Florence Pugh Archives - The Wide Screen

May 4, 2023

1st Trailer For “Dune: Part Two” Teases War On Arrakis

The massive success of Denis Villeneuve’s brutally austere sci-fi epic Dune made Paul Atreides a household name and put the desert planet of Arrakis on the map, something that no previous adaptation of Frank Herbert’s esoteric 1965 novel has managed to accomplish, so it should come as no surprise that Paul and his supporting cast of vaguely-characterized yet vividly real allies and antagonists will be returning to movie theaters later this year for Dune: Part Two, the middle-chapter of a planned trilogy (augmented by television spin-offs) that ought to ultimately surpass Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings in terms of scale – although something tells me that even Villeneuve will have a hard time convincing general audiences and many critics that capping off his trilogy with an adaptation of Dune Messiah, the first of Dune‘s increasingly bizarre sequels, was a smart move.

Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Zendaya as Chani, standing side-by-side against a dusty orange background, wearing matching gray, form-fitting, full-body uniforms. Paul holds a knife horizontally over his head in his right hand, and has a flowing black cape. — Paul Atreides and Chani | yahoo.com

Dune: Part Two, on the other hand, is a box-office hit just waiting to happen, and it’s not just because Zendaya will actually have screentime in this one. Assuming it stays fairly close to the source material (and my understanding is that Villeneuve doesn’t have any intention of diverging greatly from the narrative), Dune: Part Two will contain all the plot-beats expected of a finale, including a battle unlikely to be dwarfed anytime soon that most people looking no further than the book’s synopsis on Wikipedia would tell you is the culmination of the story’s driving conflict; the showdown between Paul Atreides and his father’s killer, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen of House Harkonnen. So I have no doubt that the vast majority of people leaving the theater come November 3rd will feel satisfied with what they will mistakenly perceive as the natural “ending” to the series, and that when they inevitably ask for spin-offs, what they won’t have in mind is what Frank Herbert wrote into Dune Messiah, a book that acts as a gatekeeper, denying most readers access to the rest of the series. My dim recollection is that I only made it through by page-skimming (I’m not proud of it, okay), and then I gave up less than halfway through Children Of Dune.

But Villeneuve’s Dune Messiah is still a long way away, and between then and now those of us who have read the books (or in my case, just enough of the books to say I tried, and little enough to prove I wasn’t a fan) will have plenty of time to prepare the film-only fans in our life for what’s ahead. In the short run it’s easy enough, deceptively easy, for anyone and everyone who watched Dune to predict where Dune: Part Two is headed, which is all to the film’s benefit. As you may remember, Dune ended with the remnants of House Atreides, a clique of conventionally attractive colonizers, scattered far-and-wide across the hostile deserts of Arrakis, which would be a fair and fitting ending to them all if only their successors weren’t the Harkonnens, an even worse bunch. But even in exile, Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica still think like colonizers. By choosing to hide amongst Arrakis’ indigenous people, the Fremen, Paul and Jessica are all but forcing them to choose a side in the coming war between the two Houses, though neither side is particularly concerned with what happens to the planet, much less the Fremen, as long as they come out on top.

As we see in the trailer, the Harkonnens have an obvious advantage when it comes to military might and the sheer amount of resources at their disposal. Crucially, they now control the flow of spice, a precious substance only found in the sands of Arrakis that enables space-travel and gives the planet its unparalleled value to the rest of the Known Universe, compelling the Emperor himself to kneel before its merchants. But Paul’s got something they haven’t got. Paul has worms.

Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha, standing with his back to the camera, silhouetted against a white oval in an otherwise darkly-lit room, holding two long knives loosely at his sides. He is bald, and his head is tilted downwards. He wears flexible armor, and a long skirt. — Feyd-Rautha | joblo.com

Let me rephrase that. Paul has giant worms. Nope, still not working. Paul has giant sandworms. Better? Better. The giant sandworms that slither deep beneath the surface of Arrakis, producing spice, are at the center of the intricate spider-web that is Dune‘s mythology, and learning how to ride them and communicate with them as the Fremen do is a transformative event in Paul Atreides’ life. My possibly controversial opinion about the sandworms is that no adaptation of Dune, neither Villeneuve’s nor Lynch’s, has ever successfully conveyed the staggering sense of enormity, grandeur, and mystery that accompanies every appearance of the sandworms in Frank Herbert’s novel, which has always disappointed the child in me who first read Dune (back when I was far too young to truly understand the book) solely for the sandworms, and who’s waited a long time to feel all those sensations again upon seeing them erupt from the sand. I don’t know if Villeneuve’s sandworms are too small, or too crusty-looking, or if I just dislike their design, but they remain the most underwhelming aspect of an otherwise stunning film.

Everything else on his Arrakis, everything man-made at least, is massive and majestic, from the sand-encrusted ziggurats that scrape against the heavens to the donut-shaped starships that transcend them. We see plenty more of that aesthetically distinct, Oscar-winning production design on display in the trailer for Dune: Part Two, and with so many new worlds and new areas of Arrakis to visit in the sequel it’s very likely that the team headed up by Patrice Vermette will find themselves nominated once more, alongside costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan, who have compiled a bleakly elegant wardrobe of prickly metallic gowns and headdresses for Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan, a minor character in the first book, excerpts of whose writing are quoted by the author as if they were historical sources. Austin Butler, inexplicably wearing a bald-cap and painted blindingly-white for the role of Feyd-Rautha, is a slightly tougher sell, but that’s just another example of Villeneuve’s style and my mental image not perfectly aligning.

Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, standing against a dark brown background with floating sand particles creating a hazy effect, wearing a metal, gem-encrusted cap and veil that clings to the sides of her face and extends down her neck, where it meshes into the collar of her tunic. — Princess Irulan | pinkvilla.com

But all quibbles aside, I’m excited to return to Arrakis, and now I want to hear your takes on the trailer, the new characters introduced, and the future of the franchise after Dune: Part Two. How far into the series can Villeneuve make it before mainstream audiences give up? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

Trailer Rating: 8/10

December 15, 2021

“Hawkeye” Episode 5 Finally Opens The Show’s Big Mystery Box

**SPOILERS FOR HAWKEYE EPISODE FIVE AHEAD!**

Today is an exciting day for fans of the short-lived but successful Marvel Netflix shows – Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, The Defenders, and that other one. If you mourned their abrupt cancellations, which happened in quick succession between late 2018 and early 2019, then the reveal that Vincent D’Onofrio’s iconic Kingpin is home for the holidays will come as a welcome Christmas miracle, regardless of how easy it was to predict (thanks in large part to D’Onofrio’s Twitter activity over the past few months). And if you’re hoping to see more Marvel Netflix characters pop up in the MCU, well, Hawkeye just opened the door.

But…there is a caveat. Until we see more of the MCU Kingpin than a grainy photo taken from a considerable distance (frankly, I wouldn’t have been able to say with certainty that it even was D’Onofrio if his name wasn’t listed in the credits), we still have no clue whether any of the events and storylines from the Marvel Netflix shows will make their way into the MCU canon, or if Marvel president Kevin Feige has handpicked a couple of actors he likes and has simply chosen to discard everything else and disregard the Netflix continuity. He would be well within his rights to do so, and it would be in Disney’s best interests not to give any attention to their streaming rival.

With the little we are given to mull on before the Hawkeye season finale next week, we can at least be certain that Kingpin is not in prison, so either he found a way to obtain his freedom after the events of Daredevil season three (which to be fair, would likely have happened anyway if the show ran for another season), or Daredevil is not canon. The answer will speak volumes about how Marvel plans to utilize other characters and actors from MCU-adjacent TV shows including Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., which drifted so far astray from the MCU canon in its last two seasons that a soft reboot approach may be the only viable option.

Oops, I found a way to make this about Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. again. My bad. But I can assure you that the meta mystery of what is and is no longer canon to the MCU is probably more interesting than the actual mystery unfolding throughout Hawkeye, which at this point is actually four or five separate mysteries all frantically jostling for screentime in a six-episode series. Even with a couple of story-threads loosely intertwined in this episode to provide the illusion of cohesion, our eyes are still led to the characters and subplots that keep bouncing in and out of the story like pinballs.

I was thoroughly prepared for Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) to fall into that latter category, right alongside the vintage Rolex watch of indeterminate origin that has already ceased to be relevant and the embarrassingly blatant red-herring wrapped up in the name of Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), a comics character with a long and illustrious history who deserved better. But where Dalton can do little with what he’s given except be charming (and to his credit, he does that so well that it’s been clear from the outset he’s not a criminal mastermind), Pugh is given a supporting role in this episode that she utilizes excellently.

As a temporary comedic foil to Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), Pugh’s Belova fits snugly into the show – providing the same kind of chipper, light-hearted banter that Kate liked to bounce off of Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) before the two parted ways at the end of episode four, and giving Kate a much-needed opportunity to assume a more stoic stance for once. Pugh’s Russian-ish accent still needs work (although the inconsistency of it might be part of what makes this performance so endearing), but whether she’s rambling on about hot sauce or mapping out her first sightseeing trip through NYC, her Belova is an absolute delight.

And although her comedic moments are some of the highlights of this week’s episode, they wouldn’t be nearly as funny or as vaguely uncomfortable if Pugh weren’t simultaneously conveying in quiet undertones that Belova is still very much a threat. She matter-of-factly states that she’s going to kill Clint Barton one way or another, and if I trusted Marvel to actually follow through with that, I’d believe her. They’ve been getting bolder in the past year, but I don’t think they’re at the point of casually killing off original Avengers in a holiday-themed Disney+ series…yet.

If Clint does make it out of this alive, it’s not going to be for lack of trying on the part of his enemies. We learn that Eleanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga), Marvel’s least-surprising surprise villain since WandaVision‘s Agatha Harkness, was behind the hiring of Yelena Belova to kill Clint, and meanwhile Kingpin hasn’t even unleashed the most dangerous weapons in his arsenal. Echo (Alaqua Cox) and the Tracksuit Mafia are also out there, but Echo takes on Clint a third time in this episode and again walks away soundly defeated. I’ve been disappointed in some of the decisions Hawkeye has made with her character, but it’s starting to get really frustrating.

And with the revelation that Echo’s desire for vengeance is being aimed at the wrong person anyway, her storyline feels increasingly pointless except to introduce the character and establish what will presumably be the through-line of her own Disney+ series. It’s accurate to the comics that Kingpin gave the order to have Echo’s father murdered, not Clint Barton as Echo had believed for much of her life – but there’s no emotional weight to that reveal, for the audience who still doesn’t know the MCU versions of these characters all that well (or in Kingpin’s case, at all).

There was one flashback to Echo’s childhood in episode three, focused on her relationship with her father – but no scenes or lines that established the largely one-sided bond of trust and loyalty that formed between Echo and Kingpin after the death of her father, nothing to earn the dramatic reveal in this episode that’s framed as if it’s heart-wrenching and instead comes across as hollow. Hawkeye has been so busy poorly keeping Kingpin a secret, it forgot that this part of Echo’s character arc is dependent on knowing something – anything – about their relationship.

I feel sorry for Cox, because she clearly deserves a story that can actually focus on what she and her character need. Some of Marvel’s mystery boxes have been disappointing or mishandled (the Power Broker reveal in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier comes to mind), but this is the first mystery that’s clashed with the rest of the story to this degree, and it’s not hard to see why. Even leaving aside the fact that it hasn’t exactly been easy to figure out what the main mystery is with so many going on, they’re all thematically estranged from Hawkeye‘s early ruminations on what it means to be a hero, and the dangers of putting people on pedestals.

Hawkeye feels like it ought to have been the story of the Ronin legacy that haunts Clint Barton, and the fact that this episode is actually titled Ronin would seem to reflect that. But instead of building on that foundation, the show has instead tied itself into knots chasing random Rolex watches and Kingpin Easter-eggs. I’d say the finale could sort it all out, but honestly I think there’s a stronger chance that Yelena Belova kills Clint Barton on Christmas Day.

Episode Rating: 7.9/10

December 8, 2021

With Episode 4, “Hawkeye” May Have Bitten Off More Than It Can Chew

**SPOILERS FOR HAWKEYE EPISODE FOUR AHEAD!**

Hawkeye is doing an awful lot of meandering and walking in circles for a show that only has two episodes left in its first season and about a dozen subplots and mysteries currently ongoing, none of which is any closer to a satisfying resolution now than they were last week. And rather than checking items off the list in preparation for the finale, Hawkeye just keeps adding more, clarity and coherency be damned. One-upping last week’s Kingpin tease, this week it’s Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) who enters and exits again just as quickly, apparently realizing that she’s so far removed from the actual plot that there’s no reason for her to be here.

Of course, I’m sure Hawkeye will find some role for her to fill in the finale, because you don’t hire Academy Award-nominee Florence Pugh for a single action sequence in which she’s only unmasked for roughly twenty seconds (well, you shouldn’t; I wouldn’t put it past Marvel to do so, though). But unless it’s revealed that she’s somehow connected to Kingpin or is also going after the mysterious Rolex wrist-watch that everybody and their mother suddenly wants, I feel pretty confident that her only purpose is to continue the storyline set up in the Black Widow post-credits scene.

And that’s great and all, and I am interested to see where that story goes, but…can it wait until after we’ve finished the story that’s actually going on right now? Leaving aside the fact that Yelena will mean nothing to people who haven’t watched Black Widow or its post-credits scene, in-universe she still has no personal significance to Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) or Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) either, so she’s just another mystery for them to add to their steadily growing pile.

Perhaps the even greater issue is that with all these story threads hopelessly tangled up together like Christmas lights, the writers and directors can’t seem to decide on just one that takes priority over any of the others, even for a single episode. The aforementioned Rolex wrist-watch that is so crucial to this episode’s final action sequence, and which Kate recovers from Echo (Alaqua Cox)’s apartment after a harrowing home intrusion? This is our first time even seeing the damn thing again since episode one, and we still have no clue how it connects back to the plot.

Just for fun, let’s play along with the mystery being built around this wrist-watch, which actually does seem to have personal significance for Clint at least. He claims it belongs to an old colleague of his who’s been off-the-grid for a while, and that it could blow their cover if it fell into the wrong hands. Whoever sent Echo and the Tracksuit Mafia to specifically locate this watch in episode one (probably Kingpin) is presumably also aware of this, and there’s a strong chance that Echo now knows the wrist-watch’s secrets, having been in possession of it for a while.

But does the wrist-watch’s original owner have any relevance to the narrative of Hawkeye, or is this another tease for future MCU storylines? My immediate assumption was that the watch belonged to Steve Rogers, because the question of where he went in the aftermath of Endgame is not only hotly debated among fans but apparently in-universe as well, something that we saw in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier. I’ve also seen it theorized that the watch belonged to Bobbi Morse, better known by her alias Mockingbird in both the comics and in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., or to Laura Barton (Linda Cardellini).

The latter theory is intriguing, because from a storytelling and thematic standpoint it makes more sense for the wrist-watch’s owner to be Clint’s wife, running from her own past as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, than for it to be a completely new character to the MCU like, say, Mockingbird (much as I want to see the latter character return, played by Adrianne Palicki of course), or a character we likely wouldn’t ever see on Disney+ to begin with, like Chris Evans as the elder Steve Rogers.

But I also have a hard time believing that Clint wouldn’t have returned speedily to be by his wife’s side if he suspected she was in that much danger, or that Hawkeye will turn out to be centered around a character who has only appeared in the show on the other end of phone conversations, or that someone of Kingpin’s high status would go to such great lengths to try and find one retired S.H.I.E.L.D. agent – unless Laura is in possession of some highly-classified information. And if that’s the case, then what is the point of everything else going on in this show?

While Clint has an obscure connection to this wrist-watch, a personal connection with Echo and through her a tangential connection to Kingpin, it’s Kate Bishop whose sprawling subplot feels like the heaviest baggage that this slim series has to carry. Even though the murder of Armand Duquesne has been completely forgotten, and Kate has yet to do any real sleuthing into her soon-to-be stepfather Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), we’re constantly being reminded in casual tones that Jack is possibly a murderer, probably the Swordsman, and definitely a corrupt and shady businessman regardless.

Meanwhile, Vera Farmiga’s Eleanor Bishop is taking a long time to properly materialize into the criminal mastermind that we all know she is behind her warm and friendly façade, and it’s starting to get a little embarrassing for both Farmiga (she’s doing the best she can with this role, I’ll give her that) and especially for Hawkeye‘s writers, who seem to think they’re being very clever by using Jack as an obvious red herring and an ineffective distraction from Eleanor’s evil antics, when in fact the only real question at this point is whether Eleanor murdered Armand herself or got Jack to do it for her.

The link between these tales of two cities is Kingpin, who stands in Colossus fashion with one foot in the dark and treacherous underworld in which Clint operates, and with the other in the glittery high society and intrigue into which Kate was born. But my fear that he would overshadow the entire series as more and more of him was gradually revealed each week proved to be unfounded, as he’s entirely absent from this episode. Now I find myself longing for any character who could bridge the gap between Hawkeye‘s split narratives.

At the very least, we still have Clint and Kate themselves…well, at least until the end of this episode, when Clint decides to send Kate away and reject her help because now and only now, after being beaten half to death by the Tracksuit Mafia and stealing a car and jumping off a bridge together, he’s finally decided that it’s too dangerous for Kate to continue playing at being a superhero. There’s a touching moment where Clint nearly loses Kate in similar fashion to Natasha Romanoff that helps sell the big dramatic break-up, but we all know they’ll reunite in the finale to take down Echo, or Eleanor, or Jack, or Yelena, or all of the above.

In the meantime, I fear that without the light-hearted banter between Clint and Kate, Hawkeye might not work as well as it has up until this point. Kate on her own has proven to still be every bit as entertaining as she is when paired up with Clint (she’s the one with the Pizza Dog, after all), but Renner’s Clint sucks the joy and energy out of even comedic moments, and without Kate to keep him on his toes, I fear he’ll be back to the same old routine.

And I mean that in more ways than one. Clint’s got the precious wrist-watch now, and the Ronin suit and sword that he came for in the first place. But after this episode, his objective has changed from evading Echo and the Tracksuit Mafia to stopping them once and for all. And although theoretically it’s to save Echo herself from straying down the same path that Clint took after Infinity War, I can’t help but wonder if this mission will dredge up any of the bloodlust and reckless desire for justice that powered Clint while he hid behind the Ronin mask for five years. Maybe what Echo needs is to see firsthand what she could easily become.

Yelena is the wild-card in the middle of all of this, because she’s on her own totally separate misguided mission for vengeance against Clint, and she seems a lot more ruthless than Echo – based on what we’ve seen from her character in Black Widow, and on how she handles herself in battle here, during the epic four-way fight that caps off the episode. Hilariously, she and Echo land a few blows on each other, neither realizing that they share a common goal. Echo is soundly defeated, which is a little unfortunate. So far she hasn’t had that awesome action beat I think we all want from her, and that I know Alaqua Cox can deliver.

But after her incredible introductory scene, Yelena spends a few seconds onscreen out of her spider-eye mask (which I’m extremely happy to see in live-action, although it doesn’t look quite as good as it does in the comics) before vanishing into the night. And even though I love Yelena, I don’t feel satisfied by this random tease that could just as easily have been inserted into any other episode or cut completely for all the difference it makes. It’s merely a reminder that Yelena is going to appear later, probably in a post-credits scene where this sort of story development ought to have happened anyway because it has nothing to do with this story.

Hawkeye is an advent calendar of character reveals and plot twists, but all the boxes have been opened at once, without rhyme or reason. Hopefully the show remembers that it has just as many boxes to close now, and that it’s running out of time to do so.

Episode Rating: 6.5/10

September 13, 2021

“Hawkeye” 1st Trailer Throws Some Holiday Cheer Our Way

As the only two members of the original Avengers line-up without either superhuman strength, durability, or flight, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye tended to get sidelined in most of the Avengers movies where the enemies were usually a little too big or overpowered to be taken down by an arrow or a well-aimed high-kick. In Black Widow’s case, the MCU got around this problem by finding a place for her in the comparatively grittier, more grounded Captain America franchise, and then when she finally got her own movie earlier this year they just…removed the problem entirely and retroactively gave her superhuman abilities even though that went against her whole character.

But Hawkeye never got the chance to be a major supporting player in anyone else’s franchise, and he never got a solo movie. Following the release of Black Widow, he is in fact the only remaining member of the original six Avengers not to have their own solo film (with the caveat that Hulk technically has one; not with Mark Ruffalo in the lead role, but the MCU has increasingly treated it as canon anyway). That’s not going to change anytime soon, I don’t think – but that’s okay, because Hawkeye’s getting the full Disney+ treatment.

And now that we have our first teaser trailer for the Hawkeye series, I have…well, a lot of thoughts, but the thing that really stood out to me from the trailer is that Hawkeye isn’t suddenly getting a power upgrade just because he’s the star of the show now. He’s a really good shot with a bow…that’s it. There’s plenty of cool stuff Marvel can do with that powerset alone (go watch all of Legolas’ scenes in The Lord Of The Rings if you don’t believe me), while still acknowledging Hawkeye’s obvious weaknesses.

Frankly, those weaknesses are a big part of what makes the character even halfway interesting, because he can’t rely on his own strength and agility to save him in a fight, like most of the other Avengers. He’s dependent on his bow and arrow, and without it he’s just a relatively average middle-aged guy. Even with it, the bow is only truly effective as a long-distance weapon – Hawkeye has some training with swords thanks to his work as Ronin, but he’s probably not gonna last long in a duel: something he learned the hard way when he fought Black Widow on Vormir, in a last-ditch effort to stop her from throwing herself off that hateful cliff.

And while a lot of Avengers purposefully put distance between themselves and their loved ones because they can’t balance their personal commitments with their duty to the world, Hawkeye is one of the few who’s always been adamant that he can’t abandon his wife and kids, and that he’d rather give up his place on the Avengers team than do so. That gives him another crucial weakness, but it’s also theoretically one of his greatest strengths because he’s so human. His empathy and capacity for understanding are admirable qualities that never really found an outlet in the movies, and I hope Hawkeye does a better job in that regard.

The series picks up probably about a year after Endgame, during the middle of the Christmas season, and the trailer and other marketing heavily leans into the holiday spirit. I’m talking snow flurrying over the title-cards, a genius Christmas-themed tagline (“This Holiday Season The Best Gifts Come With A Bow”), and a Rockefeller Center action set-piece, all set to “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year”. Marvel’s closest thing to a Christmas movie is probably Iron Man 3 (one of those “if it’s set at Christmas but doesn’t actually have anything to do with Christmas, is it a Christmas movie?” movies), so this is kind of a surprise.

Now, Hawkeye is set to premiere in November and run through December, so this is obviously just a case of good timing on one level: but thematically, I think sticking the most empathetic Avenger into the season of giving and caring makes sense and could lead to some interesting and emotional character moments, not only between Hawkeye and his family (whom he takes into the city to go see Rogers: The Musical, a Broadway retelling of Captain America’s life that features Hawkeye as a backup dancer – awkward), but also between him and his young protégé, Kate Bishop.

Kate Bishop’s arrival in the MCU is an important milestone, bringing us one step closer to the formation of a Young Avengers team. Just like in the comics, it appears she’s run away from home to follow in Hawkeye’s footsteps, which includes honing her skills as an archer and donning a version of his purple uniform. In the comics, Bishop also emulates the super-spy Mockingbird, but we have no idea if Marvel plans to bring that character back after her appearance in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., or if she would be played by Adrianne Palicki again.

Regardless, introducing Bishop here is logical, and it’s a good business move: Hawkeye has some fans, but Oscar-nominee and bestselling popstar Hailee Steinfeld brings with her an entire fanbase. She and the other women of Hawkeye, including Alaqua Cox as Echo and Vera Farmiga as Eleanor Bishop (both very briefly visible in the trailer), not to mention Florence Pugh as returning fan-favorite Yelena Belova, are the main reason we will be watching.

And none of these characters, at least as far as we know, have superpowers. That’s not to say there won’t be any, or that they couldn’t be handled well, but I do appreciate having a corner of the MCU where the “street-level” heroes don’t necessarily have to fight literal gods and monsters all the time. There’s just something so wonderfully relatable about Hawkeye attempting to zipline across Rockefeller Center and falling into the Christmas tree that not only harkens back to the lighthearted tone of the Matt Fraction comics that defined this character, but is also necessary in a franchise where heroes are too often invulnerable and untouchable.

Trailer Rating: 9/10