Early Man

Year 11, Day 82 - 3/23/19 - Movie #3,180

BEFORE: Thank God for actors with very long careers, like Christopher Plummer and Timothy Spall.  I just wouldn't be able to do what I do without their decades of service.  Seriously, I linked from a 2017 Oscar-winning film back to a little British comedy from 2001, and now with the voice of Timothy Spall carrying over, I'm back to the present (umm, or is it past?) with an animated comedy from just last year.  Whew, time-traveling back to the start of the millennium can really wear me out.

I'm no closer to fixing the October dilemma this year, in fact it seems like watching this film today removes a link to a horror-themed film - and I'm referring to "The New Mutants", which is a movie set in the X-Men universe, however since it's got something of a horror-movie feel to it I may have to treat it as such, especially since it also links to films like "Bird Box", "Glass" and "Mary Shelley".  I hope I'm not screwing myself by removing a link today.  But hey, that's over 100 films away, and I could have a lot of completely new films on my watchlist by then, so I shouldn't worry about ONE link....

Only I do, I worry about all the links.  Even if I do a condensed October chain this year, right now I've got 4 little groupings of two or three films, and no way to stitch them together.  Plus, can I really consider "Hotel Transylvania 3" to be a Halloween film?  That feels like cheating, but I'm going to do what I have to do if my streak is still going then.  Maybe I can finally get to "Coco" too.

THE PLOT: At the dawn of time, when prehistoric creatures and woolly mammoths roamed the earth, Dug and his sidekick Hognob must unite his tribe against a mighty enemy - Lord Nooth and his Bronze Age city - to save their home.

AFTER: When you decide to make a film about cavemen, or probably "primitive men" is the best phrase here, because they're not shown living in caves, the topic lends itself to a thousand jokes, about what they ate, how they discovered fire, how they spent their time, etc.  So it's a shame that the makers of this film decided to go "all in" by focusing on football, aka soccer, and theorizing for the sake of humor that soccer is nearly as old as mankind, which it's just not.  It's a little cutesy to think that the oddly dodecahedron-shaped core of a meteorite would be an early soccer ball, and people needed to move it around, only it was too hot to touch with their hands.  Umm, NITPICK POINT, if it burned their hands, wouldn't it also burn their FEET?

Of course, nothing's meant to be taken seriously here, nobody's saying this is REALLY where soccer came from, or that some early people could be living in the Stone Age while their neighbors were living in the Bronze Age.  Umm, that's not how civilization or progress works.  If one tribe had any kind of technological advantage over the other, the lesser tribe was wiped out.  Watch the opening scenes of "2001: A Space Odyssey" again if you don't believe me.  But here they've flipped it, the "good" tribe is the one on the dumber, less-advanced side, and the "bad" tribe is the one that rides on mammoths, has knowledge of metalworking, and lives in a large city, not a sparsely-populated valley.   The "good" tribe has forgotten how to play soccer, while the "bad" tribe has a three-level stadium and a team full of star athletes.

But their set-up itself contains the very thing that can defeat them - teamwork and good sportsmanship.  Because when every athlete is a star, they're each playing for their own glory, and they're not working together.  The underdogs, in true "Bad News Bears" or "Dodgeball" fashion, can beat them by practicing, sharing the ball, and letting girls play.  (Oooh, how very P.C.!).

Stop trying to make your weird "football" happen in America, you Brits.  It's not going to happen, not here.  But I suppose you really made this film for the other 90% of the world that calls soccer football, but I'm betting this movie tanked at the U.S. box office.  We're too deep in the pockets of the NFL to even consider changing, but hey, our football's been getting a bad rap lately, with all the players disrespecting the flag and all the team owners consoling themselves with trips to the massage parlor while their players suffer too many concussions on the field.  So maybe there's a place for soccer in America, but only at the grade-school level.

Why didn't they record an American version, with the word "football" changed to "soccer"?  It wouldn't have cost any more to have each actor record each line twice.  You've got to respect the language of the country that a movie airs in, and why foster any more misunderstanding than you have to?  It's going to take years for language to change, and even then, you've got to come up with another word for American football, and I've yet to hear any workable solutions for this.  Passball?  Kickball?  No, that's taken.  Tackleball?  Concussion-ball?  No, too on the nose.

I'm a fan of other films from Aardman Animation, like "Chicken Run" and the Wallace & Gromit films, but there's just not much here that appeals to me.  Still, I appreciate how much hard work it is to make a stop-motion or claymation feature, it takes years.  And then once the story and dialogue is recorded, it can't be changed, because all of the animators have to lip-synch to the dialogue.  So it feels like they got locked in here to a story and probably realized too late how lame it all felt.

Also starring the voices of Eddie Redmayne (last seen in "Like Minds"), Tom Hiddleston (last seen in "Crimson Peak"), Maisie Williams, Miriam Margolyes (last seen in "Reds"), Kayvan Novak, Rob Brydon (last seen in "The Trip to Spain"), Richard Ayoade (last heard in "The Boxtrolls"), Selina Griffiths, Johnny Vegas (last seen in "The Brothers Grimsby"), Mark Williams (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Gina Yashere, Richard Webber, Simon Greenall, Nick Park.

RATING: 4 out of 10 schnookels

Lucky Break

Year 11, Day 81 - 3/22/19 - Movie #3,179

BEFORE: Christopher Plummer carries over from "All the Money in the World", here he plays a prison warden (or "governor", as they call it over there, I think).  I didn't really have a St. Patrick's Day film this year, because Captain Marvel, but at least this one has "Lucky" in the title, and the lead actor/lead character appears to be Irish, I'm afraid that's the best I can do this year.

BUT, it seems like I've cracked the code on linking, at long last.  After I learned 2 days ago that I could neatly fit a planned documentary chain between "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" and "Spider-Man: Far From Home" and STILL maintain linking (which can get very tough with docs, though if I limit the docs to just a few basic themes, it actually gets easier) I set out to close the gap.  So yesterday I found a linked path between "Avengers: Endgame" and "Dark Phoenix" that would take up the right number of days, and I landed on something.  It wasn't perfect, it needed a little tweaking and a few additions, but I've now got a plan that will take me all the way to mid-July.

And, since I haven't had any breaks or relied on any indirect links so far in 2019, that means I COULD have an unbroken chain from January 1 to July 8 or so - that's 187 films, or thereabout.  If I can keep it going to 200 films, that would be absolutely insane, right?  At some point it becomes like a no-hitter in baseball, I'm not going to want to talk about it, but it WILL become the only thing that I can focus on, if I go 200 films without breaking the chain.

This could present me with a dilemma, once October rolls around - I've been forgiving myself some broken links in order to get horror or classic monster-movie films watched, like last year I allowed myself to link between two films with Dracula in them, because that's the same character, not necessarily the same actor.  Should I do that this year with The Mummy?  or should I only focus on some more modern scary films that share actors?  Or should I take the whole month off this year, if I'm working on a "perfect game" and I don't want to allow a horror chain with broken links?  I may have to decide in August or September how I'm going to handle this.   More later.

THE PLOT: Under the leadership of a small-time bank robber, British inmates hatch a plan to escape by staging a musical.

AFTER: Outside of "Hogan's Heroes", I don't know too many comedies that are set in prisons.  But leave it to the Brits, and the director of "The Full Monty", to turn this subject matter into something both funny and charming.  This feels a lot like a British version of "The Shawshank Redemption", or perhaps it's more like if you turned a British sit-com (Brit-com?) like "Are You Being Served" into "Are You Serving Your Time"?  It's got all the classic British comedy tropes, there are lower-class people (the inmates) and the upper-class (the warden and the guards) because really, everything in Britain is a class struggle, right?  Geez, I'd consider this whole film to be a metaphor for Brexit if it hadn't been released in 2001, well before that word or concept ever existed.

At first it sounds a lot like the end of the movie "The Producers", when Bialystock and Bloom are sent to jail, and are last seen over-financing a new production called "Prisoners of Love", which the warden heavily invests in.  Sure, there are some similarities, but this is a full-length film that riffs off the same idea, but then adds the whole plot about the inmates trying to escape during the performance.

Caught in the middle of the class struggle is Annabel, a woman who works at the prison as some kind of psychologist or anger-management consultant (and boy, some of those inmates sure need it...) but she finds herself falling for a failed bank robber named Jimmy Hands.  AND since she's the only woman around, she's the natural choice to play Lady Hamilton in a staged musical based on the life of Lord Nelson, which the warden wrote and composed.  It's all a big dodge, however, since the inmates are only producing the play to cover up an escape attempt, they've determined that the old chapel, where the musical would have to be staged, has the WORST security coverage, and the hour when all the guards and inmates will be watching the show would be the BEST time to cut throught the wires and slip a few actors out over the wall.

That's the plan, anyway, but of course nothing in a British comedy ever goes completely to plan, how else would everyone get an excuse to act all flustered and desperate?  In this case a new, very dangerous inmate demands to be made part of the plan (though he's got, like, ZERO stage presence) and once Annabel figures out what's going on, it puts Jimmy in a quandary - should he get out the prison, live the rest of his life as a fugitive and lose the woman he loves, or turn back around, serve the rest of his sentence, and win her over?

I'm a bit surprised to find that this lead actor has never played Paul McCartney in any kind of biopic - his face really reminded me of McCartney (circa 1984, the whole "Give My Regards to Broad Street" era) and then when he sang, I also heard a similarity in his singing voice.  Maybe I'm the only one who ever noticed this, or maybe someone felt that his Irish accent wasn't close enough to McCartney's Liverpudlian one.

I recorded this film off cable more or less at random, to fill up a DVD with "Baby Driver", and now I'm very glad that I did, it's definitely worth a look.

Also starring James Nesbitt (last seen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Olivia Williams (last seen in "Peter Pan"(2003)), Timothy Spall (last seen in "Appaloosa"), Bill Nighy (last heard in "Norm of the North"), Lennie James (last seen in "Blade Runner 2049"), Ron Cook (last seen in "102 Dalmatians"), Frank Harper (last seen in "Bend It Like Beckham"), Raymond Waring (last seen in "24 Hour Party People"), Julian Barratt, Peter Wight (last seen in "Atonement"), Celia Imrie (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Peter McNamara, Andy Linden, Ram John Holder, John Pierce Jones.

RATING: 6 out of 10 newspaper hats

All the Money in the World

Year 11, Day 80 - 3/21/19 - Movie #3,178

BEFORE: Well, I ran out of Marvel movies already, so that's the end of March Marvel Madness.  But "Avengers: Endgame" is just 35 days away, or just 39 movies if I stick to my schedule - because maybe I won't get to see it on Opening Day, if it's too crowded.  I might have to wait until the following Monday - Monday's a great day to go to the movies, theoretically it might be a little less crowded (though the IMAX theater showing "Captain Marvel" was pretty packed on the first Monday).  All I can do is set what I think is the best plan.

Speaking of that, I was fooling around with my schedule a little bit, and looking at the release dates for "X-Men: Dark Phoenix", so I marked all my films that are one or two links away from that film, and one of those happened to be my lead-in movie to this year's documentary chain, which I'd planned to put in July, because the other end links to "Spider-Man: Far From Home".  When I counted the days, though, I realized that my documentary chain fits almost perfectly BETWEEN "Dark Phoenix" and the new "Spider-Man" film, so now I'm moving it up from July to June.  What were the odds of that chain fitting right where I needed it to go?  (I might need to make a quick adjustment or two, but this is still an amazing find.  And if the chain runs a couple days long, that's still OK, I can just wait on the new "Spider-Man" film for a couple of days.)

Now, all I really need is to find a chain that will run between "Avengers: Endgame" (opening April 26, but I may watch on April 29) and "Dark Phoenix" (opening June 7, but I may not watch until June 10) and I'll then have a continuous linked chain between January 1 and mid-July.  That's insane.  But, since I've developed new, better techniques for finding the links, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised.  Really, I need a change that's between 39 and 42 movies long that connects to "Avengers" on one end (that's easy, since that film has an enormous cast) and the "X-Men" film on the other (a little tougher, still a big cast but the actors are more obscure) and ideally there should be a nod to Mother's Day somewhere in the middle.

If you think about it, there should be thousands of combinations of movies that will fulfill those goals, my problem essentially then becomes narrowing the focus of all the possible combinations to find the chain that works for me, contains mostly films on my watchlist, aka films on my radar that I WANT to see or have heard good things about, and then if necessary, finding the mortar to bring those bricks together.  I'm going to get right on this later today.

In the meantime, Michelle Williams carries over from "Venom", to a film from 2017 that was Oscar-nominated and ended up getting a lot of attention for who did NOT appear in the film.

THE PLOT: The story of the kidnapping of 16-year-old John Paul Getty III and the desperate attempt by his devoted mother to convince his billionaire grandfather to pay the ransom.

AFTER: Yes, this is the film that became famous for firing Kevin Spacey, after his scandal broke back in 2017, and then any film or TV show that was made with him in it was tainted by scandal, so this film chose to fight back against the publicity nightmare by re-casting his part with Christopher Plummer.  But that meant some re-shoots were needed, and when they brought back Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams for those, they paid Wahlberg much, much more than Williams, so that ticked off ANOTHER scandal, concerning the lack of equal pay in Hollywood for women.  Another publicity nightmare, so it's really a wonder that any film got completed and managed to garner some award nominations, and the Oscar win for Plummer.  (Wahlberg earned $1.5 million for the re-shoots, while Michelle Williams earned just $1,000 - but Wahlberg donated his re-shoot salary to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.)

This story got very muddled here by excessive jumping around in time - the temptation is to kick off the story with the "splash page", the most exciting bit, which is the kidnapping of the 16-year-old John Paul Getty III in 1973.  But then the movie flashes back to an earlier time, let's say 1964, when the billionaire first contacts his son after a long time of not being in contact, to show us the first meeting between the billionaire and his grandson.  Then the time period moves up to 1971, when the boy's father was addicted to drugs, and spending time in an opium den, the crackhouse of that time.  His mother demands that her son be put on a plane and flown back to her, and the divorce proceedings move forward.  Then we're back to 1973 when the boy is being held hostage.  But there's simply no reason why the film couldn't have started in 1964 and moved forward in the proper order.  A casual viewer could easily get confused here, if they're not paying attention then the boy is kidnapped, then he's suddenly younger and meets his grandfather, then he flies home to his mother, then he's kidnapped again - there's too much potential for cognitive error here if the viewer can't piece the timeline together properly.

I've come to find out that the film also mucked about with the time stream when it came to the depiction of events - like at the end of the film two key events appear to happen simultaneously, but in reality they took place three years apart.  No spoilers here, so I won't mention what those two events are, but trust me, they're major.  They also set the divorce of J. Paul Getty Jr. in 1971, when it really occurred in 1964 (the same year of the idyllic family breakfast scene shown near the start), and he remarried in 1971, but there's zero mention here of his second wife - no room for her in this fictionalized version of the story, I guess.

So, if I try to look past all the anachronisms, and all the controversy about casting Spacey, replacing Spacey, and underpaying women, is there a decent movie to be found here?  Eh, I'm not sure.  The main point to be made seems to be that J. Paul Getty was a right bastard, the kind of guy who wouldn't pay a ransom to get his grandson back.  Well, to be fair, he did have other grandchildren, and if you pay one kidnapper, you end up encouraging others, and then you have to pay THOSE kidnappers, and so on.  Like, where does that end?  And why does a man struggle to control most of the world's oil supply and make an insane amount of money, just to GIVE IT AWAY to a bunch of felons?  Eff that, am I right?  Could J. Paul Getty's reasoning be sound here, or is he just a cheapskate?

I'm being somewhat facetious here, because if someone kidnaps a family member, OF COURSE you pay the ransom, that's what any decent human would do if they could, only the police also tell people (at least in movies) NOT to pay ransom money, because then there's no incentive for kidnappers to release your family member, or even to keep them alive, if they're not dead already, that is.  So yeah, it's a bit of a moral quandary, whether to pay or not.  But since it's such a hard, definite "HELL, NO" from Getty then we really learn all we need to know about him, right?  So where's the suspense here?

Who knew that Michelle Williams, playing Gail Harris, would look so much like BARBARA Harris (star of the 1970's version of "Freaky Friday") when you give her a 1970's hair cut?  I sure didn't.

Also starring Christopher Plummer (last seen in "Dolores Claiborne"), Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Romain Duris (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Timothy Hutton (last seen in "Everybody's All-American"), Charlie Plummer (last seen in "The Dinner"), Charlie Shotwell, Andrew Buchan (last seen in "Nowhere Boy"), Marco Leonardi (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico"), Giuseppe Bonifati, Nicolas Vaporidis, Ghassan Massoud (last seen in "Exodus: Gods and Kings"), Stacy Martin (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Kit Cranston, Maya Kelly, Clive Wood, Jonathan Aris (last seen in "Race").

RATING: 5 out of 10 ski masks

Venom

Year 11, Day 79 - 3/20/19 - Movie #3,177

BEFORE: And it's three in a row for Stan Lee, who carries over from "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse".  It seems like maybe he'll be immortalized for this, just in case his decades-long career creating just about every important Marvel super-hero isn't enough for us to remember him by.  I tried to watch this one in last year, because I know Woody Harrelson makes a cameo in it, too, and I had SO many films with him already on the docket that I had to split them up into two sections, one with "Solo" and "War for the Planet of the Apes" and "North Country" and another one with "Wilson", "The Prize-Winner of Defiance, Ohio" and "The Edge of Seventeen" - and STILL I couldn't work this one in, because it was released in early October, and by then I was on to my horror chain.  Sure, this could be considered like a Marvel Comics horror film of sorts, but it didn't seem to share any actors with the other horror films on my list, so I was forced to table it.

And it's still not on premium cable - it's on iTunes, but since it's a Marvel movie I spent some real money on it last month and ordered the DVD from Amazon.  Some people still do that, right?  Now I'm realizing that I should have done some kind of "March Madness" tie-in and called this part of the chain "March Marvel Movie Madness" - is it too late for that?

THE PLOT: A failed reporter is bonded to an alien entity, one of many symbiotes who have invaded Earth, but the being takes a liking to Earth and decides to protect it.

AFTER: Monster movies don't need to be relegated to October any more, right?  I mean, like if I need to use them during other months for their linking qualities, that has to be allowed.  I just saw a bunch of toothy monsters in "The Great Wall", and I'm working my way toward both "Alien: Covenant" and "A Quiet Place", neither of which has cast lists that lend themselves to October-like linking.  Anyway, October is sort of reserved for Draculas and mummies and maybe a Swamp Thing or two - I should probably start parsing out my films and making a plan now for October, which is only like 6 1/2 months away.

But let's focus on Venom, who was seen in "Spider-Man 3" with Topher Grace playing his human host, but I guess some people felt that this film didn't really do him justice, anyway, that storyline has now been retconned out of existence, and there's a new actor playing Spider-Man in the "Avengers"-related films, so I guess that means they needed a new actor to play Venom.  If you're not up on the character's comic-book origins, way back in 1984 there was a comic-book cross-over called "Secret Wars", in which all the big heroes - Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, most of the Fantastic Four - and all the biggest villains like Dr. Doom, Magneto, Doctor Octopus, Kang, Klaw, Ultron, the Absorbing Man, Molecule Man, the Lizard, and the Wrecking Crew, were teleported away to another galaxy, where they were forced by an entity called the Beyonder to fight each other for some kind of ultimate prize.  It was an epic storyline that got me hooked on comics, and changed the direction of every book starring one of the characters involved.

Or, at least it changed the way they look.  Even though the storyline took a year (12 issues) to play out, the effects were seem immediately as the characters were teleported back for the next issue of their individual books, and some team line-ups changed, and Spider-Man suddenly had a black costume instead of his traditional red & blue one.  Even better, this black costume could shoot webs (no need for a separate web-shooting device) and also change its look to resemble street clothing, so Peter Parker could transform into Spider-Man more quickly, and not have to stash his clothing before joining the action.  However, a few issues later, it was revealed that the costume was really an alien life-form that he'd found during the "Secret Wars", and it was feeding off of Peter Parker's life energy, excreting webs as some form of waste product (Ewww...) and also taking Peter's host body out for midnight jaunts to fight crime while he was supposed to be sleeping.  No wonder he was tired all the time...

Spider-Man got rid of the symbiote suit with the help of Mister Fantastic and a sonic gun, and the suit escaped captivity and joined with a reporter who had been disgraced and lost his job, and for this he blamed Spider-Man, so both the suit and the man, Eddie Brock, had a common enemy, and joined together as Venom.  This led to many dramatic encounters during the 1990's, as Venom became a popular villain character, and then something of an anti-hero on his own.

In the new continuity, they've removed the connection to Spider-Man, there's merely a visual resemblance between Venom's eyes and the ones on Spider-Man's suit.  Sort of.  I don't know if I'm sold on this idea, it's a little bit like making a Joker movie and removing all references to Batman.  What is a villain if you take away his connection to a hero?  Would people go to see a movie about a James Bond villain if Bond wasn't anywhere in it?  That would have to be a really popular character, right?  Or a film about Ultron or Thanos if the Avengers weren't involved?  I kind of doubt it.

They do their best here by creating an even bigger villain, a sort of Elon Musk-type billionaire who wants to use these alien symbiotes to merge with humans, and create a new hybrid type of lifeform that will be better suited for space travel or colonizing the universe.  Umm, great plan dude, but it seems like these creatures (now called the Klyntar in the comic books) seem a lot more interested in eating people than they are colonizing new planets with them.  But this billionaire, Carlton Drake, persists and uses a bunch of rounded-up homeless people as test subjects.  Well, I guess that's a unique solution to solving the problem of people being homeless, not to mention general overpopulation.  (see also: "What Happened to Monday")

But the process is imperfect at best, and even the scientists here don't seem able to explain why the symbiotes bonding with certain lifeforms like rabbits doesn't seem to work, and then bonding with some humans doesn't work either, but once Venom finds Eddie Brock, things seem to go (relatively) smoothly.  Why do some species seem to burn out so quickly, does Venom just regard them as "food" rather than as a viable host?  OK, then why aren't some people able to survive the bonding, while others are?  Do these parasites kill all of their hosts until they find one that they like, or can get along with?  So much of this is unclear that it starts to push everything into the territory of "junk science".  Or else it starts to feel like some screenwriter is unable or unwilling to explain everything, so let's just forge ahead and hope that nobody notices.

I've got to call a personal NITPICK POINT on the fact that everyone in this film seems to pronounce the word "symbiote" as "Sim-BEE-oat", when in my mind, it should really be "Sim-BYE-oat", like "bio" should sound like it does in "biology" and "biography", right?

Also, I've got clear concerns about how Eddie Brock eats after he's bonded with the Venom symbiote - the first thing he does when he gets home is to reach for some frozen Tater Tots, and dump them into his mouth without even heating them up.  Did he suddenly forget how to cook food?  There's nothing about the bonding process that would make him suddenly stupid enough to crack his teeth on frozen foods.  I realize he might have been a little out of sorts, but this seems to go beyond what would be reasonable for being confused.  Another point about eating - when Venom is in control, he manages to bite the heads off a good number of enemies.  Since his face is covering Eddie's, does this make Eddie Brock a cannibal?  If not, then where does the head go?  And yes, I get that this is based on a comic book, but that doesn't mean that the rules of "cartoon physics" would suddenly apply.

There is a "Venom 2" currently being planned for release in 2020 - it would be extremely easy to follow up Venom's story by developing the character that "spawned" from it and joined with a serial killer, who's glimpsed in a post-credits sequence.  The resulting creature is named Carnage, and this would be a very simple way to maintain Venom's anti-hero status, by just putting him up against another symbiote creature who's more villainous and bloodthirsty than he is.

There's also a post-credits scene featuring footage from "Into the Spider-Verse", so I guess I watched these two films in the wrong order, but how was I supposed to know?

Also starring Tom Hardy (last seen in "The Revenant"), Michelle Williams (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Riz Ahmed (last seen in "Nightcrawler"), Scott Haze (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Reid Scott (last heard in "Nerdland"), Jenny Slate (last seen in "The Polka King"), Melora Walters (last seen in "Matchstick Men"), Chris O'Hara (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Woody Harrelson (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Peggy Lu, Sope Aluko, Wayne Pére (last seen in "The Beguiled"), Scott Deckert, Ellen Gerstein, Ron Cephas Jones (last seen in "Half Nelson"), Michelle Lee, Jared Bankens, Mac Brandt, Christian Convery, Sam Medina.

RATING: 6 out of 10 missing homeless people

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Year 11, Day 78 - 3/19/19 - Movie #3,176

BEFORE: Back in January I dedicated this year to the memory of two men, Stan Lee and Will Vinton - so it's only fitting that I use one of them as the link between three movies based on his work, as Stan Lee makes some form of cameo in them.  He played himself in "Captain Marvel", a guy on a subway reading the script for Kevin Smith's movie "Mallrats", in which he also made a cameo.  And the hero definitely sort of recognized him, and knew for a fact that he was an OK dude, and not a dirty Skrull. So he's also somewhere in today's film, though I'm not sure where just yet.

This one's still playing in theaters, theoretically I could have snuck in to see it after watching "Captain Marvel" a week ago, but it was 10 pm when that movie ended, and I had to make it to the comic shop before it closed at midnight, and at some point I had to go home to sleep.  And as I stated before, I saw the Academy screener for this one kicking around the office, but it sort of vanished (which usually means that a movie is really good), so instead I had to wait for today, when the film became available to rent on iTunes.

Seeing as how I'm friends with one of the directors, it would probably be bad karma for me to watch this one for free, anyway.  I want to support his film, so I'm paying the rental fee for iTunes the day it becomes available to rent, it's the least I can do for a bud, to help increase his film's iTunes income.  After all, it's not every day when I get to watch one of my former interns accepting an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature on TV.

THE PLOT: Teen Miles Morales becomes Spider-Man of his reality, crossing his path with five counterparts from other dimensions to stop a threat for all realities.

AFTER: I'm kind of torn here, because while I do want to champion the very forward-thinking work that was done here, I'm also kind of a purist when it comes to storytelling.  There have been entirely too many reboots and re-workings of things over the last decade, to the point where they have to re-tell the origin of Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four nearly every time they want to make a movie with those characters.  Why can't they just tell a character's origin ONCE and then leave it alone for 30 or 40 years, whatever happened to long, slow character development.  You don't see them re-telling James Bond's origin every time - umm, wait, that's a bad example.  You don't see them re-telling Dracula or the Mummy's origin every time.  No, wait, those are also bad examples, because they do all that too.  Godzilla?  No, he also gets re-booted every few years.  King Kong?  Nope, same.  God DAMN IT, I guess my point is that nothing is permanent any more, not even our most celebrated fiction.

I suppose on the positive side, old stories ARE being kept alive, just in different forms as times go by.  "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens is a great example of a story that carried an important message for people in Victorian times, and then as society changed and people's situations changed, the message needed to be put in more modern dressing for people to pay proper attention to it.  And that's why there were later versions with Albert Finney, Bill Murray and Matthew McConnaughey, delivering the same message (more or less) but with a modern spin that today's audiences might pay a little more attention to.  And then when apply this to comic books, the old Superman, Batman and Spider-Man stories are still being told today, but just in different ways - in one way there's nothing new under the sun, but on the other hand, everything still has to feel fresh and inspired.  Stan Lee himself called this the "illusion of change" - the writers could change Captain America's costume, the villain that he's fighting, his girlfriend, the shape of his shield, but they're not fundamentally changing his story, it's all one continuous, non-changing narrative, and at the end of every multi-part storyline, the pieces go back into the box so the next writer can open the box and play with them.

And then when I was a teen and started reading Marvel Comics, there was this series called "What If?", which is an odd name for a comic book title, to be sure.  But this was where the writers could let their imaginations run wild, and show some things that they felt couldn't be done in the regular comics - like "What if Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four?" In regular comic-book continuity, Spider-Man met the super-team known as the Fantastic Four and was invited to join, only he turned down the offer.  In the "What If?" book, someone could explore that story that didn't happen, to show how things could be different, either better or worse.  This alternate choice could have a dramatically different effect, like it could lead to total world peace, or to the sudden death of the Human Torch, but my point is that this was my first encounter with alternate universes or parallel realities.  Other famous "What If?" stories included "What If Phoenix Had Lived" and "What If Jane Foster Found the Hammer of Thor", and later on, versions of these ideas popped up in the main Marvel timeline, because at the end of the day, there are only so many stories to be told with these characters, and if you wait long enough, they're all bound to happen sooner or later.

But to me, these alternate reality stories were "less real" than the ones in the main (Earth-616) timeline of the Marvel Comic Universe.  But since then, Marvel has re-booted or re-structured their timelines because of the Infinity Wars, the (second) Secret Wars, the Ultra-Super Secret Infinite Invasion that Still Everyone Seems to Know About, and so on.  What was "real" when I was a teenager has been futzed with so many times and updated and retconned to the point where I'm not even sure what's real any more - like in 1964 Tony Stark became Iron Man during a war in SouthEast Asia (obviously Vietnam-like) but in the current origin, it happened during a war that looked more like Iraq or Afghanistan - so which is real or true now, or does it even matter in the end?  The Punisher is famously a Vietnam veteran, but he also still looks 40 years old, so how is that even possible now?  He should be in his mid-60's, even if he fought in the tail end of the Vietnam war.

Which brings me to Spider-Man.  The Spider-Man we know in the main reality, Peter Parker, has been around so long that he should also be in his 50's, at least, only who wants to see a geriatric super-hero?  So even though the character's been around since 1964, Spider-Man makes references to being a super-hero for only 10 years, which would make him how old?  36?  Time passes differently in comic books, which is both good and bad.  Good because we'll never see him get old and be web-slinging in a wheelchair, but bad because the stories become more unbelievable, less real, if we don't see him age and he's stuck in a state of arrested development.  But again, the Marvel Universe has collapsed, gone under reality re-structuring several times, and the character might not be aware of it. He was married to Mary Jane, once upon a time, I swear, but in a very embarrassing storyline he made a deal with the devil (I swear, it's true) to retcon the marriage out of existence, which somehow saved the world or Aunt May's life or something.  What a shitty idea - heroes don't make deals with the actual devil, no good can come of that - and why?  All because some lazy writer didn't know how to write Peter Parker as a husband, or had no experience himself at being married.  They had a whole promotional campaign back in the late 80's, actors playing Spider-Man and MJ got married on home plate at Shea Stadium, it was A THING, and now everyone at Marvel just pretends it didn't happen. For shame.

Meanwhile, what's the deal with Miles Morales?  This character was created for Marvel's "Ultimate" line of comics, which first came out around 2000, putting fresh spins on Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.  Many of these were written by Brian Michael Bendis, who is not my favorite writer, so I didn't read these books.  One of countless attempts to get new readers to pick up comic books, my guess is that they were moderately successful, because if they had outsold the stories from the main Marvel Universe, then probably the old line would have been phased out in favor of the new characters and timelines.  So it's now regarded as a parallel timeline or alternate dimension, in which things are all slightly different - it's only funny because "ultimate" usually connotes "last" or "final", and there have been many other realities and timelines shown since.  Now it's an aberration of sorts, though they did bring over Miles Morales, the evil Reed Richards ("The Maker"), and Ultimate Wolverine's son (Jimmy Hudson) to the main universe at the conclusion of the last Secret Wars mega-crossover event.  Why?  Because they thought that would sell a few more books.

So here I am, a Marvel purist who's been forced to accept that the writers are going to keep messing with reality every time there's a dip in sales figures, because if they think that a female Ghost Rider or  a Latino Spider-Man or a Punisher from the future is going to sell a few more books, then they're going to do exactly that.  I've pretty much given up on treating some stories as "less real" than the others, because at the end of the day, NONE of them are real.  If a writer can dream up a universe where ducks and pigs can be superheroes, or Gwen Stacy somehow has Deadpool powers, and they can get that shit published, what right do I have to say that shouldn't be done?  I don't have to BUY any comic book that I'm probably not going to like, so I vote with my wallet for the stories that I think I want to see more of.  Other people feel differently, and they vote differently with their wallets, it's all part of the grand experiment that is capitalism.

OK, so take all that as my roundabout way of saying that I'm not really a fan of Mike Morales, I like my Spider-Man to be Peter Parker, and I like the main Marvel timeline the best.  But still the Marvel company insists on doing these big cross-overs like "Spider-Verse" and its sequel book, "Spider-Geddon", which feature all the cross-time and cross-dimension Spider-Men and Spider-Women uniting to face a common threat, which is Morlun and the other Inheritors.  These are a bunch of very evil ancient beings who travel the different dimensions, and they EAT Spider-People.  Nasty, I know. But it's a serious enough threat to justify getting all the Spider-People together from all their universes so they can meet up and work together to defeat the evil power.

Problem is, for whatever reason when it came time to make a "Spider-Verse" movie, they adapted the "Spider-Verse" storyline from the comics, only they left out the nasty villains!  This is possibly the thing that MADE that story great, so where are they?  Instead we get the Kingpin, Tombstone, the Scorpion and Dr. Octopus from the "Ultimate" timeline, which seem lame by comparison.  Was this enough of a threat to justify getting 7 Spider-People (OK, 6 people and one Spider-Pig) together?  I'm not sure.  Maybe there will be a sequel to "Into the Spider-Verse", and these characters, plus a few more iterations, and they have to come together to defeat these proper dimension-hopping villains instead of the same old lame NYC-bound ones.

They did a good job here, given what they had to work with - probably demands like "no Spider-Men will be eaten by villains" and "get rid of the weird inter dimensional villains and put in some fan favorites like Kingpin and Scorpion".  OK, I don't pretend to know what went on behind the scenes, why they had to twist the "Spider-Verse" story seen in the comics around until it barely resembled the material that inspired it. But innovation is good for progress, I suppose.  Hey, they took THREE Batman storylines and mashed them up together to make "The Dark Knight Rises", and that movie was KILLER, so you just never know.  And this film beat out "Incredibles 2" to win the Oscar, so I'm clearly in the minority here.

I can't help but point out a few NITPICK POINTS - sorry, Chris and Phil.  First off, the whole concept of "parallel dimensions" seems out of place here, maybe it's the language.  When you think of two parallel lines, they are, in theory, identical to each other, only they will never ever meet, because of their location.  They could be very very close to each other, but they'll never touch, because that's the definition of parallel.  Here we have characters from dimensions that manage to touch each other so they can cross over, and that's against the very concept of being parallel.  Plus, a parallel dimension, if one exists, should be very very similar to the one next to it, but it could have a key difference, like more people there would be left-handed, or Jimmy Fallon is funny there. Two dimensions running concurrently shouldn't be SO different that everyone there is stuck in 1933, or everyone there is really a barnyard animal. That's not "parallel", because it's so far removed from reality.  I would accept "alternate dimension", but not "parallel".

Speaking of which, Spider-Ham is a terrible idea.  This character was created for a JOKE comic way back in the 1980's, called "Marvel Tails", riffing off the popular reprint comic "Marvel Tales".  I know, I own a copy of the book, which also featured Hulk Bunny (also stupid) and Duck-tor Doom (umm, ridiculous).  Somehow Spider-Ham got his own book after that, but it was for small KIDS, it was never a character that was meant to be taken seriously in any way, or to interact with human superheroes.  It makes no sense, and I think including Spider-Ham in the "Spider-Verse" comic really cheapened that cross-over, and he has the same effect on this movie.  Really, really, truly dumb, in every possible way, right down to his use of "cartoon physics" in an otherwise non-cartoon world.  Plus, he's a SPIDER that was bitten by a pig, not the other way around - how does that even WORK?

Now, some other odd NP's.  Why does Miles Morales live in a dorm, when he's a high-school student in NYC?  There's no high-school in this city that offers residency for students - that's what college is for.  The NYC public school system is simply not in the business of housing people - yes, there are specialty high-schools for people who excel in math and science, but since those students live in the city limits, they all commute there every day by bus or subway.  Nothing would be gained at the high-school level by having students live in dorms, and even if this did exist, which it doesn't, then the dorm space would go to the kids who live furthest away first - like I remember at NYU I had a roommate who lived in Queens, and he had to wait for all the students from out of town to be assigned dorms before they would give one to him.  All NYC high-school students live with their parents or relatives, to the best of my knowledge, so this plot point seems very out of place.  OK, sure, this is set in another universe, but is that going to be an all-purpose excuse to allow mistakes into the film?

Next, we've got the MacGuffin used to bring the characters across dimensions, which is a "collider" occupying a space under Fisk Tower in Brooklyn.  Comic book science quite easily becomes "junk science", which is the case here.  (It's weird, they call it a "collider" in the film, but Wikipedia refers to it as an "accelerator".  Did some screenwriter fail to do 5 minutes of research on the internet?) Because we HAVE accelerators and super-colliders in our own reality, and none of them manage to break the barriers between dimensions and allow other people to cross over.  HOW a collider manages to do this, and why it fails and why it's dangerous, all of this is glossed over here, as if none of it matters.  Umm, yes, it does, because you have to show your work.  You can't just have a character cross two wires on a TV set or spill coffee on a microwave and somehow travel through time.  Is this what we want our teens to think, that anything we might learn about physics by using a super-collider could accidentally cause a web-slinging pig to enter our world?

For that matter, we shouldn't show "heroic" characters painting graffiti with spray cans, either.  It's a bad message to send out to the kids, that this is somehow OK, when it's not - it doesn't matter how "artistic" that person is, it's still illegal.  Sorry to be such a fuddy-duddy.

Also starring Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson (last seen in "The Mummy"), Hailee Steinfeld (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Mahershala Ali (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Luna Lauren Velez, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Snowden"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Chuck"), Kimiko Glenn (last seen in "Nerve"), Chris Pine (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "At Eternity's Gate"), Kathryn Hahn (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), Zoe Kravitz (last seen in "Rough Night"), Lake Bell (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets"), Jaoquin Cosio, Jorma Taccone (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Marvin "Krondon" Jones III, Greta Lee, Natalie Morales (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Post Malone.

RATING: 6 out of 10 songs on Spidey's Christmas album

Captain Marvel

Year 11, Day 76 - 3/17/19 - Movie #3,175 - VIEWED ON 3/11/19

BEFORE: That's right, I went to the movies for a SECOND time in 2019, after seeing "Aquaman" in January.  I didn't know whether "Aquaman" would be available in any home video or streaming format by March, so I hedged my bets.  And once I realized that Djimon Hounsou was in both that DC film (his voice, anyway) and this Marvel one, well, then my road became a bit more clear.

I couldn't NOT see this one, because of the way that the last "Avengers" film ended, with a very strong hint that Captain Marvel would be coming to save the day, just as soon as Fury's phone call reached her, wherever she might be.  So then that leads to the possibility that this film could be just as important to the Marvel 2019 films as "Black Panther" was to the 2018 line-up.  I got to see the film last Monday, on just the 4th day of release, figuring that everyone would pack the theaters on opening weekend, and I might be able to slip in once the crowds died down a bit.

NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD, proceed with caution unless you've already seen this film in the theaters!  There's just no way to talk about this film without giving away certain plot points.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Avengers: Infinity War" (Movie #2,940)

THE PLOT: Carol Danvers becomes one of the universe's most powerful heroes when Earth is caught in the middle of a galactic war between two alien races.

AFTER: Finally, there's a game-changing Marvel super heroine movie!  This follows, of course, on the heels of DC's smash "Wonder Woman", and making the lead role in the latest "Star Wars" trilogy female, and isn't it about damn time?  Marvel hasn't really had the best track record when it comes to landing and then keeping female fans - in the past they've tried getting girls hooked on comics with everything from Millie the Model to Barbie (umm, no, try again, aim higher).  Eventually they figured out that women could be superheroes, too - but the demographics still weren't fair, only 25% of the original Fantastic Four and 20% of the original Avengers and X-Men were women.  Things improved slightly during the 1970's and 80's, especially among the X-Men, with the introductions of Storm, Kitty Pryde, Dazzler, Rogue, Psylocke, and many of the New Mutants, but the top-respected teams, the Fantastic Four and Avengers, remained mostly a boy's club.

Even today, the current incarnation of the Avengers has only two women, Captain Marvel and She-Hulk, among 7 members (and She-Hulk's being romanced by Thor, but only when she's in Hulk-form and has diminished mental capacity, so that's a sub-plot that needs to be extinguished ASAP).  Meanwhile, the Avengers' West Coast team, which was 40% female when introduced in 1984, is faring better with 50% women now - including Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Miss America (Chavez), and Gwenpool. The team still has one too many archers, but at least they're demographically on point.  (And the Fantastic Four still holding at 25% female, but I guess that's never going to change - I'm just glad that they're back.)

In the MCU, they fell into the same trap with the first "Avengers" movie - just one female member, Black Widow, but now that they're 20 movies in, they can afford to take some chances and try to turn things around.  50% of the movie audience is female, why should women be only 16% to 20% of the heroes?  (see also "Guardians of the Galaxy")  But then last year's "Ant-Man and the Wasp" finally got a female hero in the TITLE, and that seemed to go over well, so here we are.  In the comic books, the quickest way to add a female character (and to display zero creativity) is just to gender-swap the successful male hero - so after Spider-Man was a success, they created Spider-Woman.  People like Hulk?  Then they'll love She-Hulk!  More recently, Thor's ex-girlfriend Jane Foster became Lady Thor for a few years, and we've also had the Iron Man knock-off Ironheart, the aforementioned female Hawkeye (also stupidly called Hawkeye) and so it's very rare when an original, non-knockoff female character becomes a hit, like Black Widow or Squirrel Girl.  There have been EIGHT characters going by the name "Captain Marvel" in Marvel Comics history, and the Carol Danvers one (who notoriously went by "Ms. Marvel" in the equal-rights 1970's) is just the version that's managed to connect with the most fans since 2000.

Political analogies are all over this film - the Skrulls are creatures that can change their shape and look like you, replace you and then do your job, while they await further instructions.  They're thinly-veiled Mexicans, right?  We'd better get to work building a wall around the Earth to keep them out, while SpaceForce - sorry, STAR-Force battles them throughout the galaxy.

The Kree, meanwhile, have a class-based system that seems to be based in part on the color of their skin - not like Earth at all, we swear, except the "pink" Kree seem to be at the top of the pyramid, followed by a bunch of "blue" Kree on the next level down, while the "brown" Kree are at the bottom and doing all the grunt-work.  Nope, no race-based analogy here that would have any relevance to human society, please keep moving...

But we're still living in a fictional cinema world where movies that were developed PRE-election 2016 are being released, so it's very possible that this film was planned to be released in the world of President Hillary Clinton, with all the good and not-so-good things that might have come along with that.  Why else would the Supreme Intelligence, the de facto leader of the Kree, appear (at least to Carol Danvers) as an older woman with short blonde hair wearing a pants-suit?  In the comic books, the Kree Supreme Intelligence is an ugly giant head floating in a jar, resembling a giant boiling cabbage with eyes, or maybe an eggplant with some broccoli florets on top.  You know, more like Trump.  But here everyone sees the Grand Poobah in a different form, so to Danvers it looks like someone from her past who she respects, and may or may not have been First Lady at the time.

I'm just kidding - the person she envisions to represent the Supreme Intelligence is actually based on a top female scientist from Project Pegasus, who's working to develop an engine that's faster than light, and also is placed inside a military fighter plane.  One imagines that this is sort of a reference to the first planes that flew faster than sound, with Chuck Yeager and other pilots trying to do what was thought to be impossible for a time.

This whole film is a throwback to the 1990's, since Veers (as the Kree call her, for some later-revealed reason) finds herself on Planet C-53 (you may know it as "Earth) during the time of Blockbuster Video, Radio Shack, and music from TLC, Nirvana, No Doubt and Nine Inch Nails.  The Skrulls had previously captured her and tooled around in her head, jarring some memories loose that suggest that maybe she's been on Earth before, that this might in fact be where her journey started.  What are the odds?  She's tracked down by a pre-Captain America Nick Fury and Phil Coulson, back when they were simple, naive MIB Government agents, before there was any truth "out there" to be found, and they (eventually) believe her story about being from another planet, and Skulls coming to take their jobs.

After piecing her past together, and this may be the first time where a movie superhero learns her OWN origin at the same time as the audience, we find out that Veers isn't who she thought she was, and that her (male, of course) Kree handler has been using her memories of past failures to keep her from using her full power.  Which all seems a bit weird, because if she's the ONLY Kree soldier who can generate cosmic energy blasts, wasn't that a tip-off, that she was different from everyone else in the Kree empire?  Finally, after getting all of her memories back, she realizes that she's been lied to, kept down and manipulated by (probably mostly male) Kree for six years, and that's just about enough of that, thank you very much.  Prepare for an energy blast to connect with somebody, square in the nuts.  I'm a bit surprised that they didn't make Yon-Rogg her lover in addition to her mentor/handler, because that could have added an extra nod to the #metoo movement.

So America's ready for a female Marvel superhero to headline, but I guess they're not ready for a lesbian superhero involved in a multi-racial relationship?  I say this only because the Maria Rambeau character seems more than just a "best friend" character, as Carol refers to Maria and Maria's daughter as "family".  Which doesn't mean that they're lovers, but come on - tomboys, military pilots, feminists, no men in the picture, you do the math.  Marvel has added a bunch of new gay characters in the past few years, and revised some of the older ones (Iceman, Shatterstar, Moondragon) to be retroactively gay - again, it's mostly the X-Men leading the PC charge here, and the Avengers are slower to catch up.  The only Gay Avengers (so far) have been Living Lightning, a lesser member of the West Coast team, and two of the Young Avengers, Wiccan and Hulkling.  (Yes, in addition to the female versions of popular heroes, now there's also a "junior" version of almost everyone, like Iron Lad, Miles Morales Spider-Man, Viv Vision and the new Young Wasp.  There's also a new Ms. Marvel, taking the hero name that Carol Danvers dropped some time in the 1990's.)

This film also subverts everything that Marvel history has told us about the Skrulls - they've spent the last 40 years in comics being the evil, ruthless, deceptive shape-shifters, and now we're supposed to throw all that out the window?  It was only 10 years ago that the big crossover in the Marvel books was "Secret Invasion" where the writer (Bendis) sand-bagged everyone by starting the story in progress, claiming that the Skrulls had been kidnapping key figures on the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four teams for months, replacing them with Skrulls, totally "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-style.  Surprise, kids, that hero whose exploits you've been following for months isn't a hero at all, it's a dirty green evil alien!  Yeah, that did NOT go over well with the audience, even though the heroes had been kidnapped to Skrull-World and not killed or anything, but it's the type of reversal that fans don't like, because we read stories and enjoy stories and we don't like having the rug pulled out from under us like that.  Saying any story didn't happen after the fact, or erasing Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane, should cause fans to storm the Marvel offices with pitchforks and torches.

There's still a lot to like here, and beyond the action, the film manages to be both fun AND funny in some places, but with so many alien races coming to Earth, I can't help but feel that there's a great debt owed to the "Men in Black" franchise (which also started out as a comic book, I believe..).  I don't read the "Captain Marvel" comics, so I'm not really sure how much of this was adapted from that.  It's too bad that DC is fighting back with the "Shazam!" movie, and the character now called Shazam used to be called "Captain Marvel" himself at some points, before all the lawyers got involved.  I think that may muddy the waters quite a bit, I wouldn't be surprised if some older folks who haven't picked up a Marvel Comic in say, 30 years, start complaining that Marvel's just ripping off DC here, when in fact DC looks like they're going to be ripping off the Penny Marshall film "Big" with their rendition.  Turns out there are no new ideas in comics OR movies, so now we're just judging how well people now are stiching together all of the bits of story ideas from the past.

NITPICK POINT: Why is a Kree scientist working to develop this faster-than-light engine, when their society already has some kind of warp drive?  OK, they use jump gates, as my friend Adam pointed out, and they still have to travel TO and FROM the gates, which takes time.  But the tech should already be there, unless there's a difference between warping/jumping and traveling at hyper-speed.  I'm not up on astro-physics.  Once all the secrets are revealed, it sort of makes sense that the scientist is doing her own thing, but I'm still not convinced.  It's kind of like if a scientist was working on technology to get across town, and then someone said to them - "Why not just take the bus?"

Also starring Brie Larson (last seen in "The Spectacular Now"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Jude Law (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Annette Bening (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Clark Gregg (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Lee Pace (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them"), Algenis Perez Soto, Rune Temte, McKenna Grace (last seen in "Gifted"), London Fuller, Akira Akbar, Matthew Maher (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Robert Kazinsky (last seen in "Mute"), Vik Sahay, Chuku Modu, Colin Ford, Kenneth Mitchell, with cameos from Stan Lee (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), (redacted) (last seen in "Gifted"), (redacted) (last seen in "Ghost in the Shell"), (redacted) (last seen in "Thanks for Sharing") and (redacted).

RATING: 7 out of 10 clips from Stan Lee's MCU cameos