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.
Taking a look at three comic book movies.
THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (2025)
For nearly twenty years, fans have been wondering, what would Marvel Studios do with the Fantastic Four if they had the chance to bring them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Since Disney acquired Fox, the company that had the Fantastic Four film rights, we finally have the answer - and while Marvel chose to keep their version separate from the “Sacred Timeline” for now, setting the film on Earth 828 rather than the MCU’s primary universe 616 (or 199999, if you really want to go down the rabbit hole), what they delivered is exactly what we always hoped and needed it to be: the best live-action Fantastic Four movie. It may not be perfect, but it certainly feels right.
It took the team of Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer, and Kat Wood to crack the story and script, with WandaVision director Matt Shakman bringing it all to the screen with heart and style. The movie looks great, with a cool “retro futuristic” aesthetic that makes it appear to be set in the 1960s, even though it’s filled with highly advanced technology.
There were some unexpected choices made during the casting phase, but they worked out, with Pedro Pascal being a divisive pick who proved to be an interesting Reed Richards, a heroic man who’s dedicated to saving lives, but also troubled by the way his overthinking mind works. Joseph Quinn is a fun Johnny Storm who’s smarter and less irritating than previous iterations, and always ready to stand up for his family. Ebon Moss-Bachrach is a great, endearing mo-cap version of Ben Grimm / The Thing, and Vanessa Kirby gives us the perfect Sue Storm. Finally.
We’ve seen plenty of the origin story before, so The Fantastic Four: First Steps picks up four years into the team’s superhero career, with clips from a TV presentation giving us information on their history and adventures – which includes battles with Mole Man (Paul Walter Houser), the monstrous Giganto, and Red Ghost and his super apes. They have been so successful at the hero gig, their Earth exists in a state of peace, with other referenced villains posing no current threat. But then Silver Surfer (Julia Garner as Shalla-Bal rather than Norrin Radd) shows up as the herald of Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, and things on Earth 828 get pretty scary.
The decision to go with Shalla-Bal as the Surfer was controversial, but it completely works within the film and is beneficial for the Johnny side of the story. (While still leaving room for the Norrin Radd version to exist, somewhere out there in the multiverse.) The movie also makes up for the sins of the other Silver Surfer / Galactus movie, Rise of the Silver Surfer, by giving us a Galactus who looks just like he does in the comics and is creepily played by Ralph Ineson.
The movie gets off to a rather sedate start – that opening montage could have been a bit longer, and John Malkovich’s appearance as Red Ghost shouldn’t have hit the cutting room floor - but once the threat of Galactus has been established, it becomes a wild, intense ride with cool action (some stuff in the climax might bring to mind Ghostbusters and/or Ghostbusters II moments), interesting story elements, and emotional depth that was great to see. Given that the Fantastic Four is known as Marvel’s First Family, that family connection really has to be driven home, and the movie absolutely does that. You feel the love these people have for each other, and you believe that they would be willing to sacrifice themselves for their loved ones.
Sure, they could have included Victor von Doom in some way. Sure, there could have been more action and they could have had The Thing throw more punches. The movie might even be the rare MCU film that could have benefited from being slightly longer than it is (we reach the start of the end credits in just 104 minutes), but it introduces the Fantastic Four of the MCU in a great way, and it’s going to be very exciting to see what’s next for these characters, who are already confirmed to be sharing the screen with Avengers and X-Men characters in Avengers: Doomsday.
Marvel Studios was given the challenge of making the best Fantastic Four movie yet, and they pulled it off.
THE OLD GUARD 2 (2025)
Back in 2020, the Netflix streaming service released the comic book adaptation The Old Guard, which introduced viewers to a small group of people who are immortal - for a time. Eventually their healing abilities will cease to function and they'll die like the rest of us, but it could take many centuries for that to happen. Those characters are Andromanche of Scythia, a.k.a. Andy (Charlize Theron), who lost her immortality in the first movie; former U.S. Marine Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), who just realized her immortal status in the first movie; Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who fought under Napoleon; and couple Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), who met while battling during the Crusades. They put their abilities to use taking mercenary jobs in an effort to help the world around them, and now they’re joined on their adventures by former CIA agent James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
The set-up for a sequel came when another immortal, Quỳnh (Veronica Ngô), who was a close friend of Andy’s before being accused of being a witch, was dredged up from the bottom of the sea, where she had been trapped in an iron maiden for 500 years, spending centuries drowning over and over. Turns out, Quỳnh was rescued by Discord (Uma Thurman), who is said to be the first immortal to ever exist – pushing Andy, who had thought she was the first, back into second place. Discord has been able to deduce that Nile is the last immortal, and therefore has the ability to take away another person’s immortality (which is what happened to Andy), or enable someone to transfer their immortality to another – which is what Discord is hoping to take advantage of, since she has naturally lost her immortality. In an effort to figure out what’s going on with Discord and Quỳnh, Andy gets in contact with another immortal, Henry Golding as Hang Tuah.
This being an action movie, of course, Discord has concocted an evil scheme in an effort to get what she wants, and eventually this involves abducting her fellow immortals and setting up explosive charges around a nuclear facility.
Greenlit in 2021 and filmed in 2022, The Old Guard 2 took longer than necessary to get out into the world due to regime changes at Netflix. They needed to do two weeks of reshoots, and those didn’t even happen until 2024. It’s a shame this one got bogged down, because arriving five years after its predecessor meant that it definitely was not striking while the iron was hot. It doesn’t help that the sequel, which was directed by Victoria Mahoney from a screenplay by Sarah L. Walker and The Old Guard comic book co-creator Greg Rucka, just doesn’t work as well as the first movie did. It’s not as interesting or exciting, the story isn’t as good. So there’s a feeling that it wasn’t really worth the five year wait. It’s fun and I’m glad we finally got a sequel, but it’s underwhelming.
Worst of all, it doesn’t have a proper ending. It ends on a cliffhanger... which is never a good idea when a sequel hasn’t already been greenlit. Filmmakers should never tell just half a story and then play the waiting game to find out if the executives will let them tell the other half. They should never leave the viewers hanging.
But The Old Guard 2 does leave viewers hanging, and if Netflix doesn’t feel like making The Old Guard 3 is worth the expense, we’ll never know what happens with Andy, Discord, and the other immortals. I hope there will be a third movie, and that it will be better and more satisfying than the second one.
SUPERMAN (2025)
I have always been a comic book fan, but even from my earliest days of reading comics in my childhood, my focus has always been on Marvel when it comes to “the big two.” I would dabble in DC here and there, but Marvel is the one that kept me interested and entertained. When I was a kid, DC was in much better shape than Marvel when it came to film adaptations. They were giving us Christopher Reeve Superman movies and Tim Burton Batman movies, while Marvel was giving us the low-rent Spider-Man TV show and The Punisher and Captain America movies. The biggest thing they had going was the Incredible Hulk TV series. Things turned around eventually, and we had Marvel Studios building the Marvel Cinematic Universe while Warner Bros. fumbled around with the DC Extended Universe. The films that make up the DCEU do have their passionate fans, but I was never on board with how they were handled the characters and I fell behind. There are still several DCEU movies I haven’t seen. Now, Warner Bros. is starting over, giving Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy (plus a holiday special) writer/director James Gunn the keys to the DC kingdom so he can build a new DC Universe... and I really didn’t care. I was burned out on DC characters and had no intention of seeing James Gunn’s Superman in the theatre. But then I had some time to kill while in the vicinity of a theatre that was showing Superman in rooms that had D-Box chairs, chairs that tilt and vibrate coinciding with the action on the screen. And since I had never watched a movie while sitting in a D-Box chair, I decided to give Superman a try.
This turned out to be the perfect way to test out D-Box chairs, because the movie featured a whole lot of action for the chair to respond to, and the seat movements really had a positive effect on my viewing experience. I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the movie as much as I did if my chair hadn’t been rocking and rolling, but I ended up having fun with it.
Gunn’s DCU takes place in a world that has already been aware of superheroes, or metahumans, for 300 years. One of the newest heroes on the scene is Superman, as he has only been around for a few years – and Gunn makes the surprising decision to start the film just moments after Superman has been defeated in a fight for the first time in his crimefighting life. As played by David Corenswet, this Superman is introduced when he crashes to the ground of Antarctica, bleeding from the mouth and calling out for help – from the superpowered dog, Krypto, that he keeps at his secret base, the Fortress of Solitude. His interactions with his own dog inspired Gunn to include Krypto in the movie, and that dog gets a whole lot of screen time. If you love Krypto, you’ll love this movie. If you don’t like the concept of a superpowered dog, this Superman is not for you.
Superman has been caught up in a conflict between the nations of Boravia and Jarhanpur, and Boravia has just unleashed their own superpowered being, referred to as the Hammer of Boravia – which is the character that defeated Superman before the film began. Soon enough, we’ll learn that the Hammer of Boravia is actually a character called Ultraman, who is working for over-the-top crazed billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) alongside a nano-powered metahuman, The Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría). Driven by envy, Luthor is aiming to destroy Superman at all costs.
As you can expect from Gunn, things get weird as the movie plays out, with trips into an artificial pocket universe, a ride down an anti-proton river, glimpses of a lab creation called Mr. Handsome, interactions with the shapeshifting Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan) and his “weird baby,” the reveal that dorky photographer Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) is somehow seen as being irresistible to women, including Luthor’s off-balance girlfriend Eve Teschmacher (Sara Sampaio), and a controversial twist on Superman’s origin story. There are heavy moments and some good drama, but the movie has a lighthearted edge to it and there’s a lot of comedy.
Superman, Krypto, Metamorpho, and Luthor’s lackeys aren’t only superpowered beings around, as there’s also a group of heroes that referred to as the Justice Gang and consists of Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi). They’re fun to watch, although Hawkgirl’s screeching during action moments got irritating to me – and if you don’t think Krypto steals the show from the title character, you might think Mister Terrific steals it, because he is quite cool and capable.
His Superman might get outshined by others at times, but Corenswet did a good job of playing the character and his alter ego Clark Kent – and this is Superman done right, as far as I’m concerned. This is the version of the character I want to see, one who’s driven by kindness and compassion, who will even go out of his way during a fight to save a squirrel and risk it all to rescue an abducted superdog. Even when story elements didn’t completely work for me, the film’s idea of Superman did – and I also found Rachel Brosnahan to be perfect casting as Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane, Superman’s love interest.
James Gunn’s Superman is a good time. I’m still not hyped for the DCU as a whole, but I enjoyed this movie.
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