I'm late to this party. With Avengers: Endgame due out in the next couple weeks, I finally got around to seeing Captain Marvel. I had planned to see it with a friend the week after release, but illness and work got in the way, so we never made it out. Also, I just haven't been out to movies much since being blown away by Into the Spider-Verse -- seriously, it's out on home video and streaming, go watch it! There's a few other movies that I've been wanting to see, and I'm going to try really hard to not miss them in theaters. I'm really looking forward to Jordan Peele's new movie, Us, which I'm hoping to see this week or next. And apparently, DC's Shazam! might actually be good?!

But I finally had a weekend afternoon to myself, and decided to go to Captain Marvel, since my girlfriend didn't want to see it. As is par for the Marvel movies, it's good enough. Marvel has yet to produce a true flop, but I feel like Captain Marvel is a bit of a regression considering the studio's recent track record.

I like when the Marvel movies experiment with genre, but Captain Marvel remains a pretty standard fare origin story.

The big problem is that we're back to origin stories. Spider-Man: Homecoming smartly passed on re-re-telling the story of how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, and was all the better for it. Recent movies like Black Panther, Guardians vol. 2, and [especially] Infinity War, had moved beyond the dull origin stories and un-interesting, cookie-cutter villains to offer truly engaging and transcendent films. Captain Marvel kind of falls in with Doctor Strange as being a passable -- but ultimately skippable -- entry. At least it isn't as contradictory as Doctor Strange.

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A couple weeks ago, I heaped praise upon the Spectacular Spider-Man TV show, saying that it "might be the best media adaptation of Spider-Man, period!". I still believe that holds true, but Sony's Into the Spider-Verse definitely gives Spectacular a run for its money.

Spider-Verse isn't really an adaptation of any of the Spider-Man comics. Not the original Amazing comics, or even the more recent Ultimate comics. It's a completely original story featuring the modern Ultimate Spider-Man, Miles Morales, the son of an hispanic nurse and a black cop in New York. So in that sense, Spectacular remains the most faithful adaptation of the original 60's and 70's, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko comics featuring Peter Parker. I was kind of hoping to see a Josh Keaton Spectacular cameo in this film, but no such luck. Damnit, Sony, bring back Spectacular Spider-Man! Make it happen!

I also said in the Spectacular review that Spider-Man (and perhaps all comic adaptations) are best-suited to television shows in which the long-form, character-driven storytelling of comics can be allowed to play out. Into The Spider-Verse, however, proves that Spider-Man (and perhaps all comic adaptations) also work much better in animation! The animation here is fantastic. The images are crisp and vibrant, and they really "pop" to the point that the movie almost looks 3-D without actually watching it in 3-D. The action is fluid and kinetic. The character designs and costumes are all interesting (especially Spider-Gwen, Doctor Octopus, and Prowler). Kingpin's massive, hunchbacked visage kind of stands out as odd, considering that all the other characters have somewhat realistic body proportions. Everything else, however, looks really good!

Seriously, this movie's visuals will blow you away. I'm talking, like, remember how you felt when Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Toy Story came out. That's how good this movie looks.

Animation if crisp, vibrant, fluid, and kinetic.

Not only is it pretty to look at from a technical level, it's also ingeniously-imaginative. There's some reality-warping, dimension-hopping dreamscapes that put Doctor Strange and Inception to shame. Most of the action is semi-realistically drawn and animated, but certain action scenes go extra comic-bookey with brief still-images of comic-like panels, complete with sound effects and speech bubbles drawn on the screen. Peni Parker, Noir, and Spider-Pig all have their own distinct animation styles that blend in flawlessly with the rest. Peni and her robot mech are from a future Japan, and are drawn and animated in a distinctively anime style. Noir is drawn like penciled-in black-and-white. Spider-Pig is full-blown Merry Melodies cartoon.

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I have very mixed feelings about Iron Man 3.

On the one hand, the movie throws some very unexpected curve balls at the audience, and departs from other big-budget action movies by being a very thoughtful and introspective movie. It provided everything that Star Trek Into Darkness failed to deliver. If the people who wrote Iron Man 3 had been involved with writing Into Darkness, then that movie would have benefited greatly. Iron Man 3 succeeds because the writers are really trying to say things with their movie, even if they have to twist the audience's expectations and break a few eggs to do it.

On the other hand, the movie suffers from some pacing and script issues, and it blunders with its primary villain(s).

The core of the plot is about Stark coming to terms with the events of The Avengers and deciding if he can truly hang with genuine supermen and gods. It's a very introspective film (which is something that the Iron Man movies have been very good at). In fact, most of the movie revolves around Stark being forced to solve problems as a regular person, rather than being able to rely on a fancy, weaponized suit of armor.

Stark has reexamine his goals and objectives and try to figure out where he wants to draw the line regarding problems he can deal with, and problems he can't deal with, and also with whether or not he should deal with them. The internal conflict within the character is the primary moving for much of the movie's plot, and Robert Downy Junior pulls it all off with the grace and style that we've come to expect from him with this character.