One Marvelous Scene: Heil Hydra!

In honour of The Avengers: Endgame, I figured I’d hop on the “One Marvelous Scene” train in-between my mini-series; after all, everyone on YouTube’s doing it, so why can’t I?

2014 was a tough year. Academically, it was when I graduated from university, a feat I was once told I’d never achieve. Socially, I jumped ships from the then-dying ScrewAttack website to the now-defunct Infinite Rainy Day. Personally, it was the year of my dad’s near-fatal heart attack and my Birthright trip to Israel. And politically, there were the riots in Fergusson and another war in Israel, both of which left a huge impact subconsciously. It was also when GamerGate started, but the less said there…

If there’s one area that really solidified 2014, it was the maturation of The MCU through two movies: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Both proved that it could be taken seriously outside of Iron Man and The Avengers, and both are considered fan-favourites in the Phase 2 roster. Yet while Guardians of the Galaxy may have been funnier and better-directed, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is far more-ambitious. It made Captain America a character to be reckoned with, after all! And it managed to have my favourite scene in The MCU.

I wasn’t a big MCU stan pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I enjoyed it as a time-waster, but nothing, save for Iron Man, truly blew my socks off. Yet Captain America: The Winter Soldier showed the franchise deserved my respect. And it did so by highlighting an issue that, in hindsight, probably shouldn’t have been so ambitious.

The scene that really grabbed me most is halfway through, when Steve and Natasha, now fugitives, come across SHIELD’s birthplace. They enter an abandoned warehouse, get to the basement and are amazed to discover a room with super-computers. Natasha uploads a USB drive to the mainframe, and it reveals a surprisingly familiar voice. What follows is an exposition dump that flips the movie on its head and re-centres what the we thought we already knew: that Hydra, that fascist organization Cap fought and defeated in WWII, was alive. And not only alive, but thriving. And not only thriving, but thriving under SHIELD’s own nose.

I should first mention that The MCU, up until this point, hadn’t done twist-reveals too well. Iron Man 3 was an enjoyable enough, but its Mandarin reveal was divisive amongst fans: some loved it, while others thought it was awful and disrespectful to a classic villain. I’m torn on it, but I’ve already shared my thoughts. Regardless, The MCU didn’t have such a great track-record when it came to plot twists, and here they were attempting another one.

And it works. It also passes both of my personal criteria for a good plot twist, namely that: a. it fits into the story that came before. b. it progresses the story in a good direction afterward. It explains why SHIELD was after Cap and Natasha, and it reframes everything about SHIELD as being a lie. But it also shows that, sometimes, not everything is as it seems.

I remember in the months following that some people derided this twist as a cheap attempt at transferring real-world problems to Nazis, cheapening their ramifications. I can see why, it does feel like an easy way out, but I still think it fits the narrative. Ignoring how this came out two years before Brexit, Trump and the resurgence of Nazism, hence feeling prophetic in hindsight, that Hydra was secretly SHIELD is still brilliant. It demonstrates the sly cunning and persistence of evil throughout history, mutating like a virus to suit the times. Hydra might be Nazis, but they could be a stand-in for anything. They could range from anti-Zionism being a stand-in for Antisemitism, or even MAGA being a stand-in for a lot of bigotry.

How did Hydra manage to become so big? Simple: by infiltrating SHIELD and slowly corrupting it from the inside. It didn’t happen overnight, that’d be too difficult. Instead, Hydra would topple governments in foreign countries, not unlike how The CIA does in real-life, by installing puppet leaders through coups. When these leaders turned, or the people fought back, Hydra would, through its SHIELD persona, sell this as propaganda to get American citizens to surrender their rights and freedoms willingly. It got to the point that the average citizen became vulnerable.

The parallels to The CIA and military interventionism by The US government are no accident: by making the big baddie Hydra, Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s secretly commenting on The US. It’s alluding to American imperialism without directly calling it out, and it makes sense: The US has been a cause of its own shame and folly, routinely making everything worse while simultaneously claiming to “help”. It’s gotten so bad that there are, arguably, real Nazis working in positions of power, ironic given that the Nazis were “the enemy abroad” a little over 74 years ago.

It’s like Arnim Zola says: cut off one head, two more shall take its place. That’s how evil actually works, when you think about it. The sooner one hate movement dies, the sooner another one takes its place. It’s not enough to cut off its heads, you have to strike it down at its core. Its base needs to be dealt with, something we keep forgetting.

If anything, the only way to solve the problem entirely is destroy the root cause. It was SHIELD that brought in Zola as part of a secret operation in the 50’s. It was SHIELD that fostered Zola and nurtured his talents. It was, therefore, not surprising that SHIELD and Hydra became one-in-the-same, even ordering hits on their own when people became too suspicious (see Tony Stark’s parents). Considering that Hydra wasn’t a bug, but a feature, of SHIELD, it only seemed right that SHIELD had to go. And go it went, considering how Captain America: The Winter Soldier ends.

It helps that, even outside of the aforementioned layers, the scene is also expertly crafted. It’s well-directed, the muddied lighting fits the aesthetic, it has its moments of tonally-appropriate levity (like when Steve punches a monitor and Zola resumes talking like nothing had happened), and it’s suspenseful. Most-importantly, like any good scene, it gets you to think critically. How this level of subtext went by unchecked still astounds me, even five years later.

Will The Avengers: Endgame have a scene that tops this? I’ll know in a month, but don’t spoil anything!

The Omerisms-Mirai Review

As many of you know, I’m currently partaking in a yearly tradition known as The Omer. I’ll spare you the details, you can read more here, but think of it like the Jewish version of Lent. I’m not seeing new releases in theatres for a month, and to tide me over I’ve turned to other forms of entertainment. So welcome to a three-part miniseries called “The Omerisms”, and I’m starting off with a review of a movie that, for several reasons, I couldn’t watch in theatres: anime director Mamoru Hosoda’s latest, Mirai.

I’ve been a fan of Hosoda’s work for years. Ever since I first watched The Girl Who Leapt Through Time on YouTube in 2011, I’ve awaited each and every new film with great impatience. He’s brilliant, easily giving anime legend Hayao Miyazaki a run for his money as an artist. It’s also worth noting that each of his movies following The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has corresponded to a phase in his life, and Mirai’s no different.

4 year-old Kun was used to being the centre of attention. He was young, bright-eyed and spoiled rotten by his parents, so it was expected. But when baby Mirai was introduced into his life one Winter’s day, Kun’s world started crumbling. It began with his parents shifting their attention, gaining steam with his mother ending maternity leave early and forcing household duties on his father. Whenever Kun’s frustrations boiled to a feverish pitch, he’d dart out into the backyard and hide behind the mysterious oak tree, where he’d meet with family spirits of the past, present and future. But why were these spirits coming to him? And what connection did they have to his sister?

Mirai, as I mentioned, continues the trend of correlations to Hosoda’s personal life. With Summer Wars, Hosoda was getting married and learning to adjust to family life. The Wolf Children was his ode to his mother, who’d raised him alone, as well as the excitement of being a father. The Boy and the Beast was him making amends with his father, a man who’d left him at a young age. With Mirai, however, Hosoda turns his attention to his son and his new sibling.

Does he succeed? Yes. It’s hard not to see the struggles of older brotherhood in Kun’s relationship with Mirai, frustrated by his loss of attention, yet fascinated by her as well. This parallels the role that Mirai’s older counterpart plays as a mentor and guide, showing Kun the importance of familial history and helping him find his confidence. It’s not the deepest of allegories, even for a kid’s movie, but it’s charming.

It also rings home personally. I grew up the middle child of three boys, so I was both Kun and Mirai at different points in time. Watching Kun learn to deal with a baby sister reminds me of how my siblings and I interacted, which is important for a film about family dynamics. I also, surprisingly, sympathize with Kun’s parents now that I’m an adult, recognizing the tough balancing act of family and work responsibilities. It’s a testament to Hosoda’s brilliance that everything meshes.

That the movie looks gorgeous helps. Hosoda’s always had a springy, frantic style to his animation, with characters always doing something even while stationary, and he brings those sensibilities to Mirai. The movie also has heavy doses of scenery porn to compliment the characters. Unfortunately, Hosoda dabbles in the egregious sin of Manga Iconography. He used to do it more with his earlier movies, but he dropped it for a while come The Wolf Children. Considering that his animation’s already extremely-expressive, why would he return to it?

Some of the CGI integration also feels off. It’s not terribly-noticeable, and it doesn’t ruin the experience, but it definitely clashes with the traditional animation. Anime has never been known for mixing well with CGI, it simply lacks the budget for it, so it’s preferable to keep its use to a minimum.

As for the music? It’s good. I wouldn’t exactly call it a masterstroke yet, subsequent viewings are needed to fully-judge, but what I’ve heard sounded pleasant and memorable enough. I especially like the opening and closing themes, which, true to Hosoda form, are thematically-appropriate.

I want to give special attention to the dub, which is what I watched. Hemmed by voice actor and ADR veteran Michael Sinterniklaas, it features Hollywood notes like Rebecca Hall and John Cho, as well as VA legends like Crispin Freeman. But the real star is Jaden Waldman as Kun. Child actors are hard to find and train well, particularly in the world of anime dubbing, but Waldman was the best pick Sinterniklaas could’ve gotten. Like Emily Hirst in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, he’s not only age-appropriate, he’s a damn fine actor.

Is Mirai a great movie? It’s hard to say. I definitely liked it a lot, and I’m happy that it finally nabbed Hosoda an Oscar nod at this past year’s Academy Awards, but I feel as though it lacked the immediate charm of some of Hosoda’s past work. Perhaps time will warm me to it more, but while the movie was cute and relatable, it lacked the gut-punch that, say, The Wolf Children had. It also felt a tad repetitive with Kun’s frequent trips to his backyard, almost rote by his third or fourth temper tantrum. And I wasn’t terribly fond of his character resolution, which felt slightly forced and unearned.

That’s not to say that it’s not worth your time, though. For all its flaws and missed potential, Mirai’s still a beautifully-animated movie with a lot of likability. It might even appeal to you more than me, but for now I’m glad that I saw it.

Missing Returns

Raise your hand if you watched Missing Link in theatres.

…

That’s supposed to be a rhetorical question. Missing Link, for all its critical brilliance, is ridiculously-underperforming at the box office, with an unbelievably-embarrassing opening weekend. It’s a shame, as the movie looks like a lot of time and care went into every single frame of its runtime, and it deserves better. Then again, seeing as how I haven’t seen it either, I’m one to talk. (It came out during a bad week, cut me some slack!)

A lot of blame is being pointed at general audiences for this one: “It’s your fault that Missing Link underperformed! You knew that this was an interesting, ambitious and original movie, and you didn’t see it anyway! If this movie tanks Laika Animation, it’ll be your fault for watching Generic Sequel #33994939493982839829292 and not unique films!” But as tempting as this mindset might be, it’s reductive and hurts the discourse.

Here are some facts: movies are expensive. They’re expensive to make, and even more-expensive to advertise. A low-end production can go for upwards of tens of millions of dollars to produce, and close to double that to market. In order for a movie to be considered a “box office success”, it has to make back at least double its total production costs. That’s not always easy.

Additionally, movies are incredibly-expensive to see in theatres. I’ve said this before in a previous post, but the average ticket at my local theatre is $13.75. That’s almost a full hour’s wage at an entry-level job, and the price is only projected to go up in the future! And audiences are catching on, with people taking fewer trips to the cinema each year. Add in the aforementioned recuperation costs, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom.

You know what doesn’t help? That Missing Link’s a stop-motion animation. Because stop-motion animation has never been too popular in North America, even going back to the 90’s; heck, The Nightmare Before Christmas, arguably the best-reviewed project Tim Burton’s slapped his name on (despite having not directed it), wasn’t exactly setting records in 1993. Instead, it gained its traction in the re-releases that followed, including one where Marilyn Manson sang the opening number. Stop-motion animation’s always been a big risk for studios because of its lack of widespread appeal, hence why it’s so rare to see a movie attempt it.

I know that stop-motion animation gets noticed by The Oscars regularly, leading some of you to doubt me on the above, so think about it like this: look at the IMDb scores for those stop-motion animated films that were nominated for Best Animated Feature. Of those, how many were truly loved by audiences? Maybe one or two, possibly three? Now, how many rank somewhere in IMDb’s beloved Top 250 list? If you said “zero”, you’re correct. And none of them were filling theatre seats when they were released, so…

I don’t mean to demean stop-motion animation. I love stop-motion animation, and that includes Laika’s films! I also want Missing Link to succeed financially, as we need more new and inventive films at the theatres amidst the countless sequels, remakes and reboots. But it should come as no surprise that Missing Link’s not doing so hot right now, as that’s the trend for stop-motion animation. If anything, I pray that its eventual home video sales recuperate the lost costs, like what The Iron Giant pulled off in the late-90’s.

I also wouldn’t feel too bad for Laika. They’ll be fine. The studio’s head’s father, Phil Knight, is a co-founder of Nike, so it’s not like they don’t have a PHD (or “papa has dough”) to fall-back on. If anything, this proves is that a shoemaking company, and a big one at that, trusts gambling their money on financial failures for art’s sake.

Does this mean Missing Link not pulling in the numbers isn’t still upsetting? No, of course it’s upsetting! The movie, like I said, clearly had a lot of time and energy put into it, and it shows. So for people to not watch it? Well, that stings.

But I don’t think it’s the moviegoers’ responsibility to justify the film’s failure. At least, not entirely. As I’d said before, stop-motion animation has never been big here, and theatre costs are already exorbitant as is. Missing Link’s box office failure is a result of a bigger problem in Hollywood, one that’ll eventually cause it to implode like in the 60’s. It’s a problem with a difficult solution, no doubt, but it’s still a problem nonetheless. And I think we should be focusing our energy on that, instead of pointing fingers at general audiences, most of whom are only trying to get by, and saying “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!” when a new and exciting idea doesn’t generate returns. Lord knows it’d make us sound far less-pretentious, anyway…

Junk Drawer: Hell, Bladders and Jews

Every-so-often, I have blog ideas that are way too short. I usually discard them in-favour of other, fully fleshed-out ones, but occasionally I go for them and they’re padded messes. So I’ve decided to try something new: a blog containing multiple short blogs. (I might do this more if it’s a hit.) You ready?

(And yes, this is a rip-off of Bob Chipman’s Junk Drawer series.)

Hellboy had a tough legacy to live up to. It’s a reboot of a mid/late-2000’s superhero franchise from one of Hollywood’s greats. It also, on that note, bears the same name as the original film in said franchise, and it stars someone who’s taking over for Ron Perlman. Even if the movie hadn’t been poorly-advertised, it’d be next-to-impossible to recreate Guillermo Del Toro’s brilliance. And yet, in spite of everything, it still managed to be a disappointment.

I feel bad. I feel bad because I desperately wanted Hellboy to succeed, and I feel bad because it didn’t. I also feel bad because it seems like David Harbour, who plays Hellboy here, genuinely enjoyed himself. He seems to have really cared, and it shows. So why does everything else fall flat?

I’ll be the first to admit that Del Toro’s take on the character was nothing mind-blowing: Hellboy was a standard and repetitive origin story, with a lot of padding. Hellboy II: The Golden Army, while tighter, had plenty of narrative detours and ended anticlimactically. And the two films had dialogue that fluctuated in quality, with serious moments feeling funnier than they needed to be. The latter also ended with the promise of a trilogy-capper, but since it was a Del Toro project…

The only advantage this new movie had was its R-rating. (I know it’s also been touted as “being more-faithful” to its source, but you know my thoughts on that.) An R-rating could’ve allowed for more creative freedom, as evidenced by Harbour’s casual and appropriately-timed F-bomb in one of the trailers. This movie being rated R also meant that it could’ve explored some dark themes, fitting for a character named “Hellboy”. It’s a shame that that didn’t end up mattering, though.

Oh, and the Rotten Tomatoes score reveal, while not unsurprising, came off as mean-spirited.

How about that new Marvel movie? Yeah, I’m excited for The Avengers: Endgame too! I won’t see it right away, for religious reasons, but I’m still excited. I’m even excited that it’ll be a 3-hour epic, something I didn’t expect.

That said, I do have to raise a concern about that. In a recent article, Kevin Feige noted that the movie won’t have an intermission, and that there won’t be anything worth missing anyway. I’m not averse to long, some of my favourites are long, but not having that intermission might be an issue for many people. It’d be an issue for kids, who don’t have the bladder tolerance, but also for the elderly and people with bladder disorders. Given that Marvel movies tend to be mass-appeal, that’s a little bit mean-spirited.

I’m aware that 3+ hour epics aren’t anything new. Hollywood of yesteryear had plenty in the forms of Lawrence of Arabia and The Ten Commandments, and there’ve been dramas since that’ve clocked at over 3-hours. Even my favourite biopic, Schindler’s List, is over 3-hours, and it’s amazing! But a family-friendly action movie clocking over 3-hours becomes unfair when there’s no bathroom or concessions break. Because wouldn’t it make sense to have both built in? Wouldn’t that help theatre chains make more money, something they’d want?

Maybe I’m short-sighted, but if you’re allotting 3+ hours for a single experience, then you might as well be entitled to a small break. You’re paying money for this, after all! If plays, which often go over 3 hours, have intermissions, then why can’t The Avengers: Endgame have one?

So Netflix recently revealed details about its remake of Cowboy Bebop, a show I hold dear, yet haven’t been shy about being critical of. I also agreed with most people that this might not be worthwhile to re-adapt, as the original felt like lightning in a bottle. It’s rare that such a talented production house, writer, director and composer would come together to make something that’d, incidentally, also change the face of dubbing in The West in 2001, so how could anyone replicate that?

Netflix appears to be on the right track so far with its casting. The stars are diverse and fit their characters, something this show needs. My only complaint is John Chu as Spike Spiegel, and not because he’s a terrible actor, or even because he’s Korean. No, I’m concerned that he’s a Korean actor who’s playing a Jewish character.

See, Spike Spiegel sounds like a pretty Jewish name. Or, at least, the last-name does. I know people with that name who are Jewish, that’s how baked in it is with that identity. Spike, in my mind, has always been Jewish, and I was hoping he’d be played by one ever since the original choice of Keanu Reeves fell-through. So while I mean no disrespect to John Chu, I loved him in Searching, I think he’s woefully-miscast.

The question that’s probably swimming through everyone’s heads is, “Why does it matter?” It matters for the same reason that racial miscasting matters: Jews, despite being big in Hollywood, are often overshadowed by non-Jews in roles. The characters that best suit them are usually given to other talents, and they’re left with stereotypes. I can’t begin to tell you how many Jewish characters in Hollywood are rabbis or nerds. It’s embarrassing.

But outside of that, proper casting validates minorities. Remember when Ruby Rose was announced as Batwoman in a show on The CW? Remember when people were upset that she wasn’t Jewish, yet was playing a Jewish character? This is the same sort of scenario, except with John Chu.

I know that the Jewish identity is a weird outlier, in that it defies preconceptions of race and ethnicity. Jews aren’t this homogenized, Euro-centric group, they’re incredibly-diverse. A Jew can be Jewish and Turkish, as is the case with Hank Azaria. A Jew can also be Jewish and black, as is the case with MaNishtana. And a Jew can be Jewish and Asian, as is the case with Kaifeng Jews. So why can’t Spike Spiegel, whom I identify as Jewish, be played by a Korean-Jewish actor? It’s not like South Koreans don’t have a devoted community of Jews and converts, I know a few personally, so can’t Netflix have sent out a casting call to them?

Anyway, that’s all for now. Ponder these completely-unrelated tangents, and I’ll see you next time!

Mario Kart: Superannuated

To paraphrase Rick James, “nostalgia is a hell of a drug”. It’s true: while nostalgia provides warmth and comfort, it also blinds us from the past’s harshness. It can even blind us to whether or not something we loved in our youth was really good. Nothing’s more frustrating than nostalgia lying to us, especially with art. And I mention this because I think Mario Kart: Super Circuit, The GBA’s entry in the popular Nintendo franchise, isn’t as good as I once thought.

Allow me to give you some history:

The year is 2001. My younger brother and I had recently broken our Game Boy Color from all the years of dropping it. Desperate to stop us from getting upset, my mother took us to buy a Game Boy Advance at a nearby Toys ‘R Us. Since buying a new handheld was special, we were also allowed pick a game to go with it. Naturally, we went for Mario Kart: Super Circuit, as it was similar to Mario Kart 64 and we liked that game.

I can’t tell you how many hours my brother and I played it in the years to follow. We’d often bring our GBA with us wherever we went, and the game always followed. And while we’d quickly discover that this wasn’t Mario Kart 64, we’d also discover that the game had a feature that allowed us to learn from our past failures and victories. The next few years would have our GBA library expand, but Mario Kart: Super Circuit always remained a close-favourite.

Fast-forward to 10 years ago. After having recently joined ScrewAttack and received a DS Lite, I revisited Mario Kart: Super Circuit. Sadly, time had been unkind to it. What once was a fun romp was now a nightmare. What once controlled beautifully now controlled like garbage. It was so maddening that even I wrote a rant on it in a franchise retrospective.

So I put it out of my mind for years. But I recently got back into Mario Kart nostalgia, revisiting the franchise’s music on YouTube for old-time’s sake, and it got me thinking: what was it about Mario Kart: Super Circuit that I hated? Did I even hate it? And if I did, perhaps time would help me warm up to it?

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way now: I really like the game’s look. The GBA was a half-way point between The SNES and The N64, and it shows: the game looks like a supped-up version of Super Mario Kart, only with the sprites of Mario Kart 64. It’s a gorgeous-looking game by 2001’s-handheld standards, and it even looks good now. Granted, some textures are blurry in hindsight, but what can you do?

I like the music. The GBA had a superior sound chip to The SNES, but few games took full-advantage of it. This one does, with many tracks being as memorable as they are catchy. I think my favourites are the opening, which introduces the game, and the tune for Rainbow Road, which begins as a remix of Super Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road theme before going a separate direction. The rest are also pretty good.

Finally, and I can’t stress this enough, I love the Replay feature. I wish previous entries had it, as you can go back and study your triumphs and mistakes more-effectively. I used the mode a lot as a kid, and even as adult, assuming I could actually play it (more on that later), it’d probably come in handy. Whoever decided to add this feature was a genius!

Unfortunately, the problems begin where the good stuff ends. Nowhere is this more-apparent than in its biggest problem: controls. I’m not sure who’s to blame, the handheld or time, but The GBA’s D-Pad, that white button with four arrows attached to it on the left side, is stiff beyond belief. The steering of the player’s kart is, therefore, close to impossible. It’s not as if the Mario Kart franchise’s AI don’t already suffer from “Rubber Band AI”, in that they always outmatch you despite your experience, so when you can’t turn properly and keep bumping into side-rails, it’s a nightmare.

It doesn’t help that once you finally turn, your kart loses control and veers to the left and right way too quickly. To put it in perspective, imagine a bar of soap being hard and stuck to a rough surface on one side, yet wet and slippery on the other. Once it finally breaks free from whatever it’s stuck to, it flies out of your hands and hits something. That’s the D-Pad control in this game, and it’s infuriating.

Okay, maybe it’s a problem with The GBA, right? It’s not like the handheld wasn’t notorious for being a little stiff anyway, so maybe I can try my DS Lite? It’s a little better, as the stiffness is gone, but the loose steering issue still exists (ironically, my DS Lite also won’t let me fire weapons, but that’s irrelevant right now). It’s as if the soap is no longer stuck, but is still wet and slippery. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I kept bumping into walls/other players/falling off the tracks on my DS Lite, a fact made worse by The DS Lite having an actual backlight now.

That’s my problem with Mario Kart: Super Circuit: its controls feel superannuated, or “incredibly dated”. I remember first hearing the term “superannuated” in a video on Super Mario Kart, but I feel like that applies more to this game. At least Super Mario Kart could chalk its loose controls up to being the first in a franchise that’s on a technologically-limited console, something Mario Kart: Super Circuit can’t. This is the third-entry in the franchise, so what’s its excuse?

It’s unfortunate because my experience on The DS Lite actually made me enjoy the game more: the controls weren’t as stiff! The game looked and sounded beautiful! The courses were varied! The Replay feature was a nice extra! And the coin mechanic was…okay, screw the coin mechanic!

Look, I don’t like trashing this game. I love the Mario Kart franchise, even respecting its ups (Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart DS) as much as its downs (Mario Kart Wii). But none of the games I’ve played, not even the original, in the franchise compare to my frustrations with Mario Kart: Super Circuit. There’s a reason the game isn’t regarded amongst favourite entries in the franchise, and this is why. I’m sorry to say, but Mario Kart: Super Circuit’s superannuated. And that saddens me as a fan.

Shazam! Wow!

Here’s something that I never thought I’d write: I’m actually looking forward to seeing a DCEU movie.

It’s true: Shazam!’s legitimately exciting me. I’m aware that I praised Wonder Woman two years ago, but I wasn’t enthused for that film until a few days before its release. Shazam!, however, has had me pumped from the moment I saw its first trailer, and the anticipation has only grown since. So seeing it get great reviews is the cherry on top.

But this had me thinking: I was mildly-hopeful for Man of Steel, but that was in 2013. It was also right after it was announced that Christopher Nolan, who’d recently finished his take on Batman, was producing it, so I was still on a high. Him rebooting Superman, a character who’d been struggling since the late-80’s, seemed like a solid choice. But once the reviews poured in, and they were negative, I jumped ship. Why now, six years later, am I excited again?

I think the main reason is because of the new route DC’s taking. The current king of superhero franchises is The MCU, which has existed since 2008’s Iron Man. By the time DC announced their own universe, it’d already been around for four years. But instead of striving for a unique identity, DC opted for a darker, grittier version of the same concept: a multi-part, inter-connected franchise over a lengthy period of time. And rather than take the time to write compelling stories, The DCEU fast-tracked the project and rushed it out. Add in how they left the storytelling reigns primarily with Zack Snyder, and they were setting themselves up for failure.

So yes, The DCEU was, for the longest time, a complete and utter train-wreck. The exception remained Wonder Woman, but that could’ve been because director Patty Jenkins had so much creative freedom. The rest of the franchise suffered from delays, behind-the-scenes complications, studio mandates, creative re-shuffling and lots of interference with the finished projects. I can’t cover everything, it’d take too long, but it wasn’t pretty.

I think their decision to rebrand was a good one. Not only in a “let’s change the focus of our universe” way, but also in a tonal and directorial way. Let’s face it, DC’s characters aren’t Marvel’s characters. Marvel works because their characters interact freely, while DC’s often work best solo. And when they do interact, it’s usually infrequent and not a big deal (with exceptions).

Honestly, I prefer it like this. Not every franchise needs to be another MCU, that’s been proven disastrous. I much prefer seeing DC’s attempt at solo movies that rarely connect, as Booster Gold doesn’t mesh tonally with Batman. If Warner Bros. wants the success of Disney and Marvel, this might actually be better for quality-control.

Like I said, not every superhero in DC’s pantheon needs to be grim-dark like Batman. I remember having a conversation with a co-worker at my old theatre job, and she mentioned that DC’s characters are “too dark to work on screen”. I still don’t agree; after all, if every DC character is dark, then how do you explain Superman? Wouldn’t he contradict that?

This is also why, I think, Shazam!’s getting praised: aside from not being grim-dark, it’s also really funny. Even its trailers are highlighting how much comedy there is, which fits its goofier, more kid-friendly tone. And when it gets “dark”, it never doesn’t feel real or relatable. I think that fits Shazam far-better than Batman, no? Especially when Batman can do dark because he’s a twisted psychopath who beats up criminals because “justice”, right?

It’s not only Shazam! that has me excited. Remember the ordeal with James Gunn? The one that recently got resolved? That led to The Suicide Squad. And then there’s that Birds of Prey teaser, which also looks interesting. That’s not to say every DC project in the future will be good, it’s impossible to know, but it’s a start!

I think DC, after a shaky beginning, has finally gotten its act together, and I’m pleased. I wouldn’t mind if DC went the solo, self-contained route with its movies from now on, as it suits them far better than imitating Marvel. It’s also, judging by Shazam!’s reviews, working better for them anyway. And isn’t that what matters most?

Look, I don’t like deliberately trashing DC. I love DC, far more than Marvel. I also prefer DC’s highs more than Marvel’s, as I think they have the potential for better movies. That I was purposely avoiding The DCEU for years hurt me, as I was robbing myself of seeing classic characters on the big-screen. Why would I want to do that to myself?

Now I don’t have to avoid them, which is a nice and welcomed. Now I can look forward to the adventures of Shazam, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Batgirl and Future Batman without shame. I can also pump money into Warner Bros.’s pockets to make these kinds of movies, too! Isn’t that what it’s all about? Especially if it means legit competition for Marvel and keeping them from becoming stale?