A newsletter for the Banned Library’s birthday! The Banned Library opened many years ago. Some say it sprang forth fully formed from the head of a god, but those people are confusing the library with the Greek goddess Athena. No, we were spilled from a drunken bottle of whiskey onto a bar and soaked up by a rag and onto the internet in September 2010. Long shot from where we are now. Staff didn't even have smartphones when we started.
For years I've been told to check out the Jason Aaron run of Marvel's Thor comic. "A sweeping epic that's metal as shit" a friend said. I would look at the volumes in comic stores, 3-inch thick tomes covering eight years of comics and think "I cannot afford this in time or money." But now that I have Marvel Now, I burned through all those issues and I can confirm it is epic and glorious and at times metal as shit.
Y'all ever rewatch a movie and suddenly have an insight into what it means? Last night I'm watching Iron Man (2008) for maybe the twelfth time. Never watched it that closely. My surface level take is simple: a funny drunk rich dude realized war ain't good, so he makes a suit of armor to become a hero. I was wrong. Tony Stark is a sad rich dude who felt weak once so he takes it out on the world only becoming a hero when he dies.
Successful Marvel properties (comics, movies, toilet paper, etc) center on the characters. The plot, humor, action, all of it in the best they offer is driven by the characters and their motivations. Since Endgame, Marvel has struggled to pull together compelling characters that propel good plots. Thunderbolts gets the studio back on track, yet much of the meta-story shows they have not learned that much.
Summer time can be a time of reflection and introspective thought. Sure, most use the sun to have some fun outdoors, barbequing and beaching and mountain climbing to get naked and find sport with the elder gods, but some see this as a time to run and hide. To find yourself before they find you. To seek out the dark and cool places of this earth and claim them as your own. I see you, I know you, and I am coming.
The Marvels begins in space with a woman with a purple stick and her dudes. They crack open a thing and inside is a bangle much like Ms. Marvel wears. Since she looks all crazy and the bangle is powerful (but we don't really know what it does really, maybe activates powers?) we can assume this is the villain power origin story on fast forward.
Cut to the holder of another bangle, Ms. Marvel aka Kamala Khan aka played by the wonderfully bubbly Iman Vellani, fangirling about teaming up some day with Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers aka played by the stoic Brie Larson. There's an animated sequence that lights up the screen and sends a message that maybe this ain't your daddy's Marvel movie. Spoiler alert, yeah, I'm going through the plot with my thoughts and this is half your daddy's Marvel movie.
Kamala finds herself propelled… somewhere, we'll come back to it because we get a "hold up, let's go back" bit. We're in space with Carol reliving some memories aka the movie Captain Marvel. Nick Fury, aka Sam Jackson aka a bad ass mothher fucker, calls her for help so you know things are sideways. Something is wrong with the travel portals we normally see in Guardians of the Galaxy that are hexes like in Wandavision and GOOSE IS BACK AND CAN GO IN SPACE. SPACE KITTY FORCE IS A GO.
Since we got Fury (don't call him Nick, his mother doesn't call him Nick) and something hex-adjacent, we get Monica Rambeau aka oh yeah she was in Wandavision I like her aka played by Teyonah Parris. She's got powers they don't define, ever, and gonna go out and touch a malfunctioning space hole. It does not go well. All three of our leads start to switch places in space.
The best part of the movie is Kamala and her family's reaction to everything. They might just be a jolt of energy to the military stoicism that every other corner of this oozes. Like a bright red scarf on a field of blue. Everything from Kamala freaking out being in space to her mother asking "Is someone pressuring you?" after her daughter was body swapped… This is not your daddy's Marvel and it's delightful.
We go back to our villain, Dar-Benn aka mad Kree aka played by Zawe Ashton doing the best she can with eh. I honestly had no idea what was happening here. Dar-Benn is mad and the Kree are negotiating with the Skrulls but then she's like I'll let you go. Go where? Why? The Kree have been bad guys for every turn so far, so I got lost for a moment. Their homeworld Hala is in bad shape, but even she says it was because of a civil war. Sounds like a you problem, but it's a motivation so okay. Then Carol shows up and the switching really begins.
A few Kree get taken to both Fury's space station and Kamal's house while everyone is fighting everyone. Our leads continue to be confused as they fight in various locations, with Goose freaking out everyone. Special mention goes to Kamala's mom getting several shots in and the look Fury gives Kamala seeing her beat ass. Like I said, they are the best, but the very confusing fight is shot well and the locations are so different I never got mixed up.
I still don't know what Rambeau's power set is. They keep saying "she sees light," but she goes intangible and flies and shoots light and whatever. She's cool and I'm in. This whole battle ends with her and Kamala falling through the air, Rambeau learning to fly. The effect here is not good, very green screen as if you could see the globe thing they use. The acting is fine though, just don't look at the landscape around them.
There's a lot of tiny lines that work. Moments. One in particular, something is fast approaching the space station and we get a "It's cool. It's Carol" that made me laugh.
So it looks like the bad villain's plan is to use the bangles to open portals to suck up all the atmosphere. The bangles are Quantum Bands (points to the internet nerds) that set up the whole portal network of hex things, but if too many portals are made the universe can break. Kinda like swiss cheese but oops all holes. Also turns out that Kamala's powers were not bangle based, she just can do that so the mutant thing holds from her show. Also the purple stick that looks like the power stone that was used in Guardians of the Galaxy is called a universal weapon because the villain needed to be more than a woman with jewelry. I just find it fun that the bangles created travel across the universe and then someone buried one and gave one to an Indian family. Makes you think about something, too late, time for some drama.
With the gang all together on the spaceship, they use Carol's mind meld to see all kinds of past things. This includes Carol destroying the Kree AI and then talking to Mama Rambeau while she died of cancer during the Snap where Monica was wherever people went. The AI being gone made the Kree destroy the planet, and Carol never came back because she was trying to fix it and Mama Rambeau died. Cue our interpersonal drama conversation of "You said you'd be back" and "Lots of people needed you" and then the wham line heard in drama classes across the world: "We needed you."
I get this is strong for the character, but it feels like we've heard this before in a million stories. Larson and Parrs try to sell it, but the characters are military stoic so it kinda just exists as drama. Not bad, but not really memorable.
Bright moment with Fury taking the Khan family to space. "He's taking us to hell." Also I'm pretty sure mom called him "Nicholas." Just delightful.
So with the drama and the threat out in the open, our gang of Marvels must work together. Cue a montage with Beastie Boys Intergalactic where they learn to jump rope, throw balls, and general switchy fun. It's done really well.
Then for the next sequence we go to the musical episode. And I actually started to think of this as a tv show from here on out. Parts are very segmented and with wild mood swings making the very short run time feel like a Youtube montage of "here's what you missed on the Marvels." The gang gets together, the gang tries to save the Skrulls (did I mention the Tessa Thompson aka Valkyrie cameo? Didn't really matter), the gang learns about their pasts and powers, and now the gang sings.
This is a fun part, but like I said, it's almost its own montage. The colors are bright and everyone shines as the planet of water's main language is song. Also Carol is the princess and is married, but whatever. Another funny, quirky thing that's not really fleshed out. Big punchy punch fight against mad Kree and we move on to the end game because the next target is Earth.
Will Carol save the Kree by giving them back the sun? Will the Marvels stop being entangled? Will Monica and Carol hug it out?
Yeah. But first Fury and the Khan's deal with kitten eggs and evacuating the space station. This is literally horrifying and silly. The tentacle-mouthed SPACE CAT Goose had babies. Because kittens are easier to transport and the station is missing some escape pods, the kittens go around and eat all the terrified members of Fury's crew who apparently were not told today was the day to mark zero on the "days since crew members were eaten by adorable kitten tentacle-mouthed monstrosities" board. And it's set to "Memories" from Cats which is hilarious.
In the end, we have a three on one punchy fight that ends with the villain getting Ms. Marvel's bangle. She punches a hole in the universe and dies. The Marvels combine their powers like Captain Planet and Monica seals herself away on the other side.
In the end, it's bittersweet. Monica is trapped with the 90s X-men cartoon. Kamala now lives with her family in Rambeau's Louisiana house for some reason but is also recruiting Young Avengers (the scene with her and Hawkeye recreating the end of Iron Man is genuinely a delight). Carol… keeps doing Carol shit. I dunno.
One thing that bugged me: for the end power combining, Kamala has both bangles. Then she doesn't for the rest of the end. What's up with that?
Look, I had fun with this but it's a total formula movie. There's a lot of laughs, some fun lore things, but nothing feels fleshed out or real beyond the Khans. I liked it, but I did not care.
Everything here is from February 14th to the 22nd-ish. Hopefully these won't be this long in the future.
From every Guns N Roses song to every "my hammer is my ex" joke, the new Marvel tale starring the god of thunder is the high school play version of a children's story. Thor (Hemsworth) returns to reunite with a newly powered Mighty Thor Jane Foster (Portman) to face off against Gorr (Bale) as he attempts to kill all the gods. What could be more basic than that?
Another Marvel, another day. In this episode of a thirty-year-old dude's version of grandma's stories, a wizard has to protect a girl from an evil witch.
Sam and Bucky both lost a friend and five years in the world thanks to an alien madman. Now both are trying to just be regular dudes, you know? Sam is trying to get his family business back together while Bucky plays at therapy and going on dates. This series seems buried in the legacy of Steve Rogers and capitalism. My notes will have more thoughts on it, but the first episode establishes a somber loss in these men's lives, not just of their friend but of the fight. Each of them is looking for peace in their fights and struggling to find it. Bucky still sleeps on the floor while Falcon is not ready to carry the mantle he was given. On the edge of the series is the threat of a terrorist organization, but here we see two men dealing with their shit and finding that hard to do. BTW, my ship name for them is Sucky. Do with that what you will.
Notes, beware of spoilers
Lots of Cap callbacks
I can't list them all because I'm not the Smithsonian, but starting with Sam jumping out of the plane to fight Batroc, even using the same moves as Cap, clearly mirrors the beginning of Winter Soldier. He's the worthy successor to Steve Rogers because he does the same damn things, and these first scenes show that.
Canyon problem
Man, I hate a canyon scene in movies. How many have we seen? Independence Day, Star Wars, The Mandalorian, half a dozen more movies show our hero fight a bad guy while dog fighting in a canyon. Why? This would have been a nice call out of the trope. Have Sam just be like "what are they doing?" and fly above the canyon following them until "Oh shit, helicopters" and then he has to dive down. That's called cake and eating it, Marvel. I thought you were good at that.
Why not more Falcons?
Sam says they play around with his tech. The US government built these wing suits. Sam had a partner. They are a proven technology. Why doesn't the gov'ment have a dozen Falcons flying around tearing shit up. Or Hydra? Dammit, the Rocketeer told me that's what the Nazi's wanted!
Smithsonian Air and Space?
What the fuck is this museum doing with Cap's shield? He was in the Army. Was the American History Museum or the WWII museum full? It makes no sense.
Rhodey Walking
Seems like he's gotten better walking tech. Don't even see those robo-legs as him and Sam walk through the museum. Just saying. (This is me saying that's not Rhodey, that's a Skrull, baby!)
Bucky Dreaming on the Floor
Aw, man, it sucks to see the Buckster dreaming about murdering people while sleeping on the floor. Another call back to Cap acclimating, we get this and a list to show how these men coped with their problems. Bucky gets a side of therapy (good for him) that he argues with and lies to (bad for him) and his list is more Arrow "this is my city" against Hydra people. Let's hope he gets his shit together.
Bucky Old Friend and Girl
Not gonna lie, I thought this whole thing with the old man and the girl very charming until it got very sad. The relationship with Yori that leads to the date with Leah, all of it was pretty nice. At first I thought Yori was a war veteran, someone Bucky could relate to, but then, well, it's a big bummer that Bucky murdered Yori's son. And he skipped out on the date with Leah (I looked her up, it's not that hard, other reviewers) that was going so well. Never leave a girl hanging with Battleship and Beers, dude. She's a keeper. Unless what the internet wants to be right is right, and then you should just tell her you're gay and have a good friendship. Either way, bad form.
Several Money Talks
Lot of money issues. Some of it like Sam's, the Snap (I hate calling it the The Blip) dealing a heavy blow to the Wilson family business (catering and fishing? I could not really tell. Looks like they fish and then do plate lunches? Need more info, but I can see how they are struggling if that's all.) Honestly, I don't care except it seems to lead into the next note so I'll stop. Except where the hell is Bucky getting his cash? That's a nice apartment in New York plus his fancy gizmos. Doesn't look like he's working with government contracts.
Plus, I don't have another place to put this so it goes here: Falcon with his community made me smile. You can see how at ease, how confident he can be talking to people he's familiar with. Aside from his sister's and his arguing, that also made me a little sad as I know it's a place he does not fit and will lose. I hope I'm wrong about that.
Bank Robbing, Bank Borrowing
Sam and Sarah try to get money from the bank through a loan, with all the awkward bullshit this bank dude can give to a celebrity. Next, some enhanced folks with the Flag Smashers are robbing what looks like a bank. Theme? Also, I really like Torres. Danny Ramirez really is doing a good job.
Captain Doofy
This fucking guy. He's gonna kill somebody, if not himself in that squashed head helmet.
Marvel got back into television with a relatively small story with big implications. WandaVision could have been a lot of things (people speculated the whole damn way), but in the end it became a solid superhero story about grief and loss in every good and bad way the genre can offer.
Wanda dealing with the trauma we have seen throughout her six years is an interesting story, especially for a being who can warp people's minds and the physical matter around her. Where it stumbles is ending with a physical battle and a clever trick that leads to solving deep emotional problems. Wanda has learned and grown, but in the end it does not feel satisfying for her to just walk away from everything she did as an unstoppable magical badass after almost destroying a small town and enslaving its occupants.
In the end, I love Wanda more as a character, but I am not sure she can be trusted with her powers. I guess we will see more about her development in the new Doctor Strange whenever it comes out.
To the Notes! Beware spoilers for the whole damn season and the MCU as a whole.
Intro to Magic
There's been magic in the MCU since Doctor Strange (maybe even Thor) popped in waving his hands around. But what we have here is real magic. "Change the world not fucking around damn sure not science we do not understand" magic. What happened in the nine episodes was more than floating shit around and telepathic mind tricks. It also was not Strange's "we know kung fu" brand of magic. Agatha gave a motherfucker superpowers, and Wanda rewrote reality (giving another motherfucker superpowers). That's pretty damn wild, even if the rules seemed a bit arbitrary and convenient to the plot. Turns out just writing stuff on walls can take away another witches' powers. Cool for her to say that.
Agatha Harkness
OMG I love Kathryn Hahn in this role. To be honest, the only other roles I remember her from are her solid run in Parks and Rec and the best part of those Bad Moms movies. Is this the comic book character we all know and love? Fuck if I know. Fuck if I care. Hahn dominated this series as a mysterious character and as a magic sucking witch from witch there is no escape. Fuck yeah she killed that dog and she'll kill your ass, too.
Grief and Darkness
The best turns in this show played on Wanda's grief and the darkness that wormed its way into the world around her. Subtle, eerie shades of David Lynch crept in like worms in spaghetti. A normal sitcom world laugh track became a chorus of demented screams inside the heads of viewers as scenes turned in on themselves through Wanda processing her life. Only when Agatha pushes the past on her do we fully see the discomfort Wanda has been feeling, but even then things seem only being processed on the surface. The darkness is still there even when Wanda has processed Vision's death. She gives up him and the kids, but I'm not sure she gave up the dark parts of herself.
Love and Forgiveness
Speaking of Vision, that son of a bitch damn near made me cry. First talking to Wanda in her Avengers room when they fell in love, and then that damn end scene where he says he'll always be a part of her. Bettany and Olsen fit so well together I found it very easy to realize he's a robot and she has enslaved a town and does not seem to feel bad about it.
Messy Neat Ending
Man, I know this is a comic book superhero thing, but maybe there did not have to be a big light in the sky and a punchy fight at the end? Ultimately both Wanda and Vision do have some smarty-pants talking the villain to death-ish moments, but it almost felt like the "de-icing" scene in the first Iron Man. The solutions are clever and in character, but I don't feel satisfied. Sure, Wanda gets a fancy new outfit (that looks amazing), but, and I do not think I have said this enough, she enslaved and tortured a town full of people. They beg her to stop. Dottie begs Wanda to let her hug her child again. Wanda's Hulk "Take it all" moment at the end does not fix this. And is flying not a spell? Because Agatha should have dropped like a stone when those runes went up.
Monica
Monica Rambeau is one of the most exciting characters the MCU has dropped. Sure we met her as a kid in Captain Marvel, but here dealing with the death of her mom she's so much more. Then she gets some poorly defined superpowers and hell yeah I want to see what they do with her. However. Here she is just a champion and overall scapegoat for Wanda's actions. One of her last lines is saying she would have brought her mom back, too. Which, yes, of course that's human nature to mourn for the dead. But she should have followed up with "but I probably would not have enslaved so many people to my will while I was at it."
Evan Peters
Fuckers gonna troll. Disney, you bastards.
Darcy and Woo
They really are just so great. Those damn magic tricks. Flourish!
Darkhold
Same shit from Agents of SHIELD?
Let me know in the comments, on the Contact Page, or at contact@bannedlibrary.com what you thought about the episode or if you have any thoughts on the damn Darkhold.
Halfway through Spider-Man: Far From Home I turned to the person next to me and said, "I think this movie just shifted into high gear." In response, her boyfriend leaned over and said, "Stop talking to my girlfriend during the movie." After that I kept my comments about how better the effects and villain get once the whole story is laid out.
After the effects of Thanos's Snap and Unsnappening in the Avengers films, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) just wants to have a nice European vacation. He's gonna see some sights. Take some pictures. Tell MJ (Zendaya) how he feels about her. Too bad for them, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) need his help to beat some elemental apocalypse creatures with some leftover Tony Stark tech.
With Spider-Man: Homecoming, Jon Watts proved he could weave a good story around kids and superheroics. Having already proved he can deal with menacing figures going against children in the not-too-talked about Cop Car, he almost cookie cut the menace from Kevin Bacon in that film onto Michael Keaton's Vulture. Here he ziggs a bit, implying the gravitas in Mysterio while undercutting it with a twist that comics readers will see coming but is thrilling anyway. When Mysterio proves himself to not be the gracious mentor but a scheming actor, Gyllenhaal gets to stretch villainous side, not pure evil like he showed in Nightcrawler but the laughing menace Tom Cruise showed in Magnolia. He's a showman with a dark side and that resonates far more than dark and cackling.
When Mysterio shows his true colors, the movie really comes alive. Until that second act reveal, most of the action and effects seemed lackluster. Possible big budget fatigue, but the giant water monster and the backpack wearing Peter Parker in a carnival mask looked cartoonish. Then Mysterio's effects to disorient and play with Parker's senses turn the effects budget up to eleven, providing sequences that rival Doctor Strange's multiverse and Ant-Man's microverse effects for "man I wish I was in college and on drugs right now" effect. The amazing hallucination effects fall apart once you think about how we are shown dozens of people work to make the other effects possible but handwaving plots is Marvel's true superpower.
Unfortunately, all Marvel's bad traits are on display here as well. As cool as the hallucination sequence is, it and all the other fight scenes are chopped to hell. No matter how much money the John Wick franchise makes proving good action have to be seen, Marvel still cuts too quick and too often to get a good feel about how particular fights are going. Nowhere is this more clear than the ending battle on the London Bridge with Spider-Man going against a bunch of drones. It's mostly dull with misdirection and confusing more than it is thrilling.
Walking out of the theater dodging that guy and his girlfriend, I have to say I enjoyed the movie overall. A fun movie containing enough pathos to move us through the end of Phase 4 of this big weird money-making experiment. Mysterio himself also hints at bigger and better things, being an effective villain not in his over schemes in this film, but the secrets he lets out after his defeat. Whereas the Vulture kept Parker's secret identity, Mysterio let that secret fly and the implications are fascinating to think about.
Check it out before it leaves theaters
Avengers: Infinity War reviews are fun to write because there's just so much. Over the last few days, I covered that I don't like spoilers, that Iron Man learned that fighting back was useless, and that Thor unlearned everything he had learned from his movies. Now we're gonna get into Bruce Banner and his alter ego Hulk and really learn that this movie is kinda unreviewable.
The review so long that I split it up. Here we have an overview of my feelings on spoilers, Spider-Man, and Iron Man’s portion of the film. More to come!
Because Marvel! But it's also a super good movie with a complex bit of messages that snore Shit blows up real good.