Maybe it’s me. Maybe I just shouldn’t be allowed near CGI animated dinosaur films. I don’t know why this particular mircogenre of movies manages to so consistently stick in my damn craw. I, of course, have Dinosaursitting proudly at the very bottom of my rankings of the Disney canon and I have every hope that it will remain that way for a long time.
And I would still gladly watch Dinosaur over TheGood Dinosaur. Mainly because, I can at least watch Dinosaur from beginning to end. The Good Dinosaur is the second last movie on my requested reviews because I have put it off over and over and over again. I cannot finish this thing. It bores the piss out of me.
But, before we crack on, I want to explain why I’m not doing a full plot recap for this one.
Still not entirely sure this isn’t my wife pulling off an amazingly ambitious prank.
3. This movie has practically no plot to recap.
4. Disney Plus was dicking me around something fierce, constantly crashing and freezing and making the experience of watching this movie even more interminable than normal. This, by the way, was also during Kimmelnacht so you can understand why I was eyeing my Disney Plus subscription with a steely eye and whispering…
So, not a recap, more a series of observations about why this fucking movie annoys me so much.
It’s not a job I’d want as a writer, I’ll tell you that much.
Trying to write the first movie about a black Captain America in such a viciously polarised time is a hell of a poisoned chalice and I don’t envy the approximately eighteen thousand screenwriters who worked on Captain America: Brave New World. What does it mean for a black man to represent America given, y’know, the whole business? That has to be delved into right?
Or does it? Is it fair to insist that Sam Wilson has to make some great serious statement on The Issue of Race, when you would never ask that of Steve Rogers? Shouldn’t Sam Wilson just be able to be Captain America without it being a whole thing?
Personally, and this is just my instinct as a writer, I would have focused on winning the crowd over in the first movie with a really kickass Captain America movie and keep the heavy stuff for further movies down the line once Wilson/Mackie had been accepted by a critical mass of the fanbase as the new Cap.
I don’t know how I would have done that exactly.
I can tell you one thing: I wouldn’t have done this.
This being a stealth sequel to 2008’s The Incredible Hulkwhere Captain America feels like a supporting character in his own damn movie.
So let’s unpack this joke. Here is everything you, the viewer, need to know for this gag to land.
This is Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner.
Garner first played this role over twenty years ago, in the critically reviled Daredevil, and then again in the practically unseen spin-off Elektra.
In Daredevil, she was the love interest of the title character.
Daredevil was played by Ben Affleck.
Garner and Affleck married shortly after making that film.
They subsequently underwent an extremely public and acrimonious divorce.
Hence, Elektra is not particularly cut up about Daredevil dying.
And virtually every joke in this thing is that kind of inside baseball uber-specific nerd bullshit that seems positively tailormade to appeal to me, a 40 something male who had comics instead of friends growing up. And yet…this thing made €1.8 billion dollars. This is as mainstream as movies get now.
Super niche nerd culture is no longer niche. The war is over. Everyone is a massive nerd now.
Total domination.
And I now find myself in a very difficult position as a movie critic.
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I laughed my ass off from start to finish.
Hey folks! As I’ve already mentioned, my third book The Burial Tideis due to hit shelves in Spring of next year. BUT! I can now reveal that my FOURTH book will also be released at around the same time!
That’s right! There will be twin Sharpson book babies in the new year. So what’s the newest addition about? Well, after starting out with a hard-boiled sci-fi/spy-thriller and two Celtic mythology influenceD horror novels, I’ve decided the next step in my writing career will be…a picture book about fish for kids aged three to seven.
Don’t Trust Fish will be published by Penguin Dial in the US, Andersen Press in the UK and Ireland and Penguin Australia in Kazakhstan *checks notes* I mean Australia and New Zealand.
Oh, and it’s illustrated by DAN FREAKING SANTAT, #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLING AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR AND WINNER OF A FRICKETY FRUCKETY CALDECOTT MEDAL.
Dude. Is. Legit.
Anyway, this is something I’ve been sitting on since the Pandemic and I cannot tell you how happy and proud and excited I am to finally get this out in the world.
Here’s the big problem with writing a character like Superman: he can’t change the world.
The superhero genre is about taking our world, the recognisable world we live in, and adding a few discreet fantastical elements. That’s the appeal. Ordinary people, trudging to their ordinary jobs look up and see a brightly coloured figure streaking through the air. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s Superman!
That’s the magic that the entire genre runs on. Which can create problems when, say, certain real world events have to be incorporated into the fictional reality of the universe.
Yeah Spider-man. You should have used your…webs…to stop 9/11.
And that can throw up all kinds of logical head-scratchers. Like (and I’m really, really not trying to be offensive here) ask yourself; would 9/11 even be that big a deal in the Marvel universe? Given that this is the same world where Kang the Conqueror once wiped out the entire population of DC or New York is under constant attack from Galactus, Symbiotes and God knows what else?
This is not a new problem. In 1940, Siegel and Schuster wrote a non-canon Superman story for Look magazine called “How Superman would End the War”, where Supes abducts Hitler and Stalin and drags them before a tribunal to stand trial.
The League of Nations being useful. There’s some comic book logic for you.
But in the main Action Comics and Superman titles the war went largely unmentioned apart from some now deeply uncomfortable covers schilling war bonds.
Out of universe, the reason for that is obvious. If Superman takes a more active role in world affairs and gets rid of Hitler (or Stalin. Or Saddam Hussein. Or Putin) then his world diverges too far from our own and the story loses that central appeal. It stops being our world and becomes an almost alien alternate reality.
But in-universe, you need to explain why Superman doesn’t just stop every dictator and despot around the world. It’s a problem that a lot of great Superman media has grappled with, and a lot of shitty media too.
Oh fuck, the Problem of Evil. What a radical new concept.
So in 1999, Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch launched The Authority, a series about a Justice League pastiche that actually does take out dictators and get its hands dirty in global geo-politics. While Ellis intended the Authority to be seen as villain protagonists, when Mark Millar (OF FUCKING COURSE) took over as writer the team’s extreme and violent tactics were portrayed much more positively. The incredible popularity of this run prompted some fans and critics to claim that the nice old status-quo reliant heroes like Superman were strictly squares-ville, daddio, and that political assassinations and low-key fascism were what the cool kids were into. This prompted Superman writer Joe Kelly to pen What’s so Funny about Truth, Justice and the American Way?, where Supes comes face to face with a very thinly veiled pastiche of the Authority and demonstrates that wanting Big Daddy Strongman to come in and fix all our problems and punish our enemies is the cause of, like, 90% of the bad shit in our history as a species.
And…here’s where I have to confess to being a fraud and a coward. I haven’t actually read it. Yeah, I know. Even though I self righteously quoted it in the Dawn of Justice review I haven’t actually read the entire story. But, I have seen the 2012 animated adaptation Superman versus The Elite. And I am going to review it. And that is the thing you are reading now. If you’re a long time reader, you probably knew that, but I try to keep things accessible for the newbies.
I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down for a chat with Nick and Bex on the Unlocked Tomb podcast where we chatted about Knock Knock, Open Wide, When the Sparrow Falls, writing, horror, Irish folklore, my upcoming books and…honestly just about everything. This was one of those interviews that felt more like just hanging out with chill people and shooting the shit, so if you enjoy listening to me rambling about every subject under the sun (and, I mean, you’re HERE) then stick it in your ears.
The Walt Disney Corporation is very good at some things, and very bad at others. And, personally speaking, the one thing they’ve always been worst at is making me like the Walt Disney Corporation.
I love the movies. I hold them dear to my heart. But whenever I see one of those corporate promotional videos where everyone is wandering around Disneyland in a state of wide-eyed joy like they’re the first good souls to be welcomed into God’s kingdom I come out in hives. You know what I’m talking about.
CHARACTER 1: It’s so incredible that [text from marketing press release announcing newest venture] is finally here!
CHARACTER 2: Woooooooooow…
I hate it when Disney tries to sell itself because it always feels so…the vibes are wrong. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s probably why the Oh My Disney sequence in Ralph Breaks the Internet is still my least favourite few minutes in the entire canon. It’s also probably the reason why I steered clear of Once Upon a Studio for so long, and why it took me two tries to actually watch it all the way through. And that’s because it begins like this:
“It’s so incredible to think that Disney founded Walt Disney animation 100 years ago today!” “Wooooooow.”
Before you ask, no, this wasn’t planned. It’s just a coincidence that I’m doing this review so soon after Megamind: The Doom Syndicate defiled everyone’s childhood memories like a randy Gungan. Not my childhood memories, obviously. I was engaged when this thing came out. But apparently there are people out there who were children when the original movie released and now are, like, allowed to vote and stuff? It’s a mad world.
I haven’t seen the sequel but I did watch the trailer on YouTube. This was the most upvoted comment and the sense of historical tragedy and pathos was just too great for me not to share with you all.
My God. It’s like the fall of Paris.
I’ll be upfront, upfront. I like Megamind just fine but I don’t know how much I have to say about it. It doesn’t have a special place in my heart but neither is there a lot of stuff to make fun off. Plus it’s a comedy that is actually unironically funny on its own merits and you know how much I love writing about those!
But that doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting movie. It actually belongs in the category of film that I would argue are among the most interesting; movies that were re-appraised after their initial release. When it dropped in 2010 Megamind was mostly dismissed as an inoffensive but unremarkable bit of fluff chasing the trend started by The Incredibles and Despicable Me. Since then it’s been re-evaluated as one of the best Dreamworks movies with a devoted cult following. And that’s interesting (to me, at least) because when that happens it’s usually less to do with the movie itself and more to do with society changing and seeing the movie in a new light.
So, what’s next on the old docket? Why what’s this? A canon Disney movie? One of the films that this very blog was established to review?
Why, this is something of an occasion! Maybe we’ll have lots of cameos from long running characters like The Horned King or Walt Disney himself? Maybe a long and overly complicated kidnapping arc? Might Otto Von Bismarck appear? He bloody might!
“Mouse, quit stalling, I’ve got fifty bucks on you giving this shitpile a good review just to be contrarian.”
“Then you, sir, just lost fifty bucks and my respect.”
But before surgery commences, I want to talk about conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy Theories, counter-intuitively, are a way to make the world seem less scary, to make sense of an otherwise terrifyingly random existence.
To many Americans, the idea that a shadowy cabal within the US government would kill a sitting president of the United States was actually a less unsettling prospect than the idea that some random nutjob could decide to kill the most powerful man on Earth and just…do it.
Or that a lunatic fundamentalist in a cave with a few followers and some bolt cutters could have handed the US its most devastating attack on home soil since Pearl Harbour. Or that…a majority of Americans just didn’t think that Donald Trump should get another term.
Which is why, if you’re about to get angry at me for bringing up the extremely well known conspiracy theory that Wish was either wholly or partly the creation of generative AI, I think you’re missing the point. To understand a conspiracy theory’s appeal, you have to look not at the theory itself but the reality that it would replace if it were true. People want to believe that Wish is AI generated because it’s less scary than believing that this is just the kind of film that Disney’s creative process produces now.
Recently I gave an interview for a podcast where we discussed how the publishing industry is becoming totally, crushingly data driven and where books are increasingly commissioned, marketed and read for and by micro-targeted audiences. Books are becoming products rather than pieces of art, not something the artist wrote because they cared about it but because the algorithim says that Becky in Minnesota is jonsing for an enemies-to-lovers mafia werewolf story. And this isn’t just limited to publishing, the whole entertainment industry is sick with it.
So I know why so many people believe this theory is true*, because the reality is actually scarier. The same market and technological forces that make AI art so…off are now infecting even human created art. The machines aren’t just getting more human-like. We’re meeting them in the middle.
In the past I’ve had plenty of opportunities to extol my favourite film critic, Tim Brayton over at Alternate Ending and now is as good a time as any to re-up. Check him out if you haven’t already. He’s a fantastic critic and an inspiration and so it is with a certain bitter-sweet melancholy that I must report that I have at last surpassed him.
Not in terms of quality of analysis or wit of writing, fuck no, I’m not insane. But you see, Tim actually reviews movies roughly when they come out, like some kind of freak with a work ethic, where as I review movies when I feel like it, maaan.
But today represents the first time I’m aware of where I actually beat him to the punch. My The Marvels review has come out before his The Marvels review, a victory whose sweetness is only slightly mitigated by the fact that I’m not entirely sure he intends to actually review this movie, a fact that is both completely understandable and quite damning.
A major critic not reviewing the latest installment of the MCU? How can this be?
It’s like that moment during the trial of Charles the First where the top fell off his cane and no one bent down to pick it up for him. In that moment, he knew he was king no more and also possibly that he was about to get a pretty aggressive haircut.
And look, I wanted to like this one. I want to like every movie I sit down to review. I love a good comeback story as much as anyone. And I had actually heard positive rumblings that this movie was far better than its paltry box-office and mediocre critical reception would suggest. I was even told it was something of an overlooked gem. Who told me that? In retrospect, fools. The movie is (mostly) trash.
unshavedmouse 