Only Some Movies are Special

I finally saw 2004's The Incredibles last night. It was a breath of fresh air though I can also see how it's informed discourse on superheroes since its release.

I watched it on Japanese Disney+, which digitally replaces most of the text with Japanese, so I know the movie's title in Japan is Mr.インクレディブル, "Mr. Incredible". Which seems odd because it's clearly an ensemble piece. The first part of the film follows the point of view of Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) but from the halfway point it's mostly the point of view of Mrs. Incredible (Holly Hunter).

Now I understand why so many people lust after Mrs. Incredible (and why there seems to be a mountain of porn based on her). Who'd have thought giving Reed Richards' powers to a woman would be so sexy? But of course it is. She twists and stretches, she envelops, she accommodates her body to various rigid forms, not without strain and visible chagrin.

The film's philosophy has become primarily conservative, though, or right wing. Disney has steadily rowed their boat away from it ever since. The Incredibles face a world unable to deal with the fact that some people are just better at some things than others. Disney has used Marvel movies increasingly to put distance between themselves and that idea. Though the true opposite would probably be Amazon's The Boys, which I watched the first two seasons of, and part of the third, waiting to see if they would even address the question of whether or not superheroes actually help people. Maybe they finally get around to it in the third season but it really ought to have been right at the beginning.

The Incredibles shows a world in which bureaucratic entanglements entirely prevent superheroes from using their powers. I wish writer/director Brad Bird had found some more plausible scenarios than a man who'd tried to commit suicide suing Mr. Incredible for saving him, or Mr. Incredible and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) saving people from a burning building only to accidentally end up in a jewellery store wearing ski masks.

I imagine the ultimate product would combine The Boys with The Incredibles. You'd have a scene like the one where Homelander botches an intervention in the middle east, killing a civilian, and then one in which Mr. Incredible plucks a passerby out of the shadow of a falling building. Let's have a show where people debate the real benefits versus risks, like a David E. Kelley superhero series. But maybe audiences are too polarised for that (I wonder if that's why Kelley's Wonder Woman series never got off the ground).

The Incredibles is available on Disney+.

Another Week, Another She-Hulk

Last night's episode of She-Hulk, "Just Jen", does not, as of this writing, have its own Wikipedia entry yet. All the other episodes do, which I find surprising for a show with low ratings and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score that can't crack 40%. I guess the Marvel name still has a lot of cache but, by Jove, they're burning through it seemingly without restraint. "Just Jen" was just dull.

The last episode left us hanging on a tease of She-Hulk's new wardrobe and this is all we get? White polka dots on Navy blue? All right, I guess it's . . . fine. It doesn't exactly pop. I feel like white would be a good colour for her but obviously not as a wedding guest. Maybe lavender? I don't know. The lighting for special effects shots are always so flat and slightly greyed out, which doesn't help.

It would have been funny watching Jen shuffle around in her oversized clothes if the show had thought of a better reason for forcing her to. I know the joke is that people have unbearable acquaintances whose weddings they must attend, but I would have liked some explanation as to why Lulu and Jen were friends or why everyone at the party seemed to hate Jen. Are we supposed to just take it as jealousy over her being She-Hulk? It's not clear.

Was it ever mentioned why Titania has super strength? I can't remember. Has Jen ever asked? Has anyone brought it up?

The B plot, which recasts a minor Marvel hero, Mr. Immortal, as a shallow coward, didn't make sense. It's hard to see how he could be so delusional as to honestly describe what he does as killing himself. It's so disconnected from the evident reality that it fails to be funny or make any comment on the psychology of guys who are shitty in relationships. At the end of the episode, he's a jerk. So what? Why are we watching this?

I guess I am just holding on to see Daredevil at this point. That's how they get you. And Tatiana Maslany is really good in the role. I really liked the first two episodes written by Jessica Gao. So I guess I can say the show has done good enough to acceptably bring She-Hulk into the MCU. Hopefully she'll have better writers in the future. I really hope Disney learns a lesson from how much better Andor, a show with virtually no Easter eggs, is doing compared to She-Hulk.

She-Hulk is available on Disney+.

Legally Super

Last night brought another funny little episode of She-Hulk. Like the premiere episode, it was written by Jessica Gao and it'll be the last one written by her until the finale on October 13. Hopefully the various writers-without-wikipedia-entries in between are better than the average new MCU or Star Wars writer. Gao, like Michael Waldron, who worked on Loki and Multiverse of Madness, had previously worked on Rick and Morty and it's starting to look like a fair assumption that Kevin Feige is a Rick and Morty fan. At least, so far, the MCU output from both writers hasn't been as jokey and insubstantial as Love and Thunder.

Gao has said in interviews that no-one working on She-Hulk has any legal writing expertise. That's really a shame. I've thoroughly enjoyed the first two episodes but they've mainly concentrated on relationships and Jen's (Tatiana Maslany) new superpowers. Last night's episode brought in Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) and his argument, that he was a soldier just doing his job who fell prey to the effects of experimental drugs he took in good faith, sounds like it could be really interesting debated in a courtroom.

I'd actually never seen The Incredible Hulk (2008) so I watched it last night. And yeah, I think Blonsky has a pretty strong case. Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt), a general in the US government, hired Blonsky, a specialist from the UK, to assist in the capture of a dangerous fugitive. It turns out that fugitive turns into a berserk green giant who apparently massacres American soldiers and indulges in wholesale destruction. It makes sense Blonsky was trying everything he could to take him down. This could make for a juicy courtroom drama and what a boon that an actor of Tim Roth's caliber was willing to come back to the MCU for it.

It's a shame Disney didn't hire David E. Kelley, creator of Ally McBeal, which could be seen on a TV in the bar in last night's She-Hulk.

Kelley even wrote a rejected Wonder Woman pilot so he might have even been up for She-Hulk (Considering the things Warner Brothers has greenlit in the past decade, I wouldn't hold the fact that Kelley's Wonder Woman pilot was rejected against it). But goddamn Disney's penny-pinching.

Anyway, so far She-Hulk is good as it is. I've heard a lot of people complaining that its feminism is too belligerent but I haven't seen that so much so far, aside from possibly the manplaining reference last week or the guy who referred to a "hot chick" as an "it" this week. Mostly the feminism has come in the form of character opinions, which are certainly plausible. Hopefully the show will keep up the good work.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1615

The deepest well concealed the biggest grain.
The sky enclosed a plot of sightless gods.
A desp'rate stroll reduced the sleeve to stain.
Some crimson coats convene and take the odds.
The darker stones were hid beneath the floor.
Assembled singers gasped when worse occurred.
Another burglar broke the busy door.
The panicked suits were never quite absurd.
The time was men were green and dames were elves.
We stretched a suit to fit a pumpkin thief.
As fury keeps a wallet, help yourselves.
The law obscures a boney serum beef.
With summer dances set for chopping blocks
She swapped her crocs for bunny bobby socks.

Schemes and Miracles and Masks

A masked ball, a burglar in a unitard, a little girl named Alice, a cutthroat banker, and somewhere, mixed up in this carnival, is a superhero, the title character of 1963's Judex. Director Georges Franju directed this remake of a 1916 movie serial, preserving the original's pulp and camp but adding a healthy dose of surreal. It's pretty glorious.

An immensely wealthy banker called Favraux (Michel Vitold) is being sent blackmail letters by the mysterious Judex (Channing Pollack), threatening his life and to expose the means by which he acquired his fortune. Favraux hires a detective called Cocantin (Jacques Jouanneau) who is immediately charmed by Favraux's little granddaughter Alice and can't help beginning to repeat Lewis Carroll's famous story to her. During the masked ball, instead of doing his job, he's repeating "The Lobster Quadrille" verbatim to her.

The masked ball, though--wow. I'd be surprised if it wasn't an influence on Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. It has that mysterious mix of the icy and the carnal, topped with actual magic tricks from a strange tall man.

The film's villain gets a lot more screentime than the nominal hero. Marie Verdier (Francine Berge), Alice's governess, turns out to be a crook, which she proves by later breaking into the mansion wearing only a skintight black unitard, a mask, and a stiletto.

Has there ever been a burglar like this? How can I meet her?

Judex and Cocantin switch off as the film's strangely passive heroes. Cocantin runs into a little boy who miraculously fills him in on everything he needs to know while Judex seems to get by on pure luck. In the one scene where he confronts Marie, he's immediately overpowered. The climax of the film turns out to be a battle between Marie and an acrobat named Daisy--played by the beautiful Sylvia Koscina--who appears out of nowhere.

It was so great.

It's strange--if a movie to-day did something like this, I would probably find it tediously political, but in the context of a 1963 film it's just intensely charming. It feels more organically surreal, I guess.

Judex is available on The Criterion Channel.

When Bad Faith was Good

Faith must be on a few lists of great characters introduced in third seasons who dominate a show. The drama in the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer certainly revolves around her. I just finished "Bad Girls" and "Consequences", two episodes which see Buffy starting to go over to Faith's reckless, lone gun attitude only to be terrified when Faith accidentally murders a human.

The writing and Eliza Dushku's performance both work well. As entertainment, the tension in watching her inner struggle is great but it also feels credible. Of course she would have built up defence mechanisms to help her to deal with guilt and trauma, ways to force herself to adopt a less painful "truth". One wonders if she actually believes it herself when she finally tries to pin the crime on Buffy.

I was reminded of these episodes when I read a review of The Nevers in Vulture. The Nevers is a new series created by Joss Whedon that was originally to be run by him until he abruptly left the series, perhaps a result of the punitive action following Warners' internal investigation. The review in Vulture criticises Whedon for frequently portraying female characters whose empowerment comes out from past trauma. It reminded me of people complaining about his comment about Batgirl when he was attached to direct a feature film for DC--he wanted to know "What's her damage?"

Is it naive of me even to entertain the idea these are heartfelt criticisms and not just another wedge in the continuing campaign against Joss Whedon? I'm not sure which would be worse. The idea that the actions and identities of superheroes are based on trauma that has psychologically changed them is certainly not something Whedon invented--Batman is the obvious example here--in fact it's hard to think of many superheroes whose journey to their super identity didn't begin with trauma of some kind, either directly related to their identities or occurring simultaneously to the catalyst. Certainly that makes for a more interesting story--the idea of adopting such a strange role, like fighting vampires, has a better poetic resonance if it's a sort of abstract illustration of psychology.

There's another side, too, to the idea that such stories are intrinsically bad somehow--that it suggests one can't make use of having had bad experiences. It seems like the kind of thing that would encourage behaviour not unlike Faith's--a tendency to ignore trauma in the belief that there's nothing to learn or gain from it.

Infinite Avengers in Infinite Combinations

I went to the Marvel trough and fed on the nondescript paste called Avengers: Infinity War yesterday. It wasn't really bad or really good, but felt like an overproduced, late career album from a wealthy rock star. With so many hands in the mix also collectively constrained to strands of continuity, the mandated beats of a modern blockbuster, and the general lifelessness of so much cgi, there's little chance for distinguishable flavour to rise from the soup. But the filmmakers did manage to find a unifying theme.

Spoilers after the screenshot

This is a movie about sacrifice. Duh. I suppose there might be two or three people who missed that after it was hammered home again and again and again. Maybe Drax (Dave Bautista) missed it. Not since "With great power comes great responsibility" has a superhero movie so heavily slathered its theme over the top of everything else. One character after another arrives at the point where they must choose between killing another character or allowing disaster to occur.

Let's see if I can remember them all.

Quill (Chris Pratt) has to kill Gamora (Zoe Saldana)--he tries but Thanos (Josh Brolin) prevents it.

Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olsen) has to kill Vision (Paul Bettany)--she finally tries but Thanos prevents it.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston) failed to let Thanos kill Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and gave up the Tesseract instead.

Gamora failed to sacrifice Nebula (Karen Gillan), giving up the location to the Soul Stone instead.

Thanos successfully sacrificed Gamora.

Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) gave up the Time Stone instead of allowing Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) to die.

This one seems the fishiest, though I don't for a moment believe Loki died trying to stab Thanos with a little dagger. If he really is dead it was the most underwhelming end for any Marvel cinematic character to date.

But Strange giving up the Time Stone for Tony Stark seems really weird. They'd just met--plus there was the earlier scene that abruptly ended when Strange said there was one way out of--I think it was--fourteen thousand they could win. And just before Strange was wiped from existence he said something about how "this was the only way."

I do like that the filmmakers seem to have turned the aspect people complain about most into part of the main idea--the movie's overcrowded and suffers from it; Thanos sees a universe that's overcrowded and suffering for it. So his solution is a seemingly random wiping out of 50% of the population of the universe. Thanos becomes the central figure of the film because of how he factors into everyone else's stories and it's nice that he actually seems conflicted about what he's doing. Josh Brolin delivers a good performance through the veil of cgi, too. So I suppose if one flavour does distinguish itself in this movie it's grape.

The point of all the sacrifices seems to be to ponder the idea over and over--the good of the many outweighs the good of the few but can you put that knowledge in practice if it means killing someone you love?

It's a worthy subject to ponder but diluted a bit in how repetitive it is, and even more by the really really lame wisecracks. Having all these people together did also highlight some of the flaws in the too consistent Marvel formula--suddenly instead of one dopey funny guy and his long suffering, beautiful, and dull girlfriend, we have a hundred dopey funny guys and their long suffering, beautiful, dull girlfriends. There's dopey Quill who won't grow up for Gamora, there's Vision who stumbles over his words while trying to talk to Scarlet Witch, and there was dopey Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) who can't get his Hulk up and his almost girlfriend Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) who, when a foe is vanquished, quips, "That's rough." To be fair, Black Widow is usually more interesting but, then, most of these characters are. I guess this movie helps you appreciate the circus Joss Whedon ran in the first Avengers.

So the movie ends with a bunch of people dying we know won't remain dead. Unless Spider-Man Homecoming 2 is going to be about Miles Morales. Something that obviously was meant to be a gut punch feels like a waste of time. But the performances were entertaining and some of the comedy from the Guardians of the Galaxy folks was genuinely effective.