[EXPRESSO] Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) | Freaks On A Leash

I didn’t see the 2015 reboot and i barely remember some things from the 2005 iteration (“no one” has seen the Roger Corman version so i’m not gonna ask), but i’d say fans of the Fantastic Four will be pleased with finally having a more than solid film made about the beloved superhero quartet.

It definitely helps that Fantastic Four: First Steps is basically a standalone entry, taking place in another version of Earth where everything is a retrofuturistic 60s space age utopia, and (like the recent Superman reboot) it skips doing the origin story and it starts with the team already established, with a ABC style show recapping how they got their powers and became the city heroes/guardians, mythologized and even with their own saturday morning cartoon.

It does indeed play heavily on the family angle, as Sue and Richard are to have a baby….a joy shortlived by the appearance of a female Silver Surfer announcing their planet will be destroyed by Galactus, prompting the team to go back to space and trying to resolve the situation, complicated by an odd proposition i won’t spoil…

Again, it does play his card sincerely (as did Gunn’s Superman, guess this is new style for comic book movies now), there’s space travel, a bit of fighting, and it’s definitely the best offering from Marvel in a while…. it’s simply not as good as the James Gunn’s Superman reboot that we saw just 2 weeks ago, but i can’t fault the movie for that.

I can fault it for the characterization being somewhat lacking, as the Fantastic Four come off – despite the great performances – as a bit too perfect, too easily accepted and with any rough edges or weirdness (mostly) sanded off, like their media image plastered on ads or products.

[EXPRESSO] Thunderbolts* (2025) | Antiheroes’ Day Out

So we doing Suicide Squad now, but with a bucket of Marvel characters no one has ever heard before (Bucky aside)? I guess.

The question is this more like 2017’s Suicide Squad or James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad?

The question turns out it’s kinda incorrect, because it’s close enough but not quite that kind of story, and more surprisingly is the better Marvel movie i’ve seen in a while, which blindsided me entirely.

After her sister, the Black Widow in the Avengers team died, Yelena Belova feels depressed, but turns out her last job is a set-up by her employer, corrupt CIA director Valentina DeFontaine, whom is trying to remove all evidence of her shady illegal operations and experiments, and has decided to do so by setting up a trap for Yelena as well as other shady assassins and mercenaries.

The group of antiheroes (and a strange man in hospital garment that they found there, just called “Bob”) decides instead to collaborate in order to escape the trap laid out for them, and eventually have to team up against their will to save the day from a new menace, cheered on by Red Guardian (“Soviet Captain America” of the Black Widow film) and a concerned Bucky, whom is trying to empeach Valentina DeFontaine…

Nothing new, at all, it’s the usual “ragtag team of underdogs that are antiheroes of sorts and are gonna take this chance to do good for once”, but it’s pretty obvious that this time around there’s some chemistry, some effort, with actors that actually feel like they wanted to be there instead of anywhere else; heck, even the villain doesn’t suffer from most the usual problems of later Marvel films, making for an overall surprisingly decent flick, which is not how i expected “Phase 5” to end.

[EXPRESSO] Captain America: Brave New World (2025) | The Credible Hulk, Part 2

I haven’t seen the Falcon And Winter Soldier this apparently continues from (in general i don’t care about the tie-in shows for these), i honestly don’t care too much about Captain America, the character itself or the film subseries, but sure, Harrison Ford is here as the US president (not that one?) and Giancarlo Esposito is here as well, so why not?

I honestly think it’s decent, it’s fine, it’s far from the worse ones, again, considering what we should expect from these era Marvel movies, but it also has most of the issues we’ve come to expect, from trying to juggle too much without fully committing to anything in terms of themes, with subplots and characters that are set up to be important but (most likely by the many documented and reported reshoots, rewrites and production troubles) don’t really add up to the plot.

A plot which itself it’s half reharshing The Winter Soldier, half being basically the unofficial sequel to the 2008 Hulk movie, so much returns and comes to play from that film into what’s extensibly a movie about the new Captain America trying to advert a conspiracy meant to undermine the new presidency of General “Thunderbolt” Ross, trying to turn a new leaf after his questionable past, as the new “Cap” is trying to live up to Steve Roger’s legacy.

On the upside, Mackie makes for a good “Cap’”, some plotlines that were seeded in other movies but were then mostly “abandoned” get revived or given a purpose, the action is often good, but the “New Cap” VS “Harrison Ford as Red Hulk” brawl (which features some iffy special effects) kinda feels there because they based the marketing on that and the movie it’s almost over, so it had be squeezed as the unintentionally anticlimactic climax.

[EXPRESSO] Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) | Stabbing Friends

I do not know if it’s still “cool” to hate on Deadpool (both the character and the film series), but laughably wanton changes of popular opinion aside, i quite liked Deadpool and i was glad to see that he would return and drag back Hugh Jackman to play Wolverine again in the third Deadpool live action film, Deadpool & Wolverine, as they go through a multiverse hopping adventure to avoid the timelines being erased, and for spoilers’ sake i will leave it at that.

Not that you’re here for the story anyway, you’re here for Ryan Reynolds’s Deadpool and to see him interact with Hugh Jackman back in his iconic Wolverine role/persona, and honestly i can’t deny it works well as a buddy comedy adventure, as the two actors work off each other perfectly.

I will not chastize the series style and humour and characters for actually being consistent with themselves as they were before, but i also won’t deny i would be quite okay with this being the last Deadpool film, as nothing here works badly or anything, is just the formula at this point in time lacks any real surprise, and the “annoying” aspect of Deadpool deliberate meta-massacring humour is even more noticeable than it’s purposedly made to, like dial it back a bit.

Also, there’s the fact the plot is weaker and meandering, as much as it makes some cameos possible from Marvel characters otherwise stuck in stupid limbos, it’s more derivative, the new characters could be better, and the movie – which is still decent-and-above fun overall – is quite funny but noticeably not as funny (or well directed) as Deadpool 2 was, and the meta referencing und self deprecating humour ends up feeling kind old hat, even if you enjoyed Deadpool whole shtick so far.

[EXPRESSO] Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) | King Kang

Ah yeah, the sequel to that one most people (me included, to be truthful) plain skipped, until they had to hurriedly watch it in order to follow whatever was gonna going on Quantumania.

I say this because i get the feeling many threat this series as “multiverse marmite”, a byproduct of this fucking decade long MCU plan, a lot more “skippable” than others, even if this is supposed to be the movie to kick off Phase 5, i had my expectations fairly low as expected by now, thanks to the evergrowing Marvel fatigue – itself tiresome to point out, even if it needs to be, as years of Marvel movies pile up – doesn’t help.

Anyway, this time Ant-Man and The Wasp….and basically the entire quantum scientist team get sucked into the Quantum Realm, which is quite different than before, housing a myriad of unknown species and races of humanoids, all theathrened by Kang The Conqueror, helped by his servant MODOK, and YES, the screenshots were right, he looks like he escaped from the music video of Peter Gabriel’s Steam, but then again, its a silly design, what the hell did you expect?

He’s actually kinda one of the best things about Quantumania, as the quantum world is very, VERY Star Wars-esque, the villain is decent but feels like purposefully underveloped for future MCU movies, the plot it’s so ironically tiny and feels tacked on (pun), direction is unremarkable, the cast seems to be kinda phoning it in (aside from Jonathan Majors as Kang), and action isn’t great, just incredibly average for these movies.

It’s okay, as in, it’s not boring, it has its moments but it’s just plain “mid”, fairly uninspired, and honestly the two previous Ant Man movies were better, smaller in scope but just more fun overall.

[EXPRESSO] Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) | Vibranium Wars

For the record: i did enjoy the first Black Panther movie quite a lot when i saw it in theathers.

But i also saw how flippant is the quality of the MCU theathrical offerings, so expectations are as low as they have been for years. Especially with the passing of Chadwick Boseman, which is also honored and diegetically considered, as the death of T’Challa leaves Wakanda open to other nations trying to rob them of the Vibranium, forcing the reigning queen, the princess Shuri ( sister of the late T’Challa) and the remaining warrior women to fight for their land as Namor (i guess a different one from the Aquaman lore, despite the identical name) the king of a secret underwater-dwelling meso-american tribe rises up to force Wakanda into war.

After they take their sweet time, let’s be blunt, this one it’s almost 3 hours long, and boy you’ll feel it. It’s not even correct to say the movie it’s unnecessarily long, but it does take its time to set up various subplots and elaborate on the themes of legacy, inheritance and will that connect the Phase 4 Marvel movies together, as the characters deal with the emotional baggage left to them, which it’s fine but it feels like them ruminating/depending on the first movie to make you care this time too.

It’s the same issue plenty of these new Marvel movie have, and Wakanda Forever it’s no exception, arguably a little worse, which is a shame since the plot has some promise but never feels properly coherent, the cast it’s great, the villain is quite decent, but i found myself not really that invested in the new characters, the new kingdom and the new struggles Wakanda and its warriors face.

It’s a decent but unimpressive (and kinda bloated) sequel.

[EXPRESSO] Thor: Love And Thunder (2022) | “Bi” from “Bifrost”

After being pleasantly surprised by Thor Ragnarok (which i quite liked), i was cautiously optimistic about this one, since we have Taika Waltiti back in the director chair, and two Thors, why not?

The plot sees Thor cruising the galaxy on a quest for his own inner peace, after basically handing to others his expected status and obligations of a god. But his hippish voyage for love and identity is cut short by an intergalactic killer known as “Gorr The God Butcher”, forcing the son of Odin to request the aid of Valkyrie and even his ex, Jane Foster, who now can wield the mighty Mjolnir as “Mighty Thor”, on an adventure to find out Gorr’s motives and stop him before he can bring his godslaying crusade to the next level.

More than previous installment, this one leans into the comedic aspect that ran through the Thor series to make it more distinct from Ragnarok, especially by “leaning” heavily into romantic comedy territory, and aside from a similar-esque scene, the movie feel like a continuation of the previous one but not a redo, and it manages to fully give Thor a proper character arc.

Problem is that tonal unconsistency rears its ugly head here, as the “eros and thanatos” combo never fully finds a proper balance, so while the film works, it does feel kinda disjointed and in turn it’s hard to fully engage with what’s going on, even if funny, entertaining or emotional. Some tired comedy beats and some (arguably inevitable) franchise fatigue only exacerbate things further.

A shame, because the villain it’s pretty decent, Waltiti flair is still in full force here, but i also can’t deny that Thor: Love And Thunder feels messy, at times unfocused and ultimately it’s decent fun but kinda disappointing and oddly forgettable.

[EXPRESSO] Doctor Strange in The Multiverse Madness (2022) | Mystics From NY

FIY: I’m one of those that didn’t watch Wandavision before heading into this for many reasons (including not really caring nor intending to pay or use Disney +), and i was right in assuming that i didn’t need to… as they give you just enough info to follow the plot of this movie without spoiling that show or anything. It’s a perfected science of its own at this point.

THAT out of the way, i was honestly looking forward to this one, having liked a lot the first Dr. Strange movie, and having Sam Raimi on board as director for the sequel did please me indeed.

The plot sees Dr. Strange deal further with the concept of the multiverse, as a girl with the power to travel to different parallel universes appears in NY being followed by an eldritch monster, sent by Wanda The Scarlet Witch to kidnap the girl. Helped by his fellow mystics and the new girl, Strange will have to find a way to stop Wanda while traversing various realities in the multiverse…

While it starts a bit ho-hum, it does “gear up” and delivers on the expected package of magic, mystical brawls, multiverse jumping (used for what could or could be not “cameos”, let’s just put it like that), wizard duels, and i’m glad Raimi was allowed – to the extent a Marvel movie will find comfortable – to lean more on the horror elements and how he likes to handle them, which helps this entry in standing out a bit more.

Overall, Dr Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, does deliver on the title, it’s pretty fun, and it thankfully not bloated as some other Marvel movies in terms of runtime.

Nothing “great”, but i quite liked it.

Mileage might and will vary, as usual.

[EXPRESSO] Spider Man: Far From Home (2021) | Multiverse Mayhem

I feel kinda bad for this part of the new Spider Man series because… yeah, let’s get this out immediatly, Marvel themselves already did it years ago as one of the best animated movies i’ve seen in a while, a miracle all the way that worked as well as it did also thanks to be being not bound to the fucking MCU. And that is finally getting a 2 part sequel too, really looking forward to those.

This one…. yeah, whatever, guess i’ll have to watch it so we can get over it, might be even fun.

This one follows directly from the ending of Far From Home, where Mysterio revealed Spider Man’s real identity being Peter Parker and framed him as a murderer. As he, his friends and family have trouble living with this false stigma, Peter asks Doctor Strange to cast a spell in order to make everyone forget that Peter Parker IS Spider Man, but something goes wrong and multiverse portals invade this reality/continuity, bringing a lot of well known faces from the Spider Man series……

Given the existence of Into The Spiderverse and me not liking too much the new MCU Spider Man movies…. you can color me surprised, because this one was incredibly easy to mishandle, but to my surprise it manages to balance the fanservice and the many villains with a story that actually makes this Peter Parker go through some decisive character development, with a lot at stake and some meaningful consequences.

It’s “also” quite fun, with some funny moments that actually don’t feel forced, there just because the Marvel algorhythm requires some quirky (but not TOO quirky, risque or creative) comedy bits.

Definitely the one i’ve enjoyed the most out of these MCU Spider Man movies, and arguably the better one overall.