mcu | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On How “She-Hulk” Relates To Its Audience…

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist yesterday. With the show wrapping up its first season this week, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about She-Hulk, and the show’s interesting and provocative relationship with its audience.

Setting aside the fact that big villains of She-Hulk are arguably a bunch of internet trolls, She-Hulk is engaged in a literal and constant ongoing conversation with its audience. However, what’s fascinating about that dynamic is the tone of it. Jen often seems to feel trapped by the expectations of the audience for fan service and continuity references, and the need to shape her show in such a way as to hit all of the beats expected of a Marvel Studios project.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: audience, comic books, fandom, fourth wall, jen walters, marvel, mcu, plotting, she-hulk | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On How the Streaming Era Has a Writers’ Problem…

Posted on October 5, 2022 by Darren

We’re thrilled to be launching a fortnightly video companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch every second Monday, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel. And the video will typically be separate from the written content. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

This week, we took a look at one of the more under-explored and unspoken issues facing the so-called “streaming age.” In an era where there is so much content, and so much content derived from intellectual property that major corporations protect so severely, where are these studios going to find the writers and storytellers to guide these series? One of the more interesting shifts in television over the past decade has been a slow creep away from the idea of it as a writers’ medium, but that shift comes with a surprisingly high cost.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: andor, craft, directors, marvel, mcu, medium, rings of power, she-hulk, showrunners, star wars, streaming, talent, Television, writers | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “She-Hulk” and Unnecessary Origins…

Posted on August 18, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of She-Hulk, which is streaming weekly on Disney+. The first episode of the show released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

Like a lot of these streaming shows, She-Hulk suffers from an identity crisis. It is caught between the show that it clearly wants to be and its obligations to the familiar formula of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In particular, She-Hulk begins with an extended and unnecessary origin story, which the show itself doesn’t seem particularly enthused about. It’s strictly formula. Giving the first thirty-odd minutes of the show over to this generic and paint-by-numbers exercise undermines a lot of the show’s potential appeal.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: a normal amount of rage, Ally McBeal, comic books, Comics, disney, formula, lawyer show, marvel, Marvel Studios, mcu, origins, she-hulk, streaming, superhero, tatiana maslany | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” as a Critique of the Marvel Power Fantasy…

Posted on May 13, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at what the film says about the larger thematic preoccupations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is built around the superhero power fantasy, with much of the franchise focusing on the idea that its central characters should be allowed to do whatever they want, to bend the world to their tremendous wills. Multiverse of Madness is an interesting and deliberate deconstruction of this power fantasy, focusing on a superhero who has internalised that idea to a dangerous degree, while teaching another character that perhaps the ends don’t always justify the means.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: doctor strange, doctor strange in the multiverse of madness, escapist, in the frame, marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, mcu, power fantasy, superheroes, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the “Doctor Strange” as a Film About Time and Death…

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the upcoming release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at Scott Derrickson’s somewhat underrated contribution to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Doctor Strange felt like an oddity when it was released, sandwiched between Captain America: Civil War and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. It was a very conventional origin story, stripped of the legacy character attributes of Ant Man, the crossover baggage of Black Panther or the period piece nostalgia and narrative trickery of Captain Marvel. It was perhaps the most straightforward superhero origin story since the earliest days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically recalling both Iron Man and Thor.

However, underneath the surface, there was something more interesting happening. Doctor Strange is a rare superhero movie that is about both the passage of time and inevitability of death, where the ultimate act of villainy is to pervert either flow. It’s a movie about accepting that change happens, and that sometimes a moment doesn’t last forever. It’s a theme that felt particularly relevant to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, given that it was going to lose two of its three lead characters in the very near future.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: death, doctor strange, escapist, in the frame, marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, mcu, the escapist, time | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Moon Knight” and the Limits of the Marvel Cinematic Universe…

Posted on April 27, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Moon Knight, which is streaming weekly on Disney+. The penultimate episode of the show released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

As Moon Knight enters its end game, the show demonstrates the limits of the ambition and experimentation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, boiling an interesting and compelling premise down to a fairly simplistic and straightforward illustration of cause and effect. There’s something rather depressing in the show’s commitment to easy answers to its central character, and it is all the more frustrating because this is a major release from a company that holds such an important and influential place in the popular consciousness. There’s no excuse for this lack of ambition.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: asylum, escapist, Marvel Cinematic Universe, mcu, moon knight, recap, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On How “Moon Knight” Approaches Marvel’s “Villain Problem”…

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Darren

We’re thrilled to be launching a fortnightly companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch every second Monday, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

With the release Moon Knight, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about the show. In particular, how Moon Knight offers an interesting approach to the long-standing “villain problem” facing Marvel Studios.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: escapist, Marvel Studios, mcu, moon knight, Oscar Isaac, the escapist, villain problem, villains | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Moon Knight” Offers an Interesting Solution to the MCU’s Villain Problem…

Posted on April 6, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Moon Knight, which is streaming weekly on Disney+. The second episode of the show released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

One of the more consistent criticisms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the idea that it suffers from a “villain problem.” While this is perhaps an over-simplification of the situation, there is some truth to the suggestion. Part of what makes Moon Knight so interesting is that the streaming series posits an interesting solution to this long-standing issue. It offers a superhero who can legitimately serve as his own worst enemy.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: disney, ethan hawke, fascism, harrow, marc spector, marvel, marvel villains, mcu, moon knight, Oscar Isaac, steven grant, villain problem | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How the Fate of the MCU Rests on “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”…

Posted on April 4, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it seemed like a good time to reflect on how so much of the fate of the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to rely on he sequel to Doctor Strange.

Doctor Strange was a solid midtier entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was warmly, but not raptuously, received by both audiences and critics. However, there is something fascinating in how the studio has positioned Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as essentially the franchise’s first true “event” movie since Avengers: Endgame. Indeed, there’s a surprising amount riding on the film, following the performance of the previous three Marvel Studios films and the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Batman.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: doctor strange, doctor strange in the multiverse of madness, escapist, in the frame, marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios, mcu, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Your Feature Presentation – “Ranking the Spider-Man Films From Worst to Best”

Posted on December 12, 2021 by Darren

The Escapist have launched a new pop culture podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard and Marty Sliva for the first episode. With the upcoming release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a look back at the cinematic adventures of the webslinger, and discuss how they rank.