WandaVision (an MCU phase four review)

 

There will be spoilers.

WandaVision is as good a place as any to start on MCU Phase Four. It picks up, basically, as soon as The Blip occurred. Wanda returns to find Vision's body gone and goes in search of him, and Monica Rambeau returns to find that her mother died while she was not existing. All of the action happens prior to Spider-Man: Far From Home.

I loved WandaVision when it was first released. From the first episode. Doing the series in the styles of different eras of sitcoms was a lot of fun. But, then, I grew up watching all of those old black & white television shows, so I can also understand younger generations who did not do that not feeling like they were in on the joke. That said, there is enough context provided within the show itself so that anyone watching should be able to at least get that there is a joke and not feel like they were being excluded.

[Yes, I'm talking about all the people (mostly young dudes) who complained that the first few episodes were stupid. They were objectively not stupid, so stop being pissy about not everything being tailored just for you. You are not the only audience.]

It was even better the second time.

It's the kind of series, because of the way it unfolds, where you miss things the first time through. You don't understand the significance. Like The Sixth Sense. If you think you caught everything the first time, I'm just gonna say that you're wrong.

Things that stood out for me on the second viewing:
Jimmy Woo and his magic tricks. Almost as soon as we see Woo, he pulls a business card out of thin air for Monica Rambeau. This picks up from Ant-Man and the Wasp and may be my favorite single moment from the series. It made me laugh hard. It made me re-appreciate having just re-watched all of the MCU movies.

Evan Peters showing up as Pietro. Now, I liked this the first time. Peters performance of Quicksilver is one of the highlights of Fox's X-Men movies, so it was a lot of fun to have him in WandaVision. On the second viewing, though, having now seen Spider-Man: No Way Home and knowing vaguely what's coming in Doctor Strange, I find this move by Marvel rather brilliant. And the mutants are coming to the MCU, too, so... yeah... Loved Peters in this even more the second time.

Kathryn Hahn as Agnes/Ag(atha Hark)ness (get the name?). First, Kathryn Hahn is great. She's amazing and completely underrated. She should have more and bigger roles. It changes your perspective once you know she's the bad guy, like watching Sixth Sense knowing that Willis' character is dead.

Also, I think Paul Bettany is completely underrated among the MCU actors. He has had to be way more versatile than anyone else, starting out as just a voice, being an unemotional machine, being human; it's a lot. His performances have helped the other actors to stand out. He's impressive.

Having said all of that, the real power of WandaVision is that it's a story about grief. And not just Wanda's grief, lest we forget that Monica is also going through her own grief that is just as fresh as Wanda's. It's two different perspectives, but Wanda has been touched by so much trauma, not the least of which is discovering that S.W.O.R.D. has confiscated her "husband's" body and won't give it back, that it's understandable why she would try to retreat into what was the happiest moments of her life. She can't face going forward. The story, while filled with action and a spectacular "boss battle," is heart wrenching and touching. Powerful. Especially considering what Wanda has to give up to set things right. No better encapsulation exists than Vision's words to Wanda to help her to realize that it is, actually, all okay: But what is grief if not love persevering?

We have a societal view that grief is one of those bad emotions. It makes people uncomfortable. But, you know what, it's okay to be sad. We don't need to try to hide it or pretend that we're over it or any of a number of other ways that society says that we should move along. But how much grief is too much? Who can say? That's for the individual to decide. Maybe if we did better at letting people grieve and be sad or any of a number of other "bad" emotions, people wouldn't get so messed up by trying to suppress them.
Just sayin'.

So, yeah, WandaVision is a great show, and, honestly, I'm more than a little impressed that Marvel/Disney took on such a heavy subject. It's not often we see these kinds of topics dealt with in popular media.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (a movie review post)

 

MCU #23

Looking back now, I think Marvel carrying Mysterio into the MCU is one of the bravest things they've done. Of Marvel characters, Mysterio is probably the most made fun of, at least among... I don't know how to differentiate this exactly. There are some legitimately ridiculous characters in the Marvel Universe, but you haven't heard of them. They don't get made fun of because they were so "what the fuck were you thinking" that they haven't been around enough to be made fun of. Mysterio is kind of "main stream," though. He goes back to 1964 and was one of the original Sinister Six. You have to suspend a lot of disbelief to take him as a legitimate threat. The comic book version, I mean. It's really rather impressive that they took this character and made him viable in the MCU.
Really impressive.
Why do it? I have no idea, but they did, and it really worked.

Total aside: As my family and I have been re-watching the MCU movies, we have been vaguely keeping track of how many of the villains in the MCU are a direct result of Tony Stark. Mysterio and his crew blew our count totally out of the water. Though I do have to say that at least a couple of these are not really Tony's fault but Stane's. Still, Tony is responsible for more than his fair share of super villain origins.

From a story perspective, the only real problem I have with Far From Home is the European school science trip. Sure, yeah, I suppose it's supposed to be a bunch of kids from rich families or something and Peter must be there on scholarship, but they never explicitly state that so the whole thing just feels kind of weird to me. When I was in middle school, we took an overnight trip to south Louisiana and that was a big deal, and that was in the same state. I can't imagine getting to go out of the country on a field trip. I suppose they wanted to destroy some other places other than New York. And DC. I get it. That's my personal point of disbelief suspension for this movie, though.

As I stated in my previous review, the real conflict in Far From Home is not man vs. man but man vs. himself as Peter struggles with the death of Tony and his new role as some kind of replacement. Which is not to take away from the threat that Mysterio poses, but Mysterio wouldn't quite have been the threat he was if Peter wasn't struggling with his perception that he was supposed to become the next Iron Man. All he really wants to do is pretend to be a normal teenager and woo the girl.

Speaking of, I really appreciated the brief romance between Ned and Betty. It was a nice acknowledgement to the fact that they were married in the comics.
I also appreciated everything to do with "Nick Fury" in this movie. After Captain Marvel, it's so good.
I love Martin Starr.

Spider-Man: Far From Home serves as the epilogue to phase 3 of the MCU and begins the shift to phase 4, in that it directly leads into the next Spider-Man movie which is part of what kicks off phase 4, at least as far as the movies go. I find it interesting that Marvel chose Spider-Man as their transition character. No, I can't tell you why; I just  do.

That said, this will be the last of my MCU reviews for a while. My family isn't ready to re-watch the latest few of the MCU movies since they feel that we just watched them. I suppose we did, but I haven't seen any of those more than once, at this point, and I'm really wanting to see No Way Home again. Oh, well...
However, it's quite possible that I will be reviewing some of the Disney+ phase 4 TV series. We're going to begin re-exploring those, especially since the first one, WandaVision, leads directly into the new Dr. Strange movie.
Which I suppose brings us to the last ranking, at least for a while. Yeah, I know, but you'll have to find another way to hate on Edward Norton for a little while, though I am looking forward to She-Hulk; there should be plenty of opportunity with that one!

The rankings!

1. Avengers: Endgame

2. Captain America: Civil War

3. The Avengers
4. Captain America: The First Avenger

5. Avengers: Infinity War

6. Spider-Man: Homecoming
7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
8. Iron Man

9. Captain Marvel

10. Black Panther

11. Doctor Strange

12. Spider-Man: Far From Home

13. Ant-Man

14. Thor: Ragnarok
15. Thor: The Dark World
16. Thor

17. Guardians of the Galaxy

18. Ant-Man and the Wasp

19. Avengers: Age of Ultron

20. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
21. Iron Man 3
22. Iron Man 2
23. Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton believes EDITH was meant for him, not because he's the next Iron Man but because he's always the hero.)

Spider-Man: Far From Home (a movie review post)

I'm sure I've said it before, but Spider-Man is and always has been my favorite superhero. For as long as I've had a favorite superhero, that is, which is a long time, at least since I was four. I know I was four because I had this Spider-Man toy that I loved, and I remember playing with it at the house we lived in when I was four. It included a tube of stuff you could use to make spiderwebs, and I got in trouble pretty frequently for making webs between the spindles on the backs of our chairs.

Mysterio, on the other hand, has never been one of my favorite characters in the Spider-verse. And this bit may sound spoilery, but I'm not being spoilery because Marvel has done such an excellent job of setting up the MCU as its own place, and you can't take anything from the comics as being binding for the MCU. As far as villains go, Kraven was always my favorite when I was a kid then, later, it was Hobgoblin. Mysterio just wasn't that interesting but, man, has he been around for a long time, so it's cool to see Marvel pull him into the MCU in a way that makes much more sense than his comics origins. And Jake Gyllenhaal was great in the role. He really made it work.

He makes it work because the real crisis in the movie is Peter dealing with the death of Tony Stark. Both with his personal loss -- And, remember, for Peter, it hasn't actually been all that long since his Uncle Ben died. Tony is the second father figure for Peter to lose since he's been in high school. -- and the pressure from those around him to step up and be, basically, the Iron Spider. It's a lot to deal with and Quentin (Mysterio) is the only one around Peter offering him any support. Being fatherly.

And that's all I'll say about that.

The movie is a lot of fun, much of it dealing with Peter trying to work up the courage to tell MJ how he feels about her, something which is probably a "welcome" distraction for him rather than dealing with the pressure from all of the adults around him and the constant reminders that Start is dead. Yeah, I did say that the teenage romantic angst was something welcome for Peter, and he tries his best to avoid being Spider-Man just so that he can deal with what he sees as the romantic tension between the two of them.

I suppose the real question is, "Is it as good as Homecoming?" I'd have to say that it's not but, also, that it's not far off. It's definitely setting the stage for things that are to come, both for the next Spider-Man movie and the MCU in general, while dealing with Peter's personal issues and conflicts. If you're an MCU fan or a Spider-Man fan, it's certainly not to be missed.