The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

You would think setting The Fantastic Four: First Steps on a kitsch Austin Powers alternate Earth (after the 90s cartoon series (but with monochromatic blue replacing the lurid Austin Powers palette)) would help make this Marvel superhero movie a nostalgic joy, but rather than zing, it feels inert, ponderous, empty even, despite the cartoonish action, but helping fill the time is Julia Garner in another steely performance as a surfboarding metal bad guy, and while Pedro Pascale never fully inhabits his character, he is easy to look at as Reed Richards, the mild-mannered brainiac head of a superhero family.

★★★☆☆

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Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

This seems to be Marvel's boysy 90s action tv-style superhero series - think A-team's all-male cast, its leather jackets, grey military bases, tanks and fighter jets, and lots of good old-fashioned fisticuffs - and while there's special effects, of course, they are toned down - the bad guy wears a hoodie and simply has a painted-green face for much of the movie - which makes this story of a mind-controlled White House being led into war an okay change from Marvel's otherwise younger cartoony smart-arse superhero series.

★★★☆☆

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

This Marvel superhero series distinguishes itself from all the other Marvel superhero series with its catalogue of immature characters exhibiting only the basest of functions, so the space-adventuring troupe of GotG number 1 and 2 continue to do 1s and 2s in this number 3, and like Groot's one note repeated ad nauseum (*i am Groot"), we see these base character-identifiers over and over again over two hours, and it is tiring - adults like me might like to daydream about more interesting things like what is behind the movie's central thesis, expounded gently but repeatedly, that, "Good dog," is better than, "Bad!"

★★★☆☆

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The Marvels (2023)

There's a lot of "well, just because" logic in the plot of this superhero movie which teams Brie Larsson's Captain Marvel with two other characters with similar names - I don't remember who they are or what they are called but can tell you one was young and annoying and the other serious and dull - and this threesome must prevent a villain finding a powerful pair of stones/rocks/keys, but apart from that and the bemusement I felt (I never understood for example why or how the three heroes were physically interchanging during fights, or why it made any difference), nothing else about this run-of-the-mill superhero  business stuck in my mind beyond the end credits.

★★☆☆☆

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