Movie Review: The Marvels

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Attempting to work as a follow-up to “Captain Marvel,” “Ms. Marvel” and “WandaVision” while still telling its own story, “The Marvels” is a mostly fun film thanks to some fun character dynamics and decent action sequences. The plot is mostly so-so and does just enough to propel things along. The threat isn’t really clearly defined, and the villain is pretty one-note. Thankfully, the team up of the lead heroes is pretty solid. There’s a nice mix of levity and emotional moments between the three women to make them all likable. The supporting cast is solid, adding even more levity and heart to the movie. (Although some of the newer characters get a lot of screen time despite not being all that interesting.) The humor in the rest of the film tends to go a little overboard, although outer space setting helps ground some of the really bizarre material. The special effects really aren’t all that great, with plenty of obvious CG and green screen work. Thanks to a shorter runtime, the film wraps up just as the story is wearing out its welcome. There is a mid-credits scene that looks to have major implications down the road. I didn’t stick around, but apparently there’s also a humorous audio gag after the end of all the credits.

**1/2 out of *****

TV Review: Loki (Season 2)

**This review contains some minor SPOILERS**

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Coming in hot from the conclusion of season 1, “Loki” season 2 takes a big detour to tell a seemingly more mundane story. Thanks to fun characters and the show’s trademark quirkiness, it’s a fun watch, but it lacks momentum and urgency till the final episodes.

Last season of “Loki” ended with the threat of Kang the Conqueror right on the TVA’s doorstep, but we pretty quickly find out that he won’t be much of an issue and the season focuses more on what seems to be a minor problem…which escalates to a season-long crisis. While each episode is entertaining on its own, the main plot feels weak, and they feel like they struggle at times to keep all the characters relevant to the story.

While this is absolutely Loki’s show, and the season finale proves this more than anything, his bromance with Mobius is still front and center. Mobius gets some decent material outside of his time with Loki, but the payoff isn’t as strong as they hoped it would be. Hunter B-15 and Casey return as strong supporting characters, but they struggle to give Renslayer anything meaningful to the plot. Her plan is murky at best, and really never leads to anything. The same can be said of Kang variant Victor Timely. He seems to be central to the big picture, but in the end he’s kind of a red herring. (Not to mention Jonathan Major’s distracting performance that detracts from the character’s appeal.) Miss Minutes returns and the show digs into her darker side. There’s some potential in her story, but in the end there’s no real conclusion to it. The show gains a spectacular new character with O.B. His offbeat personality really adds some fun to the series. However, the biggest disappointment is Sylvie. Despite the love story between her and Loki driving season 1, it’s a non-factor here and she’s mostly pushed into the background.

The show looks fantastic, with great set designs and movie-caliber special effects. There are some really cool sci-fi concepts at play, and some are executed really well.

Despite promising to start off with a bang, Loki takes quite a detour for a fairly mundane plot about stopping a different catastrophe. While this story seems to take some seemingly meaningless twists and turns, the finale truly feels like a payoff to this new Loki’s journey.

*** out of *****

TV Review: Doom Patrol (Season 4)

**This review contains some minor SPOILERS**

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In its fourth and final season, the always quirky “Doom Patrol” stumbles with disjointed storytelling and a bit too many moments of character arc regressions to tell an impactful final story. However, the characters’ have their emotional connection to the audience and their trials and tribulations are still compelling.

The main plot suffers from having two seemingly unconnected plotlines, and while typically one could expect these to come together properly by the end of the season, they never do in a satisfactory way. The season premier sets the stage with the were-butt apocalypse, and the first mention of the coming of Immortus. While each of these arcs get a decent buildup, the were-butts end up feeling like they were forgotten and then shoehorned into the final batch of episodes as an afterthought.

As far as the individual character arcs, they weren’t as strong as some of the previous seasons. Cliff’s was the most frustrating as we once again see that he really hasn’t learned anything and is stuck in his self-destructive ways. Larry’s story seemed to lack direction at first, but despite feeling a little rushed, the love story with Mr. 104 allowed Larry some decent character growth. Jane’s own love story was not as well executed, with her connection to Shelley feeling like a nice continuation of their flirtation from last season being dropped abruptly and replaced with an out of nowhere tease of a romance between her and Casey. Vic’s desire to distance himself from Cyborg felt weak at first, but once he explained why he felt the way he did, it made more sense. (But the resolution to his dilemma wasn’t too satisfying.) Both Rita and Laura’s stories were pretty intertwined, and they alternated between emotional reconciliation and some painful regression. As far as the big bad goes, Immortus was finally revealed late in the season and was a pretty interesting twist. But the character was such a wildcard it ended up killing the momentum of third act.

As usual, the show had some fun and trippy characters and locations, with pretty good special effects helping to bring it all together. The humor was once again the show’s strong point, but the emotional moments also continued to land. And while there had been musical/dance numbers in previous seasons, the unexpected musical episode worked well and didn’t feel remotely out of place with all the other crazy stuff that happens on this series.

The final season of “Doom Patrol” had a hard time overcoming two major story arcs that never truly meshed and some interesting character arcs that never got paid off. While the show didn’t wrap things up as well as it could have, there were some beautiful and bittersweet moments that helped send this band of misfits off.

**1/2 out of *****