Jamie Foxx Archives - The Wide Screen

November 17, 2021

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” 2nd Trailer Puts The Villains Front And Center

There’s a certain irony to the fact that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and his villains are so extensively intertwined with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Spider-Man: No Way Home already feels more like a proper Spider-Man movie simply because Peter Parker is facing off against villains from pre-MCU Spider-Man movies, but hey, I’m not complaining…at least not about the villains that we’re actually getting in No Way Home. Yeah, it’s sad that the MCU hasn’t got their own versions of these iconic characters (yet), but I’m not sure I’d have trusted director Jon Watts with that great responsibility either.

The villains that Holland’s Spider-Man has fought up until this point, like Holland’s Spider-Man himself, have suffered from being weighed down by MCU baggage. To be fair, Vulture actually makes sense as a victim of Tony Stark’s ruthless pursuit of profit, but then Marvel undermined their own creativity by doing the same storyline again, only worse. Mysterio’s generic quest for vengeance against Stark did little to benefit a potentially interesting character.

And Stark is only one of several MCU characters who have loomed over the franchise, pulling focus from Holland and his actual supporting cast, most egregiously the underutilized Zendaya. Every Spider-Man movie features a big-name MCU hero in a major supporting role (Stark in Homecoming, Nick Fury in Far From Home, Doctor Strange in No Way Home) who invariably makes a mess that Peter Parker then has to spend the entire movie cleaning up. Fans often critique solo movies, like Doctor Strange or more recently Eternals, for feeling disconnected from the broader MCU, but MCU Spider-Man perfectly demonstrates the dangers of leaning too far in the opposite direction.

Shoehorning in all these connections has given Watts and his writers an excuse to stop fleshing out the characters they’re actually supposed to be building a franchise around, which is how we end up with only a vague idea of who Holland’s Peter Parker is, much less his circle of friends and family. I don’t know if No Way Home will actually remedy this issue, because it’s a sprawling Multiverse epic with a lot of characters and subplots, but at least this time around Tom Holland’s onscreen competition comes from other Spider-Men and their own villains.

We all know that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield are in No Way Home at this point. Technically it’s still only a rumor and I still need to point that out, but this is not another case of Mephisto fever – hard evidence exists, and you can find it in this very trailer. Doc Ock even indirectly mentions Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man when he confronts Tom Holland in what looks to be their first fight. We can see that Ock’s instantly iconic introductory line, “Hello, Peter”, is followed by confusion when Ock actually unmasks the MCU’s Spider-Man and is taken aback, saying “You’re not Peter Parker”. Who’s he referencing? Probably the same guy who’s very clearly punching Lizard in a frame from the Brazilian version of the trailer.

But Sony wants the Maguire and Garfield reveal to be a surprise for moviegoers, and I respect that. So for now, this trailer just focuses really heavily on all of their villains – okay, well, five of their villains; just enough to indicate that Marvel is assembling a Multiverse Sinister Six team, but one short of completion. Personally, I think that empty slot has to be filled by someone from Holland’s own universe. If the MCU really can’t come up with one Spider-Man villain of their own, that would be extremely embarrassing and very telling of how this franchise has been mishandled. My bet’s on Mysterio posing as Doctor Strange, because I still don’t get why Benedict Cumberbatch is acting so weird in these trailers, but Vulture would work.

Of the villains pulled from other universes, the stand-out to me is Jamie Foxx’s Electro – because my god, what an upgrade. Last time we saw his version of the iconic villain, he was inexplicably neon blue. Now, he’s wreathed in comics-accurate yellow lightning, and most importantly he’s wearing a proper costume and his starfish mask. Granted, the mask is made of CGI lightning, but it works better than I ever expected it to. Scratch that, I never expected them to adapt the mask in the first place, so this is a welcome surprise. Electro has been my favorite Spider-Man villain since as long as I’ve known about Spider-Man at all.

Doc Ock and Green Goblin both look pretty good in costumes lifted from the Sam Raimi films in which they originated, although there’s a clear difference between how Raimi directed both characters and how Watts tries to mimic his style, and that lessens the impact of both characters’ long-awaited reappearances ever so slightly. There’s discourse on social media about Peter Parker making fun of Doc Ock’s name, but honestly I think the real problem is that very few of Peter Parker’s jokes in the MCU are actually clever or funny, not that he makes jokes.

As for Sandman and Lizard, they’re kind of just…there. I don’t expect them to have a particularly large role in No Way Home, and honestly I don’t want them to, either. Sandman has been reimagined as a floating cloud of dust particles similar to the shapeless elemental beings that Spider-Man fought in Far From Home, while Lizard’s design doesn’t appear to have been touched up at all – and that’s not a good thing. I’d have swapped out either one for Rhino, and I don’t even like Rhino. Ideally, Black Cat would be on this team, but at this point she’d be better off waiting until after Catwoman has debuted in The Batman to avoid copy-cat accusations (I’m worse at making puns than MCU Peter Parker, I know).

But the really interesting thing about how No Way Home is utilizing these villains is how they seem to play into Peter Parker’s character arc. The trailer sets up the major conflict at the heart of the story, but it’s not between Peter and any of these Multiverse baddies – it’s between him and Doctor Strange, who sees them as potential threats to the universe and basically instructs Peter to kill them all, one by one. Peter doesn’t want to have to kill any of them, so he very forcefully chooses to defy Doctor Strange and liberate the villains. The twist is that they still want to kill him (except Ock, who seems like a genuinely good guy), so the challenge of returning them to their respective universes is going to test Peter’s ability to save everyone without getting any blood on his hands.

That’s a really compelling conflict, but No Way Home can’t be afraid to “go there” in terms of showing the consequences of Peter’s wavering. It’s been theorized that someone close to him will die in this movie to drive the point home, and the trailer ends on Zendaya falling from the Statue of Liberty in a sequence evocative of Gwen Stacy’s horrific death in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – but that’s crossing a line even for me. If Marvel actually kills off Zendaya, especially in such a callous manner, we riot. We can all agree on that, right? Just take Happy Hogan instead. Kill Uncle Ben again, for all I care. But don’t fridge Zendaya, okay?

Trailer Rating: 8/10

August 24, 2021

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” 1st Trailer Review!

Considered by many the Holy Grail of long-awaited movie trailers, the first official teaser for Spider-Man: No Way Home finally dropped last night after several tiresome months of pleading from fans; and much like the Holy Grail itself (at least if Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade is to be believed), it’s maybe not the flashiest thing in the world. Not, in my opinion, deserving of all the drama that surrounded its release and its premature leak. But at this point, I honestly don’t think the content of the trailer mattered that much. This thing was going to be big no matter what, simply because of the hype that had been built up around it, and the potency of name recognition.

Now, as sacrilegious as it may be to write these words, Spider-Man: No Way Home is not one of my most-anticipated MCU movies; not even close. I’m excited for all the Multiverse stuff because that’s more my groove, but it’s the thought of everything in between involving the unrealized potential of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker that gives me pause. I’m happy for everyone who’s happy to see that version of the character again; I’m just more intrigued by the ~~possibility~~ certainty of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield appearing as Variants of Peter Parker pulled from their own universes into the MCU timeline.

And this trailer gives me just enough of what I needed to hold my interest in No Way Home – Multiverse shenanigans involving all our favorite past iterations of iconic Spider-Man characters who have somehow never been reinvented for the MCU. Alfred Molina returns as the 2004 version of Doc Ock from Spider-Man 2, looking just as fabulous as always even though his mechanical tentacles are very obviously all CGI this time around, and we don’t really get a clear shot of them. We can hear Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin laugh for the first time since 2002’s Spider-Man, and he’s even still using his original pumpkin-bombs. There’s hints to Jamie Foxx’s Electro, Sandman, and a blurry shape that is possibly Lizard.

That’s a pretty awesome team of super-villains right there, just one member short of a true Sinister Six line-up. For Tom Holland’s sake, I hope one of his own villains completes the team; preferably Mysterio. It would be kind of awkward if in two whole solo movies he didn’t have a single villain worthy of making the cut. But that could be attributable to the fact that the MCU uses Spider-Man mostly for crossover events, and doesn’t put nearly as much effort into fleshing out his own corner of the universe. Even his solo movies have become crossover events, and Spider-Man: No Way Home is going to be the biggest one yet.

And unfortunately, Peter Parker had to go and rope Doctor Strange into his mess. The danger of crossover events is that directors and writers get to take a stab at characters they don’t usually direct or write, and it leads to…very weird inconsistencies. Like Doctor Strange apparently risking the stability of the cosmos for the sake of a teenager whom he vowed he would kill if it meant ensuring the stability of said cosmos just a few months before this film is set. And I genuinely cannot believe the number of people I’ve seen defend this plot point adamantly, claiming that it makes sense because Doctor Strange…texted while driving in his first movie. It’s funny, because I seem to remember that moment being the impetus for a whole lot of character development that pushed him to become the antithesis of everything he had been, but I guess that can all be ignored now?

On the flip-side, you can just have fun and make wild theories about how this Doctor Strange is possibly a Skrull shapeshifter, or Mysterio disguised by one of his illusions, or the evil Doctor Strange Variant whom we’re about to meet in What If…?, or even Mephisto (who at this point has become so widely-known, even among general audiences, that I think Marvel has to use him somewhere down the line). That’s what I plan on doing, because the thought of Doctor Strange actually having his entire personality rewritten to suit the plot of a Spider-Man movie is disheartening.

But I wouldn’t put it past Jon Watts to do that. His weak direction and lack of vision is consistently a major problem with the MCU’s Spider-Man franchise, and that’s what terrifies me about the future of the Fantastic Four under his guidance. I really liked Spider-Man: Far From Home when it came out, and I’m sure that somewhere on this blog you can still find a review where my younger self rambled on for hours about how it was the best MCU movie of all time, but…my thoughts on that film have changed somewhat in the intervening two years. I still think Tom Holland is very well-cast, but the writing he’s burdened with does him no favors.

And all that being said, I’m still excited to see him share the screen with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, because he’s still Spider-Man. The thing about the Spider-Man brand is that no matter how many iterations of the character there may be (and there have been a lot), the iconic image of the webslinger is already too firmly etched into the public consciousness to be disrupted by even the worst film adaptation. We all have our own version of Spider-Man that comes closest to matching that timeless ideal – for me, it’s probably the version who cameoed randomly in old episodes of The Electric Company – and that’s a wonderful thing. So celebrate it, and enjoy the trailer.

Seriously, it’s got Doc Ock. If nothing else, celebrate that.

Trailer Rating: 7.5/10

December 29, 2020

“Soul” Review!

After two decades in the business of making feature-length animated films that continually break new ground for the medium, Pixar has finally…tried to break new ground for representation, with Soul being the studio’s first Black-led film. And, in a pattern established by Disney Animation with their first Black-led Princess movie, The Princess And The Frog, Soul is at its very best whenever it’s illuminating the beauty and complexity of Black culture in America – and at its worst when it’s forcing an uncomfortable bodyswap (or, well, soulswap in this case) that in this case involves an awesome Black character being transplanted into a green blob/therapy cat for around 90% of the movie. That’s not to say that 90% of the movie is bad (it’s actually quite good, for several reasons), but it is deeply frustrating that we keep having to have this extremely specific conversation about the importance of allowing animated Black protagonists to remain in their own bodies.

Soul dives headfirst into a conversation about the meaning of life, by following a middle-school band teacher named Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) as he…well, dives headfirst into an open manhole and is left in a coma, while his untethered soul desperately tries to find its way back to him. An accident leads Joe’s soul to The Great Before, a dreamy, pastel-colored landscape where young souls first have their personalities and various character quirks picked out for them before being sent off to Earth. Here, another accident leads to him being selected to mentor a rambunctious soul named 22 (voiced by Tina Fey, a casting error if ever there was one), who doesn’t want to leave The Great Before or live on Earth. Naturally, Pixar cranks up the tear-jerking dial to an 11 as Joe leads 22 on a fast-paced tour of New York City, giving them both a chance to savor the true joys of living.

What I truly love about Soul more than anything else is its unwavering focus on simple things: things we too often take for granted, but which keep us rooted in reality; things as small and seemingly insignificant as a pizza crust, a spool of thread, or even a helicopter seed. As a Tolkien fan, that message resonated deeply with me, and brought to mind Gandalf’s iconic quote from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (I know, I know, a movie quote: but a good one) – “I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” That’s what Soul is really all about: small things and kind deeds that get us through one day, and then another, reminding us of how much wonder and beauty this world still has to offer us at every turn. A sequence in the third act illustrates this beautifully, allowing Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ haunting New Age score to narrate a vibrant montage of small-scale city life that pulls back to become a sprawling picture of the cosmos itself – and our tiny place in it.

Music is (pun most certainly intended) instrumental to Soul‘s success, and there will be h-e-double-hockeysticks to pay if Reznor and Ross aren’t rewarded at the Oscars for their work here. Their delicate New Age compositions harmonize beautifully with Jon Batiste’s jazz tunes, making the entire film as irresistible to the ears as it is to the eyes. Music, specifically soul music, is at the heart of everything Joe Gardner does throughout the story: and the film makes that clear, lavishing plenty of time on the moodily atmospheric nightclub where Gardner performs alongside in-universe jazz legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett), becoming so lost in the power of his music that he’s briefly transported to the astral plane, a mystical soundscape of shifting lights.

The animation is stunning, with all the levels of hyper-realistic detail you’d expect from a live-action film set – except in The Great Before, which has a quirky, abstract visual aesthetic, and The Great Beyond, a dark area comprised entirely of deconstructed geometric platforms, like the blank space outside the boundaries of a video game. But although I’ve heard complaints that animation’s goal shouldn’t be to mimic real life but to exaggerate it, I still preferred the sections of Soul that take place in New York City to those that center the spiritual realm. Firstly, because the entire film is clearly such a passionate and genuine love letter to every aspect of city life. And secondly, because of the character designs, which are among the most diverse I’ve seen in any animated film, ever. No copy-and-paste facial features here: Soul‘s New York is accurately populated by people of every race, gender, body type, height, and weight, each with their own individual character quirks. If the extras in your movie all look detailed enough to probably carry their own story, you know you’ve done something right (in case it wasn’t clear, I am in fact demanding that Pixar commission a series of shorts focusing on various extras from this film).

Of our two leads, Joe is by far the more interesting: tall, lanky, middle-aged and bespectacled, he isn’t anything like the usual Pixar protagonist, or even the usual Pixar “hot dad” character (yes, that’s a real thing). He’s also sometimes Black, which makes him pretty unique for Pixar simply by default. I say “sometimes” because, well, he’s not Black for most of the film. And the worst part isn’t even that he gets turned into a wispy, featureless, pale green orb ten minutes in. The worst part is that the film gets a chance to remedy its mistake soon afterwards – and instead doubles down on its original bad choice, placing Joe into the body of a therapy cat while inserting 22 into Joe’s body. You can claim this is much ado about nothing, because 22 is just a disembodied voice in a green orb: but Pixar made the choice to have them voiced by a white actress, and even commented on it in the script, with Joe asking 22 why they prefer the voice of a “middle-aged white lady” when they can adopt any voice they want. This is all played for laughs, but it’s not funny. Just like it wasn’t funny when Tina Fey, 22’s voice actress, wrote blackface performances into four episodes of her series 30 Rock – something for which she only finally apologized earlier this year. Pixar giving this opportunity to her is a clear sign that the studio needs to do better when casting: because there is nothing in the script that requires 22 to have a white woman’s voice…unless it is the belief that the soulswap will somehow be made funnier because of it.

And unfortunately, all this comes about at the expense of Joe, who, as previously mentioned, gets stuck in the body of a cat. If you’re not familiar with the strange phenomenon of Black animated characters being transformed into animals, this probably seems like just another joke I’m not getting. But it’s an unfunny joke that’s been driven into the ground at this point: one that relies on the notion that audiences won’t relate to a Black protagonist, but will happily laugh along if that Black protagonist is usurped from their body and placed in an animal – or really anything else but themselves. Soul, by keeping Joe’s body hanging around, seems to think it’s doing the right thing: but it’s not Joe we’re seeing onscreen – it’s Tina Fey’s white-lady voice, using Joe’s body as a mouthpiece for their own agendas, at one point even hijacking and running off with it (apparently, Joe’s body didn’t suffer a single bruise, cut, or broken limb during his coma-inducing fall) like a shoplifted costume. There are other instances worth noting, but I will leave it up to individual Black critics and audience members to decide whether and where Soul crosses the line exactly. I am nonetheless certain that many – if not all – of these issues could have been easily avoided by casting a Black voice-actress in the part.

The other major issue with the film, less severe than the ones I’ve already mentioned, is a problem with pacing: as the first two acts meander all over the place. There’s no clear point at which the action really starts, either – eventually, you just have to accept that the story is moving along ever more swiftly, and there’s not much time to slow down or take a breather before you’re swept up in it. I feel that all of this may have been intentional, to mirror the hurried pace of real life and the need to savor the few respites we get from daily hustle-and-bustle, but while that sounds like an intriguing concept, it makes for a strange viewing experience. Still could win over some Academy voters, however, if it was a conscious choice.

In the entire history of the Academy Awards, only two animated feature-length films have ever been nominated for Best Picture – one being from Disney (Beauty & The Beast), and the other from Pixar (Toy Story 3, somehow). Soul, if it hopes to be the third, may therefore benefit from the COVID-19 delay that forced it to debut free of charge on Disney+ this Christmas: a date that puts it firmly in the middle of awards season. I personally doubt the film will score a Best Picture nomination, but it’s certainly the early frontrunner for Best Animated Picture, to nobody’s surprise. Onward never stood a chance.

And speaking of Onward, the lighthearted fantasy adventure remains my favorite Pixar film of the year (and my second-favorite Pixar film of all time), believe it or not. But fear not: Soul‘s decidedly Tolkienesque messages and simple delights will ensure it a safe place in my affections, though perhaps never a spot at the top of my Pixar tier-list.

Movie Rating: 8/10

December 8, 2020

“Spider-Man 3” Recruits Andrew Garfield For Epic Crossover!

The third (and as yet untitled) installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man series is shaping up to be truly epic, combining elements from several past iterations of the character’s long onscreen history in what is sure to be a massive Multiverse extravaganza. Tobey Maguire’s 2002-2007 trilogy, Andrew Garfield’s 2012-2014 duology, and Tom Holland’s MCU series will finally collide in Holland’s third solo film, with major actors from all three franchises reprising their iconic roles and interacting for the first time ever. And yes, that includes the three Peter Parkers themselves. Garfield has just been confirmed today to be joining Holland in the upcoming Spider-Man 3, alongside two crucial members of the Maguire Spider-Man franchise – Kirsten Dunst and Alfred Molina – while Maguire himself is rumored to still be in talks, but is close to finalizing his own deal.

We’ve been hearing for a while now that this plan was in the cards all along, so the news isn’t too surprising – it’s just extremely relieving and exciting that it’s actually on the verge of happening. The first hint that it could be a possibility was the casting of Jamie Foxx back in October. Foxx, who played Electro in Andrew Garfield’s second Spider-Man movie, was confirmed to be returning as the electric supervillain rather than an entirely new character, although one would hope he’s getting a brand new look out of this, because his previous appearance was…not great. Soon after, it was rumored that Alfred Molina (Doctor Octopus in the original 2002 Spider-Man movie) had joined the cast. Those rumors have now been confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter. And that would have been big enough news to spark a lively bit of fandom discourse, but then Collider joined in the fun and gave us far more to talk about.

Collider’s article casually tosses out the bombshell that Andrew Garfield will return as the version of Peter Parker he played in his short-lived series, which came to an abrupt end after Garfield fell out of favor with Sony. In that very same sentence, and with no further elaboration, they also confirmed that Tobey Maguire is currently in talks to return as his version of Peter Parker, but that he hasn’t closed his deal just yet. And in the next sentence after that, they revealed that Kirsten Dunst, who played Mary Jane opposite Maguire’s Peter Parker, will also be coming back: and she will probably be joined by Emma Stone, Gwen Stacy in the Garfield movies. Stone isn’t a lock just yet, due to her pregnancy, but the fact that she just dropped out of a lead role in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon because of a scheduling conflict indicates that she might be returning to the Marvel Universe. Stone returning is interesting, given that Gwen Stacy…um, died.

All of this is very thrilling and happening very quickly, but we have to slow down and talk about why this is happening now. Because of another confirmed casting for Spider-Man 3, that of Benedict Cumberbatch reprising his role as the MCU’s Doctor Strange, we can reasonably surmise that all these alternate versions of characters are showing up in Tom Holland’s universe because of something (or someone) tampering with the Multiverse – Strange’s field of expertise. If I had to guess, I’d say that someone is probably Wanda Maximoff, who will be toying with parallel universes in her upcoming Disney+ series, WandaVision, before supposedly having a major role in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. Spider-Man 3, sandwiched neatly between the two, will likely deal with the fallout from Wanda’s disastrous attempts to reconstruct reality, and Doctor Strange will be forced to help the young hero battle villains from other dimensions. Meanwhile, the three Peter Parkers will have to team up to save humanity, and we’ll see what Maguire and Garfield’s Parkers have been up to since their franchises ended. It’s extremely meta, and I love the whole concept already.

As for anything in particular I’d love to see, well…I do hope that Andrew Garfield finally gets his wish and plays his version of Peter Parker as a bisexual man. Bisexual representation is sorely lacking in mainstream media, and so far the MCU hasn’t done a great job of depicting its own bisexual heroes and heroines: a scene confirming Vallkyrie is attracted to women was cut from Thor: Ragnarok, and a scene in which Okoye flirted with a woman was cut from Black Panther.

So what do you think? With Garfield, Molina, Foxx, and Dunst officially returning (and Maguire and Stone likely to follow suit, if all goes well), what are you hoping to see in Spider-Man 3? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!