MARVEL — current posts — Fantasy/Animation

What Makes a Loki a Loki?: Managing Multiplicity in Loki (2021)

Marvel Studios’ most recent foray into television content, Loki (Michael Waldron, 2021) marks the start of a new phase in the development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – one guided by multiplicity. Multiplicity is an inherent feature of franchised media products, an inevitable consequence of the sharing of intellectual property sources across multiple sites of production. In its attempt to unleash multiplicity upon the MCU, Loki engages in a metacommentary on the structures of industrialised creativity.

EDITORIALMadeleine HunterJuly 30, 2021MULTIVERSE, MARVEL, NARRATIVE, FICTIONAL WORLDS, TELEVISIONComment

Captain Marvel: Between Comics and Film

What’s in a flerken? Having watched Goose regurgitate the tesseract at the post-credit close of Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019), I immediately wanted to know: what’s in a flerken? Finding my answer meant looking to the comics, in particular the reboots of Captain Marvel in print by both Kelly Sue DeConnick and Margaret Stohl. I have to admit to not learning much more about flerkens, alien creatures which appear to resemble ginger cats, but DeConnick and Stohl’s revisionings did give me a lot more insight into Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel as a contemporary woman who struggles with her history.

EDITORIALAylish WoodAugust 21, 2020SUPERHERO, COMIC BOOK, ADAPTATION, SPECIAL EFFECTS, MARVELComment

Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019)

Now that the proverbial dust has settled on Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, 2019), the fallout from the almost-three hour epic can well and truly begin. To immediately follow a film that is, to date, the highest-grossing film of 2019 and now the second-highest of all time (behind, of course, Avatar [James Cameron, 2009]) was always a tricky, if not borderline impossible, act. Yet coming a mere three months after Endgame and just two years (and six films) after Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017), the next instalment Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019) does a more than admirable job of taking up the reins left slack in a post-Endgame world.

FILM REVIEWChristopher HollidayJuly 19, 2019SUPERHERO, MARVEL, FRANCHISE, DIGITAL, CGIComment

The Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Superhero’s Ambivalent Relationship with Technology

The term ambivalence was coined by the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe two opposite ideas that coexist in uneasy union. While superheroes are often understood as narratives of assurance, comfort and security, it is ambivalence, or even anxiety, that provides the more useful concept when it comes to interrogating the dynamics at work in the cinematic superhero phenomena. This is particularly the case in its relationship with technology, both aesthetically and philosophically.

EDITORIALDavid G. HughesMay 10, 2019SUPERHERO, MARVEL, FANTASY, ANIMATION, TECHNOLOGYComment

Review: Captain Marvel (Anna Boden and Ryan Flack, 2019)

Running parallel to the ongoing battles about women superheroes is another that flashes across the surface and into the depths of Captain Marvel (Anna Boden and Ryan Flack, 2019): a fight about the status of animation within the blockbuster (Fig. 1). Christopher Holliday (2018), Stephen Prince (2012) and Paul Wells (2008) are among those to have discussed the integration of CG animation technologies into the fabric of Hollywood filmmaking, in guises as diverse as character animation and digital grading.

FILM REVIEWRayna DenisonMarch 15, 2019SUPERHERO, MARVEL, DIGITAL, CGIComment