Welcome back to Comic Book Guy, where Hollywood's finest insist on turning every spandex-wearing misfit into a billion-dollar franchise, and we have no choice but to sift through the wreckage. This time we are looking as Season 5’s lineup, featuring a pizza-loving dog, an overly serious faceless dude, and a time-traveling frat bro who somehow manages to make saving the President from an assassination attempt all about himself. Let’s dive in, shall we?
HAWKEYE
Retirement’s going great for Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) — until he realizes his new neighborhood is overrun with crime, and the Tracksuit Mafia are the least of his problems. What follows is two hours of slapdash urban vigilantism, awkward mentor-mentee chemistry with Katherine Langford’s Kate Bishop, and a dog with a pizza addiction. The script juggles an overwhelming number of characters, with Bobbi Morse (Adrianne Palicki) and Barney Barton (Steve Zahn) popping in like they stumbled off a Hawkeye Family Reunion sitcom. Even the final act, which sees Clint teaming up with Mockingbird, Barney, and Kate to stop Simon Pegg’s Elihas Starr from unleashing a deadly ray projector, feels like it’s trying too hard to assemble a ragtag “team” no one asked for. The action is fine, but the film’s half-hearted attempts at comedy fall flat more often than they hit. Thankfully this was the second-to-last attempt at an LRF writer attempting to work within Disney's MCU continuity, which led to nothing much other than immediate contradictions.
THE QUESTION: DARK TOMORROW
Nicolas Winding Refn cranks up the doom and gloom dial for The Question: Dark Tomorrow, delivering a moody, existential sequel that leans into the moral cesspool of Hub City. Ryan Gosling is still magnetic as Vic Sage, but the film’s nihilistic tone can feel oppressively bleak. Christina Hendricks gets more to do as Myra Connelly, now running for mayor, but the film bogs her down with a messy subplot involving her sham marriage and a cringe-worthy assassination attempt by her drunk husband. The big set piece—a tornado ripping through the city—is ambitious, but Sage missing his own vote to tie the election feels like the kind of symbolic moment the writers thought was deep but comes off as absurd. Still, the noir vibes and Kyle Chandler’s morally ambiguous cop Izzy O’Toole give the film a gritty edge. Refn’s style elevates this sequel, but you’ll leave the theater feeling like you need a shower.
BOOSTER GOLD
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller strike gold (pun intended) with this comedic, heartfelt take on Booster Gold. Billy Magnussen’s Michael Jon Carter is a self-absorbed, time-traveling goofball who bumbles his way into heroics with Scoot McNairy’s Blue Beetle as his unexpectedly touching foil. The humor is sharp, the references to 90s pop culture are a nostalgia overload, and Kumail Nanjiani’s Skeets is an absolute scene-stealer. The stuff with Travolta's Clinton at the end came off as too cheesy for me, but the rest of the film made up for it.
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