MCU Retrospecticus: Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Original Review: The War of Bucky Aggression (five stars)

Captain America: Civil War is the beginning of a shift in focus for the MCU away from common people. A division subtly starts to erupt between “enhanced individuals” and everyone else, so subtle I didn’t really notice it until Infinity War. It makes sense as a natural progression of the shared universe; the more supers there are, the harder it gets to justify screentime for normies. We are about eight years in at this point, the days of SHIELD keeping everything quiet in Phase One and the “you’re that guy from the thing in New York” obfuscations of Phase Two are over. Black Widow released everything SHIELD and Hydra had onto the Internet and Ultron scooped up a city and blew it up. It’s a super hero’s world, everybody else is just living in it.

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Walking The Line

Jenny Lewis – On The Line

It’s a bit of a coincidence that both Jenny Lewis’s On The Line and Solange’s When I Get Home came out around the same time, since they both have the same approach to their album covers. In that they’re quite similar to the artist’s previous album, but dressed in different garb, while the album is a bit of a companion piece to the artist’s previous album. Fittingly, On The Line has a similarly breezy and beleaguered vibe to 2014’s The Voyager, and with Lewis having a few more years on her since then, she sounds a bit wiser, but also just as confounded by the impending doom of middle age. Continue reading →

MCU Retrospecticus: Ant-Man

Ant-Man (2015)

Original Review: The Smallest Man on Earth (three stars)

I have mixed feelings about this movie, but I think I’m going to rate it higher this time. Where to start? My problem with Ant-Man is that I don’t get his gimmick. He shrinks to the size of an ant and can also control ants, that all makes sense. But also he gets like super speed and strength when he’s shrunk down? When Hope starts training Scott in this movie she explains, “when you’re small, energy’s compressed. So you have the force of a 200 pound man behind a fist a hundredth of an inch wide. You’re like a bullet. You punch too hard, you kill someone. Too soft, it’s a love tap.” Sure enough, later we see Scott zipping around rooms knocking out professional soldiers with a single hit. But it bothers me that it never feels intuitively correct.

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Deuce Ex

Ex Hex – It’s Real

After seeing Ex Hex live this week, it has become quite apparent that it was misguided of me to frame Ex Hex as exclusively a Mary Timony project in my recent Retrospecticus. After all, bassist Betsy Wright sang lead and wrote two of the songs on the band’s debut, and does the same on several songs on the band’s latest album It’s Real, including headbangers like “Rainbow Shiner”. And live, she doesn’t even play bass anymore – she instead plays just about as much lead guitar as Timony, and thus gives the appearance that the band has not one, but two really awesome frontwomen. (Note: some generic dude played bass slightly off stage in Wright’s place. I cannot confirm whether it was Jonah Takagi, who produced It’s Real and played some bass on it.) Continue reading →

MCU Retrospecticus: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Original Review: Golden Living Dreams of Vision (four stars)

I realize now the folly of me being the one re-reviewing these movies is that I am predisposed to liking them. I’m the guy who buys tickets at five in the morning a month in advance for Avengers: Endgame, and whose Google News feed is full of articles about how toys are hinting at spoilers, and who would want to watch 20-odd movies again in less than two months. That enthusiasm doesn’t blind me to the faults in these stars, but it does make it easier for me to overlook them. So, instead of me writing again about how much I love watching these super freaks save people, I’ll try to take you through everything that is wrong with Age of Ultron. But, honestly, I think it’s awesome.

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MCU Retrospecticus: Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Original Review: Rise of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole (four stars)

SHIELD was the connective tissue that made the MCU feel like one thing instead of a bunch of disconnected super hero movies. The organization was so important that by 2014, Marvel had created a tie-in TV show on ABC about SHIELD’s agents. Then The Winter Soldier blew that all up, instantly making Agents of SHIELD a lot better but leaving us asking where do the movies go from here? How would the first new super heroes of Phase Two fit in without having Nick Fury show up to recruit them at the end? Well, don’t worry about it. James Gunn’s here.

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MCU Retrospecticus: Captain America: The Winter Solider

Captain America: The Winter Solider (2014)

Original Review: Cap’s Back (four stars)

Let’s talk about the politics of the MCU. Like a lot of post-9/11 entertainment, the MCU goes out of its way to make it clear that its villains are mercenaries or terrorists who have no genuine loyalty to any nation or ideology. Tony Stark was abducted in Afghanistan, but by a multinational group backed by an American businessman. Vanko was Russian, but his grudge was personal, not political. Captain America fought in WWII, but his enemy was Hydra, a faction of even more evil Nazis that later in the movie splits from Germany altogether. Again and again, the bad guys are simplified down to purely evil world conquerors. So who wouldn’t root for the good guys stopping them?

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