Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
On the one hand, ten years isn’t really that long a period of time in the grand scheme of things. But, on the other, it’s time enough for high schoolers to grow into adults, to go from single to being a part of a couple, to being a parent. Ten years is more than enough time for your life to change.
And ten years proved to be more than enough time for Marvel Studios to rewrite the filmmaking game forever. What began in 2008 as a small(ish) production house working through the B and C-list characters that hadn’t been already snatched up by rival studios has grown into a mass media juggernaut. The Marvel Cinematic Universe routinely pulls in billion dollar paydays at the box office and has made household names out of some of the strangest and most obscure characters from the comic books margins (imagine, just ten years ago, trying to explain to someone who Groot is).
For better or worse, Marvel has built an empire out of a single, interlinked universe of films, and there are no signs of it slowing down.
Infinity War arrives this weekend to put a cap on this first decade of marvels, and we’re as excited as anyone to see it. Rather than pick one film to highlight, we opted to let our readership and team choose their own film to talk about. So, without further ado, here are our favorite films from the MCU (so far).
Next Week’s Pick:
How on earth do we possibly follow up an epic Two Cents covering the cosmic entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
The answer, friends, is deceptively simple. We’re watching Stunt Rock.
We know there’s a pretty good chance that many of you have A) seen this trailer before, and a B) not actually ever watched this rare film. Let’s rectify that. Can it possibly live up to this trailer? Almost certainly not, but we’re sure as hell not gonna pass up the opportunity to finally catch this weirdness thanks to Amazon Prime! So grab a satisfying beverage and a watermelon (hand-sliced by katana, of course) and join us in an orgy of explosions, death-defying car crashes, and magical rock & roll!
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review on any MCU film to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
Adrian Torres:
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – It may seem like an easy or obvious choice, given how recent it is, but like Winter Soldier it’s one of the MCU’s rare instances that doesn’t stumble in the second going. Instead, going after bigger, bolder and more audacious overtones, while keeping the magic that makes the first film so indelible. A grand, pulse-pounding cosmic adventure with huge space battles, but whose story is on a smaller level, extolling the importance of family. Both those of blood and the ones we make for ourselves. Yes, they’re still a bunch of a-holes, but they’re our a-holes. It’s may be the least directly connected of the 18 MCU films, yet that helps more than most would imagine. By removing itself from the necessary shackles of setting up other franchises, Vol. 2 is able to dive deeper into the everything the cosmos has to offers. There’s gods, space royalty, an army of Ravagers, baby Groot and of course the most important of all additions…. Kurt Russell. Above everything though, this is a movie which embraces the reason we love to shuffle off to the theater: a desire to entertain the hell out of anyone who chooses to watch it. (@YoAdrianTorres)
Brendan Agnew (The Norman Nerd):
A few months before I saw Guardians of the Galaxy, my wife lost her mother. Weeks before I saw the sequel, I both found out that my father had Parkinson’s, and I also became a father myself.
That was…a lot.
These silly space movies about raccoons with laser guns and walking trees punched into my chest and pulled out my heart, and I don’t think I’ll ever get it back from them. I was not ready for that. Ever since “Peter, take my hand” in the cold open in 2014, I haven’t been ready. A film like Logan that you know is going to be a long, hard road – that’s emotional labor in your entertainment that you can plan for. But this? With the mom rock and the space pirates and Kurt Russell talking about his penis and then all of a sudden you’re sobbing because of something a gotdamn RACCOON said?
You’re never prepared for that. I didn’t know that I would fall so in love with these specific films, anymore than I knew that they could help be such a personal catharsis for specific moments in my life. Guardians of the Galaxy ripped the bandage off a wound that was barely starting to heal. That hurt. Vol. 2 looked me dead in the eye and told me that I will still be able find a way to comfort my child even after I, someday, will have to bury the man who raised me. No matter how much you hurt, there’s a seed of something in your pain that can ease someone else’s.
Because that’s what family does. We lose each other and find each other over and over again, ripping pieces off of ourselves to fill the holes in those we love. And if we’re lucky, someone will be there at the end to thank us for that.
Even if we never get to hear it. (@BLCAgnew)
Travis Warren:
My favorite MCU film is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I had been looking forward to it since the first film was released. On first viewing the film surpassed my expectations, but I came out saying I preferred Vol. 1. Needless to say, I have come to realize it is better than the first in every way. I love it even more every time I see it. The writing, directing, acting, and visuals are the most impressive of any film in the MCU. However, what puts this film above all the others for me is the emotion. It’s a beautiful film. All I have left to say is thank you, James Gunn.
Jesse Ferguson:
I want to talk about Doctor Strange. More specifically, his watch:
Throughout the film, I loved how the watch came to represent “his old life.” It’s mutilated in the crash, frozen at the exact moment his old life is ended. He spends everything he has (presumably liquidating all his assets, including his expensive watches) looking for a way to fix his hands, but he can’t get rid of that watch, even though it’s now effectively worthless. When he’s mugged in Nepal he says “it’s all I have left.” It’s set aside and largely forgotten while he’s training, save for a few moments of longing and reflection.
He doesn’t put the watch back on again until the end of the film, after he’s made peace with his new life, and his new role in it. It’s mentioned explicitly that he now has the power to fix his hands at any time, but he chooses not to. Likewise, he could easily turn back time on the watch, putting it back to pre-accident state. He chooses not to, and instead wears it, broken though it is, as a reminder that who he was is part of who he has become. Brilliant. (@TheDapperDM)
A qualification: Black Panther is the BEST Marvel movie. Period. No contest. That said, I don’t feel qualified to write about it (having only seen it once, months ago). So instead I’m going to talk about why I love Doctor Strange so much. Broadly, it’s the Iron Man formula — but refined from almost a decade of Marvel revising and fine-tuning and distilling their characters into film. I’m solidly Team Cumberbatch in most things, and happen to think he brings just the right balance of snark and pathos to the title character. Benedict Wong and Chiwetel Ejiofor are both very good as Strange’s fellow sorcerers, and the always watchable Mads Mikkelsen is a suitably fanatical villain.
Before its release I was worried that the film would not be able to capture the weirdness of supernatural/cosmic Marvel, but the visuals in Doctor Strange evoke the odd shapes and colors of those original comics while also operating within the ‘house style’ of the MCU. Strange’s first trip through various dimensions and realms is one of the most unique special effects sequences in the MCU, and the villain’s ability to manipulate reality makes for some fun action set pieces. Also the score by Michael Giacchino is, as is always the case with Giacchino scores, wonderful. But my favorite part of Doctor Strange has nothing to do with action or special effects (although it is a fairly heavy special effects sequence). It is Strange’s final confrontation with Dormammu. It is both an utterly satisfying payoff for Strange’s character arc and a battle unlike any other in the MCU, because Strange chooses not to fight. He comes to bargain, and in forcing a negotiation arrives at an outcome better than winning any fight. This is a smart, refreshing change from the sort of CGI action spectacle that has become standard for superhero blockbusters, and leaves Strange (and his sorcerer peers) in a place that begs for a direct sequel (hey Marvel — hurry up and get Derrickson & Cargill on that!). Until then, I look forward to seeing the Sorcerer Supreme team up with the Avengers and the Guardians this weekend. (@T_Lawson)
The Team
My favorite Marvel films are the Blade films but I guess I can’t write about that one. I would write about how the Avengers films are shit, but I guess today is a day to be positive. So… Guardians of the Galaxy it is.
I love this film. I love the sequel as much, in fact. However, this movie really hit me like a ton of bricks. With a marginal knowledge of the books and an admiration for James Gunn, I thought this would be a good time. But, damn, I couldn’t have expected just how much I was going to love this.
Marvel meets Star Wars meets that Gunn sensibility, this one is a win from start to finish. Lots of laughs, lots of thrills, and a few tear jerker moments — I watch this every few months and don’t expect that to change for a long time. (@thepaintedman)
I may have been one of the first fans of the universe to experience full on Marvel fatigue. I had had enough of the character grandness, the indulgence in special effects and the desire to take things way more seriously than was needed. Then Ant-Man came along. For me, the film was a breath of fresh air; the ultimate underdog of the Marvel family. As a normal guy, Scott Lang wasn’t a billionaire industrialist like Tony Stark, nor a genius scientist a la Bruce Banner. He was a man who had paid his debt to society whose transformation into superhero status thrust him onto the threshold of a sort of spiritual redemption. In so many ways, Scott Lang is the most unexpected of superheroes, both in his aversion to the role and in the underestimated strength of his alter ego. Yet the combination of both his reluctance and inexperience ultimately makes him one of the most watchable, relatable and endearing figures ever to don the Avenger moniker. As a movie, Ant-Man is a hilarious venture thanks to Edgar Wright’s flawless script, a more than game cast and the movie’s overall approach which has such a fun, comic pop edge than cannot be dismissed. While the bulk of Marvel’s output tries so hard to be cool, Ant-Man’s aim is to simply be fun; which thanks to solid filmmaking and the accidental hero at the center, it never fails to be. (@FrankFilmGeek)
We can debate which is the most fun Marvel movie, or which is the Marvel movie that is most emblematic of the studio, or the culture, or the world at large. But the best Marvel Studios film is Black Panther, bar none. And if this is the sort of filmmaking and chance-taking we can expect now that the MCU is fully established, crazy-popular, and walking with a swagger unseen since the early days of Pixar, then, well, my God are we in for some riches ahead.
Black Panther isn’t just a top-notch action-adventure film. It’s not just a confident piece of sci-fi/fantasy. It’s not just a terrific work of populism, aimed squarely at an audience that has long deserved greater representation and instead been forced to subsist on scraps. It’s all those things combined, all shot through with an intimacy and immediacy borne of a brilliant filmmaker (Ryan Coogler, somehow topping his own historic work on Creed) using the canvas of a big-budget superhero story to illustrate a deeply personal story about identity and coming to terms with who you want to be as you establish yourself as an adult. For as much fun as Black Panther is, and it’s a blast from the eye-popping costumes and world-building of Wakanda, down to the Kendrick Lamar beats thumping on the soundtrack, and for as proudly, defiantly African as the film is, it is ultimately a universal story about accepting the sins of the past and choosing to build on those mistakes, about making peace with history so that you might inspire hope for the future. Black Panther isn’t just the pinnacle of the MCU, it’s one of the great triumphs of modern day cinema, and I cannot wait to see what wonders it inspires from both contemporary filmmakers and all those who will follow next. (@theTrueBrendanF)
Reading the input of our friends and guests, there’s a definite trend toward the newer films. Shockingly, no one has mentioned an Avengers, Iron Man, or Captain America film despite the obvious fact that they are wildly popular and beloved. While it could be that these newer films are just fresher on our minds, I think it’s simply indicative that the Marvel Universe films have simply gotten even better and better over time, allowing for greater deviation, incorporating more style, and taking more risks. Review the sequence of posters that opens this article, there’s a noticeable burst of color at the end, the wildest of which is Thor: Ragnarok.
When Iron Man 2‘s post-credits scene first promised the coming of Thor, I groaned audibly. Thor was so goofy and ill-fitting in the comic book universe. Why bring over the worst major character of the comics when so there are many better ones to choose from? And yet, I ended up loving the movie version of the character and his world, thanks to a humorous approach and dedication to capturing the design spirit of Jack Kirby. Thor: Ragnarok delivers on these specific key strengths in the biggest fashion ever, taking the hilarious direction of Taika Waititi, lovable characters, and one of Marvel’s best screen villains, smashing it up with the best Hulk story, Planet Hulk.
On top of that, the musical landscape is incredible, which is fitting since key scenes are clearly designed to look like they were ripped from heavy metal album covers. Complementing Mark Mothersbaugh’s magnum opus of an electronic score is the perfection of Led Zeppelin. In fact my only complaint about the movie is that they whip out “Immigrant Song”too early, using it twice instead of saving its impact for the finale. (@VforVashaw)
Next week’s pick: