1, but the matriarch of the family (who was the main antagonist in the comics) was conspicuously missing. 
• Frank's ally Curtis Hoyle was last seen in Netflix's The Punisher season 2, still alive on the last reckoning. Frank's family and the gravesite; the last argument Frank had with his daughter Lisa, and the One-Penny-Two-Penny madness mantra were all introduced in The Punisher. 
• While only named 'Barry' on-screen once, Ma Gnucci's bodyguard was identified by producers as being short for Barracuda, one of Punisher's major antagonists in the MAX continuity. 

Movie Review -- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse [2023]

I put this off for quite some time, didn't I? I actually wrote this review all the way back in 2023 when I watched it! Time flies!

I think one of the major reasons was the huge 'easter eggs corner', and suffice to say that the entire movie is a massive easter egg to the various Spider-Men across the multiverse. It was a delight to research them, but it was a pain to write here. And since it's been a while, I'm going to be a lot more succinct in this review than my normal fare.

But as a follow-up to the excellent Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse puts Miles in an interesting situation. Or rather, puts Miles and his newfound spider-verse allies in an interesting situation. Handling the multiverse with much better grace and continuity than the actual live-action movies, we start the movie off showing Spider-Gwen's Earth-65. Earth-65 is rendered beautifully with an almost watercolor-like art style, which clashes wildly when an alternate-universe Reinaissance-art-themed Vulture comes in, followed up by the louder CGI-artstyle Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O'hara. 

We don't learn it until a bit later, 2099 / Miguel is the leader of a multiversal group of spider-people... and he does feel heroic and honestly would be heroic in any other circumstance. 

Gwen, meanwhile, goes through a bit of a crisis with her own family particularly with her own dad, the police chief, who is staunchly anti-Spider-Woman. With Gwen being unmasked during the fight in front of her father, she elects to jump into the wacky world of this 'nexus' world with Miguel and a different Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew (who really doesn't do much in this movie). 

We cut back to Earth-1610, where Miles is. Miles has been trapped in a similar situation, hiding his dual life with his parents, having trouble in school, beating up supervillains in a montage... typical spider-hero stuff. This comes to a head when he royally screws up bringing a cake to his father Jeff's promotion to police captain, leading to a fair bit of conflict with his parents. Also, while doing all of this, Miles beats up and humiliates (not to badly, to his credit) a supervillain called the Spot, an ex-Alchemax scientist whose body was mutated during the big multiverse explosion in Into the Spider-Verse, giving him portal creation powers. 

The movie does a great job portraying Spot both with the voice-acting, the script and the animation of having him be an ineffective joke villain during the first fight with Miles, with many Looney Tunes style shenanigans... but while Miles is dealing with his family life, the Spot falls into a strange void at the center of different realities, and begins using his powers to its maximum potential.  

This leads to a crisis that, unknown to Miles, gets the attention of the multiversal spider-police. Gwen arrives at Miles' universe and we get a lot of nice moments where the two of them get a lot of cute, sweet moments. There is a bit of tension, however, as Miles has been separated from the rest of the multiverse and even trying to dedicate his whole career to creating a multiversal portal just for the chance to see Gwen again. Meanwhile, Gwen is evasive and hides the existence of the spider-police-gang from Miles, and of her mission to take down the Spot. 

Things go awry, the Spot teleports away to another universe, and Miles ends up following Gwen to the next universe. And despite the movie having lots of new characters, the fact that they are all variations of the 'bitten by spider, spider powers, dead uncle, great power great responsibility, there's maybe one gimmick' storyline that was parodied in Into the Spider-Verse allows us to skip through a lot of the power-establishing and backstory establishing. 

Earth-50101 is home to Spider-Man India, Pavitr Prabhakar, who is super-good and super-awesome and the source of some fun jokes. Great music and animation style here, too; and as Miles, Gwen and Pavitr chase down the Spot, they would later be joined by Spider-Punk, Hobie Brown -- who is animated in an interesting UK-style newspaper-y style. I'm not good at describing these things. Hobie is much more cynical, is cooler than Miles in different ways. 

The four of them end up saving people... but during the fight, police inspector Singh -- father of Pavitr's love interest -- nearly gets killed by debris of the collider. Miles has had weird visions when fighting the Spot, and being forewarned of that, zips in and helps rescue inspector Singh. The Spot escapes... and the world suddenly begins to collapse, until even more spider-people arrive to contain it. 

This leads Miles, Gwen and their new friends to arrive in Earth-928, Nueva York, which is the base of the multiversal spider-people, with dozens and dozens and dozens of cameos. Including the return of Miles' mentor from the first movie, Peter B. Parker and his adorable child May. Turns out that ease in understanding Spider-people 'tropes' extends to another thing... Canon Events. Which sounds cheeky, but is the exact kind of multiversal plot device that works in a story like this. A dour and angry Miguel explains that one such Canon Event is the death of a mentor-like police captain close to that universe's Spider-Man. 

One such canon event? The death of a police captain close to Spider-Man. And that cannot be disrupted. Miguel is adamant about this, and has the sense of an old warrior too grizzled, having sacrificed too much to compromise or deal with the more naive arguments of the naive Miles. Miguel then tells Miles that disrupting the Canon Events of stories will cause the stories to collapse... as almost happened to Pavitr's world, and implied to have happened and claimed the lives of Miguel's family. 

Having seen visions of the Spot becoming uber-powerful and wreaking havoc in his home dimension, including killing his dad Jeff... Miles is understandably upsent and wants to go back and do something to warn and/or rescue his father. Miguel and his loyalists imprison Miles to stop him from interfering with another Canon Event. 

And Miles... he hasn't really had a good impression of the spider-people, particularly from the people he thought he was friends with. Gwen kept the existence of the multiversal spiders away from Miles for admittedly emotional reasons, and Peter B. is sympathetic and conflicted but ultimately doesn't seem willing to rock the boat. With so many information withheld from him while every other spider-person seem to have been recruited into the Spider-Army, Miles snaps and decides to rebel. 

Thankfully for Miles, Spider-Punk, who has been making vague anarchist and anti-authoritarian comments all movie long, ends up being his surprising ally. Spider-Punk springs Miles from prison, and we get a very thrilling, very fun sequence as Miles flees and fights through dozens and dozens of various spider-people. We get an emotional confrontation with Peter B, we get some fun action scenes with random concepts like a cowboy Spider-Man, or the 60's cartoon Spider-Man and his limited animations, a Spider-Cat, a Spider-T-Rex, and more. 

All this culminates with the fight against Miguel (and the way the show animates Miguel's 'vampire-like' movements and the neon lines of his suit is probably my favourite visual effect in this movie). Miguel would reveal that Miles was never supposed to become Spider-Man, that the spider that bit him came from another universe of Earth-42... a universe that is now bereft of Spider-Man because the spider came to Miles's world. This marks Miles as an anomaly... but again, Miles says 'screw you' to that, tricks Miguel and the majority of his army on a wild goose chase before activating a brand-new stealth ability in the climax. 

The final arc of the movie is an interesting one. Miles manages to befriend one of the other minor spiders (Spider-Byte), and escape to what seems to be his own universe. After the confrontation, Gwen and Miguel get into an argument and Gwen gets ejected back to her own universe... then sends out his own hit-squad of Spiders to hunt down Miles. 

This sets up a nice little coda for Gwen's story, as Gwen reconciles with her father George. It's revealed that part of rather than struggle with duty and family, George has resigned from the force instead of arresting Gwen. With that little plotline resolved, Gwen gets a package from Spider-Punk -- a multiversal portal of her own. She recruits Peter B (who gets talked into it in a short but sweet scene with his Mary Jane) and a bunch of others to support Miles. This forms the final scene as they go and rescue miles, with Gwen, Peter B, Pavitr and Hobie from this movie joining up with the other three heroes from Into the Spider-Verse -- Noir, Peni and Ham -- to rescue Miles. 

And as Miles swings through what initially seemed to be his universe, to stop the Spot and save his family, he goes back to his house and reveals his secret identity to his mother... who is confused. Not because he's Spider-Man, no, but because she doesn't know what Miles is talking about. Uncle 'Prowler' Aaron, who should be dead, also shows up...  and ends up restraining Miles. Miles realizes -- and is confirmed when he glitches out due to the lack of the multiversal-anchor wristwatch plot device -- that he hasn't actually returned to Earth-1610, but to Earth-42. Here, Jeff is dead, Aaron is alive, and this universe's Miles is the Prowler. Cliffhanger! 

And honestly, it is surprising how coherent this movie is, even as I write down the plot. Relying on common tropes throughout spider-stories and superhero stories itself is a nice crutch, but it would be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the easter egg alone is enough for the audience, something that Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness arguably failed to do since their incarnation of the Fantastic Four, X-Men, etc are just there for a wink-wink nod and there's no real stakes or gravitas when they get killed. Here, the individual Spider-variants are properly introduced even if it's quite simple, and it is clear which are just one-scene jokes and which are meant to be a bit more impactful in the future. 

More importantly, the focus on Miles and Gwen is great. Miles moreso than Gwen, but the focus on story, characterization, and Miles constantly struggling with his identity and belonging is shown very strongly in this movie. Gwen gets a bit less screentime and ergo less focus, but even her little story arc about choosing loyalty and secrecy is quite well done. Miguel is a nice antagonist that fits 'you can understand where he's coming from' better than others like Thanos. And Peter B, Hobie, Pavitr, Spot and Papa Jeff round out the main cast rather nicely. It's also a visual treat to watch. 

Now we're just waiting for them to finally cook and finalize the final part of this trilogy!

Movie Review - Joker: Folie a Deux

Joker: Folie a Deux (2024)

In the midst of the change in public attitude towards superhero movies -- and the extremely valid point of a 'superhero movie fatigue', various TV shows and movies that attempt to swap the formulaic action movies of the media juggernauts that are DC and Marvel have shown up a lot. And a lot of them were received well for bending the genre in new and surprising ways. We've got actual deconstructions like Invincible or The Boys, we've got attempts at genre fiction like Werewolf By Night or Runaways... and most famously, Joker. The original Joker, while deviating significantly from its source material, was still at heart a Batman/Joker story. It was focused more on the character's transformation and the mindscape of a mentally-unwell man oppressed by the system and society around it, a character-performance-driven show that still, at its core, worked as a superhero movie. 

Joker: Folie a Deux is not. It's an insane mess of a movie, where it can't really decide what it wants to be. It's most famously derided for being a musical, yes. But as a fan of the musical genre, I'd argue that it doesn't even work as a musical, since the songs in a musical would actually progress the plot and show something. In Folie a Deux, none of the musical numbers really add much that they don't immediately repeat in spoken form, or even matter to the progression of the story. 

A good chunk of the movie is divided into Joker being stuck in Arkham Asylum in the first half, and a courtroom drama trying to string Joker up for the events of Joker, but neither of them work particularly well. The courtroom drama was overtly long and was too referential to events from the first movie that the movie makes no real effort to remind us about. While the prison part is just... depressing, and went on for too long without anything to really move any plot or characterization forwards. There is some surface-level attempt to try to follow up on the fact that the Joker is now an idea, a figurehead for a movement, but it's really not followed up particularly well and feels more like an eye-rolling 'meta-commentary' on how well-received the first movie is, and how the fans want the next Joker movie to be like this or like that... which would be fine if there was any more substance to Folie a Deux, but there isn't. Not really. 

The side-cast, by the way, is extremely bland. Joker/Arthur's lawyer Maryanne Stewart is flat and I don't really know why she's even motivated to defend the Joker other than the script demands for a character to show up. Harvey Dent (hey, Two-Face!) barely exists, and so are the rest of the cast in the courtroom. The prison guards are nasty and assholish. And the second name on the poster, Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn... is Harley Quinn in name only. And, right, because this is one of those movies, she's called "Lee" almost exclusively. She's a rich girl who buys into the 'Joker movement', and gets Arthur to fall in love with her and the idea of becoming the Joker as the public envisions it. Which as I type it out, by the way, sounds like an amazing story hook! The execution... isn't. Lee's character is flat and confusing, and literally reduced to a cipher to just kick Arthur down even more. 

With the drabness of this movie, we also get a heavily-implied prison gang-rape done on Arthur which 'broke' him so much that he essentially breaks character in the courtroom, which loses him the support of Lee and his other 'groupies'. It really is eye-rollingly shoehorned in, and there's only really the shock value of 'wow, that was the source of the big emotional change'? to carry it forwards. The movie essentially ends with a very confusing message that "being the Joker sucks", and leads to Arthur being shanked by one of his disappointed groupies in prison.

Again, there is perhaps something cool and interesting that might've been done if the movie wasn't trying too hard to be pulled in all directions and ending up with a whole load of nothing over an almost three-hour runtime. I tend to try and see some merit in even the worst superhero movies, but all this movie does is to ruin the legacy of the otherwise excellent first one. 

Movie Review: Superman (2025)

Superman (2025)

Mmm, yeah. This review was in the editing pile for forever because I just don't know how to talk about the brand-new 'DCU / DC Universe'. Not to be confused with Zack Snyder's 'DCEU / DC Extended Universe'. Even though some characters/actors and events may be ported over, it's mostly a brand-new reboot. 

It's a bit silly, honestly. I really do feel a bad taste from how poorly the DCEU has been handled in general, and while I appreciate the fresh start, I can go a bit on a rant of how reboots should be. 

And 2025's Superman is the Man of Steel's first solo movie in more than a decade after the, well, Man of Steel in 2013. And David Corenswet's Superman is... a remarkably different take from Henry Cavill's. For one, he's got the outside-underwear back! But for another... this movie isn't so much just a Superman movie, but rather a soft 'Justice League' pilot episode. 

Now, do I like this movie as a DC fan, who grew up on Silver Age and 90's comics, on the DC Animated Universe with Justice League, Justice League Unlimited and Superman The Animated Series? Absolutely. The Justice 'Gang' was great, Guy Gardner was great, Mr. Terrific was terrific, I thought that the secondary heroes didn't overstay their welcome. Krypto was fun. I laughed out loud at the Supergirl cameo at the end. 

As a reboot and reintroduction of a franchise? I felt like the movie probably should've focused really hard on Superman himself, for the simple nature that, well, it is a reboot. We are trying to get to know this version of the iconic Man of Steel. 

And the parts that are Superman-centric were great as well. Most importantly, we've got the supporting cast back! Lois is there as Clark's secret-keeper and love interest, of course, but we've got Jimmy Olsen being a dork (and getting a fun subplot with Luthor's girlfriend Eve), and Ma and Pa Kent showing up for a short but memorable scene, giving their son some very human wisdom. The Kryptonian parents also show up as traditional holograms and I'll talk about the big twist a bit later, but I've always been of the opinion that Superman is relatable always because he was raised by some farmers on Kansas, America, Earth... and never because of the manifest destiny given by the Kryptonians. So I'm happy about the focus that this movie goes to. 

Lex Luthor is also excellently portrayed as a smart, intelligent, super-insane man without resorting to being a nonsensical giggling manchild. He is suave, he is calculated, he is vindictive... but the neuroses and cruelty doesn't actually appear until he gets pushed. I feel like this is particularly well-shown when he actually threatens to kill Clark Kent in front of Superman. So hyperfocused is he in hurting Superman, his rival, that he doesn't care or is willing to entertain the idea that Superman is Clark Kent. 

Luthor's plan with his insanely powerful and useful portal device ends up being used to service him creating a private prison for all the people who did petty slights against him. He created a clone of Superman, Bizarro Ultraman, and instead of using it as his own personal showcase of a human eraching the level of a 'supposed god', Ultraman instead dresses up in Hammer of Barovia armour and beats up Superman to discredit him. Again, that massive flaw of being so utterly petty is what Luthor is all about. So smart, but so short-sighted. 

Krypto... Krypto is adorable. Krypto acts like an actual dog, but I do admit that he is in the movie for perhaps a bit too much of the screentime; again, for a reboot and reintroduction. I cannot argue with Superman finally going full rage mode when Krypto was kidnapped, though. I must say I am happy they didn't kill the dog in this movie. 

The political storylines... it's serviceable. It's hard to discuss it without bringing up actual real-life conflicts, and I'm not really in the mood to do that here, but it does feel like an old-school Superman plot. At least the evil president Ghurkos was actually involved in Luthor's plans, which I appreciate. 

The Justice Gang is there to provide some contrast as other heroes on Earth, which... again, feels a bit too crowded in the movie. Guy Gardner's Green Lantern is perfect casting, and Hawkgirl is a bit of a flat angry mace-to-the-face superhero, but I appreciate the execution. Mr. Terrific is the show-stealer, being essentially a 'good' version of Luthor  and receiving an amazing solo action scene when he goes to save Superman with Lois. 

There's also the subplot about public opinion against Superman -- a plotline that would be much more poignant without the one glaringly stupid part of the movie, the monkeys-on-typewriters. It would be much more thematic, even if it is simple, if it truly is just public opinion swaying back and forth. Luthor hacks into the Fortress of Solitude, and decrypts the Kryptonian message from Superman's parents. In a new for the character's history (Elseworlds incarnations notwithstanding), turns out that Jor-El and Lara actually sent Superman to Earth to conquer and rule, not to protect. That's a twist all right, and Superman falls into a bit of a despair after this. Throw in the dognapping incident, and Superman ends up being vulnerable and captured by Luthor. 

That is an interesting take on the character, highlighting his emotional insecurities and a nice way to get a loved one in distress without subejcting poor Lois to being kidnapped. I also like the argument that Superman has with Lois during their interview, which is an excellent distillation of Superman. He will never let his mask drop in public, not when he's inspirational. He's secure that interfering in global politics to save lives is the right thing to do, consequences be damned. But when Lois pokes holes and prods his story, he actually shows off that beneath it all is a farmboy from Kansas who really is just trying to do his best. I like that. 

I'm not really recapping the movie particularly well, but suffice to say that the movie eventually goes into a series of action scenes. Superman convinces another captive metahuman, Metamorpho (I like him! He also came out of nowhere in the movie!) and inspires him to let him escape. Lois and Mr. Terrific rescue Superman, and they rescue Metamorpho and Krypto. There's some action scenes as theey fly through some CGI environments and avoid a black hole, and return to the real world. Superman also gets back his grove from Lois and his parents. 

The Justice Gang and Metamorpho go off to deal with the Barovia/Jarhanpur crisis, with some images of kids and whatnot being inspired by Superman. Superman himself, meanwhile, deals with Luthor's portal malfunctioning and creating a rift that splits the city in half. In the middle of this huge world-ending crisis, Superman fights and defeats Luthor's two metahuman goons, the Engineer and Ultraman. It's all right. I felt like there could've been more about Superman and Ultraman, and whether this is just Ultraman being saved for a sequel where he returns mutated as Bizarro or not, I still feel like the final moments could have been a bit more drawn-out, particularly with Superman being on a full 'no-killing' rule in this incarnation and being angry when the Justice Gang killed the random kaiju in the middle of the movie. 

Luthor and Superman's confrontation is fun, even if the ending is predictable with the Daily Bugle gang exposing Luthor's schemes to the public. It's more of a clash of words and ideology anyway, with Superman, as with all of his best-written incarnations, simply refusing to play into Luthor's 'who is better, me or you' game. 

The movie handles Superman and his supporting cast well, I must say. Having grown up with TAS and a lot of the '90's-00's era comics, this is the exact take of Superman I want. And I even really like the 'wider universe' stuff introduced here, like Guy Gardner, Mr. Terrific, Hawkgirl, Metamorpho and Ultraman. It's just...  it's just a bit too much in a movie that already has to do a lot. In a vaccuum it's all right for a movie to do a lot. James Gunn made his career with movies that do too much but still manage to work regardless. But outside the vacuum, with the pedigree that Superman and a full DC universe reboot brings... it's a bit unfortunate that yes, the movie does feel a bit too overstuffed for its own good. 

Movie Review: Alien Romulus

Alien: Romulus (2024)

It's tradition for me to review an Alien movie every Halloween, and as luck would have it, last year was the release of a brand-new Alien movie, as a bit of a standalone/soft-reboot after the duology that started with Prometheus.

Romulus is a nice 'back-to-basics' approach to the franchise that has proven successful compared to more derivative attempts to expand on franchises, which we saw in Jurassic World or Star Wars: The Force Awakens as opposed to both of their sequel movies. And in that regard, I do really think Romulus is a nice take on the franchise while also building up the world of the 2100's. 

That said, it is admittedly just Alien-meets-Prometheus with the CGI budget and effects of a modern-day movie. The movie does feel a lot more tense being that these are a bunch of teenagers with absolutely no proper equipment, unlike the space marines of Aliens or the exploration teams of Prometheus and Covenant. It honestly feels very much unfair on the side of our protagonists, in the same vein of how the original salvage crew of the Nostromo was. 

The movie does start off with a relatively long sequence of introducing us to the teenagers that are about to be put through hell, people in the hellscape work colony of planet LV-410. We start off with Rain Carradine, who should have worked off her duty to the company but just gets extended in what's essentially enforced slavery. She also has an adopted brother, a malfunctioning android called Andy, which the movie shows a lot of scenes of the two of them behaving like a family. The movie also makes Andy very lovable, treating him as essentially someone on the autism spectrum.  They go to meet a bunch of other teenagers ready to escape -- her ex boyfriend Tyler, Tyler's pregnant sister Kay, and their cousins Bjorn and Navarro. It's clear at this point that Bjorn is a piece of shit that doesn't care much for androids, which drives a fair chunk of the movie's interpersonal plot. 

Just like Alien was, this movie starts off slow as we get introduced to the world around our main characters. It's a nice slow burn, even if I do admit that I cared more about the world these guys are living in as opposed to the actual characters themselves. 

They commandeer a hauler to reach an abandoned Weyland-Yutani station -- twin installments called Romulus and Remus, intending to steal cryostasis pods so they can escape the hell of the slave-camp world. While Rain is all for getting her android brother out with her, but the rest of the group are aligned in basically abandoning Andy once they've made use of his hacking capabilities in the station. 

Of course, the station was abandoned because it was experimenting with xenomorphs, and things get progressively creepier as our little teenage salvage team go deeper and deeper into the station and find signs that it wasn't abandoned willingly. The ominous prologue scene of the movie tell us that they apparently recovered the body of the Alien from Alien, and experimented on it, apparently going far enough as to get it to reproduce and create Facehuggers. These Facehuggers were the ones that were initially released, leading to a very tense locked-room scenario as the Facehuggers skitter around like spiders and move through the water unseen.

In panic, Rain pulls off a control chip from the Romulus's damaged (and insane) android, Rook. This allows Andy to help the group get free from the Facehuggers, but he goes fully robotic, losing a lot of his previous charm... and his allegiance shifts to Rook and Weyland-Yutani. During this sequence, Navarro gets attacked and impregnated by a Facehugger, and it is quite heartbreaking to see the family not accepting 'no, she's a lost cause' as an answer.

Rook, who's driven slightly mad by isolation, damage and desperation, gives some exposition about where the original Alien cocoon came from, as well as the experimentations that happened. Rook also reveals that some of the Facehuggers did make it into adulthood, and it's the acidic blood from these xenomorphs that blew up Remus. As all of this is going on, in some really nice space scenes, Romulus's orbit is slowly decaying as it is about to slam onto the Saturn-like planetary rings of LV-410, which is a nice visual treat. 

The cowardly Bjorn attempts to escape with Navarro and Kay, but the larva within Navarro bursts out of her chest in a very brutal sequence. This causes the teenagers' ship to crash into Romulus and accelerate the station's descent into the LV-410 rings, which I can best describe as an airplane descending slowly before an inevitable crash. The alien from Navarro begins to wreak a bit of havoc, cocooning itself and molting into a larger form. The grief-stricken Navarro attacks it, only to die when a spray of acidic blood melts his face off. 

The pregnant Kay manages to escape the crash site and run all the way to a door where Rain, Tyler and Andy are waiting... but Andy, driven to cold logic by the chip, notes that the xenomorph is actually playing and using her as bait. Despite Tyler and Rain's protests, Andy coldly refuses to open the door, and the xenomorph abducts Kay. 

Rook (and via him, Andy) gives an ultimatum that's tied to a theme that was in the original Alien -- corporate greed at all costs. They want our heroes to retrieve a fluid called Z-01 from the Facehuggers, which would allow them to genetically alter humans to live and thrive in space. Faced with no other choice, Rain and Tyler have to play along. They are armed with guns now, but they are also untrained, and shooting the hull of the space station risks decompression. 

The newly born xenomorph has discovered the xenomorph nest with many other adults, and in an attempt to protect the others, Tyler sacrifices himself as bait. Kay also almost dies from her injuries, but Andy gives her a dose of the Z-01 fluid to allow her to heal rapidly. Andy himself is also incapacitated, but Rain refuses to give up on him -- eventually restoring the chip and returning him back to his original personality. 

During the process of rescue, the Romulus continues to fall apart and this leads to a rather fun (if nonsensical) sequence of acid blood floating around while Rain and xenomorphs try to navigate in zero gravity. Rain turns into a bit of a deadshot here, able to shoot all the xenomorphs while they flounder around in zero-g. It's probably an action scene that takes me out of my immersion a bit, if we're being honest. 

As they escape Romulus while it is destroyed, we get one final action scene as, just like Prometheus, we get some pregnancy-inspired horror as Kay gives birth. The Z-01 mutates her fetus into a monstrous human-xenomorph hybrid that is called the Offspring. The Offspring honestly looks way more human than xeno, looking more like a malformed human from Dark Souls or something. Having a human face allows it to look particularly creepy when it starts making expressions. Ultimately, after a bit of a tense sequence, Rain and Andy distract it long enough before opening the bay doors and dropping the Offspring into the rings of LV-410. The movie ends with the two of them entering cryostasis as they go on their little journey to Yvaga III as planned. 

Ultimately? Again, it's a good standalone movie, but I don't really think it does anything particularly new. It's quite derivative and as neat as it is to see a brand-new monster design, I did feel like we could've had... more? It is thrilling, though, so I can't fault the movie on that end. 

Movie Review - The Fantastic Four: First Steps

The Fantastic Four: First Steps [2025]

So, a Fantastic Four reboot! This movie wasn't exactly on my radar. It was going to come, yes, I knew of the casting calls and that it was going to feature Galactus, but otherwise I didn't find myself particularly excited. I will have to admit that the Fantastic Four has never really been that high on classic Marvel superheroes that I was itching and chomping at the bit for adaptations to 'get right'. The first two Fox adaptations were... the first one was all right and honestly quite underrated, but the sequel suffered a lot from sequelitis, and the 2015 reboot was an abomination and easily one of the worst superhero adaptations to have ever graced the silver screen. 

But the Fantastic Four are still a 'big deal', Marvel's First Family that, in theory, should be commanding as much respect and popularity as Spider-Man, Wolverine or Captain America. And yet... they've never been, at least outside of the comic book circles. 

A good chunk of it has been because of how to handle them. Is the reboot going to go full-on Ultimate Universe on them? But would the cheesier tone of the Golden Age comics even work? Would it even be a proper Fantastic Four adaptation without the 'happy family' tones of the original comics? Well, the adaptation for the MCU, The Fantastic Four: First Steps goes full-in with the retro-futuristic themes and the vibes of the older Golden/Silver-Age comics and enjoyed a surprisingly wholesome summer as it released opposite DC's Superman (which I will get to reviewing eventually) which also embraced DC's first son in a back-to-basics approach. 

Fantastic Four: First Steps is extremely divorced from the rest of the MCU other than the post-credits scene, taking place on Earth-828 and having zero multiversal connections to the rest of the MCU universe. Which absolutely plays in their favour, as the Fantastic Four's whole thing in this movie is their relationship with the public, and how the Fantastic Four are the heroes of their time.

After an interesting opening scene where Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards and Invisible Woman/Sue Storm discover that Sue is pregnant, we get an old-school recap about the Fantastic Four's origin story and their career as superheroes. After a mission to outer space, scientists Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm were exposed to cosmic rays and gained superpowers, becoming Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing. The family of superheroes fought supervillains, with a quick montage showing them fighting threats like Giganto, Mole Man or the Super-Apes... and the movie is really intent on showing what an impact the Fantastic Four made on their world. There's a constant showcase of Reed moonlighting in a science show for kids, little toys with catchphrases made by the Fantastic Four, Sue creating a Future Foundation organization and interacting with the rest of the worlds... they're a perfectly wholesome group of celebrities, and Earth-828 is a much more peaceful place than the more war-torn real world, or even the 'main' MCU. 

And again, such a huge chunk of the early parts of the movie is devoted to this. Showcasing the Four's dynamic as Reed and Sue skirt around revealing the pregnancy to Johnny and Ben; Ben interacting with local kids and schoolteachers; Johnny trying to egg Reed to continue doing their science experiments; their interactions with each other, and showing off bits of the world around them like the adorable little robot butler HERBIE... it's honestly kind of bold to focus so much on the incoming super-baby, particularly Reed's anxiety around being the smartest person in the world and still being terrified of fatherhood.

And for the most part, I think the only character that's really shafted by this is Johnny, who doesn't really have much to do. Reed and Sue have a lot of material to act and pull from, and the 'brains vs. heart' theme going through the movie works well with both their discussions of parentage as well as how to deal with getting the world to work together. Ben/Thing is always the member of the Four that you can get a lot of mileage out of thanks to his more extreme cosmic transformation and the demeaning moniker of 'the Thing', and we get to see his interactions with his community. Johnny? This is a more mature Johnny, so he's not as much a womanizer or a impulsive hothead as his traditional incarnations, but that does kind of reduce him to just 'the other guy'. He theoretically has a bunch to do, being a secondary scientist, but I did feel Johnny is the member of the Four that didn't get the best spotlight. 

But hey, three our of four isn't bad! As Sue approaches her childbirth date, Reed reveals that his little gift to his son is a somewhat twisted but very cool sequence as he essentially brings down all the supervillains singlehandedly in a single night... and then just as if the world is mocking him, the skies explode as an alien, the Silver Surfer (a female version of the character) shows up and heralds the advent of Galactus. Johnny tries to fight and chase down the Surfer, but gets knocked off. He did hear certain alien languages from the Surfer, and he spends all his free time in this movie trying to decode it while his sister and brother-in-law deal with more pressing matters. 

Reed finds out that charting the course of the Silver Surfer, all the planets in her wake has been destroyed, and that this 'Galactus' is real and very deadly. Thus trying to confront Galactus, the Fantastic Four pile into their spaceship the Excelsior, and through a bunch of very cool retro-tech special effects, we get to see them fly off into space through a faster-than-light engine ring. It's a lot of cool stuff. 

They witness Galactus destroying a planet, and eventually get pulled into Galactus's ship. Again, in 2025 I don't think a lot of these special effects are going to be truly mind-blowing, but I still have to give praise to Galactus in particular... for the simple fact that it's actually not CGI, but a dude in a suit. No wonder it looks so good! Galactus is a giant alien titan who is fed the energies of the planets he destroys into himself, and he gives us his cryptic backstory. He is cursed with eternal hunger thanks to something called the Power Cosmic... but during the confrontation with the Four, Galactus demands Sue's unborn child, sensing the Power Cosmic within Sue. Galactus essentially plans to pass his own hunger and curse to the unborn Franklin. 

This leads to a fight and an escape as the Fantastic Four distract Galactus and fight with the Surfer, leading to another fun and very comic-book-y sci-fi sequence as the Silver Surfer pursues them through a wormhole. We get a pretty cool sequence as the Fantastic Four use a collapsing black hole as a way to slingshot them back to Earth, while trapping the Silver Surfer there. Again, this chase scene takes a while, but I really did like it for what it is. While all of this is going on, Sue gives birth inside the ship, and the scene manages to juggle tension and comedy quite well. 

As this second act ends, the Fantastic Four returns back to Earth to an adoring crowd, and you get the feeling that this is perhaps the first time the Fantastic Four has been so humbled and defeated. Being the honest, nice guys that they are, Reed announces that Galactus demanded Franklin and they refused, and they're planning a different strategy. This bout of honesty, however, causes the Fantastic Four's once-adoring public to turn upon them in the face of existential threat. It is quite depressing considering how upbeat and happy-go-lucky the first parts of the movie were, but it was very well executed. 

Sue and Reed get into some, again, well-acted and well-written arguments -- Reed being who he is, being the problem solver, of course has planned for the worst, and has to consider all the most terrible plans... as much as he is loath to do something like sacrificing baby Franklin. Sue also gets a powerful scene where she walks out and addresses the crowd that demands sacrificing Franklin to Galactus. Sue notes that everyone there is their family, whether their biological son or the people of the world, and the Fantastic Four do not plan on sacrificing anyone. 

While all of this is also going on, Reed and Johnny separately reach a breakthrough. Johnny manages to decode the language of Shalla-Bal the Silver Surfer. Meanwhile, Reed realizes that the teleportation bridge that he's been tinkering in the movie's first act could be used as 'Archimedes's Lever' and move the entire Earth itself. The Fantastic Four make use of the Future Foundation to build these massive bridges all over the world, going through a nice, Neon Genesis Evangelion style of cooperation to build these massive locations with the help of everyone in the world. 

It's all very inspiring and we get to see the Fantastic Four's role of superheroes as peacemakers, even convincing countries to shut off power to conserve power for the activation of the teleporter. However, the Silver Surfer arrives and began to systematically dismantle everything they've worked for weeks. She is confronted by Johnny Storm, however, who has decoded her language and transmissions they've picked up over the past couple of years... and confronts Shalla-Bal with her backstory. She's an astronomer from Zenn-La, who willingly gave herself up to Galactus to save her planet and her daughter. This... this is honestly a bit rushed, and the explanation of Surfer's backstory and guilt feels like it could've had a bit more time. It's not bad, but I did feel like this moment could've been done a bit better.

The Silver Surfer is shocked and traumatized enough by a combination of being confronted with the screams of all the dying planets as well as remembering her homeworld, and flies off. However, Galactus is still coming, and Reed devises a plan to use the last remaining teleporter in Times Square and teleport Galactus away. The problem? They need to use Franklin as bait. Reed and Sue get into a brief argument, but they eventually lock in on the plan. There's a short sequence of them asking Mole Man for help to evacuate New York underground, which... again, I like the mole Man, but he didn't really have a presence outside of the five seconds in the opening montage, and I felt like this could've been done a bit better. 

Galactus arrives, though, and this whole sequence to the last battle is amazing. Galactus is shown as an unstoppable titan, walking through the city like a boy would walk through a garden of flowers. The action scenes are a bit more subdued from the Fantastic Four's side compared to a lot of more recent Marvel movies, which I do appreciate... the powers of the Four are very much well-defined, with only Johnny's fire blasts and Sue's invisible barriers really being anything too visually spectacular. There's a lot of fun beats done with the relatively limited powers.

Halfway through the fight, Galactus realizes the ruse and trap when he sees that the decoy crib near the teleporter did not actually contain Franklin. But as the Fantastic Four all get systematically overpowered by Galactus, including a surprisingly painful moment as Reed gets stretched forcibly by the world-devourer, it's Sue that finally decides to make a last stand, using her forcefield to stop Galactus in place and push him towards the portal. There's also a sequence where Johnny decides to sacrifice himself to knock Galactus back... but Silver Surfer zips in, knocks Johnny away, pushes herself and Galactus to the edge of the universe. 

Sue dies from her efforts, but then a crying Franklin shows off his powers and brings her back. The movie ends as the superheroes prepare to appear on a live show... but then leave because there's another distress call. 

Overall? The movie feels quite by-the-books, if we're being honest. And not all of the moments landed as well as it should, with the act three Mole Man moment being a particular 'hmm, I feel I'm missing the set-up' scene for me. The Silver Surfer stuff was done competently, but I also felt like we could've had more scenes with her. And Galactus... is all right, even if the way he's taken out is quite simple. But there's nothing wrong with simple -- this movie is really just trying to give us the Fantastic Four dynamics, to give us two major moments in a Fantastic Four franchise (a Galactus battle and Franklin's birth) and to sell a new generation on the concept of Marvel's First Family. And whether it's the simple goofy costumes, the simpler stakes and even just how the old-school aesthetics and music of the movie, I feel this was a well-done labour of love. I really respect this movie.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene:
• 
  The mid-credits scene show four years later, when Franklin is a bit older and is shown to be a bit smarter than your average four-year old. As Susan goes off to get a book, she comes back to see Franklin interacting with a green hooded figure holding an iron mask... Doctor Doom!
  
• The post-credits scene is an excerpt of the in-universe Fantastic Four cartoon. 
• Past Movies Continuity:
• This taking place in an alternate Earth, we don't actually get many continuity nods other than a sign saying 'Westview Appliance Television', referencing the town of Westview where WandaVision is set. Ironically, Wanda Maximoff the Scarlet Witch was the cause of an alternate universe Mr. Fantastic's famously brutal death. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames: Very interestingly, only 'Mr. Fantastic' is only ever referred to by name, and it's made clear that it's something that's tacked on as part of his public persona. Sue, Johnny and Ben are notably never referred to by their superhero sobriquets of Invisible Woman, Human Torch or the Thing, even by the public. Shalla-Bal is also never referred to as the Silver Surfer, only as 'the Herald'. Mole Man is referred to by that name several times, but it's meant as an insult.
• This also extends to the catchphrases too, where the implication is that Human Torch's "flame on" and Thing's "it's clobberin' time" are marketing tools more for cartoons and cereal tie-in toys than something they actually say, just like the 2005 Fox movie. And just like that movie, Thing embraces his catchphrase in the climax. 
• Franklin's never referred to by his codename, but he's a baby. And to be fair, the editors could never decide on a codename for comics!Franklin either. 
• The mostly-unseen villains like the Red Ghost, the Super-Apes, Wizard, Diablo, Mad Thinker and Puppet Master are all referred to only by their codenames. 
• Favourite Action Scene: Less of an action scene, but the scene when Galactus finally makes planetfall and starts interacting with the world around him. A good runner-up is the subsequent fight as the Four try their best to stop this walking titan.  
• Funniest Line: "There's gonna be a time dilation." "Is it as big as mine?"
• During the montage of the Fantastic Four's superheroics, we get a recreation of their very iconic Fantastic Four #1, mirrored here, where they fought a giant green monster called Giganto. 
  
• While the content is new, the constant showcases of cheesy old cartoons are likely based on the '70's cartoon, The New Fantastic Four. Incidentally, that cartoon also infamously replaced the Human Torch with the robot assistant HERBIE who tended to be made fun of by the fandom, but later proved popular enough to make it into this movie. 
• In addition to the name-dropped Fantastic Four enemies above, the cartoons also show depictions of some other Fantastic Four characters like Dragon Man. 
• Just like Fantastic Four: Rise of the Siler Surfer, this movie features a scene of Human Torch chasing Silver Surfer in flight before running out of oxygen in space, and getting knocked down back to earth. 
• The cast of the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four movie all make cameos. Alex Hyde-White (Mr. Fantastic) plays the newscaster William Russell, Rebecca Staab (Invisible Girl) portrays newscaster Carolyn Haynes, while two of the power plant workers rescued by Johnny are Jay Underwood (Human Torch) and Michael Bailey Smith (Thing).
• This universe is numbered Earth-828, based on Fantastic Four creator Jack Kirby's birthday (August 28th). 
• Shalla-Bal is traditionally the wife of Silver Surfer's alter-ego, Norin Radd. It is noted that Shalla-Bal has been the Silver Surfer in the Earth-X alternate continuity.
• Johnny's interest in her seems to imply that she also takes nods from Frankie Raye, a.k.a. Nova, an ex-girlfriend of Johnny in the comics that became a herald of Galactus.
• The Fantastic Four's company, the Future Foundation, is a team formed by Reed Richards in the comics that also features several guest stars (famously Spider-Man) that is a philanthropic organization meant to better the world. 
• Their spaceship, the Excelsior, is their creator Stan Lee's catchphrase in all of the letters he writes. 
• The cereal box Johnny holds is a homage to the Human Torch pin-up page from Fantastic Four #3. 
• One of the background signs references Timely Comics, the first name of the company that would later be renamed into Marvel comics. The two citizens in that shop are intentionally dressed up to look like young Stan Lee and young Jack Kirby, the two co-creators of the Fantastic Four. 
• A 'Cult of Galactus' is briefly mentioned in a montage all over the world. Humans that formed a cult worshipping Galactus was the plot of Silver Surfer: Parable, a book that won the Eisner Award.

Movie Review - Thunderbolts*

Thunderbolts* (2025)

I am insanely behind on superhero movie reviews. Which... yeah, I just kept pushing things further and further.

But let's talk about Thunderbolts*! Or as part of its rather delightful media play, "Thunderbolts* New Avengers". Ostensibly an adaptation of Marvel's answer to DC's Suicide Squad of a group of super-villains/anti-heroes who find themselves forced by circumstance and the goodness of their hearts to take a more heroic role, Thunderbolts* ends up actually being a bit of a lower-key Avengers team-up. And taken in that regard, I feel like it does a pretty good job at gathering a bunch of the MCU's more forgotten secondary characters and giving them a huge boost, while also making it an introduction to several new ones.

And I think I'll go through the parts of the movie that I don't like so much... it really isn't a problem unique to Thunderbolts* but it's something that's common to a lot of the ensemble movies. Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Justice League... there's usually a couple of characters that are left just hanging. Whether it's Hawkeye or Groot, it's understandable that the movie focuses on a couple of characters as the 'star'. For Thunderbolts*, however, owing to the fact that almost everyone in this movie are already secondary characters, I felt like the problem is a lot more noticeable. Yelena and Sentry take center stage, while the rest are... they don't really feel particularly necessary for the movie, if we're being honest. The movie does the best with the screentime that it's got with these characters, and we did get some great scenes for Red Guardian and USAgent, but at the end of the day it does really feel like it's a Yelena Belova movie first and foremost, and the rest of the Thunderbolts are just her quirky side-cast. The fact that we didn't even get hints of their 'fear' dimensions even though a couple of them clearly seem to be built up to it felt quite of a missed opportunity in my opinion. 

There is also the very wasted character of Taskmaster, who was killed with maybe five minutes' worth of screentime. I really did feel like Taskmaster's death was really kind of... unnecessary? It felt like 'we needed a death for the supervillains-turned-heroes movie' moment, except instead of a nobody, they actually killed a character with some backstory and history that was abruptly truncated. It's not like I'm a particularly big fan of Taskmaster, but the fact that Yelena -- who was from the same Widow program as her -- barely had any reaction and handwaved it away... it felt very off. 

But other than that? Thunderbolts might be my favourite Marvel movie since... perhaps since Spider-Man: No Way Home. I don't think it's a mistake to say that Marvel's been on a bit of a decline since Endgame, something that's a bit more noticeable in the past couple of years. And while Deadpool & Wolverine was a fun success, it was also a movie that relied on a lot of meta jokes to really understand. This was a great return to a more 'grounded' superhero team... which makes the contrast of them fighting against the immensely powerful metahuman Sentry even more stark. 

The movie starts off focusing with Yelena acting as a hit-woman for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, leader of the CIA and essentially an evil Nick Fury as far as the MCU is concerned. We get to see a very cool physical stunt as she jumps off the towers in Malaysia, and Yelena is just... going through a superhero-assassin's equivalent of a mid-life crisis. She gets into a discussion with her dad Alexei "Red Guardian" Shostakov about it, but Alexei isn't exactly the best person to go to for a deep talk like this. Always enjoyed the MCU's random but well-delivered reinvention of Red Guardian as a crazy-yolo embarrassing superhero dad. He runs a limousine service now, and there's quite a bit of pathos worked into his scenes where he goes through the motions of acting like this limousine job is a totally natural thing to do for a retired superhero... but the death of Natasha Romanoff clearly still weighs heavily on the two of them. 

Yelena decides to do the spy-movie thing of doing 'one last job'. And that one last job turns out to be Valentina sending four different assassins to the Vault with directions to kill each other. We've got Yelena Belova (former Black Widow from, well, Black Widow), Taskmaster (former villain in Black Widow), Ghost (former villain in Ant-Man and the Wasp) and USAgent John Walker (former villain in Falcon and the Winter Soldier). During the skirmish, Taskmaster is killed and the three remaining assassins argue against each other about why they're sent here and their relation to Valentina.

I'll just go through the other two very quickly here... Ghost/Ava Starr feels like a huge wasted potential. She gets some lines here and there about her past and her desire to find a cure for her condition, but she's probably the character I notice the least in the movie. She just feels like she's there for the spectacle of having someone with slightly-more-powerful-than-the-average-human superpowers. 

USAgent/John Walker gets some nice moments early on as he keeps trying to deny that everything is well and good for him. He's got a prickly exterior and the most assholish of the group, but as we learn through the movie, he never quite survived the whole 'evil Captain America' thing, and his inability to control his temper has destroyed his personal life too, making him estranged with his wife. My problem really is that USAgent's story was built up... and he kind of just slowly fades into the background of the movie as 'the jerk' without much of a real resolution. Again, future movie, sure. But Walker is who I'm thinking of when I thought that the climax of the movie could've featured one or two extra flashbacks from the other Thunderbolts. 

Anyway, Yelena, USAgent and Ghost find a strange amnesiac man called Bob, who is just.... he's just Bob! Lewis Pullman acts as Bob/Sentry, and the direction the MCU goes with the amnesiac, confused Bob is perfectly fun. Bob's adorably out of his depth, and it's clear that there's more than meets the eye about him -- when Yelena and Walker touch Bob, they are transported to some creepy mind-scapes based on their past traumas. But our heroes don't have much time to deal with it, as we jump into another action scene as they try to escape. It's at this point where the Yelena and Walker kinda-sorta learn to... not trust each other yet, but at least to realize that they have a common enemy. Walker is more gung-ho in his approach to battle, Yelena prioritizes saving the civilian Bob, and Ghost... initially just runs away before coming back. 

In-between these action scenes, however, Bob reveals that he has superpowers -- impressive ones at that. Flight, super-strength, invulnerability... typical Superman powers. He gets separated from Yelena's group, and falls down to the ground and causes a shockwave before being detained by Valentina's minions. At this point it's somewhat clear that Bob or 'Project Sentry' actually worked, and that was one of the genetically-modified superhuman assets that Valentina had created. 

While all of this is going on, Valentina has a bit of her sub-plot where she's under investigation for improper usage and disposal of assets. Councilman Bucky Barnes, the former Winter Soldier, is running against her and trying his best to get her unseated legally. There is a bit of a side-plot with some characters like Valentina's put-upon but ultimately well-meaning secretary Melissa Gold (Songbird in the comics), but ultimately it's just some nice setup for what Valentina is trying to do -- eliminate evidence in face of a trial that could destroy her... and eventually pivoting to showing off the new face of the Avengers. 

Back to the crew at the desert, Red Guardian rejoins the movie as he shows up in the middle of the desert with his limousine, picking up Yelena, USAgent and Ghost. Alexei is over the moon excited about being embroiled in some dark-secret-spy superhero mission, and we even get a fun brick joke of Alexei discovering this from his role as a chauffeur, where he was moving around some of the politicians involved in the Valentina subplot. Alexei decides to dub the group the 'Thunderbolts' after Yelena's childhood soccer team. 

We get a bit of a comedy-action moment as a group of military humvees attack the limousine, while Yelena and the others are frustrated that all of Alexei's so-called improvements to his limousine are all junk. Bucky shows up at this point, dressed up in full superhero regalia and shooting sci-fi magnet-disc launchers and taking down the humvees. Our heroes are excited... until Bucky attacks them. 

Bucky notes the relatively poor track record that Yelena, Ava and Walker have been doing -- since they still look like criminals. The whole 'man, look at these losers' side of the movie is probably quite clear at this point... but Yelena and Walker manage to talk Bucky down, explaining the whole Bob situation. The now-complete team of Thunderbolts then take the fight to Avengers tower.

In Avengers tower, however, Bob has been... well, essentially gaslit and manipulated by Valentina. She shows up and acts as the kindly mentor; she gave Sentry blonde hair, a very fancy suit, and honeyed words. It's a lot of well-done manipulation that builds up on Bob's own insecurities and frustrations because everyone else has been treating him as a joke or a deadweight throughout the entire movie. And thusly controlled emotionally, Sentry faces off against the Thunderbolts and just shows off the sheer gap in power between someone with the powers of Superman... and a bunch of people with super-soldier serums. Absolutely nothing the Thunderbolts did works, and they are beaten into a hasty retreat. 

All the talk about Sentry having the 'powers of a god' and all that jazz begin to get to him, however, and Valentina is forced to use a killswitch on him. This, however, awakens Sentry's dark side -- the 'Void'. Perfectly creepy by having two tiny pinpricks for eyes, the Void rises up and begins attacking everyone indiscriminately, delivering a very creepy effect of turning people nearby into shadowy afterimages on the ground. It's a harrowing effect. 

As the Thunderbolts disperse, we get one of my favourite emotional moments in the movie, where Yelena and Alexei get into a bit of an argument. Alexei is far from being the perfect father, but by god he loves his adoptive daughter and the scene between the two is quite well acted. This tender moment of purpose and Alexei's belief in his daughter ends up being interrupted as Void's attack causes helicopters to crash and buildings to collapse. And despite everything, despite the world telling them that they are losers and should give up, the Thunderbolts rush in and start saving people. 

Which is a nice, uplifting moment...  right until a little girl gets turned into shadow right after our heroes rescued her. 

This kickstarts the movie's climax, where after a tense moment of running around, Yelena realizes that the way to stop the Void is to reach Bob from the inside, and just... lets herself be consumed by the shadow dimension. It's a bit of a trippy sequence where Yelena sees Bob trapped within the Void dimension as a poor, scared child in an attic while his parents fought and yelled about what a loser he is. Yelena then gets warped away to one of her more traumatic missions as a child, where she caused another young girl to get killed. This plays on a bit of a loop until the Thunderbolts break in and together they arrive in a facsimile of the Malaysian laboratory where Bob was experimented upon. 

The final battle itself is... it's all right. Void immobilizes the Thunderbolts still, but they manage to talk Bob into resisting and fighting his own dark side... and as all the emotions build up, they realize that they need to make Bob stop attacking. Yelena reaches Bob while struggling against the warping landscape, and manages to talk her down. This causes the Void to disappear and for everything to return to normal as the Void-ed people are released. 

And again, what I just described is something that hinges entirely on execution. It could either be an eye-rollingly stupid, cheesy way to end the movie with the power of friendship... or a genuinely touching moment. And I feel this is where the focus on Yelena pays some dividends, becuase that's really what allows the movie to sell the friendship and bond between Yelena and Bob well. Again, I would also reiterate that this arguably comes at the cost of losing character moments for everyone, but it does make for a neat ending. The fact that mental health and the acknowledgement of it is something that talks the superpowered evil side off is something that not all people would like to see in a superhero movie, but I absolutely love it. 

And the movie ends (post-credits scene notwithstanding) with a bit of a funny twist. As the Thunderbolts converge on Valentina, she lures them into a press conference where she introduces them as the New Avengers... and the credits rip off the 'Thunderbolts' title with 'New Avengers'. 

Ultimately? Watching this movie the first time, I really did feel like it was a bit patchy, especially for a movie that's supposed to introduce the New Avengers. Bucky really didn't have much to do and he doesn't exactly fall into the 'loser hero' category as the rest of the cast. Ghost is, well, a bit of a ghost. But ultimately I still feel like this is a great return to form for the MCU. The plot is well-done and the plot twists are well delivered. After several movies that relied a bit too much on CGI, the more traditional stunts and low-key use of CGI make the movie a delight to watch. And at the very least, the movie does have a very strong focus on Yelena and Bob. It's not what I expected from a Thunderbolts movie, for sure, but it's a surprisingly fun watch. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene:

• A scene apparently taken from the upcoming Avengers Doomsday, where the New Avengers argue about Captain America/Sam Wilson making his own group of Avengers. Alexei suggests they market themselves as the AvengerZ; Bob apparently can't transform into Sentry for a while; but signs of a spaceship entering orbit show up on their radar and they see the Fantastic Four's shuttle. 
  
• Past Movies Continuity:
• The events of Captain America: Brave New World is mentioned, with President Ross's transformation into the Red Hulk and Bucky acting as a congressman both happening in that movie. 
• Yelena was approached by Valentina in the post-credits of Black Widow, and was working for her in Hawkeye. John Walker was recruited and given his new darker uniform in the final scenes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Red Guardian and Taskmaster were last seen in Black Widow; Ghost was last seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
• The events of Yelena, Walker and Ghost's failures and roles as antagonists are brought up and recapped to varying degrees by other characters.
• The alien invasion of New York in The Avengers is mentioned by several characters, with Mel being a high schooler during that attack.
• Loki's scepter from The Avengers, last seen being experimented to create Ultron in Age of Ultron, appears on a museum commemorating the Chitauri invasion. 
• Avengers Tower was sold in Spider-Man: Homecoming, with it having moved hands to Valentina by the time of this movie. The fight against Sentry takes place in the penthouse bar where Loki confronted Tony Stark in The Avengers.
• Walker uses Steve's "on your left" catchphrase... which is a bit weird since that's a personal joke between Steve and Sam. 
• Bucky's disc-launcher weapon was used by him during his villainous stint in Captain America: The Winter Soldier during the assassination attempt against Nick Fury. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames: Red Guardian, Sentry and Winter Soldier's codenames are constantly spoken by everyone, with Alexei being particularly happy about dropping code-names. Bob and Yelena also name-drop "Void" several times. Yelena is mostly referred to by name, though some characters describe her as 'a' Black Widow. Ava is never properly referred to as "Ghost" (though the word 'ghost' as an adjective is used), Walker is never referred to as "U.S.Agent" (though comparing him with Captain America is used a couple of times), and Antonia is also never referred to as Taskmaster.
• Favourite Action Scene: Everyone trying to dogpile Sentry and subsequently getting tossed around.
• Funniest Line: "BOB!"
• This isn't the first Marvel project to have a sudden 'title change' at the end, with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier changing titles in its last episode to Captain America and the Winter Soldier. 
• Sentry, a.k.a. Bob Reynolds, a.k.a. the Void, was initially released in a solo series where Sentry is a superhero 'with the power of a million exploding suns'. The civilian Bob wakes up one day with a lot of memories as a 'forgotten' superhero who worked alongside classic superheroes like the Avengers, Fantastic Four and X-Men, but found out that all evidence of his existence seems to have disappeared. Trying to figure out who his arch-nemesis 'the Void' is, Bob discovers that the Void is his evil alter-ego.
• Sentry's "Golden Guardian of Good" and "the power of a thousand exploding suns" that were originally throwbacks to his status as a (fake) Silver Age superhero is used as Valentina's market research.
• Melissa Gold is the civilian alter-ego of the supervillain Screaming Mimi, better known by her post-comics-Thunderbolts superhero alter-ego Songbird.
• The Thunderbolts borrows its name from a superhero team led by 'Citizen V'. The Thunderbolts appeared out of nowhere as relatively unknown superheroes who begin to show up the Avengers. Turns out that the team is a group of supervillains in disguise led by Baron Zemo. Subsequent incarnations of the Thunderbolts would have varying rosters with varying members of supervillains/anti-heroes and varying levels of reformation. 
• The term 'New Avengers' have been used for several different alternate versions of the Avengers, and a version that included the Sentry was one of the first uses of the name, formed by Captain America after the disbandment of the original Avengers. 
• Specifically, the presence of Sentry and a villain who's trying to make use of him is based on the Dark Avengers, a group led by Iron Patriot (Norman Osborn) who had a somewhat similar premise with the original Thunderbolts as a superhero team made of reformed supervillains. 
• Valentina renamed the Avengers Tower 'the Watchtower'. That was the name of the base of Sentry's home base in the comics. 

Movie Review: Captain America: Brave New World

Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

I actually really liked this movie. 

Online audience reactions are a bit less excited as I was, no doubt due to the increasing Marvel fatigue recently, but I do feel like Captain America: Brave New World is nowhere as messy or as bad as its detractors claim to be. 

It is still true that the movie does the rather unexpected decision of focusing on a lot of plot threads that stem from The Incredible Hulk -- a movie that has honestly felt like it was swept under the rug when the Marvel Cinematic Universe consolidated everything under a more comprehensive direction. One of the major players is the return of the newly-elected president Thaddeus Ross, recasted as Harrison Ford of Star Wars fame, who also has to deal with the primary theme of this movie -- legacy. Ross is easily one of the biggest highlights of the movie, with his anger and frustration being very visible, his old grudges against superheroes alternating with his genuine attempt to be a good president, and a huge chunk of the movie's storyline revolves around the question of whether an evil, manipulative old man like Thunderbolt Ross can genuinely change and redeem himself... or if he's internally as ugly as the monstrous Red Hulk that he transforms into at the end of the movie. 

Which, of course, with the optimistic tint that this movie has, the answer is yes. And it's a simple enough hook to make Ross be engaging -- a character that has a long enough of a history to believably go through such a character arc, but also never quite in the spotlight enough for the audience to be super-familiar with. Ford plays the bubbling rage and frustration that Ross faces throughout his handling of the crisis that's going on extremely well... and beneath it all, the heart of a father who has climbed to the highest position his career path would allow him -- who wants to prove to just one single person, his estranged daughter, that he can change. And that quiet scene in President Ross's office as he calls his daughter is such an amazingly well-acted scene. 

But, of course, the main character is Sam Wilson, once-Falcon and the new Captain America. Like Ross, Sam also has to deal with legacy. We've dealt with a lot of the more interesting and drama-oriented impostor syndrome in Sam's excellent Disney+ show, but he doesn't have the trust of everyone yet -- especially President Ross. The movie stats off with a nice little recap of Ross's ascension to presidency and Sam's ascension to Captainhood, before leading us into a fight scene as Captain America and his brand-new Falcon, Joaquin Torres, fight against a terrorist organization called SERPENT. Some fun action scenes, and we get a nice showing from secondary antagonist Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito). 

We also bring back Isaiah Bradley, the forgotten 'black Captain America' from Sam's Disney+ show, who acts as a mentor figure for Sam and Joaquin. The three of them arrive on the White House in an international summit over the discovery of a brand-new metal called adamantium on the petrified Celestial from Eternals. And while all this fancy sci-fi worldbuilding is nice, the movie's focus is on Isaiah Bradley, and how hesitant he was initially to accept the fact that things have changed for him, and his country is trying to do right by him. A lot of focus on how proud he was of his wedding suit that he's wearing to the party, which is all the more heartbreaking when Isaiah, without provocation, pulls out a gun and begins attacking President Ross. 

Now this isn't the first time that MCU has dealt with mind-control -- with Bucky Barnes' whole storyline in Winter Soldier and Civil War dealing with that. So I was admittedly a bit disappointed that none of it is really brought up. But Ross is extremely emotional over the shooting and locks Isaiah up, while the confused and innocent Isaiah delivers a very heartbreaking line on how everything good in his life that he thought he could've enjoyed after a lifetime of suffering is now gone. 

The dynamic between Sam and Ross is pretty well-executed here, with both men being angry at each other due to their past history. Captain America is grounded, but Sam and Joaquin continue on their own investigation. After a brief action scene when Sidewinder ambushes an equipment-less Sam Wilson, he and his allies manage to track down Sidewinder's sponsor to a black ops site called Camp Echo One... finding that the mastermind of everything that's been going on is Samuel Sterns, otherwise known as the supervillain known as the Leader. The Leader has apparently been working alongside Ross during his military career -- having blamed Sterns for the Abomination's rampage in Incredible Hulk but secretly using him to help create anti-metahuman technology and also cure the illness he has.

Ross had promised Sterns freedom from his imprisonment, which he goes back on, and as revenge Sterns has been trying to set up a way to utterly crush Ross at the height of his power. Sterns was responsible for the mind control with the 'Mr Blue' song as the trigger -- and this leads Sam and Joaquin to have to fight a small army of mind-controlled soldiers. 

Meanwhile, Sterns has also manipulated the data to make it look like America has paid Sidewinder to steal the Adamantium to make themselves look good, and then leaked it to other world leaders. In the midst of a desperate attempt to get Japan back on the bargaining table for the all-important treaty, the prime minister of Japan drops the bombshell that Ross couldn't refute -- but is utterly frustrated about. 

Oh, while all of this is going on, Ross's main minion, ex-Black-Widow Ruth Bat-Seraph is off doing her own investigation on the mind-control, finding that all the other shooters in the initial conference having been killed by strangely-behaving guards. Ruth manages to stop the guard before he kills Isaiah, but realizes that there is more than meets the eye, and rendezvouses with Sam and Joaquin. To be perfectly honest, Ruth's character feels like she's mostly there to make Ross's administration less of just him... but I think we can blame the rewrites over some real-world controversies that Marvel faced for adapting this character -- Ruth Bat-Seraph ends up feeling like a character that didn't really need to be here. 

As our heroes exit Camp Echo One, Captain America and Falcon arrive on Celestial Island, where America and Japan's navies are facing off against each other in a bit of a standoff... right as Sterns takes control of the minds of two pilots who fire on the Japanese navy. I actually really like this action scene as the two winged superheroes charge in and try and stop overt hostilities from breaking out, zipping around and disabling missiles while they wait for the world leaders to hopefully talk it out. The tense partial transformation Ross has in his battleship as Sterns mocks him is also very well done. During the subsequent attempt to stop the missiles, Joaquin is heavily wounded and is out for the rest of the movie. 

Sam gets into a bit of a moment of self-doubting again, thinking on whether he should've taken a super-soldier serum or something... but Bucky shows up for a brief pep-talk cameo. Going back into action, Sam manages to arrest a surrendering Sterns, before he realizes what Sterns is planning to do. 

As President Ross is at a press conference, Sterns unleashes the information of his involvement with Ross in the past to the public, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Ross has been holding in his rage towards these unjustful acts, towards these attacks on his character, towards the fact that people refuse to look beyond his past as 'the Hulk Hunter'... and finally snaps. He transforms rather majestically into the Red Hulk, which gives us the final showdown. And the final showdown is nice enough, even if as with a lot of Marvel's more recent output the CGI isn't the best. 

The fight is less about Sam Wilson taking down the Red Hulk, but talking him down. Dragging the battle into a location with the cherry blossom trees that meant the world to Ross and his daughter Betty, Captain America manages to wound Red Hulk enough to have him calm down and ultimately revert back to his human form. 

And after that incident, we get some closing scenes. Isaiah is exonerated and gets his suit back. The treaty is finalized but Ross surrenders himself to the superhuman prison, the Raft... but gets a nice surprise because Sam arranges for Betty to visit him there. And while the scene did take a bit of a longer time than it should, Sam visits the wounded Joaquin on his hospital bed, and Joaquin goes on a long speech about how his whole cocky act throughout the movie was because he was inspired by Sam Wilson, Captain America. Sam might always compare himself to Steve Rogers as the gold standard, but other people are looking up to him. And that's a nice bit of legacy for him. 

Ultimately? Yeah, the movie's plot is a bit basic, although I honestly do unironically appreciate the usage of older characters and spinning their stories into a conclusion. I also liked how personal the stakes were for Ross in particular, and how much Sterns isn't trying for a plan of global domination and just one of revenge. This movie did go through a chunk of rewrites thanks to Ruth Bat-Seraph's comic-book counterpart being tied to the Israel military, and I don't doubt that there would be some changes made to a movie that features an assassination attempt at a controversial American presidential figure. But all that aside? It's not the best Marvel movie I've watched, but it's a lean, simple story, and one that I genuinely, unironically enjoyed. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene:
• The Leader, in prison, rants about an incoming threat from other worlds that the heroes will be unprepared for, seemingly foreshadowing whatever will come in Avengers: Doomsday.
• Past Movies Continuity: (Characters)
• Sam Wilson took over the mantle of being Captain America in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Isaiah Bradley ('Black Captain America') and Joaquin Torres (the new Falcon) are both introduced in that show as well. During the first action sequence of this movie, Sam uses the bulkier suit from the TV show. 
• Samuel Sterns and Betty Ross make their return since The Incredible Hulk, an entire 17 years of real-world time between the movies -- the messy licensing issues revolving the Hulk's supporting cast has probably been to blame.
• Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross has shown up in various movies since Incredible Hulk -- notably in Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Black Widow. His original actor, William Hurt, passed away and the character was recasted as Harrison Ford in this movie -- with a lampshade that Ross had to 'change his look' for the presidential election.
• Past Movies Continuity: (Others)
• Finally, after being omstly reduced to news reports, the petrified body of Tiamut the Celestial from Eternals is acknowledged by the MCU, with various nations attempting to claim the precious Adamantium contained within the Celestial's body.
• President Ross brings up Wakanda's attitude towards Vibranium as seen in both Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, where Ross's predecessors had butted heads politically with Wakanda's leaders over the sharing of Vibranium.
• In his gym, Isaiah punches a sandbag off of the chain, a nod to Steve Rogers' very iconic scene in The Avengers where he did the same.
• There is a slight running gag of Joaquin asking Sam about Ant-Man. Whether on purpose or not, Sam's unexpected cameo and defeat at the hands of Scott in Ant-Man has been a bit of a running gag for the character. 
• Ross and Sterns would later find themselves imprisoned in the superhuman prison the Raft, most famously seen in Captain America: Civil War. 
• The sonic cannons that disabled Captain America and Falcon in the bunker seem to be the same sonic cannons seen in The Incredible Hulk that Ross's team used against the Hulk.
• Bucky being busy and unable to help out is presumably an allusion to whatever is going on with him in the next movie, Thunderbolts. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames: Captain America, Falcon and Sidewinder all use their codenames throughout the movie. The Serpent Society is renamed 'SERPENT'. Red Hulk is never referred to as exactly that, but with variations of the term. Neither 'Leader' or 'Sabra' is ever spoken on-screen, and Samuel Sterns and Ruth Bat-Seraph are always referred to by their real name.
• Favourite Action Scene: I like the fighter jet sequence around the Celestial, but I think this one has to go to a no-equipment Sam Wilson fighting against Sidewinder. 
• Funniest Line: "I should have taken that serum. Bucky was full of shit!"
• Dennis Dunphy, Sam's soldier ally, is the civilian alter-ego of minor Avenger member Demolition Man. Considering that Sterns kills him, he's probably not going to adopt that superhero outfit .
• Adamantium, the resource that the various governments are attempting to claim, is, of course, the famous indestructible metal that is used in the experiments that laced Wolverine's bones with it.
• While the MCU's adaptation of the Red Hulk is missing the fiery powers of his comic-book counterpart, during his public, full transformation, Ross's clothes do burn off instead of tear apart, and there were some shots where the Red Hulk is wreathed in flames in reference to this. 
• Camp Echo-1 in the comics was a location meant to hold Amadeus Cho, the second Hulk, in the comics.