School of Movies

The Fantastic Four

[School of Movies 2022]

For years this seminal, game-changing Silver Age comic book has seemed damned-near impossible to adapt into a movie, with all four efforts failing resoundingly at getting major audiences to care about Marvel's First Family. And yet Pixar did it twice with the serial numbers filed off and the clear vision of Brad Bird.

So Sharon and I look back on those movies, two that we've covered in the past just based on their own merits (2005 and 2007) and two others whose productions deserve delving into (1994 and 2015), and we compare them against the comic itself from various periods (Lee & Kirby, Byrne, Simonson, Morrison, Waid, Straczynski, Hickman) and not only speculate on how they could fit into the MCU, but celebrate their characters (along with Doom, Silver Surfer and Galactus) in a way that film has been unable to, at least to date. This episode took a hell of a lot of research and is richly prepared for all of you.

Our shortlist of recommended reading is as follows...

1. FF #48-52 ('The Coming of Galactus', 'This Man, This Monster', The Black Panther debuts)

2. FF #262 ('The Trial of Reed Richards')

3. FF #334-346 ('Into the Time Stream')

4. 1234 (Limited 4-issue series)

5. Vol. 3 #67 - Vol. 1 502 (4-issue 'Unthinkable' arc)

6. #538-543 ('Civil War')

7. #570-572 ('Solve Everything')

Thor: Love and Thunder

[School of Movies 2022]

Back when this was announced there was all kinds of excitement. Thor, much like his buddy Hulk was a character it seemed like Marvel took a while to get a handle on, relative to the duo of immediate home runs with Iron man and Captain America. The first film was a relative success, he contributed greatly to the chemistry of The Avengers, but then underwhelmed in The Dark World and felt vestigial in Age of Ultron.

But Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth's 2017 Ragnarok reinvention revealed a hilarious and savvy rogue still with his roots in the earnest early performances. This was followed by two wildly popular Avengers outings which harnessed a palpable rage and grief (though not without a problematic amount of fat-shaming). This evolving dimensionality made it seem like it was worth a victory lap, bringing Waititi back in. The spotlighting of Jane Foster and Natalie Portman's unexpected returned to the series adapting Jason Aaron's recent comic run. 

It seemed very likely we would get an evolution of what the world saw Thor as. Especially considering the villain this time was largely sympathetic, as a simple man entirely let down by a pantheon of absurdly privileged complacent gods...

And then we watched the movie.

Guests:

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Austin Wilden @WC_WIT of Wits-Writing

Ms. Marvel (MCU)

[School of Everything Else 2022]

This is our second show on Kamala Khan. The first was all the way back in 2017 when we talked about her first comic miniseries. I've re-released that show on the podcast feed so these two can be companion pieces. 

The Disney+ miniseries delivered almost exactly what we had been hoping for all these years. A bright, funny, courageous Pakistani-American girl hero. Instantly iconic and clearly in love with all things Marvel. 

We did not expect the drama to be quite so naturalistic and poignant, the family to be so much more interesting than the interdimensional shenanigans or the gut punch of the 1947 Partition of India which stands as the centrepiece. This real life event created millions of immigrant refugee stories and generational hurt across a cultural divide which exists to this day. 

Also the soundtrack is amazing!

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

[School of Movies 2022]

This one hit us mere hours after the finale of Moon Knight. It has been six years since the first Doctor Strange hit in late 2016. To the point where the dangling threads of that film are ignored, because Stephen has made four more appearances since then, and been instrumental in deliberately instigating The Snap.

But even that is mostly pushed to the side as this film becomes the follow-up to the first Disney+ Marvel TV show, WandaVision. And the handling of that factor by dream director for many; Evil Dead and Spider-Man-helmer Sam Raimi has caused this to become one of the most polarising of MCU movies. 

We needed several months to think hard about it, and this is what we really wanted to say. Many thanks to our brilliant guests for lending perspective and also putting into understandable words how time and dimensional travel seems to work within Marvel's Earth 616 (movies and TV not comics). 

Guests:

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Moon Knight

[School of Everything Else 2022]

A risky venture on Marvel's part. More than one might imagine. This is a character who is mostly known in the comics as a street-level supernatural vigilante (somewhere between Batman and Blade) and from a meme where that nerd Dracula owes him money.

But more than that, in this TV miniseries, he's a Jewish superantihero played by a Guatemalan, directed by an Egyptian, and penned by the writer of the cursed 2015 Fantastic Four reboot that everyone forgot. And it deals chiefly over everything else, even the mythology... with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

And when you get to the end, after all the theatrics and horror, after all the mummies and costumes and screaming and creepy cults, the abiding memory is a pair of distinct and sympathetic performances from Oscar Isaac. The Moon Knight is almost incidental! 

Join us now as we talk the ups and downs of this strange journey.

Indiegogo for "The Bludgeoning": https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-bludgeoning-working-title#/

Guests

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Nick Jaragosky: SOM Discord regular and occasional guest on the Commanderin' MTG podcast  

Hawkeye

[School of Everything Else 2022]

Bouncing back from What If? Marvel came out swinging with a street-level Christmas crime caper. This served the dual purposes of finally giving the least-loved Avenger some substantial spotlighting, and ghosts of his past to deal with, and introducing us to a brand new Hawkeye in the form of Kate Bishop.

Hailee Steinfeld was offered the role the moment she walked into casting director Sara Halley Finn's office. Kevin Feige had seen her in Bumblebee, Spider-Verse, Dickinson (and hopefully Edge of Seventeen, which is splendid) and knew already that she had the charm and pep and serious acting chops to be a young Avenger.

But is this six-episode miniseries the ideal place for her story, or did it get lost among the scrabble for screen time from some seriously charismatic appearances?

Guests:

Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door @MightyGregDoge

Spider-Man: No Way Home

[School of Movies 2021]

A lively and enthusiastic end of one trilogy and setup for a different flavour of future web-slinging, this thing drew gasps, cheers and applause, even from my British audience, and we don't cheer for anything except football.

This is a really special and important Spider-Man movie. Beyond all hyperbole and landmark moments in comic-book style crossovers it is a story about the serious toll that being Spidey extracts from everyone under that signature mask.

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod

Nathan Eastram @bertnerdtram These two also of Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

Austin Wilden @WC_WIT of Wits-Writing 

Nama Chibitty of our Discord @NamaTheNerd 

The Eternals

[School of Movies 2021]

This one came out surprisingly contentious. What was originally, seemingly set to be Marvel powering back into Phase 4 with a new group of superbeings now that The Avengers are on garden leave, actually turned out to be quite a risky endeavour. It's a Space-Odyssey-scaled combination of metaphysical rumination, mature interpersonal relationships, deliberately diverse casting and a hot property award-winning Chinese, female director with a very personal pitch. It's also got epic fights, giant monster greeblies and laser eyes.

And at least in terms of box office and critical praise it seems right now like this gamble hasn't worked. A lot of folks bounced right off Eternals. We ourselves were thrown by many elements, but ultimately warmed to it, and we suspect this one might grow in appreciation over time. Find out possible reasons why, right here. 

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

What If? (Season 1)

[School of Everything Else 2021]

For the first time ever, a direct MCU production really threw me. We've had underachieving films in the past, like the listless Thor: The Dark World, the dramatically unexplorative Ant-Man and The Wasp and starting out with a really serious challenge for our flawed hero before dropping the PTSD ball in the third act with Iron Man 3.

Thanos was troublingly handled in Infinity War and a year of imbecilic agreement in the myopic viewpoints of a sympathetically-cast abuser only made that worse. WandaVision, Falcon and Loki all had their missed marks in otherwise solid packages.

But this one was wildly uneven. It had two episodes I actively despise, a couple I absolutely adore and a bunch of fluff in the middle. And so that we end on a high note we will be scaling the Marvel mountain in that order.

Guests:

Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door @MightyGregDoge

Austin Wilden from our Discord @WC_WIT

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

[School of Movies 2021]

One of the first huge blockbuster movies made by a western studio with a largely eastern cast, this one really underlines my abiding contention that "Superhero" is not a genre, and neither, as it turns out is "Martial Arts". Would we say Boogie Nights was a "Sex Movie?". Genre is an increasingly blurry construct to help marketers and those who want to know what to watch. 

Luckily for us all though this particular Martial Arts Superhero movie is fantastic. Once again, we urge everyone to be as safe as possible and not take risks. But even if you aren't able to see this in the cinema, you have something special to look forward to on your TV screen in the near future, and while we discuss what happens we can't really spoil the movie for you. It's too rich and nourishing for that. 

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast