Saturday coffee: Do I have Marvel fatigue?
'Spider-man,' Harry Potter and two podcast appearances!
Happy Saturday, everyone!
I hope your weekend is off to a good start and that you’re all gearing up for a great holiday at the end of next week. Because I know we’re all busy, I’m going to skip much of the preamble and just get straight into a few quick selections for this Saturday’s entry, but there’s a big week coming up. Monday, I’ll have my spoiler-filled thoughts about Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Wednesday, I’ll have a special holiday-related post for you to enjoy. And to accompany your Black Friday shopping, there’s a new Franchise Friday coming for you, with a log back into The Matrix. That, plus a fun new Christmas series coming next Sunday! But for now, I have a few other things to talk about.
Do I have Marvel fatigue?
The latest trailer for December’s Spider-man: No Way Home dropped this week. As expected, it gave a little bit more insight into what we can expect from the multiverse-hopping adventure this Christmas, with clearer looks at the myriad villains from pervious Spidey projects who will be popping up, including Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, Jamie Foxx’s Electro, and the Sandman and Lizard, although it’s not confirmed whether Thomas Hayden Church and Rhys Ifans will be returning to play them. Not showcased are previous Spider-men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, although their return seems to be the worst-kept secret in Hollywood at this point.
It’s all fine. There are quips, stunts and giant lights in the sky. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange makes mysterious proclamations about messing with the multiverse and things breaking through. Tom Holland’s been a fine Spidey and I’ve enjoyed his appearances in the MCU, and I’m sure this will be just fine as well. But despite how overwhelming everything in this looks, I just feel...underwhelmed.
Marvel is pushing the multiverse hard, and I guess I get it. What’s a bigger play than combining all the characters from its various franchises? Pulling in characters and actors from other studios’ attempts at these franchises. I’m sure that’s eventually going to play into other Marvel movies, and likely set the stage for how they’ll bring about their X-Men reboot (although, wisely, I’m sure Fantastic Four will start from scratch as no one likes the previous attempts at that property).
But just a few years back, Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse beat the MCU to the punch at pulling in a variety of Spideys from different universes. It’s easily the best Spider-man movie, the best Marvel movie and in contention for the best superhero movie ever made. And its Spideys were diverse. There was a slacker, 40-something Peter Parker; a female; a robot from the future; a hard-talking gumshoe; and a cartoon pig. It was inventive, it was funny and it was original. The MCU’s approach seems to be “what if we had access to infinite worlds, and brought in people we’ve seen before...but when we didn’t have the rights.” Spider-verse was a triumph of imagination; this appears to be a triumph of negotiation and marketing. Maybe it will all be fun, but I worry that it’s going to tune into two hours of the guy from Pitch Meeting going “he’s from the other movies!”
And maybe there’s something bigger going on. Maybe I’m actually tiring of Marvel. I’m not totally over them; I liked Black Widow and Shang-Chi, and I’ve enjoyed most of their Disney+ shoes. But it’s hard to get excited about new Marvel when it never goes away, and Eternals is the first MCU offering I haven’t even bothered to check out in theaters. I know it’s likely fine and it will continue to be fine when it’s available to stream at my leisure at home. A new Spider-man film is fun, but it’s just another episode in an ongoing story. These don’t feel like events so much as obligations anymore, and I’m curious who’s feeling the same way.
The Hogwarts gang is back...again
Speaking of things that we can’t miss if they don’t go away, Warner Brothers announced that a reunion of the Harry Potter cast will hit HBO Max on Jan. 1. And I have to wonder...why do we need a reunion?
Granted, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released 20 years ago, a fact that makes me feel incredibly old, given that it came out my senior year of college. But the last film was released in 2010, and in the ensuing decade the cast has reunited to film scenes for rides at Universal Studios. It doesn’t feel like Harry Potter’s been gone long enough for us to be clamoring for a reunion; at least the Friends and Fresh Prince reunions on HBO Max were decades down the road. It seems Daniel Radcliffe is in a new movie or TV show every few months, and Harry Potter is still the go-to source for any millennial who needs a quick political illustration or allegory.
I have nothing against Harry Potter. I’m a little too old for it to be the life-changing text it was for an entire generation, but I enjoyed the books just fine. I saw all of the movies in the theater; the second date with the woman who would become my wife was to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I can’t say I’ve revisited the movies or thought about them much since then, but I’m looking forward to introducing my kids to them. And I’ve enjoyed some of the other reunions that HBO Max has put on; the Friends one was fun, if a bit too soft, but the Fresh Prince reunion worked really well. I’m sure this will be fine; I just don’t know if anyone was asking for it.
And no one probably was. The people who needed it are the execs at HBO Max, who have the entire Harry Potter streaming available to stream and probably know a reunion can goose the eyeballs a bit. That is, after all, what drove the previous reunion specials on the streamer. And whatever; keep the corporate overlords happy, I guess. HBO Max is one of the few genuinely good streaming services out there, so I’m not going to moan too much. I just feel like, maybe, another WB property, such as Lord of the Rings — which also turns 20 this year — might have yielded a more intriguing and entertaining reunion. And we haven’t seen that cast together much since the series ended in 2003.
Book report: My Heart is a Chainsaw
Stephen Graham Jones’ novel was a holdover I’d hoped to read before Halloween, but I ended up tackling it this month. Oddly, it’s the second novel I read this year that depends on its protagonist’s knowledge of slasher films to help her survive, after Grady Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group, which I also enjoyed. Jones’ novel concerns Jade, a teenage Native American girl in Idaho who is obsessed with horror movies. When people start dying in her town, she’s convinced she’s living in a slasher movie that she gets to watch unfold from the periphery. She sets her sights on a classmate who might make for the perfect final girl, and tries to find out just who may be behind the killings.
Final Girl Support Group is probably the more enjoyable read, a more familiar take on the tropes of the genre and straightforward thriller. My Heart is a Chainsaw sometimes takes awhile to show its true intentions. But when it does, it reveals itself to be a thoughtful and emotional dive into trauma and an examination of why we tell stories and how they help us frame our lives. Jade has her own secrets and sufferings, and slasher movies have given her a language to make sense of them. But they’ve also distracted her from confronting the real monsters who have populated her life and have left her convinced she could never be the hero in anyone’s story.
Like Final Girl Support Group, I wouldn’t call this novel particularly scary, although it does turn stomach-churningly gruesome in its final 100 pages. The horrors here are more internal and psychological. But Jones does introduce us to a compelling heroine in Jade. And Jones knows his slasher movies; the book is riddled with “essays” from Jade to her history teacher that showcase her knowledge of the subgenre, from the well-known to the obscure. It’s a smart and sensitive read, and I’m curious to check out some of Jones’ previous work.
New We’re Watching Here watches M*A*S*H
A new episode of the We’re Watching Here podcast I co-host with Perry Seibert dropped this week, and it kicked off our long-awaited discussion of the films of Robert Altman. Altman’s a huge blindspot for me, so I’m looking forward to digging into his filmography a bit. Our first stop, predictably, was Altman’s feature debut, M*A*S*H. We talk about this in more detail in the episode, but if your only exposure to the franchise is the TV show (as mine is), the film is its own different thing. Perry and I talk about the anger that fuels the film, the humor that doesn’t quite hold up to modern standards, and the undeniable charisma of Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould. This was a fun discussion to have, and I can’t wait to keep digging into this filmography. Listen on Transistor or subscribe on iTunes and Spotify.
Hear my faux Irish accent on Seeing and Believing
I was honored to be invited back to Christ and Pop Culture’s Seeing and Believing podcast this week to talk about Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. Kevin and I talked a bit about what the film does right and some areas where it falters, which I didn’t have the space to go into in my review. All that, and I try my hand at an Irish accent (and it sounds pretty good, I have to say!).