Microreview [Movie]: Captain Marvel

It might be years overdue, but Captain Marvel finally provides a great first outing for its unapologetically powerful main character.

I'm relatively late and slow on the Marvel cinematic universe, and the fact that they've spent ten years and twenty movies without having a female-fronted superhero film is, let's be honest, quite a big part of that scepticism. When you're a woman interested in the stories of women (or, let's be honest, anyone who isn't the same muscly white man seventeen different times), it's hard to get enthusiastic about a franchise with high barriers to both entry and continuation which doesn't want to speak to you. As a space opera fan, I've seen (and liked) both Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and I tried the original Avengers, but it wasn't until Black Panther came on the scene that I started looking into what I've been missing. I'm still very much behind on the main arc, ignorant of everything that happens in Infinity War and a lot of the previous instalments too (who's this Bucky guy anyway?*) and currently weighing up whether to catch up on that main story in time to see the next Avengers in cinema or just to let that milestone pass me by.

Luckily, with the exception of a post-credits scene I probably shouldn't have stayed for anyway, none of this matters with Captain Marvel, which has a couple of returning faces but mostly blazes its own trail in a mid-90s setting that both capitalises on elder-millennial nostalgia for that decade and conveniently avoids any tricky "so why hasn't this woman been around in the 20 previous films" questions in-universe. This lack of baggage does more than make the film accessible: it allows it to build its own themes and turn this into a convincing, enjoyable and kickass origin story for the Captain to take centre stage.

Not that you'd realise it from the movie's beginning: Captain Marvel starts in the middle of a story that it feels like we should already be clued up on, though it does bring us up to speed and justify the decision pretty quickly. Vers, soldier on an alien planet, has been having nightmares that seem to be about a past she can't remember. She's been enlisted into Starforce as the Kree - an advanced civilisation run by an AI - fight a galaxy-spanning war against the Skrull, green-skinned shapeshifters who can mimic the form and voice of anyone they see. Vers' old life was apparently wiped out by a Skrull invasion, and Starforce are now moulding her and her interesting magic-fist powers into a level-headed fighting force via the mentoring of Jude Law's Yonn-Rogg, and is ready to do her bit to protect the rest of her people. After being captured and forced to relive some odd memories, including those of a "Wendy Lawson" on Earth, Vers decides to take matters into her own hands and go looking for Lawson against Yonn-Rogg's orders, with a sense that she might be tracking down something from her own past in the process.

If you've seen the posters, you won't have trouble figuring out "hey, this Vers lady is the one on the posters", and it's not going to come as a surprise to any but the most precious of filmgoers that Vers' memories are from her pre-Kree life on Earth: one in which she was Carol Danvers, ace pilot for Project Pegasus. The extent to which Captain Marvel's plot surprises is going to depend very much on how well-versed you are with the character's comic history and her wider place in the Marvel universe. Having picked up, like, 3 issues of Kelly Sue DeConnick's original Captain Marvel run - which entrenched the character's promotion from her previous iteration as Ms Marvel and made space for the rise of Kamala Khan in the process, I had very little background for the Kree-Skrull war and the history of characters like Yonn-Rogg and Lawson. Since watching the movie and doing a bit more research, it looks like the roles of these characters pay service to, but don't exactly follow, their comic book iterations. It also looks like we missed something great by not having the Kree wandering around in rainbow-coloured Captain Planet uniforms, as was apparently a Thing in the comics for a long time?

Hello. (Image: Marvel)

Whether it's wandering confidently around mid-90s Earth in a "laser tag" uniform, or reflecting her character's emotional journey as she tries to unpick what has been done in her past and understand how to move forward, Larson does well with the material she's given, although the emotional journey stuff isn't quite as exciting to watch as her lighter scenes, and I hope that comedic potential is played up more in future outings. What's refreshing is that Captain Marvel is explicitly shown as an ass-kicking sensation from the moment the movie begins, winning brief friendly victories over Yonn-Rogg by power-fisting him across a room, fighting her way out of an entire ship of Skrull with her arms encased in metal, and then getting a finale action sequence that felt like an absolute dream of well-realised power. Carol Danvers is an unapologetically, uncomplicatedly strong character and while that makes me a little worried for how she's going to be used in future, for this story it's just a joy to watch. The emotional journey is also extremely well backed up by the supporting cast, especially young Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and Danvers' best friend and platonic life partner Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) as well as Maria's daughter Monica, who needs to get her superhero upgrade in the MCU sooner rather than later.

Because it does many things well, the blind spots in this movie do become more obvious. One huge one is the role of Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, the only other woman on Vers' Starforce team and haver of many close-ups and few lines. None of the characters on the team get much development but having Chan's character apparently exist only to be kind of bitchy and indifferent to Vers is deeply frustrating, especially because the rest of the Kree are so dude-heavy. It's also frustrating, in a movie that gives such interesting roles to black characters like Fury and the Rambeaus, that the only rep for Asian women is painted blue and consigned to a flat role in the sidelines. I felt Annette Benning's role as Wendy Lawson also didn't live up to its potential, which would have been to really build up between the older Lawson and her pilot protegee. As it is, it's made competely obvious that Danvers feels that way about Lawson without actually giving the two the screen time to play it out for an audience. And while I do think Brie Larson knocks it out of the park in the role, especially in her 90s grunge girl aesthetic, I would just love to live in a world where the first movie-carrying woman could be something other than white and conventionally attractive. There's still so much to unpack here about who does and doesn't get the opportunity to shine, and while I welcome this as a good baby step, it still is one and it's hard to get too excited about the glacial progress of representation on film.

Captain Marvel is a great film, and as every woman led film outside of "chick flick" genres needs to be a great film in order to justify its own existence, that's something that we can all breathe a sigh of relief about as well as celebrating. Its smart message about self-belief, regardless of the limitations people feel entitled to stick on you, is one that works particularly well for a female superhero, and is overt about sexism without it overtaking the narrative or overshadowing her unique journey or the fact that she's probably the strongest and best thing I've seen happen to this franchise. I came out of Captain Marvel immensely pleased that I'd made the time for it, and up to 7.6% more likely to watch Avengers: Endgame next month: a victory all round.

*Note: this line is just for effect. Please do not write to me explaining who Bucky is.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 Floats elegantly on the sea of male tears; +1 The 90s are back!

Penalties: -1 There is still so much to be done to ensure diverse representation beyond a white woman and some black supporting characters.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke.

On Shared Universes

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Shared universes are all the rage right now. Generally, as you might expect, this is a thing I like. But are we going too far? For the purposes of this discussion, we'll call a shared universe any mixed media that doesn't follow a single narrative, but follows multiple characters and/or narratives across at least one for of media. We'll also focus on the big names, not one-off tie-in books, etc. Off the top of my head, we have:

• The MCU
• The, uh, DCU
• Star Wars
• Harry Potter
• MiB/21 Jump Street ha ha I'm kidding.
• Star Trek
• The Walking Dead

And then there are ones that just miss the cut, like Game of Thrones. But you get the idea. For the most part, however, these are good things. Everyone loves the MCU. DC is trying to right the ship after the BvS debacle. And who doesn't want more Star Wars?!?!? Wait, do we want more Star Wars? Of course we do, Dean, you say. You, of all people, want more Star Wars, right, Dean? Hey, I love Star Wars as much as the next person, as long as the next person freaking loves Star Wars, but let's look at what we have on the docket:

• Rogue One
• Han Solo
• Boba Fett
• Someone else
• Oh and I think some movies following episode VII?

That's for now! Plus a ton of new books, comics and video. Basically, Star Wars overload, which sounds great until you really start to think about, oh, say, Han Solo getting a movie about Han Solo pre-Episode IV, and what the directors have said:

“He’s a maverick, he’s a scoundrel, he’s clever but he’s not smart and he wants to present himself as this cool, tough guy but in the end he always does the right thing and that’s why you love him so much and why he’s one of the most iconic characters of all time”

WHAT. NO. That is not Han Solo. He had NO heart of gold coming INTO Episode IV; that's what makes his arc so compelling. And then Boba Fett! Imagine what they're going to do with him. Turns out, he's not such a bad dude and has a puppy. What makes Boba Fett great is we DON'T know him. But, hey, maybe some people really want this.

Oh, RIGHT, you already HAVE it all

And that's basically the great and terrible thing about these sorts of franchises - you can explore all these backstories and details, and as long as they are well done, it'll probably work.

Except it doesn't technically have to be good. We're all suckers for this, because once it has a certain  momentum, it's is a guaranteed hit, good or not. Are we all going to turn up for every movie listed up there? YUP. Am I stupidly excited for Suicide Squad, even though BvS was hot garbage? You know I am.

We clamor and clamor for original movies, original franchises, and something different, but then we go see Thor: the Dark World, despite the fact that you didn't even remember that movie existed until I mentioned it just now. So when Hollywood execs look at what movie to greenlight, they say "Thor is a guaranteed blockbuster, and we just recycled the script from the first one" instead of "Holy crap, maybe we should make a good original movie", because we all went out and handed it a $85m opening weekend*.

But what's the alternative? Another 30 years of no Star Wars? Or the last times anyone tried to adapt Marvel to the big screen? Or the time before that? Or are these franchises starting to bog themselves down? Look what making Age of Ultron did to Joss Whedon- he had to balance so many agendas and stories that he was handed an impossible tax, and we were handed an overstuffed mediocre movie. But then we got Civil War, which was fantastic, so maybe it is all fine, in the amalgamation.

Perhaps looking at them as shared universes is the wrong way to approach it, then - is the MCU good? The DC whatever? - but on a case-by-case basis. BvS sucked; maybe Suicide Squad will be good (edited to ad: Not lookin' good). Age of Ultron was meh, Civil War was spectacular. We've actually been doing it for years with Star Wars- we all basically pretend the prequels never happened, while loving the Clone Wars show and Episode VII.

So while we can do that; enjoy each piece on its own merits, there's still the voice in the back of my mind questioning if all this** money should be going into so few buckets. The Funko Pops, the Sideshow figures, the LEGO sets, all are branded with the above-listed franchises. How does a creator (cough cough) elbow their way into the midst of such massive brands? Does new, original content that we all say we want stand a chance of standing out?

I don't have a grand conclusion; I've had notes for this post for months, and I have no answers to any of those questions. I could, of course, make a call to pump the breaks - hey, maybe let's not give movies like BvS a $150m opening weekend - except I saw Civil War, Star Wars and Deadpool*** opening weekend, and celebrated those box office numbers.

I could say, go see small-studio and indie films, but that's like saying read indie books: A lot of them suck, and they aren't always widely available.  So, no grand conclusions, just the hope that the Han Solo movie isn't the Star Wars equivalent of Thor: The Dark World.

-DESR****

*Granted, it's only competition that weekend was The Book Thief. But that's also kind of the point.

**my

***Does Deadpool even count for this post? That just makes Deadpool cooler.

****I am 100% available to write any movies or shows in any of the universes, if any producers are reading this

Review: Captain America: Civil War

Captain, my Captain

Hype is a heck of a thing. And short of The Force Awakens, I don't remember a movie having more hype around it. By the time the actual movie came out, I am reasonably certain you could splice the entire movie together from the myriad TV spots and trailers. But does Civil War live up to all that hype?

The answer is: Kinda? Like, mostly? It's a lot to live up to, ya know? It's really good, but there was a LOT of hype. Ya know?

Not all of it was even the fault of Marvel/Disney. Once praise from critics started pouring in, it reached a fever pitch. And that praise is warranted! But, man, I honestly will remember the hype more than I will the movie.

So let's talk about the movie itself, even though you have already seen it. On the off chance you have not, I will try my very best to avoid spoilers.

Civil War did a LOT really, really well. I loved that it was actually a better Avengers movie than any of the ones that SAY 'Avengers' in the title. I loved that even with all those people in there, no one really felt left out, yet it was still a Cap movie.

I loved the villains. Again, avoiding spoilers, it did this much more gracefully than any other Marvel movie to date. And it didn't do it by just making Tony/Iron Man the bad guy. He was actually relatable and understandable, save for one early scene that felt like it was trying just a little too hard.

On the whole, it was a very, very good movie. Cap's character gets even deeper and more interesting, and really, so does the rest of the crew. There were, however, several small things that bugged me. Time/location jumps are really, really bad. That, or our heroes can literally teleport places, which I don't remember really being anyone's skillset. There was one part, in particular, where it killed two very impactful scenes for me because I was trying to figure out, how and when, exactly, two characters who were somewhere else entirely were suddenly in a very different place.

There have been a lot of complaints about the lack of stakes in this - someone should have died, no one was ever in any really danger, and I honestly disagree. The stakes were not absent, but they were different. I am treading on dangerously spoilery ground here, but the stakes was not the death of Cap, Iron Man or even Bucky. It was their trust and reliance on each other - and that died, and died hard. I liked it, because the movie was at least being honest with us. In, say, my least favorite Marvel movie, Thor: The Dark World, they beat you over the head with the universe is going to die and not once do you even care or feel suspense. Civil War never lies like that, instead telling you no one is going to die, but they might not trust each other again.

The airport fight scene, which in another movie would have been either a dour affair with lots of grimacing, or one where the heroes effortlessly trample the Bad Guys, was instead filled with friendly quips punctuated by punches, or vice versa. There were actual stakes there, too- it was the part I worried about the most coming in, but in execution, no one was trying to kill each other- just stop [CHARACTER] from  [DOING A THING]. So no one needed to die in order for the scene to work - and it made the emotional climax of the scene that much more powerful, as all the quips and jokes turned serious and everyone realized they now had to live with the consequences of their actions.

Also, Black Panther and Spider-Man are worth the price of admission alone.

The Math:

Baseline assessment: 8/10. Holy crap, this is a great movie. It's just the right mix of fun-popcorn flick and actual statement. The Russo brothers have outdone themselves, and I feel really bad that two Infinity Wars movies will probably break them like Avengers broke Joss.

Bonuses:
+1 for actually doing service to the 739 superheroes who are in this movie (count is approximate)
+1 for not doing another Spider-Man origin. Or even talking about it. Seriously. Thank you.

Penalties:
-1 for weird time/location jumps
-1 for not possibly being able to live up to all the hype
-1 for all the hype

Conclusion: 7/10: an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws. Which is actually the best description of the MCU. (Reviews policy here)

Microreview: Daredevil Season 2

This ain't your daddies review. And it's not really a microreview, either.

There's a lot to say, a lot to unpack, and it is really hard to know where to start.

So let's go back to the beginning. The real beginning. Back to when superhero movies just didn't work. Sure, there was Chris Reeve as Superman, and a halfway decent Batman, but c'mon, those aren't great movies.

Then others tried. And failed, but nobody failed harder than Ben Affleck as Daredevil. I won't talk about his upcoming turn as the caped crusader, but holy god, Daredevil stunk. For years- remember this? The MCU makes us blot out the dark ages, but I know you remember- Daredevil was pointed to as why comic book movies just didn't work.

Yeah, it IS as bad as you remember

Then there was Watchmen, and we can talk later about if that was good or not (my opinion- both), but I saw it opening night, and again the next day, because it is one of the all-time great stories, and Zach Snyder (who we can also talk about later as to if he is good or not. My opinion: meh) asked on Monday or Tuesday after it opened, for fans to go see it on subsequent weekends, to prove to studios that gritty, real, superhero movies worked.

You're so right, Comedian

For as far behind the times as Mister Snyder is these days, he was ahead of it there. The world- the medium- was not ready for costumed heroes that were not cartoons, or cartoony.

Iron Man and the MCU changed a lot of that. The Nolan Trilogy changed a lot of that. But still, no necks were snapped (We can talk later...). There were heroes, and there were villains.

So we arrive at Daredevil: S1. Holy crap, Daredevil? It'll be compared to Affleck's Daredevil,  we all said.

That was over fast, wasn't it? There was no comparison. One was a forgettable, by-the-numbers, vaguely creepy action movie, one was twelve-plus hours that grabbed you by the neck, forced you to watch and screamed your day job doesn't mean anything here, you are watching another episode.

2003? What happened in 2003?

So how do you top that? What Daredevil: S1 did was nothing short of monumental. X-Men: Days of Future Past exists to make us all forget X3 and everyone knows it. Daredevil the show doesn't give a [expletive deleted] that a movie exists with the same name - it just adds it to the pile of corpses it has created.

Season two does something else. It has no demons to purge, only itself to conquer. And conquer it does. If it was hard to know where to start, it is harder still to know where to continue. Its mildest successes are triumphs, and its triumphs are sublime.

The only word I can come up with to describe this season is poetry. Everything rhymes, everything- no, gentle reader, I mean everything- belongs together, flows and marries in rhythmic perfection. I am trying desperately to avoid spoilers for the five of you that didn't binge it over the weekend, but allow me to go back to the hero formula for a moment:

Daredevil is the hero, right? That's the formula. He is good, everyone else is bad or helps him. Except, not. The Punisher is the bad guy, right? Except you one-hundred-per-cent see where he is coming from and nod in agreement. Electra, man what is she even? But, man, she raises some good points. Foggy is the chubby comic relief, who fails at everything and our hero [cartoon eyes] braces him up in his failures. Except [no spoilers!] when Foggy is about to fall into that trope, he stands up and owns a situation. Karen Page, the heart-palpitation inducing blonde damsel in distress who is also the love interest, suddenly keeps the whole gorram thing together? She's much more than a pretty face (Although she is that- keep it together, DESR).

I am only human

The actors who portray them are spot-on as well. My love for Charlie Cox in Boardwalk Empire is well-documented, and when he was cast as Matt/Daredevil, I was a little concerned. Season one obviously allayed any concern there, his accent instead working to add some depth to his performance.

Much like the hero he portrays, he is hardly even the star. Deborah Ann Woll (Page) and Elden Henson (Nelson) elevate what would be simply supporting characters in any other show to stars in their own right, their on-screen charisma marrying perfectly with the brilliant writing mentioned above. Newcomers Jon Bernthal (Punisher) and Élodie Yung (Electra) do an amazing job of showing the true depth of there characters, from Castle's pained expressions as he justifies his actions, to Electra's insane smirks as she embarks on another 'fun' adventure. Everyone involved does a simply amazing job.

 **DIGRESSION ALERT** My previous favorite show was Peaky Blinders, also a Netflix original, and it did so many things, so well (you can drop S3 anytime, gang). But it was also the first and I wondered then, as now, when so many others- Hulu, YouTube, etc- have followed suit, is how will it all work? Because, with a standard teevee show, episodes air at a specific, there is reaction, next one airs, etc. But now, we get 14 episodes all at once, available to watch whenever we can/want, and the reason, or at least, the measure of it, is very, very different. More to the point: is it sustainable? **END OF DIGRESSION ALERT**

And this is where Daredevil makes its bones. It is far more than another show, it is a fourteen-hour[expletive deleted]-movie. Season one set the stage, stood up against all the Breaking Bad binge watching, and paved the road for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, et al, Season two proves it is a viable medium and release strategy and that, no, we don't have to tune in Tuesdays and nine/eight central. For me anyway, this is my default- wait for the DVD/streaming option to come out, watch it all at once. Daredevil capitalizes on that. Don't believe me? Ask all your friends what they did this weekend, or check your twitter feed.

Not that taking advantage of technology or viewing trends is the end all, be all of a show being great. Daredevil is great, from top to bottom, the whole series. And that is without delving into 'New York's Finest' (episode three), which is in the pantheon of perfect cinema. From the writing, the character development that ratchets tension up through the first 40 or so minutes, than releases it for a ten-minute one-shot that will leave you breathless, to every subtle detail littered throughout the entire series- well, if Daredevil is the man without fear, than he has a show befitting that, for it shows none.

Nerd coefficient: I'm forgoing bonuses (there are lots) and penalties (there are none), to simply give it the 10 it so richly deserves. 10: mind-blowing/life-changing/best.show.evar

Do We Want the Fantastic Four in the MCU?

I did not see Fantastic Four. I don’t need to taste spoiled milk to know it’s spoiled. I’ll take your word. Same as I’ve taken the internet’s word on the unmitigated disaster that the film is.

Allegedly. I haven’t seen it.

But this post isn’t about that film. It’s about a hypothetical film, one that hopefully won’t get made. And one that no one seems to want. But, I already wrote this post, so...

We all know by now that Fox has the film rights to the Fantastic Four—for another five years or so  as a result of rushing this latest installment into production. We also know that Fox has the film rights to the X-Men universe, a property the studio hasn’t completely mangled, at least not recently.

So serious...

Marvel isn’t happy about this, of course, having made the deals back in the ‘90s when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. The company even appears to be actively sabotaging the Fox properties by phasing them out of the comic universe, thereby giving Fox no new characters to use or plots to adapt.

But, there’s a chance that Marvel can get its hands on the Fantastic Four. With the monumental failure of the latest reboot (as of this writing, it hasn’t turned a profit), Fox may be forced by its shareholders to work out some kind of deal á la Sony with Spider-Man. And now with Fox wanting to expand the X-Men universe into TV—and with Marvel owning the TV rights to those characters—Marvel’s first family may come home.

Marvel just wouldn’t get the Fantastic Four. They’d get Dr. Doom, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Skrull, Franklin Richards. Others, I suppose. All could soon make their appearance in the MCU.

There are great characters in the Fantastic Four universe. While I cannot imagine that the Silver Surfer will look much different from his previous incarnation—the only thing good from those early installment—Galactus would certainly be something akin to the Celestial walk-on in Guardians of the Galaxy. Yes, we’d actually Galactus as a god—not a space cloud. And Avengers: The Kree-Skrull War and Avengers: Secret Invasions (jettisoning most of the source material from the latterl, of course).

And Dr. Doom, possibly the greatest comic villain of all time. Marvel desperately needs interesting villains.

You know which characters are more or less unnecessary? The Fantastic Four themselves.

Would a Marvel Studio’s Fantastic Four be any good? 

Well, it would probably be a lot like Fox’s previous FF movies: a bit more colorful than the standard gritty fare we’re fed and a lot more tongue-in-cheek. Even the cast wouldn’t look much different: a collective of relative no-names, a handful of B-Listers, and maybe a bona fide star or two in support—plus a Nick Fury or Tony Stark cameo. There’s a chance that this formula would work better this time around. After all, the first Fantastic Four came out in 2005, the same year of the first Nolan Batman and five years after Singer’s interpretation of the X-Men. With Batman and Robin in recent memory, there seemed to be a consensus, within the industry and among fans, that the only way to translate comics into film was to up the grit, thereby “grounding” the story in the real world. Fantastic Four and Rise of the Silver Surfer doesn't fit that gritty mold—as the newest version seems to have conclusive proven.

They almost look like they enjoyed making the movie.

But things have changed since 2005. In spite of commonsense, Marvel Studios gambled on making fun and often funny films, presenting their characters pretty much as they are written in the comics—maybe even a bit less gritty and realistic than the many incarnations of these heroes. So, the Fantastic Four seems perfect in the actually-enjoyable MCU.

A Marvel Fantastic Four film could look a lot like Guardians of the Galaxy—or at the very least Ant-Man. Like those characters, the Fantastic Four aren’t among Marvel’s more “realistic” heroes, so the Studio could have fun with them. But, unlike the previously mentioned Marvel fare, the Fantastic Four does not benefit from being relatively unknown. They got baggage.

Does anyone like Fantastic Four? Yes, no one really likes Ant-Man. But few of us even have an opinion on Ant-Man. Most comic fans have an opinion on the Fantastic Four—and not a favorable one. Yes, we all pay lip service to the original Kirby-Lee run. But by the darkening eighties, the Fantastic Four seemed so out of step with the grittiness that was overtaking the medium, grittiness we fans demanded and ate up. While Spider-Man survived the Great Darkening, the Fantastic Four are no Spider-Man. Peter Parker, however, epitomizes much of what actual humans go through. The Fantastic Four as a set of human characters are weak and no very relatable in comparison. Hey, there’s the scientist guy! And the cocky hot shot! And the tough one! And…a woman…

We certainly never cared enough about the team to actually buy the book. And we don’t care to see the movie either.

Certainly, a Marvel Studio’s Fantastic Four would likely not be the unmitigated disaster that Fox’s latest effort is. But Marvel Studios would probably have made many of the same mistakes that Fox did. Marvel, after all, has a history of putting untested directors at the helm of big budget projects. Marvel may have even hired Josh Trank on the basis of Chronicle, just as Fox did. Furthermore, Marvel’s success stems in large part from its oversight on productions, ensuring that films look and feel like bona fide MCU movies. Edgar Wright’s exit from Ant-Man was the result of this oversight. Would Marvel had acted any different than Fox on the set of the film?

At the end of the day, we really don’t need a Marvel Fantastic Four. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is pretty full as it is, with a dozen characters in waiting. Sure, Marvel probably would love to get their first family back, but as it stands the MCU is probably crowded enough. And Marvel should focus on making Spider-Man—another character I’ve never cared about—decent again. Not for me. For the fans.

Plus, wouldn’t you rather have Marvel involved in an Old Man Logan or X-Factor Netflix series? Unless Marvel is planning a series based on Ed Brubaker’s Doom. I’ll sit through another boring FF moving for that.