So, in the past month I’ve seen three super hero
movies - Spider-Man Homecoming, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Wonder
Woman. All three were incredible, and you can’t go wrong with any of
them.
Possible minor spoilers ahead.
Wonder Woman
This was my least favorite of the three, but don’t
take that as a negative when the competition’s so fierce. It’s like
saying pizza is your least favorite out of pizza, sex, and video
games. It’s just that a lot of my love for the
Wonder Woman movie is actually relief. Relief that the current DC
movie continuity isn’t completely cursed, and relief that a female-led
superhero movie can actually do well. The movie’s biggest strength is
that it fills me with hope for future movies. Wonder Woman gets so much
right, and was so necessary to the movie industry, that it feels like
sacrilege to point out the flaws.
But to be completely honest, I think the movie is sort of generic. 90% of what I loved about the movie only worked
because it was Wonder Woman. If they’d swapped her out for a
male character (let’s say Hercules if we want to
keep the general theme), it would have been just another forgettable
action flick. I love the movie, but it’s not going to be as rewatchable
as the Marvel films.
Most movies try to save the best stuff for the end,
but I found WW more entertaining at the beginning. The first half of
the movie is outstanding, but the it gets a little dull towards the
end, and the final battle is just your standard
boss fight. The villains didn’t exactly sweep me off my feet, and the
casting of the Big Bad seemed like an odd choice. More than anything I
see the movie as a foot in the door, proof that female superheroes can
succeed in Hollywood after all. In a future
where female-led superhero films are more common, I’m not sure Wonder
Woman will really stand out much. But the success of Wonder Woman means
that future might actually happen, and that’s very important.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
This is my favorite of the three. If you liked the
first one, it’s more of the same, though there’s more character
development this time. While I love the first GotG, the characters
were one-dimensional quip-generators, kind of like
Suicide Squad in space. The sequel gives them more depth, which slows
down the movie but not enough to make it boring.
The opening battle is one of my favorite movie
sequences of all time. From the trailers, that particular fight looked underwhelming to me. But in the film itself, they actually made
the scene better by taking the focus off the
fighting itself. For spoilers sake I won’t to go into detail, but it had me dancing and singing in my seat.
People find me strange because I’m not very much
into music. (Well, that’s not the only reason they find me strange.)
In my life I’ve owned maybe 3 tapes and 6 CDs, and the ones I’ve owned
haven’t seen a lot of use. I don’t have to
listen to music while I’m driving, I don’t go to concerts, and I never
just sit and listen to music while doing nothing else. I generally consider music as something to keep it from being too quiet, but I've never been into it. And yet,
roughly 50% of my love for the GotG movies has
to do with the soundtrack. The music ties into the action so well,
that I simply can’t imagine the same films with a standard issue
orchestral score. I’m happy to report GotG2’s soundtrack is just as
good as the first, if not better.
GotG2 is definitely the most rewatchable of the
three movies I’m reviewing here, and I can’t wait to wear out the
blu-ray when it’s released. I will say that of the three, this movie is
the least child-friendly (which is a weird thing
to say about a movie with a talking raccoon). I don’t know if I would
bring a small child to this one, as some of the language is a little
strong for young ears (including a scene where they talk about Ego's penis), and
some of the death scenes are a bit graphic.
Not actually bloody, just… explicit.
Spider-Man: Homecoming
A lot of people complain about reboots, and the
Spider-Man franchise is their go-to example. Personally, I’m okay
rebooting a series if you have a good reason for doing so. But I do hold a reboot to higher standards – did you really
have an idea worth throwing out the old continuity? In this case,
definitely yes. Bringing Spidey into the MCU was the best thing that
could have happened to the character. It changes the character so much. In the previous films he’s pretty much the
only superhero in the world (as far as we know), but in the MCU he has
people to look up to. Instead of just “I can outdo myself and help more
people,” now there’s the additional element of “I want to impress the
Avengers.”
I think the smartest thing they did was skip his
origin story almost entirely. At this point everyone in the audience
knows how Peter got his powers, and there was no reason to waste screen
time on it. There’s one short conversation about
getting bitten by a radioactive spider, but there’s almost no mention
of Uncle Ben or how power relates to responsibility. Instead Peter’s
moral code is just based around “it’s the right thing to do,” which is
deep enough for a 15-year old boy, as far as
I’m concerned. I think the Civil War movie summed it up best
when Peter said, “When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you.” Which is basically a different way of
saying “with great power…” but sounds a lot more like how people
actually talk.
Michael Keaton did a great job, and I found him a
lot more believable than the ax-crazy moustache-twirling villains
Spider-Man usually fights. In some ways I found his motivations a
little too understandable, and I have to wonder
how many of my friends would turn to supervillainy if presented with the same circumstances. Occasionally he'd lapse into his Beetlejuice voice for a second, which was distracting, but I didn't mind.
I loved the overall tone of the film. When the Ant-Man
movie came out I kept saying how glad I was to see them using different
genres. Instead of everything being just a “Superhero Action” film,
some of them focus on comedy, sci-fi, drama, and so
on. Well, Homecoming is a high school comedy that also happens to be a
super hero film. I’ve seen several reviewers compare Homecoming to a
modern John Hughes film, which might be giving Homecoming too much
credit, but it’s easy to see what they mean.
So if you only get to see one of the above movies, which should you see?
Well, GotG2 is my favorite, but for other people
I’m going to have to recommend Spider-Man. I think it has more
universal appeal. But let’s face it, if you’re fanatic enough to be
reading this, you’re probably going to see all three eventually.
