Marvel’s ‘WandaVision’ Echos Our Lasting Pandemic Grief
Addressing pandemic-induced topics such as loss, grief, and mental illness, Marvel’s ‘WandaVision’ serves as a metaphor for life in the time of COVID.
superheroes
The New Mutants’ Cursed Journey to Theaters: A Horror Story
The New Mutants had a long, circuitous journey to the big screen as the final Marvel Comics film produced by 20th Century Fox before its merger with Disney.
‘Captain America: Civil War’ Mirrors Another Kind of American Civil War
In the Russo Brothers' Captain America: Civil War, friend turns on friend, and no easy resolution is reached. It's rather like the toxic online fan culture that followed the film's release.
How ‘Watchmen’ and ‘The Boys’ Deconstruct American Fascism
Superhero media has a history of critiquing the dark side of power, hero worship, and vigilantism, but none have done so as radically as Watchmen and The Boys.
Beautiful Lies and False Gods in ‘Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice’
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice ‘interrogates two primal drives in American culture: fear and its trauma (Batman) and naked power and its ambiguities (Superman).
‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’ Will Never Rise from the Ashes
Simon Kinberg’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix might be the most bumbling, mishandled Marvel Film ever produced.
The Highs Are Higher, the Lows Lower in ‘Deadpool 2’
The first half of Deadpool 2, in which Vanessa is murdered and Wade becomes purposeless and suicidal, is a slog. The second half, where Wade commits to defending an angry teenage mutant, positively soars with fantastic action and some of the funniest superhero film moments in years.
James Mangold’s ’Logan’ Depicts Wolverine’s Worst Nightmare
In Mangold's Logan, an elderly, sick surrogate father and a young, estranged, emotionally-scarred "daughter" come to rely entirely on the aged Wolverine who is now but a haunted, battered, suicidal husk. It's nothing like superhero films that came before.
8 Low-Budget Films That Delivered Big
Money isn't everything, although in filmmaking it counts for a lot. These eight films defied their minuscule budgets.