Black Widow
dir. Cate Shortland (2021)
Not bad, as far as superhero action flicks go. Some character depth is allowed to coexist alongside all the biffy-baffy stunt work, and the actors—most notably Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh, but also the support cast—make the most of it.
Morbius
dir. Daniel Espinosa (2022)
Jared Leto and Matt Smith do rather well in the Jekyll-side of their performances. Unfortunately, the Hyde-sides are beyond preposterous. Simplistic as it is, the film doesn’t even bother with closure, merely tailing off into some unfathomable prelude to interconnected Marvel bollocks.
Fantastic Four: Doomgate
by Jeffrey Lang (Pocket Star, 2008); audiobook read by Jeffrey Kafer (Dreamscape Media, 2021)
A workmanlike novel of the Marvel Universe, splitting the Fantastic Four up and pitting them against an insidiously powerful if anticlimactic new threat. Lang’s focus on characterisation is welcome, as is the more gritty approach, albeit that the prose is merely functional.
Ant-Man
dir. Peyton Reed (2015)
Deliberately as formulaic a superhero movie as possible, scripted with a view to then humorously undercutting audience expectations. There are genuinely funny (dare we say, laugh-out-loud) moments, but in terms of spoof Ant-Man’s straight parts needed to be played with more conviction.