Dr. Strange (1978)

At the tail end of the '70s, Marvel Comics teamed up with CBS to translate some of their superheroes from the printed page to the world of television. But while the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno-led The Incredible Hulk proved to be a big hit and became a memorable part of that era's pop culture, other efforts weren't so fruitful. A Spider-Man TV show lasted only a handful of episodes that aired sporadically between 1977 and 1979, while there were two incredibly hokey Captain America movies that ultimately never led to a series.

And then there's the case of Dr. Strange. Despite the success of the title character's comic books, he's so unlike Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Captain America that I'm actually surprised that they decided to give him a shot at TV stardom. I'm guessing that it wasn't much of a success, considering that it never made it past a pilot episode that aired on CBS on September 6, 1978. But there's nothing wrong with trying, is there? So as the Sorcerer Supreme makes his big-budget theatrical debut today as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I figured I might as well look back nearly forty years and see if Doctor Strange could have had as much success on the small screen as I'm sure he will on the big screen.

Beyond our world lies a realm of such mystic wonder that only a select few can truly comprehend it. This realm is host to a constant war between good and evil with our plane of existence hanging in the balance. Defending us in this battle is Thomas Lindmer (John Mills), a powerful wizard who holds the title of "Sorcerer Supreme." With him out of the way, the vile beasts opposing him would be able to invade and conquer Earth.

But the battle is taking its toll on a weakening Lindmer, who must soon pass the Sorcerer Supreme mantle to a successor before all is lost. Realizing that this will be their best time to strike, evil sorceress Morgan Le Fay (Jessica Walter) is sent by her dark masters to eliminate their foe before his successor can be found.

To do this, she arrives in New York City and possesses a young woman named Clea Lake (Eddie Benton), who she uses to push Lindmer off a bridge. He survives unharmed, but the possession leaves Clea so mentally scarred that she is taken to the nearest hospital's psychiatric ward and left in the care of brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten). Lindmer and his assistant Wong (Clyde Kusatsu) follow her to Dr. Strange, discovering that the fates have aligned to make him the next Sorcerer Supreme.

Despite his initial skepticism, Strange becomes intrigued by what Lindmer is trying to sell him and follows him down the rabbit hole into a world of magic and mysticism. And it's a good thing too, because Le Fay is to be defeated and the world saved, Strange will have to fully tap into his potential and embrace his new role as the Sorcerer Supreme.

Thanks to a combination of low ratings and poor reviews at the time, CBS chose not to pick up Dr. Strange as a series. And honestly, I can see why. While this pilot really picks up during the second half, the first act is so lifeless and dull that by the time something interested happened, I'd begun to mentally check out by that point. It wasn't until the last thirty minutes of the movie that it really re-captured my attention. But it isn't bad, either; it actually shows some promise. The cast is good, and the effects aren't bad for a made-for-TV pilot at the tail end of the '70s. And had it gone to series, I could've seen it finding something of a cult following similar to Kolchak: The Night Stalker. But it's not perfect, so let's get into why.

This pilot was written and directed by Philip DeGuere, who was no stranger to television. At the time he made Dr. Strange, he'd most notably written episodes of Baretta and The Bionic Woman among others, and would go on to create the long-running show Simon & Simon just a few years after this. But I can't say I was particularly enthusiastic about DeGuere's work here. As far as his script goes, there's not a lot here to justify its 90-minute length. A lot of scenes feel like padding or don't really add much to the story otherwise, but my guess is that these scenes were here to add threats that would be followed if the pilot got picked up as a series or in any potential sequel movies. But all it does here is make the movie feel like it had 45 minutes of story stretched out to an hour and a half.

The story also suffers from having a tremendously weak villain. The depiction of Morgan Le Fay here is a shallow, one-dimensional character who does practically nothing except for giving people the stink-eye for the majority of the movie. The ending implies a change for the charactor's methods, but considering that there was never any follow-up, we're just stick with this boring, uninteresting villain.

DeGuere's direction is a bit better than his writing, though I wasn't really too impressed with it either. I know I should probably judge a 1970s TV production differently than a theatrically released movie, but there's isn't a lot worth talking about here. At least not until the movie is almost over, anyway. Thanks to all the meandering around that it does in the first half, the movie is almost a chore to watch for quite a bit of time. DeGuere does spice things up in the second half by picking up the pace and giving us some action and the occasional trippy visual, but it's almost too little, too late. By the time things really get interesting, it's almost over.

At least the cast, for the most part, is what really elevates the movie. The exception is Jessica Walter, who you'll most likely recognize from her roles on Arrested Development and Archer, isn't really given much to work with here. She's not awful, but Walter is wasted playing a flat character with nothing really going for it.

I could very nearly say the same for Eddie Benton, who would be credited as "Anne-Marie Martin" for much of her later career (which includes 251 episodes of Days of Our Lives during the first half of the '80s, as well as co-writing the script for Twister). Benton doesn't have a lot demanded of her here, and I get the feeling that the character would have developed more over the course of a series. But Benton does what she can with the role, and puts forth a watchable performance at the very least.

On the other hand, I really liked John Mills, whose earnestness in the role made him feel very much akin to Alec Guinness' performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi. He contributes possibly the best performance in the whole thing, with Peter Hooten coming in a close second. I thought Hooten started off a bit on the dull side at first, but really began to win me over as the movie progressed. He's got a unique charm to him that really makes me wish for some kind of follow-up to the movie, be it a series or a sequel, because I'd enjoy seeing Hooten play the character as the fully fleshed-out Sorcerer Supreme that we saw in the closing moments here.

If this review feels like it's all over the place, I'll take part of the blame for that. It's not often that I watch or write about failed television pilots from the '70s. But to be fair, the movie is kinda all over the place itself. Its imperfections are boldly on display for anyone and everyone to see. Could Dr. Strange have worked as a TV series? Sure, I believe so. I saw some real potential deep down here. And I did leave wanting to see where they could have gone next creatively. But when it's said and done, Dr. Strange is just sorta... okay, I guess. But at least that's better than bad, right?

Final Rating: **

Suicide Squad (2016)

Two years ago, Marvel Studios gave us a movie starring a gang of morally-ambiguous misfits that, in the realm of the comic books they originated from, were D-list characters at best. So when Guardians of the Galaxy turned out to be a big fat hit at the box office, DC Comics decided that when it came time for them to create their own cinematic universe, they'd do something similar...

Cue the Suicide Squad. The group initially appeared in 1959 as a team of elite commandos taking on dangerous missions following the disbanding of the Justice Society, but the concept was completely reimagined by writer/artist John Ostrander in 1987. Drawing inspiration from The Dirty Dozen, Ostrander revived the Suicide Squad as a covert ops team with a revolving roster of minor villains wrangled into the group. The Suicide Squad has made a number of off-and-on appearances in the comics ever since, and eventually popping up in animation, video games, and now their own live-action movie. And folks, if you thought that was Batman v Superman was bad, you're probably not gonna like Suicide Squad very much either. 

The death of Superman has shocked the world. It's also left its political leaders with an unshakable sense of dread. Superman may have been one of the good guys, but what would happen if another being with similar abilities decided he wanted to be a villain instead? To combat this, government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has convinced the CIA to sign off on a project she's conceived called "Task Force X." The project would see a number of dangerous criminals cobbled together and sent into black-ops missions with the promise of reduced prison sentences and extra perks during their stay in jail. And if things go south or someone goes rogue, that's where plausible deniability comes in.

The team is placed under the command of Special Forces member Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and expert swordswoman Katana (Karen Fukuhara), and all it needs are a few lucky recruits. And for her merry band of misfits, Waller has assembled...

• Deadshot (Will Smith), the world's deadliest assassin
• Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former prison psychiatrist who became a mentally-disturbed loose cannon after being seduced by one of her patients, the notorious Joker (Jaret Leto)
• Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), an Australian bank robber whose nickname comes from his preferred weapon of choice
• El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), an ex-gangbanger who can summon and control fire
• Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who was born with an incredibly rare genetic condition that has made him into a reptilian beast
• Slipknot (Adam Beach), a mercenary whose specialty lies in the use of ropes and grappling hooks
• Dr. June Moone (Cara Delevigne), a meek archaeologist whose body hosts the spirit of an ancient and powerful sorceress known as "the Enhantress"

Things take an immediate turn south, however, when Enchantress takes full control of June's body and decides that if humanity will no longer worship her as they did millennia ago, they must be exterminated. She awakens her brother, the demonic Incubus (Alain Chanoine), and the duo begin building a mystical weapon with which they will accomplish their ultimate goal. Waller deploys Task Force X to the city that Enchantress and Incubus are occupying with orders to extract a high-profile target, but standing in their way are two pissed-off godlike beings and a bunch of creatures under their control.

I wanted to like Suicide Squad. I desperately wanted to walk out of that theater and write a rave review where I'd tell you to run to the nearest theater and see it as soon as you possibly could because Suicide Squad is the coolest movie ever. But I'm unable to do so. The truth of the matter is that Suicide Squad is kinda weak, to be honest with you. As I implied in the introduction, one gets the feeling that Warner Bros. and DC Comics saw the success of Guardians of the Galaxy and chose to make their own version, right down to having a bunch of classic rock and pop songs on the soundtrack. But Suicide Squad has none of the charm or heart that made Guardians so much fun. The direction is lazy, the plot is hokey, the characterizations are wafer-thin, and the whole thing is just plain unappealing.

Writer/director David Ayer is no stranger to action movies, having worked on quite a few over the last few years. You'd think he'd have plenty of experience in making them, but he left Suicide Squad lacking. It feels like some generic, low-budget flick that would've gone straight to DVD and ended up in the $5 discount bin at Walmart within a year, not a summer blockbuster starring a bunch of DC Comics characters. It doesn't help that the movie's schizophrenic pacing puts it all over the place, never letting it establish any sort of consistent flow. It's hard for a movie to get into any real groove when it feels like it's been edited with a chainsaw.

Ayer's script also leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. A lot of the dialogue is hokey and hackneyed (Rick Flag's exposition and introductions of Katana and Slipknot stand out in particular), while other parts try so desperately to sound cool when they're corny almost to the point of being laughable. Take, for example, when Harley comments "that's a killer app!" when Flag remotely detonates one of the explosive collars that Task Force X wear, or when Deadshot tells Harley to "stay evil, dollface" after the two come to an agreement about their fates. If lines like these are supposed to be jokes, they aren't very funny. If they're supposed to be serious, then they just sound lame.

The characters are also almost all one-note caricatures, with any sort of development being slim to nil. You can make a movie about villains and antiheroes and give them some depth, but it seems Ayer couldn't be bothered with that. The characters only seem to exist to go from action scene to action scene while making cute little quips every so often, and that's it.

The movie also suffers from having some extremely weak villains. Enchantress is an absolutely boring villain, and Incubus is even worse than that. The Suicide Squad themselves might be relatively flat, but that's more than I can say for Enchantress and Incubus. They're sub-generic baddies who are only there as an excuse to bring our protagonists together. Enhantress and Incubus also suffer because the digital effects used to create them is ridiculously dodgy. Cara Delevigne's live-action face looks really awkward on a badly animated CGI body, while Incubus doesn't even remotely look realistic (especially during his fight with El Diablo during the climax). I've heard the movie cost $170 million to make, and if that's the case, couldn't they have funneled a little more towards the digital effects budget?

A talented cast could probably elevate mediocre material, but the majority of the cast barely register at a level I'd call "okay, I guess." Jai Courtney has some funny moments as the sleazy Captain Boomerang, but the best among the cast are Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Smith and Robbie are a lot of fun as Deadshot and Harley (even in spite of the occasional dodgy bits of dialogue I mentioned earlier), so much so that I'd say this whole slog of a movie is worth sitting through just for them.

But I'd gladly take actors phoning in their performances over the utter shitshow that is Jared Leto as Joker. The garish costumes, metal teeth, and the stupid tattoos on his face are bad enough, but Leto is laughably bad in the role. Every second he's on the screen, you can't help but wonder just what the hell he was thinking. And for that matter, what the hell was Ayer thinking when he let Leto carry on with this utterly ridiculous, unlikable performance. This was really the best he could get out of Leto? I get that the actors who've played Joker in the past have all been beloved and iconic in their own ways, and that Leto probably wanted to go in his own direction with the character. But he's just so awful here that he becomes memorable for all the wrong reasons.

If Batman v Superman wasn't enough of a sign, then Suicide Squad is further proof that Warner Bros. is so focused on the billions of dollars that Marvel Studios and the Avengers are making in that they're ignoring why those movies are so successful. Suicide Squad itself is just an absolute mess of a movie. A poor script, lackluster direction, and barely above-average acting make it an absolute trainwreck from start to finish. It's slightly better than Batman v Superman, but that's just damning it with faint praise. I'd only really recommend seeing it if you absolutely have to see every single comic book movie that comes out of Hollywood. You otherwise aren't missing a lot otherwise, and you'd probably better off waiting for it to turn up on Netflix or HBO. It's just another stumbling block for Warner Bros. and DC as they attempt to catch up to their competition, and I really hate to say that/

Final Rating: **

Ghostbusters (2016)

I don't normally worry when Hollywood cranks out a new remake of an old classic. I've seen enough good ones over the years that the idea doesn't bug me that much. But then I heard that Sony would be remaking Ghostbusters and my heart sank. The original movie is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I'd gotten my hopes up that one day we'd see them return in Ghostbusters III for one last ride into the sunset. Even after Harold Ramis died in 2014, I still clutched onto that belief.

But a remake? Really?! Why not just follow what Star Wars: The Force Awakens did and give us a sequel that revives the series and has the old cast hand the torch over to a new one? The idea of remaking Ghostbusters hasn't endeared itself to me at all, and it hasn't helped that I've found the bits and pieces I've seen so far to be painfully unfunny. But I felt that I owed it to myself to see it anyway, to give it a chance and see if my preconceived notions were incorrect. And you know what? I didn't hate it. It's far, far from perfect... but I didn't hate it.

Years ago, Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) and Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) wrote a book that posited that ghosts just might actually exist. The book was a big fat flop, and an embarrassed Erin distanced herself from both it and Abby. Their lives take far different paths as time passes. Abby runs a parapsychology lab at a low-rent technical college, assisted by her rather kooky associate Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon), while Erin is a respected physics professor at Columbia University and is desperate to put her past behind her. But she quickly learns that the past can have a bad habit of encroaching on the present.

Erin is approached by someone asking her to look into a potential haunting at a local museum, producing a copy of she and Abby's book when she denies knowing anything about the paranormal. She is horrified to discover that Abby has had the book republished, something that threatens both her reputation and career. Erin approaches Abby and demands she stop selling it, but when she mentions the museum haunting, Abby and Holtzmann insist on looking into it and drag a reluctant Abby along for the ride.

They do encounter an actual ghost at the mansion, but embarrassing footage of their investigation goes viral after Abby posts it on YouTube and all three are fired from their jobs. Erin, Abby, and Holtzmann take this as an opportunity to become professional paranormal investigators. Their business mostly draws out kooks and pranksters at first, and their dimwitted receptionist Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) isn't much help either. But they're soon contacted by Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), a subway booth attendant who swears she saw a ghost in one of the terminals and wants them to investigate.

Their journey into the subway doesn't quite go exactly as planned, but it gives them the confidence to graduate from paranormal investigators to paranormal exterminators. Bringing Patty aboard as the fourth member of their team and armed with equipment built by Holtzmann, their public profile begins to rise and they adopt the name the media had given them, "the Ghostbusters." A sudden spike in supernatural activity leads the team to a strange little man named Rowan North (Neil Casey). An occult-obsessed weirdo, Rowan has sworn to completely demolish the barrier between the living world and the afterlife and allow untold scores of ghosts into our plane of existence. He's dangerously close to accomplishing that goal, and it's up to the Ghostbusters to stop him.

As I entered the theater to see this new iteration of the Ghostbusters franchise, a feeling of dread followed me. The advertising campaign hadn't done much to sell me on this new movie, the online arguments are frustratingly annoying, and I honestly haven't enjoyed what little I've seen of Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy in the past. But I thought to myself, "what if I had completely misjudged it?" And it turns out that I had, to a degree. The Ghostbusters remake isn't a particularly great movie, but it's got quite a few moments that are a lot of fun. Even at its absolute worst, I found it to still be an entertaining diversion that isn't a totally bad way to kill two hours of your time.

In the director's chair is Paul Feig, whose prior work I honestly haven't seen. Yeah, I know Bridesmaids was a huge smash hit and won all kinds of awards, and The Heat and Spy were no slouches at the box office either. But I won't lie, none of those movies actually appealed to me. They just didn't look like anything that would be up my alley, y'know? However, I wouldn't dare miss a new Ghostbusters movie, so I was went into the movie willing to give Feig a chance. Strictly speaking about his direction, Feig's work is serviceable, I guess. It gets the job done, but it isn't anything special. He puts the movie's 3D effects to good use,  throwing slime and lasers beyond the edges of the frame. But past that, there isn't really a whole lot to talk about. The cinematography feels flat even in 3D and the pacing is inconsistent, bouncing back and forth between "energetic" and "dull" like a ping pong ball at high speed. The movie doesn't feel big, but more like it's just kinda there.

I really can't say much about the script either. Penned by Feig and Katie Dippold, the script is probably the movie's weakest part. The original movie was a group of comedians stuck inside a horror movie, while this is a straightforward comedy from start to finish. Some of the jokes are funny, don't get me wrong. But there are so many that fall flat, or are good for a light chuckle but aren't the hilarious zingers Feig and Dippold may have been hoping for. (Did we need that stupid running gag with Abby and her wonton soup orders?)

I'm also curious why Feig and Dippold felt the need to tell us every tiny little detail about how the Ghostbusters got started. We didn't need to see how they built their proton packs, or where their logo and jumpsuits came from. And could the movie's villain have been any more lame? He's so utterly forgettable that I had to Google his name since I couldn't remember it otherwise. Gozer was a god of destruction, Vigo the Carpathian was the ghost of a medieval tyrant... this guy is just some dweeb who wants to let ghosts take over New York City because he was picked on growing up. Was that really the best Feig and Dippold could come up with?

I said earlier that I enjoyed the movie, even though I haven't had a lot of nice things to say about it thus far. And that's because the thing that really drew me in was the cast. Well, the four main actresses did, anyway. The majority of the cast are forgettable, while Neil Casey is honestly not very good as our villain and Chris Hemsworth is irritating as the Ghostbusters' dimwitted secretary. Hemsworth gets a couple of chuckles here and there, but his character is written to be so painfully stupid that he starts quickly becomes annoying.

But I quite liked the four lead actresses. They're likable and engaging, with a believable chemistry between them. Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig have their moments, as does Leslie Jones, but the show is undoubtedly stolen by Kate McKinnon. I haven't watched much Saturday Night Live over the last fifteen years or so, so I can't say I'm familiar with McKinnon (or Jones, for that matter). But she's absolutely the best part of the movie. McKinnon brings a madcap, energetic charm to the movie, so much so that it makes her scenes more fun than they might've been without her. McKinnon is utterly fantastic and practically carries the whole movie on her back.

Long story short, this new Ghostbusters movie isn't very good. Maybe I might've been carrying a slight bias against it since I'd wanted the old cast back in their old roles. I don't know. But that said, the new movie can certainly be enjoyable at times. And even at its worst, it's still a fun footnote in the Ghostbusters franchise. So who ya gonna call? These new four might not be your first choice, but they'll do in a pinch.

Final Rating: **½

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

It was in the summer of 2006 that Marvel Comics published Civil War, a massive company-wide storyline built around a seven-issue series by writer Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven. Civil War had a huge (albeit somewhat temporary) effect on the Marvel universe, shaking up the status quo in a number of ways, most notably with the public revelation of Spider-Man's secret identity and the assassination of Captain America.

And despite the mixed reaction it got from readers and critics during its original run, it still remains one of Marvel's most talked-about stories even a decade later. Elements of it appeared in the Avengers cartoons on Disney XD, it inspired the story for Activision's Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 video game in 2009, and now, ten years later, it has crept into the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe with the release of Captain America: Civil War.

Much like the comic that inspired it, the movie seeks to shake up the status quo by pitting the Avengers against not a god, not alien invaders, not an army of killer robots, but one another. And in a summer that already gave us one horrible attempt at pitting hero against hero, it's nice to see someone take that idea and make a good movie out of it.

We begin in Lagos, as the Avengers have arrived to stop members of Hydra from acquiring a deadly biological weapon. They are successful in stopping Hydra, but an attempt by Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) to thwart a suicide bomber accidentally causes a number of civilian casualties. With public opinion of the Avengers already drastically declining following the incident with Ultron, this only adds fuel to the fire and leads to the United Nations to pass what it calls "the Sokovia Accords." These accords would establish a committee to oversee the Avengers, essentially putting them at the UN's beck and call.

The Sokovia Accords split the Avengers right down the middle, with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) on one side, believing that forfeiting the team's autonomy would make them political pawns instead of protectors. On the other side, however, is Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), whose guilt over his role in Ultron's rampage has convinced him that the Avengers need to be governed by outside sources who would hold them accountable for their actions.

But things get really shaken up when it comes time for the Accords to be signed in Vienna. Ten people — among them, the king of the African nation of Wakanda — are killed when a bomb is detonated outside the building, with all evidence pointing to Steve's old friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Already an international fugitive because of his past actions as the Winter Soldier, he immediately shoots to Public Enemy #1 across the globe despite his protests of innocence.

Not only does this mean that every cop in Europe is looking for Bucky, but so are the Avengers who've agreed to sign the Accords as well as Prince T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) of Wakanda, who has vowed to kill him and avenge his father's death. But Steve is steadfast in his defense of Bucky which further ruins the strained relationship between he and Tony and forces the Avengers to pick sides as the tensions rapidly reach a boiling point.

DC Comics just can't catch a break. It's bad enough that Batman v Superman was met with terrible reviews and awful word of mouth, but Civil War is pretty stiff evidence that Marvel Studios can make what is essentially the same movie and do it a hell of a lot better. Civil War is everything that Batman v Superman is not: fun, exciting, serious but never dour, and willing to let its heroes actually be heroic even in spite of their personal flaws and their quarrels with one another. And even when the movie is at its weakest, Civil War is still proof that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is firmly standing at the top of the superhero movie mountain.

Returning to direct the continuing adventures of Captain America are Joe and Anthony Russo, who once again do a fantastic job behind the camera. The movie itself is essentially Avengers 3 in all but name, but considering that the Avengers are actually fighting one another instead of some giant alien threat or an army of killer robots, it has a different feel than Joss Whedon's two movies. It feels more personal, more intimate. By putting the focus entirely on the Avengers themselves rather than their battles with some new supervillain, the Russo brothers add a level of drama you don't really see in movies like these. We the audience have spent the better part of the last decade watching these characters develop on the big screen, seeing their universe blossom and grow as they fought alongside one another. And to see them come to blows really makes the movie feel a lot more drawn in, if that makes sense. Things look differently when you're fighting your friends instead of your enemies.

But that's not to say the Russos don't cut loose and give us the spectacle we've come to expect. Oh, there's plenty of that. While I'd say the airport battle royale pitting Captain America's Avengers against Iron Man's Avengers is most certainly the movie's biggest draw and quite a bit of focus is put on it, the Russos make sure that each action sequence is the right blend of exciting, tense, and emotional. And as I said before, that feeling of intimacy makes the action feel different. The stakes feel higher since the Avengers are their own opponents for a change.

While the Russos direction is solid, the script penned by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely isn't always perfect. I doubt Mackie and McFeely wanted to write another political thriller in the same vein as The Winter Soldier, but I actually would've liked seeing that. The Sokovia Accords don't really seem that important in the scope of things, as the movie becomes more about the Winter Soldier being the wedge driven between Captain America and Iron Man rather than the Accords. The fact that this seemingly important plot device doesn't really seem that important at all makes me wonder why they even bothered. I mean, I'm sure future Avengers movies will show us that it's changed the MCU's status quo much like Millar and McNiven's comic book did, but for now, it feels a little pointless.

Speaking of pointless, I really don't see why the movie needed appearances from Ant-Man and Spider-Man. Outside of showing off that Marvel Studios had reached a deal with Sony that allowed Spidey to join the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe, I just don't get why either he or Ant-Man really needed to be in the movie. But I will admit, however, that their presence here is still quite welcomed at the very least.

I'm also surprised by just how little the movie's actual villain appears in the movie. The vast majority of the movie's plot is set into motion by Helmut Zemo (played by Daniel Brühl), who is barely in the movie at all. I'd honestly be surprised if the total sum of his screen time surpassed twenty minutes. Did they just not come up with anything for Brühl to do? Did they prefer a villain who was working in the background so as not to distract from the whole "Steve vs. Tony" dynamic? It's probably more the latter than the former, but it still sometimes gives the impression that Zemo is a non-factor. Maybe I'm just used to seeing the villains being put on something even remotely resembling equal footing with the protagonists in these movies as far as screen presence goes, I don't know.

But let's move along to the cast, pretty much all of whom hand in strong performances. It seems like that's par for the course with the MCU, but it's still worth saying. Tom Holland and Chadwick Boseman are great as Spider-Man and Black Panther respectively, and I really liked what Elizabeth Olsen brought to the table as Scarlet Witch. I wish she'd been able to do this in a smaller movie more focused on her character rather than playing a secondary role among an ensemble cast, because I'd love to see how Olsen would play Wanda when the spotlight is shining on her alone. Olsen playing Wanda as being scared of her powers accidentally hurting people and being unsure of herself make for a fascinating bit of character study had the character's arc not been one of a whole bunch of different things going on in the movie.

The movie also boasts some great moments from Sebastian Stan and Paul Bettany (who returns as Vision), and Daniel Brühl makes the most of his limited screen time. But the stars of the show are very obviously Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. Both of them once again step up to the plate and knock it out of the park as Captain America and Iron Man. Their performances are exactly whet this movie needed; both characters are justified in their beliefs, and Evans and Downey play their parts in a way that a viewer leaning one way or the other as to whose side they'd chose to be on is totally reasonable.

While I personally think Civil War is the weakest of the Captain America trilogy, it's only because The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier are just that damn good. Civil War is still a very entertaining, very exciting way to spend two and a half hours at the movies. And that's a hell of a lot more than I can say for that absolute mess Zack Snyder and DC Comics made with Batman and Superman.

Final Rating: ***½

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Some of the most heated debates you'll ever see begin with a single question: "Who'd win in a fight?" Pick any two popular fictional characters, and the idea of them doing battle is enough to send any geek's imagination running wild. We'll even occasionally end up with these arguments bearing fruit, with movies like King Kong vs. Godzilla and Freddy vs. Jason hitting theaters and wars between the Alien and the Predator sprawling across comic books, video games, and two movies. But other than James T. Kirk versus Jean-Luc Picard, the one argument I've seen the most is who would win between DC's legendary superheroes, Superman and Batman. It's a battle that's actually happened in the past, most famously in the pages of Frank Miller's seminal comic book The Dark Knight Returns, but never on the scale of the newly released flick Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But I should have taken the movie's Rotten Tomatoes score (as of this writing, it sits at 30% and will probably drop lower) as a warning, because I don't know if I could have been more disappointed with it.

Eighteen months have passed since the city of Metropolis was left devastated by General Zod and his band of rebel Kryptonians. And while his intervention on that fateful day and his acts of selfless heroism since then have led many to trust Superman (Henry Cavill) as a benevolent force, there are those who are convinced otherwise. Among the doubters is billionaire industrialist Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), who witnessed firsthand the death and destruction caused by Superman's battle with Zod and is now fearful of the day that he might switch from savior to conqueror. He's bound and determined to prevent this, using the expertise and equipment he's acquired as the masked vigilante "Batman" to develop a means to neutralize Superman should the need ever arise.

Wayne's paranoia is surpassed, however, by that of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), an eccentric businessman who has grown obsessed with proving that Superman is far from the altruistic hero that appears to be. Luthor begins secretly orchestrating ways to sully his enemy's good name and shift the public's perception of him, while using his vast wealth and political connections to get access to the top-secret laboratory built around the wreckage of Zod's ship and find answers to all of his darkest questions about our superpowered visitor from another world. But his primary goal: to subtly stir the tensions between Superman and Batman and manipulate them into a fight, a clash of titans that that he hopes will end with Superman either dead or exposed as the villain Luthor believes him to be.

I wanted to like this movie. I honestly did. I went in thinking to myself, "There's no way it can be that bad." But I was wrong, dead wrong. Batman v Superman is a bloated mess of a movie that tries to accomplish way too much in the time its given yet never really does any of it right. It's painfully obvious that they're trying to play catch-up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet missed every single thing that Marvel Studios did well so wildly that it's almost like they were doing it on purpose. The movie practically assaults the audience with all of its failed potential and wasted efforts. Between that, the inconsistent writing, and the oppressively dark tone, Batman v Superman is an absolute chore to get through.

Zack Snyder returns to direct the movie after helming Man of Steel, and I'm not one hundred percent convinced that Warner Bros. was wise to bring him back. Snyder has always been accused of preferring style over substance, a criticism that is none more accurate when applied to Batman v Superman. There's absolutely nothing worthwhile about the movie beyond what's on the surface, and what is on the surface isn't very appealing. The movie's dark, downright bleak tone makes it really depressing to watch, as if the entire project was one big experiment Snyder was conducting in an attempt to discover the antithesis of fun. It's like he was actively trying to make a movie that was utterly devoid of any sort of happiness or glee, instead preferring to make a movie so gloomy and joyless that it makes me simultaneously sad and angry that this was the best Snyder felt that he could do.

It's also relentlessly dull until the climactic fight scenes, because it feels like Snyder and the writers are trying to cram so many things into the movie that nothing really ends up happening. And the fight scenes... oh dear, the fight scenes! By the end, it felt like Snyder was beating me over the head with a pipe while trying to make me go deaf and blind at the same time. It's one giant terrible mixture of cacophonic light and sound, an all-out assault on the senses that stops being entertaining and becomes annoying halfway through.

And then there's the piss-poor script credited to Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer. It feels like Terrio and Goyer just cobbled together pieces from other, better stories without trying to make any sort of coherent narrative out of it all. It feels bloated, trying to cram numerous movies worth of material into one 150-minute project just because the Justice League movie starts filming this summer and they've got to hurry up and get all this stuff out of the way now while they still have a chance. There's just so much going on that it does not allow for any sort of narrative flow at all. The story bounces around like it's trapped inside a pinball machine, with no chance to make any sort of sense of it or to give the audience a chance to care. You'd think that a movie that is ostensibly a sequel to Man of Steel would be more concerned with just being that. But instead we have to clumsily introduce Wonder Woman, shoehorn in cameos from Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash, and give Batman the lion's share of the movie's focus.

And honestly, none of it ever goes anywhere. It's setting up for movies down the road without worrying about taking care of itself. Instead of being a self-contained movie where Superman fights Batman, it's basically giving you an entire franchise worth of Cliff's Notes just so Snyder and Warner Bros. can skip straight to Justice League with as minimal effort as possible, and then give all of the characters that aren't Batman or Superman their own movies after the fact. It's a classic case of trying to put the cart before the horse. Rather than treat this movie with love and care, they just slap everything together in a great big rush and shove it out into theaters without really caring how good or bad it is because the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made nearly ten billion dollars combined at the worldwide box office and they want some of that action too. But rather than develop a world a world of heroes and villains and build towards Justice League as the natural payoff towards all of their hard work, it's like they've convinced themselves that people would rather just see all of the characters lumped onto the screen together and have a bunch of monotonous action scenes thrown at them without things like story or character development or good acting getting in the way.

And how about that acting, huh? One almost gets the feeling that even the majority cast realized how awful the movie was going to be and couldn't bother to even half-ass it. The rest were so hampered by the lousy material that even if they'd given their absolute best, they'd have barely made it out intact. Granted, there are a couple of good performances, but the majority of the cast is just disappointing at best. Among the good is Ben Affleck, who is a strong Batman. When his casting was first announced back in 2013, it drew an absolute ridiculous amount of criticism. How dare they hire the guy that played Daredevil? But now that the movie has been released, Affleck shows that he's a lot better in the role than anyone could have anticipated. He approaches the role with a grizzled, jaded demeanor that really suits the character. Affleck's Batman is haunted by years of emotional grief, his fight to protect Gotham City having taken a toll on him. We're only privy to bits and pieces of it ― the broken-down state of Wayne Manor, a desecrated Robin costume kept as a memorial in the Batcave ― but Affleck manages to convey so much through his actions, his facial expressions, his tone of voice. This Batman has been through absolute hell, and it's Affleck who shows us that.

I also really enjoyed Gal Godot as Wonder Woman. She isn't really given a lot to do until the finale (and Wonder Woman is completely irrelevant to the plot, to be honest), but Godot absolutely nails the role. Godot's Wonder Woman is a strong, charismatic heroine, just as she should be. Once she leaps into battle, you can't take your eyes off her. She commands your attention with a ferocity that makes one curious as to why it took so long for Warner Bros. to work Wonder Woman into a movie. But word is that they're making one as we speak with the intention of it coming out next year, which I'm actually excited for because I can't wait to see Godot actually have something to do as the character.

And while the movie does boast those good performances and some decent ones among lesser members of the supporting cast (Jeremy Irons, Laurence Fishburne, and Diane Lane are all fantastic, by the way), they're outweighed by the bad and the ridiculous. Henry Cavill, for starters, certainly looks the part. But the way his character is presented, he's stuck playing a whiny, emo bitch. This is not the big blue Boy Scout we all know and love; it's instead an emotionally conflicted wuss that feels more pathetic than heroic. I get the reasoning behind writing Superman that way, as I'm sure Snyder & Co. felt they were giving him more depth that way. But what's wrong with the traditional depiction? Regardless, Cavill seems to be trying hard, which I appreciate, but he just can't overcome how poorly written the script is. He's not playing a character to believe in, but to pity. And that is no Superman that I want any part of.

And why is Amy Adams even here again? She's dull as dishwater, having absolutely none of the likability, charisma, or spunk that made Lois such a beloved part of the Superman mythos. It doesn't help matters that Adams and Cavill have zero chemistry whatsoever either, but that's more the fault of the casting director than Adams herself. She is a talented actress, don't get me wrong, but Adams honestly doesn't feel like she was the right person for this role. One wouldn't be surprised if the only reason she was playing Lois at all is because someone wanted a multiple-time Oscar nominee in the role.

Speaking of roles that are woefully miscast, Jesse Eisenberg sucks. This has to be one of the absolute worst performances I've seen in quite a while. He's an annoying doofus that does nothing but inspire anger and frustration every time you see him. Eisenberg is painfully inconsistent, wandering all over the place throughout the movie, hitting all points of the map sometimes within a span of a few moments. This isn't Lex Luthor at all, but a schizophrenic hipster instead. Had Superman just torn his head off and punted it into orbit, I'd have been perfectly fine with that just so I didn't have to see Jesse Eisenberg in this movie anymore.

As I said earlier, the whole thing makes me think that Warner Bros. saw Disney raking in cash hand over fist with the Avengers and went into full-blown panic mode. And in doing so, they entrusted the franchise to a director who has made it abundantly clear that he has doesn't have a single clue as to what makes these characters so wonderful. Zack Snyder has given us the cinematic equivalent of all those crappy comic books from the '90s, the ones full of violent, brooding antiheroes because being "darker and edgier" was what they thought was cool, as if all the bright, shiny, happy stuff that had come before it had somehow suddenly become lame. I've loved the heroes of DC Comics since I was a little kid, but Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice makes me want to rethink that. Watching this movie hurts. It hurts a lot. If this is how the road to a shared cinematic universe starring DC's characters gets started, then I should probably just stick with the Avengers.

Final Rating: *½

Deadpool (2016)

Every so often, a TV show's minor character will get so popular that they graduate from a small supporting role to being one of the primary stars of the show. Characters like Fonzie from Happy Days, Steve Urkel from Family Matters, and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are all huge examples of this. And this can apply to other forms of storytelling beyond TV shows. I mean, that's how characters like Tigger, Jay and Silent Bob, and the Minions got their starts.

It's also quite prevalent in comic books as well. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko didn't plan on having Mary Jane Watson stick around for long after her debut in 1966, but she's become just as important to the Spider-Man mythos as Peter Parker himself. Wolverine got his start as someone for the Hulk to fight in 1974's Incredible Hulk #181, but became one of Marvel's most popular characters not long after he was brought into the X-Men fold.

I bring all this up because we can't talk about breakout characters in comic books without mentioning the one and only Deadpool. Making his initial appearance in Marvel's New Mutants #98 in 1991, creators Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld will be the first people to tell you that Deadpool began as just a ripoff of Deathstroke from DC's Teen Titans comic. But as the years rolled on, Deadpool would evolve from a villain into a goofy, wisecracking motormouth antihero. And as he evolved, his popularity with readers grew exponentially, so much so that he's become one of their top-tier characters, almost on the same level as Spider-Man and Wolverine.

With that popularity, Hollywood was sure to come knocking on Deadpool's door. But alas, so did a little thing called "developmental hell." A movie starring everyone's favorite "Merc with a Mouth" was first conceived all the way back in the summer of 2000 by the now-defunct Artisan Entertainment, but nothing came of it and the film rights ended up with New Line Cinema in 2004. But they eventually scrapped the project, at which point 20th Century Fox picked up the character and gave him a brief role in X-Men Origins: Wolverine that they managed to completely bungle in the process.

The Deadpool in that movie had "Murphy's Law" written all over him; if they could screw something up with him, they would (and did). By the end of X-Men Origins, Deadpool's mouth had been sewn shut, and he was shooting lasers from his eyes and waving blades that grew from his forearms like he was Baraka from Mortal Kombat.

But a spin-off was in the works, with word around the campfire that one day, someone would correct the mistakes made by Wolverine & Co. and create a proper Deadpool movie. And it only took them a decade or so (give or take a few years), but that day has finally arrived. Deadpool has his own, proper movie, and I don't know if I could possibly be any more excited to see it. So let's dig right in, shall we?

Once upon a time, there was a man named Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds). Dishonorably discharged from the Canadian military, the cocky Wade puts his special-ops training to work as a mercenary, a soldier of fortune helping people in need. He's also madly in love with his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), but their relationship hits a serious rough patch when Wade is diagnosed with late-stage, terminal cancer. As he begins to resign himself to his eventual death, Wade is contacted by a shadowy organization claiming they can cure him while making him a superhero in the process. Seemingly out of options, Wade sneaks away from Vanessa in the middle of the night and signs up for their program.

He arrives at their facility to discover that human experimentation is the name of the game. Under the supervision of the lead scientist, a rather sociopathic gentleman calling himself "Ajax" (Ed Skrein), participants in the program are pumped full of a specialized serum to grant them mutant abilities before being subjected to increasingly extreme conditions to fully trigger said mutations. Wade is put through the ringer for weeks, finally being locked in an airtight chamber and deprived of oxygen after Ajax grows tired of him being such a smartass all the time.

The experience does activate his mutant ability — a healing factor so potent that it not only stops the spread of his cancer, but renders him practically immortal in the process — but it also has the pretty side effect of covering his face and body in hideous burn-like scars. Enraged over this, along with the revelation that Ajax has secret, sinister motives for he and his fellow test subjects, Wade attempts to stage a fiery escape only to be beaten and ultimately left for dead by Ajax.

He survives, but is so humiliated by his extensive scarring that he's convinced it would be in Vanessa's best interests if he never returned home. It is shortly thereafter that, while out drowning his sorrows with his best friend Weasel (T.J. Miller), he gets the idea to put his newfound abilities to good use as a masked vigilante. He adopts the name "Deadpool" and begins cutting a bloody swath through the criminal underworld as he follows a trail of breadcrumbs that will hopefully lead him directly to Ajax and a potential cure for his disfigurement.

But while X-Men members Colossus (the voice of Stefan Kapičić) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) follow him and try convincing him to join their little team of mutants and become a more conventional superhero, Wade is more concerned about finding Ajax. But when he catches wind that he's effectively led Ajax and his brawny sidekick Angel Dust (Gina Carano) to his own front door and put Vanessa in danger, the "cure for disfigurement" idea goes out the window and Wade just wants some good old-fashioned vengeance.

The thing about Deadpool is that it is so unlike every other superhero movie out there that going in expecting it to be more of the same is the wrong way to approach it. Granted, the plot is a bit of a paint-by-numbers origin story when you break it down, but outside of maybe Kick-Ass and its sequel, Deadpool is practically in a class of its own. It's violent, vulgar, immature, and hilarious. And when it's all said and done, Deadpool is such a unique entity among its superheroic brethren that I can't help but absolutely love it.

The movie marks the directorial debut of Tim Miller, who does a fantastic job telling the story and giving it an anarchic spirit. He crafts the movie in such a way that it feels very unique and stands out among all the other superhero movies out there. It stays energetic throughout, and the fights scenes... oh boy. They're ridiculously violent, practically outdoing the Blade trilogy and the Punisher movies combined. But they have the same infectious vibe as the rest of the movie.

And if it didn't earn its R rating through the violence alone, it definitely would via its script. Written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick of Zombieland fame, the script's sense of humor is about as blue as you can get. But it stays really, really funny all the way through. Sure, quite a few of the really good jokes have been given away by the trailers and TV advertisements, that doesn't stop the movie from having plenty of fantastic, fun, hilarious moments.

The narrative hopping around back and forth between flashbacks and the present day for the first two acts adds a little style to set it apart, while the frequent asides and breaks of the fourth wall add a lot to the movie's already irreverent sense of humor. Take, for example, a scene where Colossus tries dragging Deadpool away to meet Professor Xavier of the X-Men. Deadpool's response: "McAvoy or Stewart? These timelines are so confusing." It's things like that that keep the character true to his roots for the most part. I say "for the most part" because while the movie version of Deadpool is well aware that he has an audience watching him like his comics counterpart, we don't see him talking to his own inner monologue like he does in the comics. He's also way more of a potty mouth here than he was in the source material, the same kind of feeling is still there and bring a subversive silliness that makes the movie more engaging.

And then there's the cast, all of whom do a fine job in their roles. Morena Baccarin and T.J. Miller are quite likable, and Leslie Uggams is entertaining in her small role as Deadpool's elderly, wisecracking roommate, Blind Al. Ed Skrein, meanwhile, is perfectly sleazy as our villain. I also greatly enjoyed Brianna Hildebrand and Stefan Kapičić as the movie's resident X-Men, but the movie wholly belongs to Ryan Reynolds.

This is one of those movies that would live or die based on the performance of whomever plays the title role. Reynolds absolutely nails it, elevating the movie from "good" to "great" through sheer force of will alone. I'd heard that Reynolds fought hard to get this movie made after how much everybody hated Deadpool's appearance in X-Men Origins, and his affection for the character is obvious. He's turned all the way up to eleven here, playing Deadpool with a madcap intensity that makes him feel like a demented Looney Tunes character. The movie is that much better for it, and I couldn't imagine anybody but Ryan Reynolds playing Deadpool. 

Deadpool is not going to be for everyone. The violence and occasionally vulgar comedy won't suit everyone's sensibilities. That being said, it's still a wonderfully crazy movie. It's a genuinely fun, entertaining flick that I can't recommend enough, a refreshing change of pace from the formulaic fair we usually get in this genre. So if an R-rated superhero movie that makes jokes about itself and other superhero movies sounds up your alley, definitely check out Deadpool. They don't come much crazier than this. 

Final Rating: ****