Comics movie roundup: Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Punisher, Justice League.

Only halfway through the new Netflix/Marvel "Punisher" series, but admiring it so far. It's much more apolitical or even reactionary than the previous fare, staying loyal to the comics themes of "crime demands revenge", "violence is primally satisfying" and "men suffer from psychological trauma." All of these are examined critically, but they're very much front and center. There's nothing like the topical political messages of Jessica Jones or Luke Cage, which at this point is fairly surprising.

It feels kind of disjoint for a comic book series to deal so much with wartime PTSD. It provides these moving portraits of men who saw horror in war, even just on a banal level, and can never escape thinking about that. Next week Daredevil will kill, like, a hundred zombie ninjas and never mention it again. It causes the message to have a "very special episode" vibe, rather than a universal problem.

I might have more to say when I've finished it, but it's definitely worth watching, for a number of political perspectives.

***

Balioc wrote a thoughtful review of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, over at his wordpress. You should read it, and take in its valid points, before I disagree with it.

For one, it's not a very good movie. The first 15 minutes are not only forgettable, they are interminable. The best scene is a nearly silent dreamlike fight sequence between two sisters, that feels like its from an entirely different movie. The one good technique GOTG had going for it - running cool scenes to eighties tunes from Starlord's mixtape - is built up to the point of awkwardness, and no longer really carries any emotional punch. The climax is even more interminable, busy almost to the point of satire.

But mostly to address this:

This would allow him to make a real case to his son, providing a real dilemma worth grappling with — are you sure you want to fight for the status quo, like every other self-appointed hero?  Are you totally unwilling to embrace my vision of Something Better? 

…which would be a desirable thing in any story of this kind, but double-ultra-desirable in a story where our heroic protagonist is literally the son of God.  It is narratively unforgivable that Peter Quill is never presented as any kind of Christ figure, that he at no point grapples with the awesome responsibility of having been created to save a universe of lesser souls.

Ego does make a coherent case though, one with serious implications. Ego shares his love of an eighties song with Starlord, one that idolizes 80's/70's/60's caddish/beatnik lifestyle: we love our women so much, but the sea calls and its irresistible. It's nothing about you baby, I just gotta be free. He hammers this point with no subtlety whatsoever.

Now this may come off as a completely anachronistic boogeyman - modern media is more concerned with the overly attached male paramour, not the irresponsible one - but it acquires different meaning in a franchise about "we're a chosen family." It becomes a familiar plot: Starlord has questions about the burdens of his new family, he is shown all the glory of the option of leaving it all behind, but he chooses his friends instead.

GOTG2 just makes this a lot darker, acknowledging the awful/awesome responsibility of power. Ego's choice to leave Peter's mother is identical with him choosing to kill her. On one hand this is because of his terrible self-centeredness: he knew so long as she was there he'd be tempted away from his work, so he killed her. But on the other hand it's making explicit what was ignored: he could make her, or any of his lovers, immortal fairly easily. In choosing to leave them he is choosing their mortal fate, and he decided she was disposable.

This may sound fairly stretched, but what is friendship in the GOTG universe anyway? Every time someone "goes back" for a friend, it's to save their life. In a world of danger, when you choose to love adventurous rogues, leaving your friends will always mean leaving them to their death.

So Starlord must choose between always being stuck with this family, or letting them die. He is chained to obligations we would find intolerable, or repugnant consequences.

(This is still not the "terrible responsibility of Godhood" Balioc wants, not really. But what he's interested would be too dark for a Marvel movie, and besides, is the central philosophical argument of Man of Steel, between Superman and Jor-El against Zod.)

***

Speaking of:

Justice League is a fitting addition to the DCU movies. There will probably be more thorough analysis later, though for now I'm just bedeviled by critical reaction. It's definitely a little more light-hearted and witty than the previous DCU movies, something ascribed to the influence of last minute writer addition Joss Whedon, but not like, a ton. The character still believe in themselves and their mission, rather than undercutting everything they do or say with ironic detachment every thirty seconds. (Also the villain is a total letdown - a big ugly with few lines and an army of drones. We really are Marvel now.)

The box office disappointment of this movie is like some sort of ironic justice, where deviation from the artistic monstrosity of the first few DCU movies is punished. Give us more of Grandma's Sweet Tea, audiences demand!

But that conclusion is too far gone, and it's still hated by critics just as much as BvS or Suicide Squad was. That alone should be a good sign. I was particularly shocked by the review from fairly thoughtful film critic Walter Chaw:

The consensus seems to be that Justice League at least isn't as bad as Suicide Squad, which is like comparing something favourably to eczema. Granted. Yes, you got me: it's better than skin disease. I would offer that Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman and Man of Steel were at least fascinating in their atrociousness while Justice League is so desperate to be pleasant (when its core is so obviously bleak) that the best thing you can say for it is that it's puzzling.

I like how early DCU entries are now getting this sort of Prequels retrospective praise: at least they were trying to do something interesting, mainstream critics notice years later.

Consider that all that desperation shares time with two or three superhero origin stories crammed into whatever cranny's available, leaving the genesis of Cyborg (Ray Fisher) a garble right up until he bonds with Flash (Ezra Miller) over their being the team's "accidents," setting up a bro-bump that is never paid off because the script is a piecemeal slop-and-shuck. 

The multi-polar cast is actually quite efficient at telling their own nuanced stories (except Aquaman, which is not limited because of its lack of screen time, but because the "ronan prince" story is so uninteresting.) The origins and personality of these characters are all told deftly and quickly, and their small details pay off. You just have to actually be watching it, instead of expecting to be spood fed through exposition. In particular the bro-bump Chaw didn't notice happens in the final victory shot.

I definitely don't agree with everything said in Justice League, but the meat is there, and refusal to grapple with it is weird. In particular, analyzing director Zach Snyder is like a modern-day Clinton Derangment Syndrome, where anything he does is evidence of some inexplicable depravity.

Justice League is a hot mess, a film that was probably about something accidentally before it became about nothing on purpose. The thing to appreciate vis-à-vis Snyder's truncated run as the DC Cinematic Universe's showrunner is that he doesn't understand and maybe hates Superman. He captured the despair of our current state: the toxic masculinity, the triumph of mediocrity, the destruction of empathy and critical capacity.

Snyder hates Superman??? How do you even get that? Quick, here's the first sixty seconds of the movie.

(Apologies for the quality, but a bootleg filmed on a phone of an interview diagetically filmed on a phone, is more fitting anyway.)

How do you get more loving than this? The children are adorable. Superman is beatific without being arrogant or self-satisfied. The last question, answered only by Supes smiling and looking off into the distance, perfectly sets up "what question is this movie trying to answer" better than any Marvel movie has even thought about doing.

Hell, the worst you can say for Snyder is "he sure doesn't care about Batman, because he'll deface this fan favorite in any way if it can make Superman look better."

And yeah, he captured "our current state of despair" well. Here's the song that follows that initial flashback.

Thanks for using music and specifically chosen shots to capture the subjective feeling of a particular historical moment in time. Which is, you know, the whole point of being good at making movies.