By some measures, summer movie season has just begun – temperatures are peaking, school’s out, and vacation is on everyone’s mind. By other measures, summer movie season is already almost over – as I write this, most of the major tentpole films have already been released.
Whatever gauge you use, summer 2023 feels like the first true “summer movie season” in quite a while – we’ve got big-budget movies raking in the cash (well, some more than others) and amassing more buzz than films from any season since 2019.
Some of these films, of course, have been better than others. What follows is the first in a few “summer roundup” pieces I plan to do this season, talking about some of the big (and not so big) theatrical releases of the year. Film reviews, mild spoilers. You know the drill by now; let’s get to it.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
The MCU just ain’t what it used to be. One of the defining staples of 2010s blockbuster cinema (a term some people would take umbrage with, but let’s ignore those people), adapting dozens of Marvel superheroes for the big screen and popularizing the phrase “cinematic universe” in common parlance, has felt increasingly messy and jumbled in the 2020s. Now over thirty films (and at least a half-dozen TV series) deep, the Marvel Cinematic Universe finds itself struggling to find a new overarching storyline to tie things together the way the Thanos arc did in the mega-franchise’s first decade, resulting in a lot of films that feel disparate and disconnected – and, for the most part, not particularly good.
The nature of the industry – both for comic books and the movies they’ve spawned – is that no saga can ever truly end. There is always another villain to face, another world-shattering threat to narrowly avert. Avengers: Endgame, straight down to its title, may have suggested a conclusion to the broad, sweeping arc of the MCU, but the business model demands more – more Spider-Man, more Doctor Strange, more new heroes as time and actor contracts demand.
So perhaps the most refreshing thing about the third installment of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise – itself one of the cornerstones of the MCU for nearly ten years – is its presumed air of finality. Not merely for series director James Gunn, who wrapped up production on this film just in time to leave Marvel in favor of revamping the films of their Distinguished Competition – but for Star-Lord, Gamora, and their whole ragtag crew. It’s likely that some of these characters may again appear, alone or as in tandem, in future MCU productions. But for the saga of titular team itself, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 feels like a fitting swan song.
Overlong and tonally uneven, GotG Vol. 3 isn’t quite at the level of the two films preceding it. But it’s got style and panache, and makes some bold choices in rounding out the trilogy. Whereas the first two installments focused chiefly on Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), the third turns its eye on Rocket, the brash, tough-talking, gun-wielding raccoon who was one of the original film’s two breakout stars in 2014.
Centering the emotional crux of a film around a two-foot furry mammal with an attitude adjustment would normally be a sign of sharks circling around the franchise, with the cast strapping on a paid of jet-skis. But Gunn subverts expectations not merely in focus, but in tone. Through its exploration of Rocket’s backstory – as a lab experiment, prodded and tormented by the maniacal High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji, who previously collaborated with Gunn on DC’s Peacemaker) – the script delivers some of the darkest material in Marvel history.
This sort of boundary-pushing script – which includes animal torture, a bounty of kidnapped children, some shocking spurts of alien violence, and the first F-bomb to appear in an MCU film – has been Gunn’s forte for years, dating back to his grossout work with Troma Entertainment through his inaugural DC work in 2021’s The Suicide Squad. Set against Marvel’s PG-13 confines, it creates some tonal whiplash – the scenes where Drax and Mantis perform their buddy-comedy-in-space shtick never quite jell with the tragic flashbacks depicting Rocket and his poor animal-experiment friends. But more often that not, both drama and comedy hit the mark, with effective (if at times emotionally draining) results.
In the end, the success of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 comes down to the characters – a fun and energetic group of misfits whom we’ve come to know and love for the past nine years, to the point that Groot’s three-word vocabulary becomes purely conversational by trilogy’s end. Gunn even smartly weathers the major MCU events that have occurred in the six-year gap between Volumes 2 and 3; Gamora’s death and rebirth in the last two Avengers films are explained as little more than character amnesia. Longtime Marvel fans will be satisfied, but viewers exclusively focused on the Guardians trilogy won’t be lost.
Whether Marvel can ever recapture the thrills and momentum of the Thanos years remains an open question, particularly as the franchise grows larger and more complex while still trying to remain accessible for new fans to climb aboard. Which is a great part of what makes Guardians 3 so refreshing – like its two predecessors, it manages to feel of its own piece within the MCU, unencumbered by context from dozens of other movies, and allows some of the saga’s most memorable characters a fitting conclusion.
Score: 7/10
Fast X
As the long-running Fast and Furious saga hits double-digits (or, depending on your preferred format, reverts to single Roman numerals), I can’t help but think of it as the latest victim of the 24 Problem.
For those too young to recognize the phrase “network television,” 24 was a popular 2000s action drama in which Kiefer Sutherland fought terrorists all around the world, with each season covering precisely twenty-four consecutive hours. The show was enormously popular, even as it grew increasingly outlandish from one season to the next – just how much can happen in one day, and how long can our hero go without using the toilet?
I never liked 24, mainly due to the way it seemed calculated to give me a migraine. It was a show that simultaneously required you to turn off your brain, in order to ignore all the myriad pacing and logical fallacies, while also investing a lot of brainpower in focusing on the complexities of the show, which typically featured no fewer then five or six interconnecting storylines per season. Was it a smart show that felt too dumb? A dumb show yearning to be smart? What was up with that cougar, anyway?
I bring all this up because it’s quite similar to the reaction I had while watching Fast X. On the one hand, it is a film packed to the gills with ridiculously impossible stunts, as has been the series’ chief selling point for over a decade. On the other hand, it is the latest installment of a franchise that has run so long and introduced so many new characters – some seventeen actors appear topline in the end credits – that one could be forgiven for consulting an online flowchart or two at some point during the film’s 142-minute run.
The series has proven surprisingly malleable over the years, morphing from street racing flicks in the 2000s to international spy drama in the 2010s. This latter genre continues to fuel the series into the ’20s, with a new twist – the series is ramping up for a big multi-part conclusion, a sort of multifaceted Infinity War–Endgame finale bringing together as many old faces (ands some new ones) as possible.
So it is that Fast X winds up with at least five different running storylines, some only tangentially connected to the others. Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) leads a mission through Europe and beyond, while Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) finds herself in a maximum-security prison with Cipher (Charlize Theron). Other series stalwarts like Han (Sung Kang) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) take off on a side-quest that leads them to reunite with former enemy Shaw (Jason Statham). Meanwhile, former antagonist Jakob (John Cena) jets off on a comedic adventure with Dom’s young son, all while Agent Tess (Brie Larson) pops up to remind everyone that this whole operation is still being bankrolled by the Agency, which… look, I’m getting another migraine just typing this.
The whole thing is loosely tied together by the villainous Dante (Jason Momoa), who propels the plot forward with a wave of surprisingly manic energy. Playing the son of a former series villain with a level of chaotic flamboyance – imagine a 30% gayer version of Heath Ledger’s Joker – Momoa crafts a character unlike any we’ve previously seen in the Fast saga, becoming both the film’s most memorable character (a scene in which he nonchalantly paints the toenails of two decaying corpses will rank forever as a series footnote) and its most obvious sore thumb.
It’s all somewhat crazy and convoluted, but not in the way that typifies the series’ best installments. And it’s not helped by the fact that – with ten films and a spin-off movie under its belt – the series seems to be running out of new ideas for outlandish action. A scene in which the protagonists chase a large rolling bomb through the streets of Rome is perhaps the visual highlight, but even that falls short compared to the sight of a bank vault dragged across a freeway in Fast Five (briefly replayed at the start of this film) or the gleefully ridiculous skyscraper jump in Furious 7.
There’s a scene midway through Fast X in which Han, Roman, Tej (Ludacris), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) enter an Internet café and meet with the owner, a hacker played by Pete Davidson. During the conversation, Han ingests some drug-laced cupcakes that send him on a trip, while Roman throws some powder at the ceiling. Neither of these events are further explored or followed up on, suggesting some heavy post-production cuts to keep this already crowded film below 2.5 hours. (Alternately, the writers simply threw in these little tidbits and then forgot about them; I’d believe either explanation at this juncture.) The scene is weird and random and bizarre, but it’s also a standout scene in a film that generally prefers to coast along on prior installments, piling on more characters and setting up new sequels all the while.
Score: 5/10
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
As the MCU continues to struggle in a post-Endgame world (see two reviews above) and the DCEU burns off its last few installments before wiping the board clean, it’s become key for the average fan of superhero films to temper their expectations. While the genre has never batted a thousand, the cape-and-tights crowd has been milked pretty relentlessly these last few years, and so we should go into each new film with the understanding that comic-book movies simply aren’t what they used to be.
And then something like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse comes along, and suddenly the bar is blown through the roof.
The new film already had a lofty standard to meet – as a sequel to 2018’s excellent Into the Spider-Verse, a film which stretched the boundaries of computer animation like no film before it, there was a lot for this sequel to live up to. But the creators of that Oscar-winning crowd-pleaser have done it again, serving up a sequel that ups the ante and expands the ambition and scope of their first film while retaining the beating heart and humor that defines every good Spidey story.
Into the Spider-Verse ended with Miles Morales embracing his role as his universe’s Spider-Man, with the inspiring mantra “Anyone can wear the mask.” Across the Spider-Verse builds upon this idea to a whole new level, introducing a multitude of parallel universes in which everyone wears the mask. These hundreds of Spider-People (including the returning Spider-Woman/Gwen Stacy, who gets a meatier role this time around) have all been brought together by Miguel O’Hara (better known to Marvel fans as Spider-Man 2099), a grim-jawed Spidey who has discovered that several of their universes have begun to unravel.
It’s almost inevitable that the root of the problem lies with Miles and the fallout of events from Into the Spider-Verse, but the film smartly takes its time getting there. Much of the first act centers on Miles coming to grips with his double life, and in headaches caused by a new supervillain, the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), who has a personal grudge against young Spidey. The focus on the Spot – long seen as one of the most ridiculous supervillains in Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery – is one of many clever turns of the script, which soon turns this cornball villain into a genuine threat to Miles’ universe and all those beyond it.
Before long, Miles is thrown back into interdimensional antics, as he discovers a self-named Spider-Society out to restore stability to the multiverse. Across multiple universes, we’re introduced to a new Spider-Woman (Issa Rae), an Indian Spidey (Karan Soni), and the rock-n-roll Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya) – each with their own quirks, abilities, and animation style. And it’s that last aspect where Across the Spider-Verse – much like its predecessor – truly shines.
At 140 minutes, AtSV is the longest American animated film ever released to theaters. (The previous record holder, Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 Lord of the Rings adaptation, clocks in at 132 minutes.) Yet thanks to its incredible combination of visual styles and aesthetics, it never drags – each new scene offers something fresh and visually interesting, from the opening battle against a Da Vinci-esque Vulture to a climactic battle involving hundreds of different Spider-People. All these different styles – the watercolor designs of Gwen Stacy, the slick outlines of Spider-Man India, or the Sex Pistols aesthetic of Spider-Punk – blend together to create a cinematic experience like none before.
Combine the great visuals with a creative and often wickedly funny script (courtesy of the always-reliable Phil Lord and Chris Miller), and throw in the copious amounts of blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em references (is that 2020s Internet meme Sun-Spider swinging along beside 1960s animated “does whatever a spider can” Peter Parker?), and you’ve got a film that’s an absolute blast from start to finish. There are only two things holding it back from sitting on a par with the first film.
The first is the pacing – while this film is very well-structured and mostly earns its lengthy runtime, it can’t compare to the simply airtight structure of Into the Spider-Verse, which carried weight and purpose with every line of dialogue. Across the Spider-Verse is jam-packed with action and incident, but I could definitely imagine a version of the film that works just as well while trimming off ten minutes of screentime.
The second issue, as many others have pointed out, is the ending, or rather the lack of it. Across the Spider-Verse is hardly the first film to end on a cliffhanger – and in this regard, certainly has plenty of company among trilogies’ middle chapters. But unlike Empire Strikes Back or even Matrix Reloaded, Across the Spider-Verse very clearly feels like one half of a story – the thematic drive of Miles’ forging his own trail in the face of all logic and “canon” remains unresolved, and Gwen’s closing narration leaves her in relatively the same place she started.
These issues aside – and I must stress how incidental they are – Across the Spider-Verse is a terrific filmgoing experience. In an age where even the most recognizable brands in Hollywood are treated with kid gloves, the fact that a film this ambitious and innovative was given a nine-figure budget – and will make back that amount manifold – fills me with unvarnished hope. The minds behind the Spider-Verse series have created something spectacular, and I can’t wait to see where they take it next.
Score: 9/10
Critically Touched 