I'm sorry that I've been off for a few weeks. It's been a very busy set of band-related weekends.
And as a result, I haven't carved out the time to distract you from football with other things. Which, when I think about it, is a bad job by me because I am filling my non-work weekend time with the ULTIMATE football distractor . . . marching band.
But I am thinking ahead slightly this week to try and fend off your unthinking acceptance of college football on Saturday or pro football on Sunday. But I also can't spend tons of time writing about something and getting into tons of detail in my argument.
Luckily, we live in a digital/visual world and everyone hates words. So I will try to keep my words to a minimum this week.
My football distraction this week is something that many of you have probably heard me talk about. I've been preaching its secular gospel for months now. But I still don't think most of you are taking me seriously or really trying to mix this recommendation into your media rotation.
What is it?
The British variety show Taskmaster.
It's off kilter, very funny, and engaging. You can watch almost all of it on YouTube.
It's very simple but simplicity makes it seem easy. And since I don't have tons of time, I'm gonna let this video do the explaining for me. Please watch this video and then take Taskmaster into your heart. And do it on Saturdays instead of watching football.
Welcome back to another week of avoiding football. How is that going for you? Are you watching less? Thinking about other things more? Here are my thoughts for this weekend, to divert and intrigue you. And as you can likely guess, I'm choosing to focus on the Matrix: Resurrections trailer that came out a week and a half ago.
So I guess it is a good thing no one reads this blog or stakes any decisions on what I do--except on whether or not they watch football.
I realize that this movie ISN'T Marvel content (which appears to be the theme of this year's Football Counter-Programming). But even so, it IS heavily based on nostalgia. Much of the discussion so far on Spider-Man: No Way Home--which has been a strong current of FCP--is definitely nostalgia. And well, let's be honest here--in order to convince people to go and watch this new Matrix movie, it's going to have to address and fixing the sins of the past. And I think that was a dominant theme of last week's movie focus--Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
So, I feel that it works.
PLUS, you guys . . . you just don't know (except for some of my oldest most loyal listeners) how much the Matrix movies meant to me in the early 00s. As much as I spent time debating Tobey Maguire at lunch, I also spend much time crafting intricate emails to convince people to go see the Matrix movies with me.
I read philosophical texts.
I was INTO. IT.
So as much as I truly enjoyed watching this trailer and was strongly moved by the choice of "White Rabbit" as the music cue . . . fool me twice (or in a near future thrice) and well . . . definitely shame on me.
The trailer certainly looks promising. I’ll grant that. But is it any good? Am I willing to risk it?
As I’ve said, I've been burned by the sequels. And as I’ve gotten older I am less willing to give something a try when logic and reason tell me I should stay away.
Heck, I watched the Animatrix. I tried to understand! And then the movies just disappointed. And confused. Did the Architect.s speech make any sense at all? Will this movie make sense?
It’ll definitely have style. And it might be worth going to see purely on style and visual skill alone. Is that enough?
Do you go to a football game (not that I’m here to encourage you to think about football right now--except that I clearly am right now.). But let's continue down this inadvisable path.
Do you go to a football game because you like the style of the uniforms? You are there to see your team win. In sports, winning is the equivalent of a movie making sense. You can all sit in the stadium and enjoy a pleasant afternoon and see colorful guys dressed up in uniforms doing their thing. And making nice formations. (Yes, it does sound like I’m describing marching band right now.)
But if the team loses--or if the marching band's music makes no sense--then is it really what you’re there for?
So if the Matrix: Resurrections is only going to be stylistic, then I shouldn’t give them upwards of 45 of my dollars for me and members of my family to go see it. Right?
What is the point of movies anyway? They’re incredibly visual, because that is the inherent nature of the medium. But there are other types of stories. That’s the core of Martin Scorsese‘s hatred of the Marvel movies. He thinks that style and visuals have overwhelmed story to such a degree that you’re going to see fireworks and nothing else. (See how I slipped Marvel into this week's post even though you thought I was going to forget about it?) Are movies better than a play because of their strongly visual capability? Or are movies better than reading a short story?
If story is really why you seek out entertainment, then you should be going for what speaks to you. Not what looks good to you.
And in case you’re wondering, yeah . . . I love Marvel movies, as you clearly know. But I love them in part because of the story. I like how it all connects together and how everything influences everything else. It is an act of storytelling. That story may not be to your particular liking, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a story.
So, I'm hoping that the Matrix sequel is good.
And I hope that you don't watch football this weekend.
Because drum major's sometimes fall down. And sometimes it gets caught on video. And the game goes on anyway.
So, watching the game won't help. Just find something else to do.
It's Saturday and I'm sitting down to write this while a great many people in the Ohio area are most certainly watching football. Does this discourage me? No. It only makes my conviction stronger. My crusade to put something else in your weekend social networks feed beside football is still going. And I won't stop.
This week, it's a continuation of the Marvel theme that I started a few week ago. This time it's a movie review for the newest entry in the MCU--Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
In case you aren't big MCU fans--or in case you just haven't been following entertainment news in the last months, a brief explanation.
Shang-Chi . . . is the 25'th MCU movie. But it is the first one with a majority (almost entire?) Asian cast. As the MCU moves into Phase 4 of it's decades-plus project, it continues widening its scope in character, setting, culture. Most definitely this expansion in representation is a very long time coming. But this story put a spotlight on that effort and raised the stakes in the movie's success.
Shang-Chi has a comics history. As I have learned in recent weeks of podcasts and blog post readings, his comics story originated in the 1970s when Marvel chose to capitalize on the kung-fu craze that the United States was experiencing thanks to Bruce Lee and Enter The Dragon. (Along with David Carradine's "Kung Fu" TV show.) In my own life, I remember these kung fu movies playing on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid. Such things were not my favorite types of entertainment, but over the years I've watched bits and pieces of these movies. In the 1980s, I loved the Snake Eyes G.I. Joe character. I'm certainly familiar with the stereotypes and the tropes that have defined and surrounded some of the Asian portrayals that have happened in my lifetime.
For a very illumination look at more of this history of Asian stereotyping and a in-depth intro (?) into the culture of it--and how it specifically relates to Shang-Chi, I recommend this Ringer post. It helps explain what hurdles the newly rebooted Shang-Chi comics and this movie in particular fought against.
So, how did I enjoy the movie itself? I really, really enjoyed it. After the movie, we discussed it and updated the MCU Rankings to reflect its score. As you can see, it ranked very high--into our top five.
What did I like about the movie? I really liked the characters! Shang-Chi was interesting and certainly his father (the villain--sort of) of the movie was also interesting and engaging and I felt more involved with his story than most MCU villains.
The cinematography of the movie was truly outstanding. Some of the scenes and the special effects employed was quite amazing and beautiful to look at. The music was good, if not the best MCU soundtrack that I've ever heard. And the movie was funny when it should be and serious when it needed to be. The story was engaging.
Even though it sounds bad of my to say this, I thought that the bus fight in the first thirty minutes of the movie was a stand out moment. Fundamentally, this movie is an origin story to introduce you to who Shang-Chi is and why his story is important. But it isn't a character drama. Its an action movie. And that bus fight scene was the most impressive action sequence of the whole movie. I have always liked the Lumerian Star ship fight scene at the start of Captain America: The Winter Soldier as my favorite action sequence in the MCU. But this Shang-Chi bus scene was much more impressive.
Some of the best choices made in the movie were also the most surprising. Including the return of Trevor Slattery--the MCU character played by Ben Kingsley in one of my favorite MCU movies, Iron Man 3. Kingsley's Slattery "portrays" the famous comics villain The Mandarin. And his version of that character is played for laughs and definitely opened up some interesting questions when the plot of this movie was first announced. But the return of Slattery provided Marvel a chance to apologize in a way for their whitewashing of the character. I thought Slattery's return was appropriate and interesting.
What I didn't like about the movie? That said . . . I thought that Slattery's involvement in the movie was longer than it needed to be. And I really didn't need more and more of Morris the magical cat/dog/bird thing that was Slattery's sidekick. Morris himself represented the third act shift of the movie plot that spun it from a street-level movie about a martial artist and the crime syndicate that he knew too much about.
Instead it abruptly shifted into a magic, mystical, otherworldly story that has clearly become the focal point of MCU Phase 4. And if you didn't need too much of that, then your opinion of this movie likely dropped from that point forward. I didn't mind it, exactly. But it was the least interesting and least developed part of the plot.
I hope that you take some time to go and see this film in a safe and thoughtful way. If you like Marvel movies, I think that you will like this one. And if you don't like it . . . well, there is always football to take up your time.
Grace and I are big fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It's almost fifteen years in the making and 25 films deep. I'm updating on WWYG?! the MCU rankings that Grace and I put together as we have watched the movies together.
And yes . . . you'll notice that we decided to include Deadpool and Deadpool 2 plus Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse . . . and even Shazam! in our rankings. I regret nothing about this.
(This list is always being updated, as new movies come out.)
It's a new weekend and that means it is time for your favorite returning WWYG?! feature--Football Counter-Programming. In which I spend my precious blogging time trying my hardest to get you to eschew your football watching practices for something else. And in this case, the something else are my musings about whatever strikes my fancy when I sit down at the computer. And I'll be trying my hardest like Minnesota tries its hardest to win a game every against Ohio State.
But enough football content . . . let's get into the theme of the season--which for right now is All Spider-Man All the Time.
***
The rumors are swirling about the new Spider-Man movie.
Will the three Spider-Men actually show up in the film, even though they did not appear in the first trailer? Will Tom Holland's Peter spend most of his time skipping through alternate universes? Will we get any connection to Miles Morales and the Ultimate Spider-Man? Will Tom Holland ever get to be his own character without needing a mentor to guide his way through the movie that is supposed to be about him?
My favorite rumor is centered around trying to understand why Dr. Strange is so willing to bend space and time to indulge the whims of a teenager who just doesn't want to go through the trouble of getting his girlfriend to like him again. (And if Peter thinks what he is facing is hard, then he should talk to my main man Chuck Bartowski about loved ones and memory loss.)
Why would Strange use his cosmic powers just in order to keep a teenager happy?
Maybe it's because . . . he's NOT Dr. Stephen Strange? Maybe he's . . .
Oh that's right! Our favorite rumor target is back again. And maybe this time its real! Maybe all that we learned from our weeks of WandaVision rumoring and study is going to pan out this time! Maybe the Devil really made him do it?!
But is it truly likely?
Is Disney willing to spend millions of dollars to center one of the most popular superhero characters in opposition to Satan? Does that fit with Disney's family brand?
My thoughts are . . . no. Mephisto is a fun thing to talk about and to generate Internet buzz. (And that is one of the key aims of a movie trailer.) And it is also true that movie trailers often explicitly create red herrings and diversions in its imagery to mislead. So even though you've seen it, that doesn't mean you will see it when the movie is in front of your eyeballs.
So, do you have a favorite rumor? What are your hopes and dreams for this movie? Who do you think is the best Peter Parker? Do you have an explanation for why Dr. Strange is acting so . . . well, strange?
While you think about those questions ponder this . . . which is more likely--Dr. Strange being a fake representation of the Biblical Personification of Evil or your second-string kicker managing a 50 yard field goal when the game is on the line?
