Continued from Part 2… my reviews of the MCU produce, mostly in timeline order but a few shows I missed (my Disney+ was set up for nothing 18+ so I didn’t see they were there) and things that have come out since I finished the last lot!
Moon Knight ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This show has been quite fun – it’s quite dark, and doesn’t feel very Marvel at all really. It’s centred around Egyptian gods and a lead character who is two men who are complete opposites fighting to be in charge of the one body. I was annoyed they’d got an American playing an English character until they revealed the dissociative identity disorder where Steven is a mild-mannered Englishman working in a museum and Marc is a brutal mercenary American – suddenly the American actor made sense, and his English accent was actually ok. One complaint I have (which is a regular complaint) is that the whole show is literally so dark – it’s hard to see the screen even when the TV is set to vivid mode – it means you miss so much stuff. It may be because I’ve been doing other things while watching, but I have found it a little tricky to follow exactly what is going on sometimes, but the general gist all made sense. Overall I like the characters, I like the peril and the supernatural elements, I like the settings – it’s good and fun and acted well.
Thor: Love and Thunder ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I was so pleasantly surprised by this one! I had written off the Thor franchise after Ragnarok but my sister convinced me to watch this with her and it was excellent! Really lighthearted like Thor was initially, and a fun adventure film. I liked Jane’s plot lines in it too.
Werewolf by Night ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Hold onto your butts guys – I really liked this! Like, genuinely enjoyed it. Not just Marvel enjoyed, but actual enjoyed. It was really stylistic, not too many characters, a weird cult, likeable leads, well shot and executed, a standalone story and not too long either – it was good!
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ⭐️⭐️ On the release of this film my social media was blowing up with how emotional this film was, with lots of suggestions that there was a death of a furry friend. It seemed quite obvious to me from that what was going to happen, and maybe it desensitzed me from the storyline a little. I feel like the writers were really trying to get us in the feels with all the baby raccoon stuff – and it was sad, but I wasn’t totally invested, but maybe that is because of the spoilers? Other than that, it did have it’s funny moments, and was enjoyable, but it was also very predictable and quite long. I also found the planet of the half-human/half-animal people just reminded me of the mutant race in The Mighty Boosh which completely changed the reception of them for me. 😂
Ant-Man and and the Wasp: Quantamania ⭐️⭐️⭐️ I enjoyed the Ant-Man humour and it stood up well against the previous films. However, there were a few big things that made me dislike the film, which knocked it down to three stars. I get that this is connecting with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse, and also with Loki and the multiverse, but the point where there were 100s of Ant-Man’s just felt once again very unnecessarily confusing – the amount of time the Marvel writing room just want the viewer to feel confused is quite incredible. The other thing I did not like was Darren – that character was just annoying from the start and a totally different personality to the character in the original Ant-Man, and all of his “comedic” one-liners just fell flat for me, but it felt very Marvel, so maybe I was in the minority on that one.
Secret Invasion ⭐️ Yeesh. This show is everything I hate about Marvel. Unnecessarily complicated for a reasonably straight-forward storyline, using very unlikely technology, the zeros becoming the heroes, many threats of world destruction including many efforts to begins World War 3, and way too many lead characters. Any relationship stuff was so shallow, and backstory was all just assumed or covered very quickly so there wasn’t much opportunity to actually warm to characters. Olivia Coleman was good – as she always is, but her character was still a bit confusing at times because she was a little too mysterious. Samuel L Jackson does play Fury well – he’s a great actor too, but he does choose some interesting roles! The only reason I stuck with this one was because I figured it would impact the overall timeline.
See you for part 4 whenever the next lot of Marvel films and series hit Disney+!
To re-cap my ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reviews went to:
- Iron Man
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Ant-Man
- Black Widow
- Black Panther
- Loki
- Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
- Hawkeye
- Wakanda Forever
- Ms Marvel
- Thor: Love and Thunder
- Werewolf By Night
Ellen Wiggins 