Sometimes I like it when I’m right.
Actually though, the above was kind of just a snarky comment, but it is topical. I finally went and saw Spider-man: No Way Home. I already knew through osmosis that there would be some connection to the previous two Sony Spider-man series, but I didn’t know the extend. I did not expect that they would wrap three famous Spider-man storylines, namely “Sinister Six” (or in this case “five”), “Spiderverse” and “One More Day” into one neat package. But do I really need to see the Andrew Garfield ones now?
I did feel a bit annoyed in the scene where the arc-words of the Spider-man universe was spoken because I thought the series had actually a) skipped past this central pillar of the Spider-man property or rather b) explored it through Spider-man’s relationship with Tony Stark in the MCU. However, it made more narrative sense as the movie progressed.
Also can’t help but admit that I had a huge grin when I saw Matt Murdock appear on-screen.
Over christmas vacation I’ve actually been catching up with a lot of MCU stuff I’ve missed since for some reason it didn’t really grip me to get back in after the pandemic delays created a break that more or less coincided with the end of Phase 3 of the MCU. I got back into it after starting to play Marvel Champions again (see here).
- Black Widow was fine, not great. The new character of Yelena was fun, as was the MCU version of Red Guardian. It somehow felt a bit “too little too late” for the character of Natasha Romanoff though, particularly when combined with the cerfuffle over Johanson’s contract.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was interesting but also felt a bit commercial to me, as the film was most certainly designed to appeal to the chinese market. I did like the callbacks to the Iron-Man movies which they are tied to. They did pretty well with adapting the source material while filtering out the rather orientalist leanings within it, or at least the very overt ones that even a pasty white guy from austria recognizes. Great fight scenes throughout.
- The Hawkeye TV series was pretty good. It wasn’t quite what I hoped for as I am a big fan of the Matt Fraction Hawkeye run this borrows a lot from, but considering where the character of Clint Barton is in the MCU this paved over the gap pretty well. A prequel series with a young Clint Barton probably would not have worked with a 50-year-old Jeremy Renner, and wouldn’t have given us an heir apparent in Kate Bishop.
- Venom is one of the dumbest action movies I have ever seen, but it is fun. Only watched it because I stumbled over it on Netflix, and didn’t expect to be now actually relevant to the MCU.
Overall, a lot of the MCU now feels like “rebuilding” which makes sense after the events of Infinity War/Endgame and the resulting death or retirement of the original Avengers line-up. I just hope it doesn’t fall apart.