We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Cody marvels, others purge.
WHAT IF...? (2021)
Marvel Comics has a series called What If...?, in which familiar stories from their comics are twisted around by pondering "What if" things had gone differently - what if something happened to one character instead of another, or what if a character made a different choice than the one we saw them make. For example, there were issues titled "What if Spider-Man had joined the Fantastic Four?", "What if Wolverine had killed the Hulk?", "What if The Punsher's family had not been killed?", etc. I always enjoyed reading these What If...? scenarios - and honestly, there was a morbid aspect to my enjoyment, because things usually went terribly wrong in these stories and heroes ended up dying, which I found to be entertaining. (Only because these stories didn't actually happen. I didn't really want heroes to be killed off like this.) So I was glad to hear that Marvel Studios and Disney+ were going to give the Marvel Cinematic Universe the "What If...?" treatment with an animated streaming series.
The first season of this show consisted of nine episodes and not only told some stories that never would have crossed my mind, it also ended up going in a direction that I never thought would happen. The "what if" stories are told by the Watcher, voiced by Jeffrey Wright, an alien being who has the ability to observe events that take place in different realities. He watches the multiverse, but he doesn't interfere with anything he sees. He only watches. At least, that's what he claims when the show begins, and that's what his name indicates. But he doesn't stick to his "no interference" rule for the entire season, which was quite a surprise to me. I also expected every episode of this anthology series to stand on its own entirely, but that's not the case by the end of these nine episodes. Characters introduced in previous episodes are brought together in the season finale, like an animated multiversal Avengers. Or Guardians of the Multiverse.
We get some interesting stories on the way to that crossover finale. The first episode sees one simple choice - the decision of whether or not to stand inside a certain room - lead to a very different version of Captain America: The First Avenger, in which Peggy Carter receives the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers. Peggy being Captain Carter keeps Bucky Barnes from becoming the Winter Soldier and doesn't keep Steve out of the hero business because Tony Stark's father Howard Stark turns him into a World War II era Iron Man, called the Hydra Stomper. I love The First Avenger, so it was fun to see things go differently within that film's basic set-up.
The second episode is one that never would have occurred to me, because it didn't even make sense when I first heard the idea: what if future Black Panther T'Challa was abducted from Earth by the Ravagers in 1988 and became "a Star-Lord" instead of Peter Quill? I don't know how the show landed on that concept, but it works with a very quick explanation from a couple dim-witted characters. T'Challa's good nature turns the Ravagers and even Thanos into heroes, and the nicest thing about this was that it gave Chadwick Boseman the chance to play T'Challa again, although a different version of T'Challa, before he passed away. I was still left confused as to why T'Challa would be referred to as Star-Lord, since Peter Quill is only called Star-Lord because that was his mom's pet name for him.
The third episode satisfied that same morbidness I would have when reading the What If...? comics as a kid, as it's all about a mysterious killer knocking off the Avengers one-by-one before they can become the Avengers. Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor, Hawkeye, all dead.
The fourth episode goes even darker than that, taking place in a reality where Doctor Stephen Strange becomes the Sorcerer Supreme not after his hands are destroyed in a car accident, but after his girlfriend Christine Palmer is killed in an accident. And in this reality, Christine's death is an unbreakable, "absolute point" in time. So Doctor Strange has to go to extreme lengths in an effort to break that absolute point and find a way to bring Christine back to the world of the living.
For a horror fan, the fifth episode is a lot of fun. Inspired by the Marvel Zombies comics, it deals with our heroes facing a zombie outbreak. And yes, we do get to see a lot of zombified heroes. Marvel and Disney+ plan to spin this episode off into its own Marvel Zombies animated series, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Episode 5 may be the one that leans into horror, but I found episode 6 to be much more disturbing. In this one, Black Panther villain Killmonger takes a different approach to carrying out his mission of vengeance against the nation of Wakanda; and the first step in his plan to infiltrate Wakanda involves him manipulating his way into the life of Tony Stark. I found this episode to be legitimately troubling at times, so I'm glad it was followed by the most comedic episode: one in which Thor is an only child and comes to Earth to party... which causes a lot of trouble on this planet.
The end of the "Party Thor" episode is when the crossover story begins, leading into an episode that imagines Ultron beating the Avengers in Avengers: Age of Ultron and becoming so powerful that he even gains the ability to see the Watcher and learns about the multiverse. This is when the Watcher realizes he's going to have to take action, because Ultron is capable of destroying all worlds and realities. I'm not that familiar with the Ultron character, but I've always heard him described as a great villain. That didn't really come through for me in Age of Ultron, so it was nice to see him portrayed as an incredibly dangerous threat on this show. It started to make me understand why fans like Ultron stories.
And thanks to the threat of Ultron, we got a great crossover finale that I never thought would happen. I expected What If...? to be an interesting anthology show, but in the end it turned out to be even cooler than I imagined it could be.
THE FOREVER PURGE (2021)
The Purge: Election Year appeared to give the Purge franchise a happy ending. The anti-Purge presidential candidate beat the New Founding Fathers of America candidate by a landslide and abolished the annual Purge. That's why the next movie in the series was a prequel, The First Purge. When the sequel The Forever Purge was announced, I thought it would be about Purge supporters going wild in the streets, carrying out their own unofficial Purge in a time when it no longer existed. But that's not the case. In The Forever Purge, we find that the NFAA have been voted back into power and the Purge has been reinstated. Purge supporters do indeed start carrying out their own unofficial Purge, but it's not because the Purge has been taken away from them, it's because 12 hours a year just isn't enough for them. They want the Purge to go on non-stop. Thus the title.
As nightmarish as Purge-happy America appears to be, it still seems like a better option for some residents of other countries, because the characters at the center of this film are Adela (Ana de la Reguera) and Juan (Tenoch Huerta), a couple from Mexico who have illegally crossed the border into America to escape cartel violence. They start a new life in Texas only to get caught up in the violence of the "forever Purge" - and then they make a desperate run back to the border, accompanied by members of the family Juan worked for on a ranch. One of those ranchers is Dylan Tucker, played by Josh Lucas. I was impressed by Lucas's performances in some movies I watched in the early 2000s, including Session 9, but it had been a while since I saw him in anything. I was glad to see him turn up in this.
The cast is pretty solid overall. Reguera and Huerta make for great leads, the always reliable Will Patton is in there as Dylan's father, Cassidy Freeman and Leven Rambin play Dylan's wife and sister, and Alejandro Edda plays a likeable supporting character called T.T. Zahn McClarnon of Fargo season 2 also shows up along the way as an interesting character named Chiago.
I thought the first Purge was good and liked The Purge: Anarchy even better. From there, I enjoyed The Purge: Election Year less than its predecessors and enjoyed The First Purge least of all. Thankfully, The Forever Purge was another upswing as far as I was concerned; I would rank it as my third favorite of the films. Directed by Everardo Gout from a screenplay by James DeMonaco, who has written every one of the movies (and directed the first three), this one is packed with a good amount of action and I found it to be quite an entertaining viewing experience.
The Forever Purge was supposed to be the end of the franchise, but now DeMonaco is saying he has an idea for another sequel, and I would like to see another one happen. I haven't gotten around to watching the two seasons of the Purge TV show yet, but I have had a good time with the Purge movies over the years.
DEMIGOD (2021)
According to online trivia, Demigod writer/director and Mississippi native Miles Doleac had an “academic focus” on Greco-Roman antiquity and earned a Ph.D. in Ancient History, and his education must have led him to the legend of Cernunnos, a diety in the Gallo-Roman religion. Some believe that Cernunnos was considered to be the Lord of the Animals or the Lord of Wild Things, and Doleac has taken that idea and run with it, building a horror movie around it. But not only did Doleac put his education to use in crafting Demigod, he has also used the film as a showcase for his German accent, which he must be at least quite confident in, if not proud of. Some of the most important lines of exposition in the film are spoken by Doleac’s German character, in English but with a thick accent.
Doleac isn’t the only cast member who sports a fake accent, and when these folks start speaking they tend to go on and on for several minutes at a time. I have to admit, the spectacle of these accents did distract me from some major lines along the way, and I had to go back to them and listen to them over again to properly take in what was being said. But in the end, I would say it doesn’t really matter if you miss certain lines as you make your way through Demigod. If you get the basic gist of it – there’s a group of people who dwell in the Black Forest of Germany who consider themselves “servants of the hunter” and the “protectors of the forest”, who send people into the wild as a sacrifice to the demigod Cernunnos – you have all the information you really need to know.
Doleac and co-writer Michael Donovan Horn do try to get us emotionally invested in this whole thing by centering the story on Robin Murphy (Rachel Nichols) and her husband Leo (Yohance Myles), an American couple who have ventured into the Black Forest to visit the remote cabin Robin’s late grandfather (played by Jeremy London in flashbacks and dreams) has left to her. The characters are somewhat likeable and the actors do well in their roles – I have been a fan of Nichols’ since the days of Alias and P2, and find that she can always be relied on to deliver a solid performance – but I still couldn’t manage to care about them… or any of the other characters (including Doleac’s) they end up wandering the wilderness with after the “servants of the hunter” capture them and send them out into the 70,000 square mile forest.
The hunt begins – after the Cernunnos devotees have rambled on for nearly ten minutes straight and finally set their victims loose – when there’s still about half of the 94 minute running time left, but don’t expect Demigod to turn into a thrill-a-minute actionfest at that point. The set-up of people being stalked through the woods by a horned beast-man somehow comes across as being rather dull when brought to the screen and populated with shrug-inducing characters, and the sight of a horned man-beast wearing a cape is more comical than frightening. When you’re watching a movie, anyway. I certainly wouldn’t want to run into a bloodthirsty horned man-beast wearing a cape in my personal life.
I found Demigod to be a disappointingly underwhelming movie and can’t recommend seeking it out. I wouldn’t call it flat-out bad, but I didn’t enjoy the time I spent with it. I couldn’t connect with the story or the characters, I didn’t care about anything that was happening, the presentation was off-putting to me, and the action wasn’t exciting enough to be worth slogging through the scenes around it.
This is the second Doleac film I have reviewed, the previous one being last year’s The Dinner Party. I also wasn’t a fan of that movie, but I would say that Demigod is an improvement mainly because it’s 21 minutes shorter.
The Demigod review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
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