The Critical Corner

When Marvel announced their initial slate for the MCU's Phase Four, the project I was looking forward to the most from the initial offerings was definitely "Falcon and the Winter Soldier". Even before the pandemic shuffled things around (this was going to come out after "Black Widow" and before "The Eternals" and "WandaVision"), I was looking forward to this simply because both "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Captain America: Civil War" are my top two favorite movies of the entire MCU. The later movies of the "Captain America" trilogy stood out to me not just because they were some fine action movies, but married their action to thrilling, thought provoking themes you don't see elsewhere in the MCU. Anchoring those movies obviously was Chris Evans' Steve Rogers who proved to be the heart and soul of this shared universe. With "Avengers: Endgame" essentially retiring the character seem

  It's crazy to think 2020 was the first full year where the Marvel Cinematic Universe didn't release a single piece of content since 2009. With the COVID-19 pandemic closing down theatre chains across the globe, and Marvel's production pipelines being halted mid production, the start of the MCU's Phase 4 didn't go according to the original plan. If things had gone differently, by now we would have already seen movies like "Black Widow" and "The Eternals", and we would have gotten the MCU's first TV show under the Marvel Studios umbrella, "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" with the fourth show in the schedule, "WandaVision" next in the pipeline. As we all know, the order of things ended up being way different. And to Marvel's credit, "WandaVision" works surprisingly well as the opening salvo for their new phase of content. If there is anything you can takeaway immediately from "WandaVision", is that th

It’s always special when you get this feeling. This feeling we may have witnessed history. History where we will tell our kids and grandkids what it was like to live it, how old we were when it happened, and where we were when we experienced it. This is the feeling I was left as soon as the credits finished rolling for Avengers: Endgame. Make no mistake, what the Russo brothers, executive producer Kevin Feige and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were able to accomplish with Avengers: Endgame is a miracle unto itself. Not only were they able to live up to the promise of what last year’s Avengers: Infinity War provided, but they also managed to tie up an overarching narrative that started all the way back in 2008’s Iron Man and pay homage to many of the movies that came along the way. Can you find nitpicks in this three-hour endeavor? Absolutely. Does it take away from the achievement? Not in the slightest. Originally conceived as

I can’t think of another movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that is releasing with both high anticipation and with hyperbolic controversy like Captain Marvel . But this is what happens when you promote your movie as part of a “feminist movement” and you have people misconstrue actress Brie Larson’s criticism towards a male dominated press junket. But amidst all the controversies casting a pall on the release of this movie, how is the movie itself? Captain Marvel is a traditional origin story in the mold of the Phase 1 slate of the MCU. Taking a few cues from the original Iron Man and the original Thor , Captain Marvel is a surprisingly lean, low key affair despite its mostly intergalactic background. After a third slate of movies in the MCU that have seen Marvel Studios experiment a little bit with the way they have done their movies, it is both refreshing and a little jarring seeing a movie follow on the old mold from almost a decade ago. If anything, t