There is something off with the Marvel Universe. I don't like the idea of superheroes in general - I much prefer the idea that people can work towards attaining abilities (under certain constraints). You know, like the real world. But far, far beyond all of the glam and drama, the thing that superhero movies always get wrong is the terrifying moral certitude. No checks and balances. No equals, no peers. Just judgement. Gawd help us all the day when the Hulk has diarrhoea. The world will end because some super is in a bad mood.
So with that baggage in mind, I went to see the Avengers with half the Biochem department. A nice time was had by all. The entire film, of course was completely superfluous - with the most fucken tenuous of plots. Tony Stark continues to fly around in his WMD of a costume, while ignoring the fact that he can singlehandedly remove the reason for half the world's conflicts at once by agreeing to license his arc-reacter tech. There is some mumbo-jumbo with Loki's sceptre containing an AI- which naturally gets unleashed, since Mister-I-Am-So-Clever-Stark couldn't conceive of the idea of testing the damn AI out with a standalone cluster - no pipes going to the internet. Seriously, Stark, a few nodes in a bombproof vault and ten MIT/Caltech grad students working on it. Would it have hurt to try that? Arsehole.
All the problems in the Marvel-verse are because someone couldn't keep his shit out of other people's business. Also Banner has a boner for Natty Romanov. And she sings him to human-ness when the Hulk needs to stand down. Also she is infertile, and in her own eyes, a monster. There is some strange, borderline Oedipal shite going on here. Anyway, to sum up - meh.
But there was the other highly anticipated movie of the summer - the 7th instalment in the F&F franchise. I love the unselfconscious happiness of these movies. For all of the pretentious, wannabe Nolanesque, dark and gritty half billion dollar crapfests that Hollywood is churning out - I am glad they still make movies like this one. I can go elsewhere for my navel-gazing indie fix. People have accused the F&F franchise of not having a brain, but nobody - and I mean nobody can accuse it of not having a heart.
All the problems in the Marvel-verse are because someone couldn't keep his shit out of other people's business. Also Banner has a boner for Natty Romanov. And she sings him to human-ness when the Hulk needs to stand down. Also she is infertile, and in her own eyes, a monster. There is some strange, borderline Oedipal shite going on here. Anyway, to sum up - meh.
But there was the other highly anticipated movie of the summer - the 7th instalment in the F&F franchise. I love the unselfconscious happiness of these movies. For all of the pretentious, wannabe Nolanesque, dark and gritty half billion dollar crapfests that Hollywood is churning out - I am glad they still make movies like this one. I can go elsewhere for my navel-gazing indie fix. People have accused the F&F franchise of not having a brain, but nobody - and I mean nobody can accuse it of not having a heart.
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